Have no fear, it's just a new template. Same ole Jessa and Blake. I got a bit sick of looking at the old format for the blog so I took it upon myself to change it. I hope I don't get in trouble with Jessa the next time she opens this.

Things are still just moving right along. I finally found some really great volunteer work at Habitat for Humanity Guyana. I am filling in for the "Community Mobilization" department since the recent departure of the previous "Community Mobilization Officer." Sounds very official huh? It really just means lots of volunteer coordination, community outreach, event planning, a little resource devolpment, and a lot of fun. It's rewarding on a day to day basis and good experience for the future.

We are starting to say goodbye to many of our friends that we came to Guyana with. VSO does placements from 3 months to 2 years and a few friends have left with more to leave soon. It's been a little tough to say goodbye to people that you've become great friends with in the oddest of circumstances, we will miss them all.

So let's see, updates since Jessa's last posting. We'll, we went camping with about 10 friends on Good Friday at a place called Capoey Lake. It was supposed to be a secluded beach but it turned out to be an Amerindian Village. There was a peace corps volunteer there who set us up with a nearbye place to camp that was more secluded and what we had in mind. The campsite was pretty basic though: just trees, white sand beach, and black water lake. No real facilities and no shelter to cover us from the rain. It was a pretty big risk considering how much it rains here but we slung up our hammocks in the trees and crossed our fingers. It turned out to be a nice night, no rain, campfire in the sand, all that good stuff. We got back to Georgetown the next day but not after an ackward confrontation with two boat captains and an old lady who had different ideas of who would be taking us back across the lake and a very adventurous trip across the Essequibo river where everyone in the boat got soaked except for me and two locals. Jessa's mom sent down a ten year supply of easter egg decorating kits so we put them to good use on sunday and Jessa organized an "easter egg decorating party." Translation, a fridge full of colored hard boiled eggs for us to eat for the last two weeks. We also put on an easter egg hunt for the downstairs kids and they loved it once the concept was explained.

Next day was World Cup Cricket. I think some of you may have heard but the West Indies is hosting the ICC World Cup and Guyana won a bid to host part of the Super 8 matches. We saw New Zealand play Ireland and New Zealand won in a landslide, the score was:

New Zealand: 263/8 (50.0) and Ireland: 134/10 (37.4)

I bet most of you can't make sense of that. It just means Ireland is pathetic even though they were a cinderella second round team.

After that we had a week of saying good bye to our very close friends from Canada and I got very busy here at Habitat. I helped put together a volunteer day with the Miss Guyana Universe contestants that went very well. I think I left a good impression. You can see the winner represent Guyana at the Miss Universe pageant on May 29th (I think) in Cancun. Here name is MeLeesa Payne. I'm working on lots of other things but that's the only one i'll mention for obvious reasons.

We are now on a 10 day count down until we come home to visit. It has been a long 8 months since we left Austin and we can't wait for some spicy tex-mex, cold live oak beer, and familiar accents.

Miss you all - Blake