One night we were all sitting in the living room and I had to use the bathroom so I got in there and closed the door – except it wouldn’t close.  Our bathroom door typically closes very easily and never sticks.  Well, it was still a new house to us so I just kept trying to get the door to close, almost slamming it at times.  I kept thinking that it was so strange the door wasn’t closing.  After about 6 attempts at getting the door shut a thought darted through my mind – gecko.  I froze and thought; there could be a gecko where the door hinges.  Internally I was saying, “No, no, no” as I slowly opened the door to look at what was causing the trouble.  As my eyes reluctantly moved in to the site of the hinges there he was – eye bulging and completely flattened.  I let out a scream and, like a little girl, jumped up and down, brushing myself off like I had gecko guts on me somehow.  “I killed a gecko, I killed a gecko!”   I couldn’t even bring myself to scrape it off the door and clean up the mess I had made so Will did it for me.  Sadly the whole thing was slightly traumatizing.  So between me and my cats we may not have any geckos left after a few months. 

At this point we had been working like crazy – there were no days off.  It started to hit me that this was nothing like my 9 – 5 at home.  There would be no days off for a long time.  It was a completely different feeling though; we were building this for ourselves.  We couldn’t blame anything on anyone else but ourselves.  This is my first experience working for myself and it’s absolutely different.  It takes a little time to get used to the fact that there’s no one there to keep tabs on what you’re accomplishing.  So we continued to spend our days painting, cleaning, building, buying and organizing.  We were spending like crazy - it quickly got scary how much money was going out.  We had grossly underestimated how much it would cost to get this thing going.  Will and I had come to Belize with a set amount of money and it was depleting at a rate I was getting nervous about but we had to get the restaurant opened so we kept spending.  Our next big spending trip would be to Belize City so Solo picked us up early to make the trip – there had been a lot of flooding in the country at this point since the rain just wouldn’t stop.  It had finally started to let up but it would now take some time for the standing water to dissipate so we didn’t know what to expect on our trip.  Solo drives an SUV so there was no trouble getting through the standing water on the roads but there were some long stretches of road that were flooded over.  In fact, there were boys all along those sections of the highway (this was their main highway) fishing and actually catching fish to sell alongside the road.  It was very sad to see houses along the highway that were halfway under water.  These homes were in villages where their livelihood was farming and their entire crop would be wiped out.  It was seemed very random too, one house would be totally fine while their neighbor would be under 4 feet of water and rowing to and from their home. 

We eventually made it to Belize City and we had three separate stops to make; Premium Wine and Spirits (for our alcohol), Food and Beverage (for bulk items) and Brodies (for other miscellaneous items).  It went very well, not a single problem.  We hit all three stores, got what we needed and got out of town.  The vehicle was stuffed with merchandise.  We had decided that we wanted to sell wine at our place along with the other standard mixed drinks and beer so we had about three cases of various wine – one bottle being a King Estate Chard, Yah Oregon!  We also bought bottles of the local rums, some vodka and tequila.  We were planning on having a simple bar because most of the bars around Corozal didn’t offer a full bar which we took as an indication that there wasn’t much money in it. 

On the way back to Corozal Solo stopped alongside the road to buy some fish from one of the boys who had been fishing in the highway (so bizarre).  He bought a bundle of them and stuck them in a cooler behind my mom and me.  Neither my mom nor I are well-informed in the buying fresh fish department so we did not realize that these newly caught fish were not dead yet and would be jumping around in the cooler.  As we rode back the fish would jump, we would jump and then look at one another and laugh at ourselves.  It was an entertaining trip.