June 2009
22 posts
Accidentally put this post on my other tumblr...
It’s 12:30 now, and in about 5 hours I’ll be in a bus, on my way to Belize City to catch a flight to Houston, and then fly home to Memphis. It’s all bittersweet, but today was a perfect last day. We went shopping this morning and I got a beautiful blanket (haggled over it, of course) and then we took a boat out to Tobacco Caye for the day. The weather was perfect, our boat driver took us into...
Wrapping Up
I can’t believe we only have 2 days of project work left! Friday is a free day, so we’re all going back to Tobacco Caye, having a barbeque at Jungle Huts (I’m learning how to make toritllas!), wrap up discussion, and packing. This afternoon’s teaching was kind of anti-climatic, we got to our Standard 5 classes and they told us they had national testing for the rest of the...
There are 2 lizards in our room
and I’m incredibly excited, hopefully they’ll eat all the mosquitoes in here. It’s hilarious how many lizards there are here, and there not seen as a nuisance because of their diet of bugs. In Placencia, our hotel was an addition to the house of Deb and Dave, some ex-pats from California (I love the stories of the Americans who live here, it’s so funny how they just pick...
46 kids, oh my!
I have a really bad habit of putting posts intended for this sight onto my other tumblr. Friday’s post didn’t quite make it up, but it was just kind of complainy, my Friday class at Sacred Heart had 46 kids in it because one of the teachers had gotten in a pretty serious car accident that Monday and the schools here don’t have the money, or resources, to hire substitutes. As...
Scratch That
We got to make coconut fudge instead— so good!
I think I'm starting to hit a wall
We’re all getting pretty tired. It’s the middle of week three, and all I want to do is sleep. It’s hard, we’re past the half-way point and everything isn’t quite as new and exciting. Rice and beans with stewed chicken have definitely lost their appeal, people here eat them everyday, usually for lunch and dinner. I think that’s why I had diet coke and...
For just under $2 US
You can buy Diet Coke and poptarts at the Price is Right. That was my lunch today, it was wonderful.
Rain/Weekend Update
I had a really hard time waking up this morning. Usually, the sun rises around 5:00 (they don’t have daylight savings time here) and by 6:30 there’s so much light in our room it’s impossible for me to stay asleep. This morning, though, it was dark outside when I woke up, I think I pressed my snooze button about 5 times. The wonderful thing, though, is it’s dark because it’s...
May 2009
18 posts
Tsunami Scare
So last night I experienced my first earthquake, and I have to say it was pretty frightening. It was around 2:30 in the morning, when we woke up and the entire room was shaking. I had been dreaming we were on a boat, so when I woke up I still thought the boat was just rocking really hard, I have no idea why I rationalized it like that. According to Mr. Usher, our hotel manager, the shaking...
Hello Wednesday
What’s that theory in science where if something can go wrong it will? I’m kind of feeling like that right now, it’s been a long 2 days. Yesterday the business group took the afternoon off to go to Tobacco Caye, which actually didn’t go wrong at all, it was wonderful! $10 US for the boat ride there and back, and $5 US for snorkeling equipment. This island is tiny, no bigger than a football...
Weekend Update
I’m going to try and type fast, I have about 15 minutes until the time on my internet runs out! All the internet stopped working at the Jungle Huts, so in typical Belizian style, they won’t have someone at Dangriga until the end of the week at least to fix it. I’ll probably just keep word processing about how everything is going and I’ll put up a giant post next Monday,...
My internet is back!
It’s been gone all day today, but Mason and Richard (two of the guys in our business group who are also working on building a park) are pretty handy and fixed it.
Today was great, the first POWA meeting this morning was absolutely fantastic. The women are extremely interested in budgeting and improving their businesses, but they have no idea where to start. A lot of their financial...
So I'm a little overwhelmed right now...
Just got back from a meeting with a co-op of farmers getting into the tilapia market. They want, not quite a market analysis, but information about demand for tilapia. And a lot of other things, too, actually, but I think that’s what we’re going to focus on. There were just so many people, the co-op is made up of 35 farmers, and about 9 of them were at the meeting. They all came...
Breakfast:
Homemade flour tortillas
Scrambled eggs with garlic
Cooked spinach
Mangosteens
Delicious.
Chicken Foot
End of day one, and it already feels like I’ve been here forever. The meetings this afternoon, especially the one with Michelle Irving, the head of POWA, were really helpful. It’s just crazy, we’ve worked on these projects all semester, and they’re finally materializing— there not coming together quite as originally planned, but it’s still good, and I think...
Good morning Belize!
It’s 6 AM, and I’m up working on POWA stuff and having my quiet time— partly because it’s really bright outside this early, partly because our whole room forgot about the time change and thought it was 7 AM, and partly because I found out my meeting with Michelle Irving, the head of POWA, is today and not tomorrow. The business group is doing weekly seminars with POWA (a...
Just arrived
I’m in Belize! Arrived in Belize City around noon, then took a 3 hour bus ride to Dangriga. This country has personality, and I love it! The “highway” (aka narrow road, if I was driving on that road I would have killed us) was definitely a scenic route. The Mayan mountains are breathtaking, and all the houses are bright colors. A ton of beautiful flowers, too. Once we...
Going on a jet plane
and in 7 hours I will be on my 6 AM flight headed to Belize! Well, first a layover in Houston, then to Belize. I have my luggage all packed, the suitcase was initially a consistent 54 lbs when I repeatedly weighed it, but Mom had the genius idea of splitting my stuff between a smaller suitcase and a carry on, so now it’s perfect. I have two adorable tie-dye shirts Gwen and I made today,...
WatchThis is a video someone made of the project last year. The business group isn’t mentioned much, and some of these projects have changed, but it’s still a really cool look at the community and things we’ll be working on in Dangriga!
I got my malaria pills today!
Which means I’m now officially done with Belize health prep. I got Typhoid and Hepatitis A shots last week, along with a scary pamphlet about rabies that suggests, among other things, avoiding stray dogs and not bringing food into Asian temples that have monkeys. The pills I’m taking for malaria are weekly and known to potentially have hallucinogenic side effects— definitely...
April 2009
2 posts
So I'm going to Belize this summer...
and I am super excited! I have another Tumblr, but I wanted to separate this one out for travel updates. I tried a blogspot, but it just wasn’t working for me.
I will be leaving for Dangriga, Belize, on May 17 at 6:00 AM from Memphis International, and I will be spending a month there studying abroad, getting 6 hours of upper-level business credit for doing community development work in Belize,...