Saturday was a relaxing day. Around 11 in the morning, the whole group walked into town to the community center to eat lunch at a fundraiser for the high school teachers. Belizeans don’t really understand what it means to be a vegetarian, but the other girls that are vegetarian and I are always able to find something good to eat. After lunch, Natalie, Anna, and I walked around for a little and then spent a few hours on the beach. I love how there are no huge hotels on the island. There are some beautiful hotels in the area, and one of my favorites is one that consists of a bunch of huts right on the beach. While we were sitting on the sand, we saw a wedding and a parade. There are always so many wonderful activities going on at the beach.
Children are always trying to sell us things like jewelry and other random trinkets. The children walk up and down the beach, and they can even walk into restaurants and come up to you while you are eating. Sometimes, three boys will come up to me at once and ask me to buy something from each of them. When we were at dinner, the boys went up to Natalie and just put a necklace on her and told her she looked beautiful. After she bargained a little, she bought the necklace. Once I get to know my students at Isla Bonita, I’m sure I will see them around the island selling things, or working at different places. It is interesting to see how life is so different for my students here than it is for my students at home in Wilmington.
Brittany and I went out for dinner at a restaurant that had a sign on it claiming that it had great vegetarian food. We sat outside, looked at the menu and didn’t really understand anything on it. The waiter told us that he had a really tasty vegetarian dish that he would give us, so I decided to take a risk and go with what the waiter suggested. When we got our food, I had no idea what was on the plate, but took a bite and it tasted delicious. Some of the food just looked like brown mush, and there was some kind of salad, and things that looked like donuts.
After dinner, we met up with everyone at Wet Willy’s. Wet Willy’s is one of the coolest restaurants in San Pedro, because it is located at the end of a dock. When you are inside the restaurant, you can see the ocean water in between the wooden planks that make up the floor. There was a band that played some excellent blues music. Something made this band very special and that was the 15-year-old boy that played the guitar. The other three members of the band are probably around 50 or 60 years old. The young boy’s family never had enough money to send him to school. Here on the island, every family has to pay for their children to go to school. The three older men helped the young boy, named Derek raise money for him to stay in school throughout his life. Also, they taught him how to play music, and when Derek was 12 years old he started playing with the band at bars. People on the island have come together to raise money to send Derek to a summer music program at Berkley College in Boston. They hope that the college will be impressed with his talent and give him a scholarship to go to college there. Almost 10,000 dollars have been raised for Derek, so hopefully he will be off to Berkley in June.
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