Half way through the trip!

TGIF had a whole new meaning for me on this particular Friday. My teacher yet again did not come in on Thursday and my kids gave me quite a challenge to say the least. Luckily he was back on Friday and I let him take back over his classroom and regain management and organization. I did get to introduce Flat Stanley to the kids and they loved him. They all got to color their own Flat Stanley and we read a book about him as well. After school Lauren and I went to the soccer, or better known here as “football”, games at our school. For the past few weekends since we have been here there are football tournaments going on every Friday and Saturday. Many of the students are on teams that are lead by teachers of that grade. The younger kids play on Friday nights and Saturday during the day the older kids play.  They all have jerseys donated to the teams and they are legit jerseys! Their names are named after professional soccer teams i.e. Brazil, Germany, England, Spain, etc and the jerseys match the real ones that the real players wear. Lauren’s Infant I students played at 5:00 on Friday night so we went to watch them play and work the “concession stands” at the fields. It was so cute watching them all play. It reminded me of the summer when we used to go to McAllister park and play softball and baseball games. It was very similar to that atmosphere. After the games we went to play BINGO at the San Pedro Lions Club! Unfortunately I did not get BINGO but it was a very enjoyable evening.

Saturday we all got up bright and early to bike 5 MILES to see an ancient Mayan dig site at the very south end of the island. Wish I could say it was an easy and relaxing ride but at 8:30 in the morning it was already sweltering hot and most of the bike ride was on a dusty dirt road with lots of bumps and I have a legit bruise on my tailbone. I was sweating so much that by the time I got there I looked like I had jumped in a pool – disgusting. However, very cool fun fact: the Mayan dig site that we went to visit was just deemed a National Park the day before and we were the very first official visitors to the park J Cool right? It was a very interesting tour of the dig site. The Mayan dig site is thought to be where the Mayans lived their everyday lives while the Temples were more of places that they went to worship and do large rituals. I think it was good that we got to see this type of dig site so that we can compare it to the temple when we go inland. The artifacts that they found there dated as far back as 1,200 AD and some as early as 600 B.C. The Mayans inhabited much Central America and Belize especially. The only bad part of the tour was that while it was interesting, many of us were very distracted by the massive amounts of mosquitoes that were having a smorgasbord on us all! Not a single one of us came out of there without at least 5 bites on each body part! Everyone was spraying so much bug spray, we were about it a cloud of it at all times but these were like super bugs and even bit us through our clothes! It did not make the 5 mile bike ride back any more enjoyable. It was blistering hot by the time we biked back which was around noon. 5 miles seemed like 25 and all anyone could think about doing when we returned as immediately putting on our bathing suits and heading to the cool clear water of the Caribbean Sea and to bask on the white sand like lizards for the rest of the day.

Those of us who went to the beach swam and slept and after we were crusty with sand and sea salt we went back to Pedro’s to shower and get ready for the evening. We were in for quite a surprise when we got back though. I was in the shower (as were many other people at this point) and suddenly the power went out! I finished bathing in the dark which wasn’t too difficult as there was still some natural light shining throw the crack of the door for me to see. Of course when the power goes out, so does the air-conditioning and it did not take long for our rooms to become hot. With all of our complaining going on, no one thought to go downstairs and tell someone, we thought the power was out in the entire Inn. However, come to find out that it was only on our floor that it was out and we had been complaining for quite a while without letting anyone know! A few hours passed and they were still working on getting our power fixed. It gets dark quite early here so around 6:00 our deck filled with girls getting ready, a few of them even went down to the pool to use the electrical outlets down there to dry their hair. It was a fiasco and when we left for the evening we hoped that upon our return our power would be back on again.

I went to church Saturday night with Kyle and Katie because we would be leaving early the next day for snorkeling. Afterwards we ate at the stands in the center plaza of town and got ice cream. We ate ice cream on the beach and Katie got her first kiss from a Belizean – a dog named Dustin!  He came right up from behind her and licked her entire face. I think he was going for the ice cream but it was very funny.  While the rest of the group went to the High School Pageant, Kyle, Katie and I opted to go to the electric air guitar contest at Fido’s that evening. There was an amazing live band, fun spirited tourists and a nice island breeze. It was a lovely evening.

 Sunday was the big day – our first excursion as a group! We again met early in the morning and headed to the yacht club where our tour group, SeaRious tours, would be taking us out. We were taken out on a large catamaran. The floor of the boat was woven trampoline material with mats that covered it. So while we were out on the ocean, it came up through the bottom and continually sprayed us with cool water. Our first stop was Hol Chan which is a channel that is dug between the barrier reef. The channel itself was over 30 feet deep but where there was coral were only about 6 or 7 feet deep. There were an incredible amount of fish there – huge fish! We saw barracudas, sting rays, enormous amounts of reef fish and even a sea turtle! He was feeding on some seaweed and when we all gathered around him he just looked at us all and continued eating. I got so close to him, I could have touched him. Best part of that dive.

Next we went to Shark Ray Alley. Supposedly there are many nurse sharks that swim there and boats throw out sardines to make them congregate in larger numbers. However, we got the site a bit late and there were not that many sharks left. We saw one relatively large shark, he was about the length of me, and we saw so many stingrays. One of the stingrays had to be almost 8 feet in diameter, he was massive! I was slightly disappointed, I wished to see more sharks and interact with them. Call me crazy, but I was really looking forward to it. Maybe before I leave I will get another chance …

The rest of the trip consisted of going to Caye Caulker, a smaller island south of San Pedro. We docked there and ate lunch and were given a few hours to walk around. Honestly, I enjoyed this island much more than San Pedro. It was so much more laid back, less touristy and had more of a “paradise” atmosphere to it. They say that Caye Caulker is much like what San Pedro was 30 years ago. I enjoyed the time there; I wish it could have been longer. On our boat ride back we were lucky enough to see a pod of dolphins. We spotted another boat that was watching them and we sailed up behind them. The dolphins were so close to us. I was sitting at the very front part of the boat and I literally could have reached out and touched them in the water they were so close. They swam with our boat for about 10 minutes, jumping and swimming all around us. Another highlight of a most splendid day!

Something that I have learned from my teacher that helps me understand teaching here in a positive way is that respect is a huge part of being a teacher. In America we concentrate so much on “behavior management” and have so many great systems implemented into many different classrooms in America, and it works. Here I have noticed that there is not any system of behavior management, yet the teacher somehow still maintains control over the classroom. One the days that I taught by myself, I struggled greatly to maintain control over the classroom. I tried all of my “behavior management” strategies that would work for me back home but here they did not work. My kids say that they “love” me and they are constantly giving me hugs and showing me signs of affection which I have no doubt in my mind that they don’t in some way admire me. However, they do not yet respect me and there is a huge difference between the two. I have only been in their classroom for 3 weeks now and they know that I am not going to be their teacher for much longer. I am not sure if this has something to do with the fact that they do not respect me and feel the need to listen to me as they would their teacher but it is something that I have noticed. My teacher talked to me about how it took him a good part of the beginning of the year for them to respect him but now his relationship with his students is incredible. Just his presence in the classroom changes them from rowdy circus animals to quite studious children. I know that if I had more time here I too could earn respect from the children. I’m not saying that children in America don’t respect their teachers, but it is much more evident in a whole different kind of way.