The sea breeze. Mexico. Birthday. Fun!

We finally took a trip up north for Ginnie's birthday. Fortunately, the trainees' visits to PCVs sites fell on her birthday weekend, so we planned a trip to Chetumal, Mexico for some shopping, as well as to get away for rest and relaxation at the mid-point of community-based training.




The trip gave us our first chance to see Corozal and finally spend some time with our good friend Mateo in his site. Corozal is absolutely beautiful - we loved being able to spend the weekend overlooking the beautiful blue-green water of the bay.



Beginning on Friday afternoon, we hopped the bus heading to Belize City to transfer to a northbound bus. After nearly 5 hours, we reached and found ourselves at The Sea Breeze Inn where we settled in and headed out for dinner and then a restful evening so we were alert and ready to go early in the AM. In the morning, we met Mateo, got our pesos, and hopped on a bus bound for Mexico! Just about 30 minutes later, we were crossing the border and into a whole new world.

The sign outside the bus station pointing us to our destination!

Our plan for the day was simple - go to the mall and shop, eat, and see a movie (if time allowed). We never made it to the movie because we just took our time enjoying browsing the stores. Strangely enough, our favorite was the ginormous Chedraui, which reminds us of a WalMart-type place. The aisles are so long and stocked full of so many choices, it was paradise. Not to mention the bakery and panaderia were filled with the most delicious-looking (and tasting, as we discovered) treats.

We were mesmerized by the bakery - look at those doughnuts and muffins, so many flavors!

There are fruit loops on these muffins - who would have thought of cooking muffins with cereal? They had zucaritas muffins and cocoa puff muffins, too.

All decked out for Mexican Independence Day

Granted they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but isn't it still early for Christmas supplies?

They have a lot of flavors of Oreos that I've never seen, having been in Belize for so long; this one caught my eye since choco-bananas are such a staple treat around here. Considering I do not like banana flavor, I could not justify purchasing them, but the photo was a must!

I really miss Special K! Look how much cereal this store has! We're lucky to get three shelves of a half aisle (and an aisle is not very long, folks!)

Anthony wanted to share the fun flavors all the North American folks are missing out on


During all that shopping in the mall, we never stopped to eat (well, ok, Ginnie did get some gelato) so in the taxi ride back to the border, she had her birthday doughnut and coke zero {that is the best doughnut she's ever had, she thinks, but it may be perspective since it's rare to eat a doughnut these days}

The clock tower in a park in Corozal looks so pretty against that bright blue sky

Just hanging out by the bay on Ginnie's birthday

We got pizza for the birthday dinner, and this sign was in the restaurant; we found it a bit funny

I love pizza, especially on my birthday! Somehow, it had ham under the cheese even though we did ask for no meat at all. The woman said there was no meat at all (maybe she doesn't consider pork meat?). It was all good, we just picked it off and the friendly cat who hung out with us ate most of it.

We had a pretty nice view as we ate during sunset.

Even though it's blurry, I like this picture

I wonder where my next birthday will find me?

Wi mi deh rait ya!

So. We haven’t updated the blog in quite a while. We’ve been a bit busy since last we wrote, so here’s the quick review of the past couple months. Enjoy!



We had a few dinners at the Riverside Tavern to say farewell to COSing PCVs - it was hard to see them go, but we expect to stay in touch!

We shared a host family with Mary back in the Armenia days

We participated in the graduation ceremonies for our schools (once again on the same night so we couldn’t attend both).

We celebrated St. Luke’s graduation with another night of dinner and dancing at the Smoky Mermaid. Ginnie attended her last official meeting with the Leadership Group at YES (but she’ll be going back when she has free Saturdays again!) where she was surprised with a beautiful song sung by Menisha that brought tears to all.



We took our first trip to the United States of America in over two years and enjoyed meeting and playing with our niece Siena and our nephew Domenic. Wish we could have seen the other nephews spread out around the country. We ate a lot of our favorite dishes, cooked some of our faves for the family, celebrated the 4th of July, and quickly caught up with friends. Among it all we did some shopping and even got out to the zoo with the kids. What a trip! (Side note: what is the story with all those magazines up there – apparently we did not notice the abundance of magazines on every topic; while delayed in Miami we were stunned by the entire wall devoted entirely to magazines. Okay, enough on that. By the way, we went to the bookstore. It was awesome!). Oh, we ate a lot of good ice cream, too; how we miss good ice cream!

