My First Work Days in Belize

After a few days of sight seeing and exploring we spent our first session of work on Sunday night in Red Bank. We set up the dental clinic which was amazing. Watching all of the dental students transform a small one room church into a functioning dental clinic was unbelievable. Children were swarming with excitement and peaking there head into the windows, curious to see what was going on. When we got there I got out of the van and met a group of boys, 3 of them were brothers. I asked them about their family and one of the boys said he had 10 sisters! I was amazed. It took him a few seconds to count them all! The children also love having their picture taken. If you get our your camera you have to take atleast 50 pictures. All of the children love seeing their faces on my camera and love taking pictures of others. I can't tell you how many pictures I have with little fingers in the way!
As the night went on we began taking family pictures for all of the people in the village. The children were so excited that they formed a line of 50 or so and wanted individual pictures of themselves too! Many of the children were dressed in beautiful traditional dresses and boys in nice pants. It was such an event for them because they never get to have a family picture. Watching them file in and seeing the smiles on their faces is something I will never forget.
One thing that I learned after Sunday was a new definition of the word beautiful. In in the US the word beautiful is defined by a lot of things for women, especially make up, weight, hair, eye color, etc. Here, natural beauty can be seen all around, from young to old. I have never seen such intruguing men in women that show such natural beauty no matter what size or age.
Today I will be working in the schools with the children and I can't wait! I am sure I will learn a lot and have some life changing experiences! I will blog again soon :)

Alex

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