Friday was teacher payday (once a month), which meant early dismissal in the afternoon, so we were able to catch the bus to Placencia that evening. We really love it there and were even able to get another cabana on the beach. It is amazing to us how many locals remember us and we are known to most as the teachers from PG (or the girls with the green volleyball). We went out dancing that night to a great local band. The played a mixture of Belize music and well known covers. We met an older man from the USA who had brought a volleyball net, so it didn’t take us long to get some beach volleyball games going. We even had the World Championships with 6 gringos playing 6 locals guys. The locals took the first game, but the gringos came back and won the next two. We definitely worked off the Belikins (Belizean beer) and fry jacks. We are fortunate with how safe we feel in Placencia and spent Saturday evening taking in the ocean waves and stars on the beach. The ocean was dead calm on Sunday and I think we could have floated on our backs all day. I even managed to get a little marking done under the shade of a palm tree. There was a group of children on the bus home we were returning from selling crafts to tourists on the beach. They were quite energetic and we played with them the entire way home. Great way to pass the time. We were beat when we returned home after a full weekend in the sun and were all asleep in bed by 8:30 that night.

Some Belize Things That Make Me Smile:
-Belizeans LOVE Celine Dion. Yup, you heard me, the one, the only Celine Dion. And I don’t just mean a few people, they ALL do. Even guys our age droll over her! We can’t figure out why, but they do. You will often walk by a bar blasting Celine. They even have reggae remixes at the gym we go to and I never thought I would be riding an old school bus through the dirt roads of Belize and hear Celine Dion being played through the bus stereo. I am certain that the whole country would shut down if Celine ever came here.
-Karaoke, Karaoke, Karaoke. Belizeans love their Karaoke. Now that would make you think that they are good at singing Kareoke, but that is not the case my friends. It doesn’t matter how bad you are, everyone seems to sing Karaoke. And unlike most Karaoke bars I’ve been to, the participants are stone cold sober. We were surprised at the number of slow songs they like to sing. In addition to Celine, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers are big hits. We have yet to have our first performances, but I feel as though the time will come soon enough.
-Belizeans are quite friendly and it is not enough to simply say ‘Hello’ to someone when you are passing by. A “Good Morning’, ‘Good Afternoon’, or ‘Good Night’ is the appropriate greetings here. The ‘Good Night’ took us a little to get used to as we tend to only say that to someone when they are going to bed. The Canadian ‘How’s it going?’ is replaced here with ‘Y’all right?”. You will quite often walk by someone who looks mad at the world, and as soon as you say ‘Good Afternoon’ to them, they are a completely different person and quite friendly back to you.

Field Trip!
I took my class on field trip to the Post Office on Friday as we had been writing descriptive letters in Language Arts class. My students were quite excited, and even more thrilled when they found out they were the only class going as the other classes had not finished covering the material. I was a little nervous about taking them as you have to walk through town, but it was a lot less of a gong-show than I had anticipated. I think we sure took the man working at the post by surprise.

Thursday, February 22nd
It was a teacher’s workshop for the district today, which meant no regular classes. They put us to work in the kitchen all morning preparing snacks and lunch for all of the teachers. They had us do everything from pealing bags of plantains (looks like a bigger banana) to helping make a traditional Garifuna soup, to serving up the lunch. Trisha and I even took a turn at mashing up the plantains in a giant wooden bowl with what looked like a huge wooden stick. Our hard work paid off as we were given the afternoon off and spent it lounging around the pool and soaking up the sun at the Coral House. I believe the picture of the flower is a passion flower. The other picture is taken of the clock tower and park downtown PG.

Professional Study

As part of our final practicum, we are required to complete a professional study. The three of us have decided to join forces on a topic that have become to feel very passionate about since teaching here. The following is an outline of our professional development plan:

Professional Study:
To encourage reading among students whose first language is not English.

Rationale:
My students have very poor reading and writing skills. They do not use proper English when they speak or write, and they need substantial practice with grammar and punctuation. Encouraging them to read more at a young age will help them to improve on these skills, and better their education in general.
Goal: To excite students about reading.
This will help students to:
- have greater confidence in reading
- improve reading comprehension
- improve spelling and increase vocabulary
- improve grammar and punctuation
- communicate ideas with greater clarity
- improve oral speech

Plan of Action:
- gather and ship a variety of reading materials from Canada to St. Peter Claver
- read to students on a daily basis
- find stories that appeal to students (both picture books and novels)
- implement silent, partner, and oral reading into class time
- establish an at home reading program
- set up an in class library
- ensure weekly visits to the library by entire class
-participate and assist in after school reading program