We returned to Belize and celebrated the wedding of our friends Melissa and Dyon – it was such a beautiful day at the House of Culture and we loved being able to be part of it.

Work began in the office and Ginnie switched out of her PCV role into her new job as a programming and training specialist while Anthony jumped right into his new role as volunteer leader. We commuted for a couple weeks and it wasn’t fun and now we live in Belmopan. It’s quite a difference from the city; while it is considered a city itself, we certainly feel we have moved to the jungle – we have creatures we did not encounter in the city and we no longer have the luxury of the many amenities available to us both in our home and in our neighborhoods. It’s good – Ginnie’s adapting well to life without a TV (actually, it’s kind of nice to not have it; I never realized how much time it sucked away and we’ve been able to stock up on some TV series on DVD, which is the best way to go since we don’t have to deal with commercials and weeks between episodes. I’ll see how long I go, I actually mostly miss the morning shows from Belize that I watched everyday) and Anthony’s gonna be a pro at choppin’ the yard with the machete in no time. We’re really getting stronger muscles with washing laundry in a bucket and Maya is helping with critter hunting on a nightly basis, so all is well. We have a great yard with a mango tree, a lime tree, a coconut tree, and a craboo tree so we are not complaining! Sadly, our mangoes are finished for the season, but we’ve still been able to get really ginormous mangoes at the market.

Zach, the best German Shepherd watchdog ever

Our old veranda - we miss that bus seat!

Anthony's new skill - choppin' the yard

Maya chasing butterflies - we wonder what she would do if she actually caught one

Finally, a place to relax after work!

This is a ginormous mango that only cost $1

This is a mango from our tree!

Maya's first weekend in Belize

Just after we started in the office Camp GLOW 2009 was held and we both took part in the week as leaders and session facilitators; Anthony was even the head chef for pizza night and taught all the girls how to make their own pizzas from scratch (41 in all). It was a really fun camp and the girls loved it! Definitely still up there as Ginnie’s favorite Peace Corps project fi true!

Belize City girls on their way to camp

Arts and crafts

Giving instruction on how to pat out the dough and make the pizza

Who doesn't love pizza?

Belize city girls with their certificates

Anthony helped Ginnie cut off 12 inches of hair to donate. She still had fairly long hair, but somehow the hairdresser took off about 2 more inches despite several comments on wanting to keep it long. Oh well, the shorter hair is a new look and Ginnie’s adapting. It’s certainly a lot cooler in this Belizean climate, that’s for sure!

Just before cutting - it was really long; I was tempted to keep growing it to see how long it could get, but finally just had to let it go!

Pre-service training began in August and we’ve both been super busy helping the new class prepare for service. Ginnie is responsible for training the education group and is loving working with them. Anthony has been a major help with much of the programming and training as well, and has already done sessions for many of the different training sectors (thanks for helping out when our guest speakers didn’t show up!). It’s got us working 7-day weeks, but it’s worth it for the experiences we get to see the trainees having – it’s really fun to see them experience Belize for the first time and think back to our own training and first year. Hard to believe it was only two years ago that we began this journey. Ginnie took the trainees on a tour of the southern placement sites and it was a ton of fun (wish Anthony could have joined us, but he was slaving away at the office in Belmopan). It was only her second trip to the Toledo district and she explored several villages and had a great time meeting principals and touring schools. Belize is an absolutely beautiful country filled with so many nice, welcoming people – it’s why we love it (and why you should visit...soon :)

The trainees just arriving

Education trainees in Santa Teresa village; look at how color-coordinated this group is :)

We’re heading for our first trip to the northern border. I know, it’s ridiculous that we haven’t been in the entire time we’ve lived here. It’ll be a great little break from training since the trainees will be off on their visits with volunteers and we have an entire free weekend – just in time for a birthday trip to Mexico for shopping, movies, and enjoying the seaside.