Continuation of last post

Andrew was called on stage second and none of us knew he was doing anything besides being in the fashion show. He read a poem he wrote, about love, in which he compared it to things like a sumo wrestler. The whole UVM group was hysterical while listening to his poem, but everyone else didn’t really react much. At the end, we all congratulated him and were really proud of him for getting up there and reading a poem. During the first half of the show, some people played guitars, a little girl played the keyboard and flute, and a teacher sang.

The second half of the show was definitely the best. It started out with the fashion show, in which Andrew, Kourtney, Emily, Chris, Mr. Ford, and a few others were involved. All the girls were dressed really nicely. Mr. Ford was the first of the guys to strut his stuff and he came out wearing a woman’s spaghetti strap shirt that was way too tight, a headband, and a skirt. Everybody got a kick out of him, especially the Belizeans. Andrew would have crossed dressed, but he wasn’t sure how Belizeans would have reacted to that, since their culture is a bit different here. Andrew then came out wearing a nice shirt and purple biker spandex shorts with black shades on and no shoes. Once he reached the stage, he stripped off his nice shirt, revealing the crazy Japanese shirt and looked like Tom Cruise. He got really into it and was posing better than the girls did. Chris followed as the last model. He reached the front and then took off his normal shirt and his belt and shorts to reveal a really well put together superman costume. Everybody in the audience was dying of laughter at this point.


Andrew stripping

The rest of the show went really well. A few people sang, a band came on to play, our friend Kaela and her friend Jam did fire dancing (and won second place), and a few people danced. The first girl to dance was on the stage by herself doing, I guess you could say authentic cultural dances. By this I mean club music was the soundtrack and she shook her hips and every other part of her body in a way that made you feel like a horrible person for watching her. She even was on the floor at one point doing her thing. We were all laughing really hard and didn’t really know how else to react to what we were watching. I felt like I was back at the strip club, except with a girl stripper.

The second dance was performed by Ashanti, Ms. Rhondine’s daughter and one of my classmates. She had been practicing for the talent show for months, so we were all really excited to see what she would do. The song, Halo by Beyonce came on and from the moment she started dancing, I was captivated. She has taken ballet lessons since she was really young and combined ballet and modern dance in her routine. The routine was choreographed by one of the staff members at Martha’s, which was really cool. She danced so eloquently and I could not take my eyes off of her. At the end when they announced the prizes, she had won first place and we all were so excited for her.

After the talent show, we all went out to the culture club to dance and catch some live music. Not that many people were there though and we only ended up dancing for a short amount of time, since it was extremely hot and nobody seemed to be really into it. We walked outside to get some fresh air and I met a few guys who proceeded to try and get me to go to Orangewalk with them one weekend and another guy who talked to me about how he lost all his pets and wants to get another one. I was ready to call it a night, so me, Katie, and Andrew gathered together and left.

Saturday – Katie had slept in my room, since my 2 roommates were gone for the weekend and the three other people who live at the guesthouse with her were also gone. We woke up at 8 to eat breakfast and find out where we could go on a day trip cheaply. By the time we were all ready to go, however, it was already around 10-1030 and the two places where you can book a tour in town had nothing to offer us. We wanted to go to Mountain Pine Ridge, which has a series of waterfalls and is described in one of the Belize books as looking like Vermont. The first place told us it would cost $60 U.S. and the tour had already left really early that morning. It is also not a place where you can just get dropped of at and hike on your own, since the waterfalls are miles apart from each other. We decided to try our luck with the taxi drivers. They told us they could take us for $175 BZE, but we would not have time to see the whole area since it was so late already. The price immediately deterred us away from this idea, so we asked about going to Bullet Tree, another swimming spot. They told us it would be $20 each way for a ride there, so we went there instead.

Bullet Tree is a town about 15 minutes outside of San Ignacio and since we did not want to get dropped off right in town, we had the taxi driver drop us off closer to the river. When we got there, he told us he’s charging us an extra $5 for driving further and that if we wanted to be guaranteed to be picked up, we have to pay him all the money right then. We did so, since we didn’t really have a choice and just hoped that he actually would come back in a few hours to get us.