Trisha tells me that today is day 53 in Belize. Wow, hard to believe! It was a ‘cold’ morning here in Belize and you should have seen how bundled up the students and staff were. I am not sure what the actual temperature was, but I was fine in my skirt and t-shirt. They were joking that it was Canadian weather (Oh, if they only knew how cold it gets!). It never stays cool here for long, and by lunch we were baking in the sun while we ate lunch on our rooftop restaurant. As you can see by the photo, we change out of the teaching uniform and into shorts and tank tops every chance we get. It was the school Spelling Bee today and we were the judges (even Melissa’s friend who is visiting got recruited to be the time keeper). The students were quite into it and I must admit I was impressed with their spelling abilities. One of the boys in my class did quite well, but was unfortunately not the winner. There were 300 words on the list of possible words and I couldn’t help but laugh when ‘tequila’ was one of them! (you know you are teaching in the Caribbean when…). Another word that hit home was ‘Ontario’ and it took me by surprise when it was called. Another reminder of home today was seeing one boy at the morning assembly wearing a Montreal Canadians jersey. I was hoping to ask him where he got the jersey, but didn’t the chance. We are trying not to eat out as much and getting better at our cooking abilities. We definitely cook better meals here than we even did at home. Trisha has perfected banana bread and cooking popcorn on the stovetop. I think I would make Mildee proud with my dinner that I whipped up last night.

Snake Caye on the Wild Thing!
We spent Sunday taking in all that is Snake Caye. It is definitely called Snake Caye for a reason as we came across not one, but 2 boa constrictors. I’d like to say that I took the above photo of the snake with the zoom on, but that was actually how close I was! Oh the things people (silly tourists) will do all in the name of a good photo. One of the guys I was taking the photo with got bit not once, but twice. Thankfully they aren’t poisonous. The caye is basically a deserted island located in a marine reserve off of the coast of Belize. The white sand beach and palm trees provided some great photo ops. I was also able to amuse myself for quite sometime with hermit crabs walking the beach. Our guide was fantastic and took us to a nearby spot for snorkeling. I have been tubing many times, but today was defiantly a first tubing in the Golf of Honduras. The waves we definitely bigger than good old Lake of the Woods! We had hoped to see a manatee that day, but no such luck. The other part of our group that was with us is actually here shooting a movie just outside PG in the jungle. It was quite interesting talking to them about their experience and they have invited to come to the set to watch and lend a helping hand. We are quite excited to take them up on their offer (especially Trisha and Melissa as they are both drama majors).

Things are continuing to go great with my teacher here. I don’t think I could have asked for a better match. It’s great to be able to laugh and joke around with each other. We all have quite a bit of marking to do in the evenings. It has been rewarding though as we can already see improvements in our students! Melissa has a friend visiting for the week, so it’s fun to relive PG life through the eyes of a new comer again. It is amazing when we realize how many things we have already become accustomed to. We went out for breakfast one morning to discover a tarantula in a jar sitting on one of the tables. It was a big night for us ladies on Saturday night, as we all wore mascara out for the first time in ’07. It was this mascara night that I met my future husband, MJ. Don’t believe me? Check out the pic to prove it!

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Today was ‘rags’ day, in that student didn’t have to wear their uniforms and could wear red to celebrate Valentine’s. Valentine’s Day (which was really Valentine’s week) was definitely a bigger celebration an we are used to. The kids were pretty excited today as it was only a half day of classes. I don’t think that I got through half of my lesson plans this morning. There was a Valentine’s Day dance in the afternoon, which the kids went nuts for. The students here spend the vast majority of their days doing seatwork, so they tend to go nuts whenever they are given the freedom to move (even going to the library is usually chaotic). The dance was definitely a big difference from your typical North American school dance, as the students here love to dance! There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t have a student in my class standing up and dancing (and it is most often the boys). The last school dance I supervised I was leading the chicken dance, but there was no chicken dance to be found – it was all Punta! It was a little shocking to see the students (including the 7 year olds) dancing quite provocatively!

Calling All Comments!
I believe that I have changed the settings on my blog so that now anyone can leave a comment. So feel free to write me a note if you wish :-) They are always appreciated.

MY DREAM HOME: A BELIZEAN FIXER-UPPER
After going for a long walk down the beach in Placencia, I came across what I believe could be one heck of a dream house. It looks like what used to be or could be a nice house that is right on the beach, yet away from the main part of town a little. There is even a little hut for shade on the beach. The house is rundown and the plant life has taken over the yard, but I still have faith. It has become my mission when we return to find out who owns it. If I never return to Canada, you can find me here...

Placencia Paradise:

We went back to Placenia to spend the weekend relaxing on the beach. There was an art festival taking place and artists lined the narrow streets (apparently some of the narrowest in the world) selling their work. Some great stuff and we wished that we could take some home with us. We rented a cabana right on the beach with the ocean only a few meters away. We spent the majority of the time relaxing in the sun and playing volleyball to work off all the food and smoothies we had at our favourite beach shack. We found a group of starfish just off of shore and had them race. Okay, maybe not the most exciting race but we were supprised with how fast they can actually move. I don’t think there could be a more relaxing place than here.

