Happy Mental Health Day!
Trip Start
Jun 14, 2004
1
11
27
Trip End
Jul 30, 2006
Belmopan,
Belize
Friday, October 8, 2004
I feel likes its been awhile since ive travelpoded, so I thought I would catch you all up on my life here in Belize. I am still living in Belmopan, the capital of Belize. But when I say that im living in the capital, don¡¦t think that it is the metropolitan capital of Central America. It is actually a quiet and small town of only 7,000.
My work at BFLA is going well, although slow right now. I don¡¦t mind because Im just getting my feet wet and I have two years ahead of me to get work done. I feel at times like I am back at Fordham because I spend a lot of time looking up information, reading up on different topics, taking notes on it all and creating presentations. But as most of you already know, im a big dork at heart and love to learn so its all good to me. Plus they are all really interesting topics like well of course, HIV/AIDS education, sexuality, puberty, etc. Im going to be an expert by the time I get back home!
Let me catch everyone up on the past few weeks, since I guess some pretty interesting stuff has been happening.
So two weekends ago I decided to trek it to Belize City to visit my favorite Chinay bwai, Dominic and Ben who had come in from the jungle for the weekend. Dominic thought we should go see a movie which was fine with me because well, I haven¡¦t seen one in a real theater since I left the states. Let me remind you though, that the entire country of Belize only has one movie theater at the Princess Hotel in Belize City and there are only two screens. We had no idea what is playing, but decide to chance it. Let me just tell you that Alien v. Predator was the better of the two choices, the other one being some Japanese animation film. Let me also tell you that this movie is entirely NOT worth seeing. Who even thought that Alien v. Predator would be a movie people would want to watch to begin with? It was completely ridiculous, with the pinnacle of ridiculousness at the point where the Alien makes weapons for the main actress with a dead predator carcass and then explains to her that he has a bomb through special Alien sign language. But hey, I guess I can say that at least we laughed the entire time and at least we got to spend 90 minutes in an ACed movie theater, eating popcorn and starbursts.
Then there was this past weekend, which was quite memorable and so exhausting that I passed out Monday night and didn¡¦t really wake up, except to tell nurse jones I couldn¡¦t come in because I was sick, until Tuesday at 3pm. It was my friend Dominic¡¦s 23rd birthday, so a bunch of us congregated in Belmopan Friday night to celebrate. I made the ever popular chocolate cake with homemade peanut butter frosting that of course reminded me of home and of dad¡¦s birthday since that is what we have every year on the 31st of January. It was so much fun and Phil, who lives down in the Toledo district showed up which was such a great surprise since I hadn¡¦t seen him since before I left for Guate. I was introduced to the delicious combination of sprite, ideals (which are like flavor-ices) and large quantities of one barrel rum. They were yummy. Saturday we jumped on the bus and headed to San Ignacio where we spent the day floating down tubs in the Mopan River. I think everyone would have gotten a kick out of me, relaxing in the cool water with a bottle of rum and coke tied to my tub floating behind me fº That night we partied it up again until the wee hours, with Stacey fire dancing while Brian and Allen played the drums. I have yet to learn how to throw fire, but I still plan on it. Hopefully I¡¦ll be competent enough to give mom and dad a show when they come in January. But if not, I can promise there will be a show in C-town during my two week hiatus there in June!
I like my life here because I work hard during the week and play hard on the weekends!
Today in Belmopan we celebrated mental health day. It is technically on the 10th, but since that¡¦s a Sunday, the people organizing it thought it was best to have it today. BFLA, the NGO I work for, had a booth up with info about our services and different pamphlets and of course, condoms. The theme for mental health day this year is the relationship between physical and mental health. There were many speakers, one of which was Errol, a Belizean man living with HIV. He is a powerful speaker and makes any audience he speaks too realize how strong a person he is and also how strong we all can be.
Tonight I am watching the second presidential debate, which is a treat considering I never get to watch TV because I don¡¦t have one.
November 2nd is just around the corner and all of us down here are waiting with baited breath. ROCK THE VOTE!
