Day 2

Today was our first full day in Belize and it was a very busy and awesome day!

A few of us began the day with a nice run around San Ignacio. The weather was beautiful and it gave us a chance to give ourselves our own little tour- and become temporarily lost.. then find our way again.

Next, we had a delicious breakfast (and coffee!!), of eggs, bacon and flapjacks- which are sort of similar to fried dough without the sweetness.




After breakfast, we headed into town to the take the bus. While waiting, we all tried seaweed juice- which was surprisingly delicious and tasted like peanuts. We then boarded the full bus and paid $1.50 BZE ($.75 US) and traveled about 25 minutes to Galan University.

We met with two young women, Yuri, who recently completed an MBA program at Galen University and is the international coordinator there and Monica, who is currently working on her bachelor's degree at Galen and is the director of student affairs. They shared a tremendous amount of information about education at the college level. In Belize, they have recently begun focusing on primary education due to the high number of teachers who are not considered qualified as they do not have teaching certifications, therefore, Galen has recently begun a big teaching program at several of their campuses. Unfortunately, there is currently no degree program for becoming a special education teacher and they currently only offer one special education course for teachers to take. I learned that only students with mild disabilities, such as learning disabilities, are in regular schools and classrooms and students with more moderate and severe disabilities attend a special school which is in Belize
City. We then traveled to the capital city of Belmopan to another Galen University campus where we met with Dr. August who shared a lot of great information about the districts of Belize then took a couple of us to a secondary (high) school where we met with a principal. I learned that there are a number of classroom discipline issues due to the fact that corporal punishment was recently abolished and there have not been any classroom management strategies put into place or taught to teachers to replace those practices.

After a great lunch of fajitas, we returned to San Ignacio for a evening of relaxation. We did try a few different Belizean "delicacies", such as baby mango (with salt), sour plums with spicy seasoning, plantain chips with hot sauce and ketchup and pineapple slices with spices. The mango was interesting, though not at all what I expected, the plantain chips and pineapple were delicious but the plums were definitely not my favorite! We had a great evening of live music, great food, some shopping and entertaining conversation!

Sour plums with spices