ODE TO NORTH AMERICAN WASHROOMS:
In the things that I’ve learned to appreciate from home, bathrooms are most definitely one of them. Here are a few pictures illustrate my point and yes we have used all of them. Check out the double seater with no walls and the one where you actually go straight into the water below.

Our supervisor from the U of L visited us this week and we got the chance to share our experiences with her. We celebrated her birthday here, which meant yet another birthday cake (food seems to be a common occurrence with us here) and took in a live band at a really neat local ‘pub’. Teaching continues to go well and I am getting better at planning lessons that I think my students will enjoy. Phys-ed is still a ‘gong-show’, but I don’t see that changing anytime soon as all the students seem to go nuts for it. They seem to have fun playing the games, so I guess that’s what counts. Lesson planning can be challenging at times due to the fact that each grade plans together so there isn’t much lea way. There have been days where there should have been a test all morning and I’ve have to make up lessons on the spot and days where I’ve planned lesson and turned out having to keep my students quiet for a test all morning. The large amount of resources, supplies and photocopies that we are used to in Canadian schools is not something that we have luxury of here so we have had to be creative in coming up with fun lessons. On Friday evening we went out for an after school refreshment with one of the teachers from our school. The place we went is located on the upstairs of a building which overlooks the ocean, and our bikes were locked to a pole below. When it was time to head home we discovered that my seat had been stolen and Melissa’s bike was missing the handle bars!

My parents had a surprise for us on Sunday for their last day in PG. A taxi picked us up and we drove for about 20 minutes into the jungle. When we got out of the taxi we were at a small resort up on top of a mountain surrounded by jungle in every direction that you looked. The resort itself used to be mainly used by fisherman, but will officially reopen in a week as a resort appealing to ecotourism (a great escape in what seems like the middle of the jungle). My parents had arranged for us to use their canoes and go exploring up the river. The river and surrounding jungle was breathtaking and green with beauty. We honestly felt like we were the only people on Earth. We could hear a great deal of birds and animals, but the jungle lining the shores of the river was so thick that you could not see what was making the noises. One section of the river became quite narrow and eerie and I was sure that some crocodile or jaguar was going to get us. Mildee and I didn’t stay for long to find out and quickly paddled out. We couldn’t have asked for a better surprise and a better way to spend the last day with my folks. Thanks Mildee and JB!

We caught a boat to Livingston, Guatemala on Saturday morning. The ocean got quite rough for the small sized boat that we were in and it was quite the bumpy ride. We wandered around the town and made our why through many of the shops lining the streets. We are thankful that Belize is an English speaking country as it was a little challenging at times in Livingston with our minimal broken Spanish and trying to convert our Belizean money to Guatemala’s currency ($1 USD=$2 Belizean and $1 Belizean=$3.25 Guatemalan). We are definitely motivated to learn some Spanish for our future trips to Guatemala and Honduras. One of my highlights for the day was finding the most delicious ginger snap cookies and coconut ice cream!! Mmmmm it was the best ice cream that I have ever had by far! We took a refreshing dip in a gorgeous pool overlooking the ocean, in what appeared to be the only resort like establishment in town (although there were no guests in sight). For lunch my dad and I were determined to try a traditional Guatemalan stew/soup including huge shrimp, shellfish, squid, coconut milk, complete with a whole fish laying in the middle of the bowl (scales, fins and all as the only part removed was the eyes). It looked ‘interesting’ shall we say, but we both enjoyed it. Thankfully the boat ride was a smooth one home.

The sunrises here make getting up early well worth it. These 2 pictures are from 2 different mornings and both are taken from our balcony. Pretty incredible view.

It’s hard to believe that we have already been here so long. Teaching keeps getting better each week and I am really enjoying my students. I’ve been trying to think back to activities and games that I loved in elementary school and been sharing them with my students. My students go nuts for Phys-Ed and it is definitely the ultimate alternative teaching environment. Aside from school, It’s been great having my folks here! We have made good use of the pool, even swimming to cool off during our lunch break. We celebrated by dad’s birthday on the 31st and went out for a great dinner. We even surprised my dad with a birthday cake that one of the principals at school had baked. My students were quite excited when my parents visited my classroom and they sang my dad happy birthday and even counted out his age. Friday afternoon was the annual school bike races (and dress down day which meant no skirts!). It was quite chaotic with 900 students flooding the streets on the hottest day we have had so far. T-Bum, Melissio, and I were the judges at the finish line, and although we weren’t racing I think that we were still the sweatiest as it was HOT! We couldn’t wait to cool off in the pool.