We walked down the path to the river and jumped right in. There were tiny rapids in the middle, which if you swam in the middle, it would take you pretty far down the river without you doing any swimming. We all had fun with this, but got a few bruises from hitting rocks along the way. We stayed at Bullet Tree for about two hours and then the taxi driver showed up to take us back. Since it was only 1:30 when we got back, I was determined to get some work done. Andrew, however, walked into my room about 10 minutes after getting back and turned on the tv, which sucked me right into tv and movie watching all day/night. The only other thing I did that day was play the guitar for a bit, since Kaela’s boyfriend had bought a cheap one here and left it for her when he went home. Since Kaela can’t play, she said I could hold onto it, so I have yet another distraction from getting work done besides the heat slowing me down.


River at Bullet Tree

The following Tuesday – we had a field trip to Black Rock River Lodge for Ecology. We took two vans to get there, in which it was the hottest day thus far in Belize and none of the vans, cars, buses have air conditioning here so we were all sweating beyond belief. We traveled down a really narrow road with lots of turns for about a half hour, passing trees, cows, and horses along the way. When we arrived, we had to cross the river by canoe to get to the other side where we would be hiking. The hike normally takes about 45 minutes if you are young and do not stop along the way. We stopped numerous times to talk about the plant species we saw and how the forest survives. The hike was pretty much straight up and just seemed like it went on forever.


Canoeing to the other side

We went right in the middle of the day as well and I don’t think I have sweat so much in my life. We found out later that it was 98 degrees in the shade, which meant it was over 100 degrees outside where we were, not even considering humidity. It is supposed to stay this way for the rest of the summer and get even warmer here, which I can’t even fathom right now.


We hiked to the very top of this mountain

Every time we stopped, I was out of breath and could barely drink my water because I needed to rest for a while first. When we finally reached the top, we were all thankful, but there wasn’t even a view from the very top, only trees. About 5 minutes before you reach the top, however, the view is amazing and you can see the oxbow shape of the river through the mountains.


View from above


Everyone at the top of the mountain

Once we hiked back down the mountain, we were served lunch and lots of water and juice. I think I had at least 15 cups of water/juice with lunch because I felt so dehydrated. Our lunch was also really good…we didn’t have rice and beans for once! They served us spaghetti with real red meat sauce and Parmesan cheese. It was delicious.

This weekend I am going to Caye Caulker to do some volunteer work with a high school there by helping paint and build things for them. I’m excited to go away again for a weekend, since I haven’t in a while. Yay, beach!

Service-learning, Galen’s Variety Show, and Rivers

This past week I worked mostly on my service-learning project, since our projects are shortly coming to an end and my group still had a lot of work to do. Our rough draft of our final report is due today and since I was the one who put together and edited the literature review, I am the one to do the same for the report. I also finally finished editing and creating two different brochures for adults on the Humane Society and proper pet care, while Kourtney in my group is working on the children’s brochure. I also created flyers that could be posted around town about the objectives of the San Ignacio Humane Society.

Our biggest challenge, however, was designing and giving a presentation suited for 7 and 8 year olds. We each wrote our own sections and then I put the power point together, came up with an activity to play with them about the essential things pets needs (food, water, shelter, pet doctors), and found a picture of a dog that they could take home and color. We gave the presentation today and I think it went really well. I took some pictures of the kids and they seemed to really love the activity, but not so much the power point. When we quizzed them at the end, they all knew the basic things their pet needs and were really excited by the coloring page. We decided at the spur of the moment to have them bring the coloring pages back by the end of the week and we would hand out prizes to all of them for coloring and listing four things their pet needs on the back. We decided animal crackers and m&ms would be appropriate…and even got to snag some for ourselves.


The kids playing our game

Monday – This was the first official day where it felt like true summer. From that day on, it has been smothering hot and humid, even at night. I now wear shorts to school and am not cold like I used to be from the air conditioning because it is just so hot outside. After taking a shower and feeling clean, you start sweating about 5 minutes later. I can’t even imagine staying here for all of May, June, July, and August. People must not come out during the day because it gets so hot.

