Belize: Days One and Two (The "Fun Days")

Last week was Baylor's Spring Break , and I went on a Child and Family Studies Academic Mission Trip to Belize! It was an amazing experience. We worked alongside Teachers for a Better Belize (TFABB), which is a non-profit organization that has been working with teachers in the Toledo district of Belize (the most southern and poorest district) for 15 years. Our professor, Dr. Nuner, has been working with TFABB for about 5 years now, focusing specifically on preschool teachers. We went down mostly to observe in the classrooms to see how preschool is different in Belize than in the States. We also put on two parent workshops to encourage parents to send their preschoolers to preschool, since it isn't mandatory but is very helpful in terms of preparing them for Kindergarten. I absolutely loved my team and the week was wonderful. Now I will attempt to tell our story in pictures!

Our travel day was mostly uneventful, except for a VERY bumpy flight from Waco to Houston that left most of us queasy, and being rushed through the airport in Belize City because we had almost missed our flight to Punta Gorda. We felt like VIPs! Then we emerged on the tarmac and saw the vehicle that was to be our transportation to PG, and were a little afraid:

But it was The Little Plane that Could, because the ride was the smoothest one we had all day! It also gave us some wonderful views of a beautiful Belizean sunset:











We got settled into our hotel in PG (which just happened to be directly next door to the airport-we literally walked!), then went for dinner at Miss Marian's, which was to be our default restaurant for the week. I think we ate there 4 nights, and with good reason-it was delicious!



The first day we were there (Sunday), the schools were obviously closed, so we took a snorkeling trip out to the Snake Cayes.
We saw all kinds of fish and other sea creatures: starfish, jellyfish, HUGE lobsters, barracudas, and a nurse shark (who, thankfully, stayed under his rock!)










But most of us also got VERY sunburned on our backs. It was a fun, but tiring, day.

Monday happened to be a national holiday in Belize (Baron Bliss Day or Heroes and Benefactors Day, depending on who you asked). That meant the schools were closed again, so we took another fun day! We drove about an hour and a half out of Punta Gorda (our base city) to Blue Creek. We hiked out into the jungle...

...and swam into a cave! The water was freezing, so some of us made funny faces:

We had headlamps to help us see in the dark, though (Yes, I'm fully aware of how unattractive this is):

The cave was definitely a "life experience", as Sarah Hall said. I enjoyed it, even though right near the end I slipped trying to cross a big gap and fell about three feet into the water. I smacked my right arm against the wall and it was pretty scary, but our Belizean guide worked some kind of medicine-man voodoo on it (seriously, y'all, he spit on my arm and cracked all my knuckles. In a dark cave. In Belize. Life experience!) and it felt OK. I got a semi-nasty bruise, but will survive.

After our cave-diving adventure, we drove another hour or so to Rio Blanco National Park, where some of us jumped off of cliffs:


Then we ALL followed our guide farther into the park, trusting him not to lead us into danger. Weren't we surprised when he led us to this bridge:



And suggested that we walk across it! It was like something out of Indiana Jones. But we all got across, with varying degrees of excitement and terror. No one fell off, and we were all SO BRAVE!
















So that gets us through days one and two. I think that's all I will do for now, because I have actual school work to do! (I know, what's that, right?)