OK, OK, I’ve been a sloth. For the past two weeks, or nearly so, there has been a daily blog on Belize from this quarter. When we got to Caye Caulker on Sunday, however, I “went splat.” “Went splat,” you ask? I have an expression, “to go splat” which means to utterly relax.

I’ve done a few photographs, as you will see here. This one was late our first afternoon. The sun had pretty much gone down on the east side of Caye Caulker, but it was still high enough to shine on this traditional Belizian sailboat.

We had a fantastic time with our participants, but with the blog and inquiries on the workshops, I rarely got to bed before 12:30 after my shower. With the oft-recalcitrant nature of the Internet at Cotton Tree Lodge, I couldn’t always upload our blog, so I’d get up early in the morning, usually 5:30 or so to return to the main communal, thatched cabana at the Lodge when the Internet was fresh for the day.

People would jokingly asked if I had even gone to bed, as I was in the same position when they came for breakfast as I was after they had …

Today was another full day, starting with the market in Punta Gorda — “PG” as some of the locals call it — and ending with Abelina and Juan’s chocolate around the corner from the Lodge. In between, we had lunch with Gomier at his wonderful veggie-and-fish restaurant in PG, dropped off two of our participants who had to leave a half a day early at the airport, and watched Andrea make pottery the way her grandmother taught her last year shortly before she died.

It was the birthday of one of our participants today, so dinner was a little more leisurely than normal, not that we ever rush through dinner. Then, there was imaging, the daily critique, and exporting the daily picks and what we call the Purple People Eaters onto a stick for our Students’ Gallery that will go up in another week or so.

We have to finish packing for an early-ish departure for Caye Caulker, so this will be …

We weren’t sure if we would go out, as the skies were dark. It had rained torrents last night. But the weather broke, and we piled into The Jungle Bus to head for Blue Creek.

There was a cultural center there and what we would call a boarding school. High school students from all over Toledo, and some beyond, come to learn traditional Mayan ways, both Kekchi and Mopan who speak different languages. We were told that Kekchi usually cannot understand Mopan, but Mopan can sometimes understand Kekchi.

The students also learn entrepreneurial skills, computer programs, and other elements of our so-called modern life.

Alas, the students were on break, but two from Blue Creek came in traditional Mopan dress to