Tuesday - I went to Branch Mouth, or Green Iguana Park, to go swimming in the river with a few people. It was about a 20 minute walk down to the river and then I had to cross a really old bridge that was swaying back and forth like it was going to snap at any moment. We crossed the bridge successfully and were greeted by several really large, dirty pigs wallowing in the mud by the river. There was a huge fig tree to the right of the bridge and a string with a branch attached to it for swinging into the river. After about 10 minutes of trying to grab the string from the hanging tree so we could swing on it, we each took turns swinging into the river. We soon found out, however, that the water was not deep at all and several of us came back with scrapes and bruises from hitting rocks at the bottom of the river.

Since our field trip to Gales Point Manatee Reserve was canceled once again for the weekend, some people went to Tikal, Guatemala, while others went to Chetumal, Mexico. Most of us, however, stayed back in San Ignacio for the weekend.

Friday – I woke up early to catch the Galen bus to school to go talk to Ms. Shaw, the teacher of the students we would be giving the presentation for our service-learning project to, and to see if I could take out a projector for the presentation. I got to the bus stop at 10:05, since the bus normally comes at 10:15. I stood outside in the blistering heat until 10:40 and no bus was in sight. Two other public buses passed through, but I had never taken the public bus by myself before and wasn’t sure which one to get on. Plus, the public bus is always an adventure with many people standing because there are never enough seats for everyone and it gets extremely hot on the buses.

At that point, I walked back to the guesthouse to figure out the correct bus schedule and found out that the Galen bus wasn’t coming until 12:45, so I had to take the public bus. I knocked on Meg and Jay’s door, our group leaders, and talked to Meg about which bus to take. She told me it would cost one dollar and to get on the Belmopan/Belize City bus. I headed back to the bus waiting area downtown and as soon as the right bus pulled up, a horde of people scrambled towards the bus to increase their chances of getting a seat. I followed the crowd and managed to squeeze myself towards the front of the crowd and got a seat right in front with a woman who refused to move into the seat, but I didn’t mind. The guy collects your money about 5 minutes into the bus ride and depending on how far you’re traveling is how much it costs. There are no specific stops either. When you want to get off, you have to stand up and walk towards the front and yell stop so the driver knows to stop. As soon as one seat vacates, someone standing must sit down. I was only on the bus for about 20 minutes and during that time I had about 5 different people sit next to me. I’m also pretty sure I was the only white person on the bus. It’s still bizarre to me being the minority all the time here.

I got off the bus and went upstairs to talk to Ms. Rhondine, who OKed me signing out a projector for that following Monday. I then walked over to the children’s school to talk to Ms. Shaw, who is the sweetest woman I’ve ever met. She was completely fine with us giving the presentation whenever we wanted at whatever time we wanted. I waited for the Galen bus to take me home and then when I came home, the power was out, again, so I couldn’t work on my project since my battery on my computer is dead and I can only use it when it’s plugged in.

I lied on my bed like a star fish for quite some time, just trying to cool off, since I couldn’t turn the air conditioning on either, until Andrew came in and wanted to go to the river. Alex, Andrew, and I went to branch mouth, since Alex had never been there and cooled off for a bit. When we got back, Andrew had to go find an outfit for the talent show that night, since they asked him to model in it, along with several other girls and two other guys. We walked to an “American exchange” store and the door was already halfway shut, since they were going to close in 15 minutes. A couple kids came out with hula hoops and told us we could still go in if we wanted, so we ducked under the door (the doors are like garage doors here or something you would see at a mall) and looked around. Andrew found a banging t-shirt that looked Japanese with designs that looked like hello kitty to wear. Before we got a chance to look some more, the kids told us they were closing as we had to leave, so we crossed the bridge over to Santa Elena and went into one of the thrift stores.

A few people had gone to some of the thrift stores before and each one came back with a piece of cheap American nice clothing. We spent about 15 minutes looking, in which I found one top I really liked, but refrained from buying it since I don’t really need it. Andrew found something else for the talent show, but I didn’t see what it was before he bought it and wore it to the show.

By the time we got back, we only had about a half hour until the show started. I quickly made myself dinner and packed it to take with me and then headed over to Hode’s, a restaurant where it was being held. It was $5 to get in and was supposed to start at 6:30, but of course that’s in Belize time and the show didn’t actually start until after 7. The group of us that went got seats towards the front for prime viewing. After waiting about 45 minutes for the show to start, a man got on stage and announced the start of the show. What I then witnessed in the show I will never forget.

See next post for the rest of the story…