Author Archives: e2roberts

Leaving Caye Caulker, an amazing experience!

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I’ve never felt time fly by in the way that it did while being on Caye Caulker. 8 weeks seems like forever and then it passes by in the blink of an eye. This morning’s ferry ride into the city was filled with tears and lots of reflection on the memories that were shared by all 6 of us. Abbey and I were fortunate enough to have had almost a whole extra week after school ended to relax and be in vacation mode, and I think it made it harder to leave. We spent our final days with our students and their families, enjoying our time at the Split, going on many boat rides from our friend Ryan, tubing at sunset with new friends we had made, and winning trivia and doing Karaoke at Sports Bar… the perfect way to go out in my opinion.

 

For those of you coming here in the spring, or any other time for that matter, or thinking of coming here… my advice to you is to just do it. Weather you’re doing it by yourself, or you’re as lucky as I was to get to do it along side one of your best friends, take the opportunity to come visit the island and its people because you will not regret it. Go on a full day snorkel tour and a sunset tour with Raggamuffin– ask for your crew to be Ellio, Ricky and Charles, trust me they’re AWESOME. Book a sunset cruise with your friends and meet every stranger on board with you. When you’re at the Split, you’re going to eat mozzarella balls and play corn hole and meet people from Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Portland, New York, England, everywhere– be open to every single person you meet. And when you’re ready to party, head on over to Sports Bar and tell our friend Charles behind the bar that the teachers sent you, he’ll know exactly who you’re talking about. Some of my favorite meals have come from the stands on the side of the road.. specifically my favorite is the burrito cart in front of the basketball courts, 9$BZ for a foot long burrito and a hot dog and they are AMAZING.

Leaving is the hardest part, but I know it isn’t forever. I plan on coming back to visit since its easy to get to and relatively cheap– not to mention I’ll always have somewhere to stay down there because of how many new friends we made. This whole experience opened my world to so many new ideas, opinions, lifestyles, and experiences. There were certainly amazing ups, challenging downs, and twists and turns along the way… but this experience is one I wouldn’t change at all.

 

If anyone wants to know ANYTHING, or has questions about the experience feel free to email me: ellbell1397@aol.com, I would love to tell you everything about it.

Thanksgiving and the midway mark

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Right now we have exactly 2 weeks left on this awesome little island. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas theres a lot of cultural experiences that we’ve gotten to have! My family came down to visit for thanksgiving and the Sports Bar we all go to was putting on an actual dinner with all types of turkey, side dishes, etc. and we all went and it was DELICIOUS. (If you’re coming to Caye Caulker, spend a decent amount of nights here. Truthfully, it’s helped us feel more like locals than tourists because it allowed us all to become familiar faces!) That friday was also LICA’s “Cultural Day” where the students are assigned different Belizean cultures and they create performances, dress in that fashion, and also have food to try. I brought my parents to the school that day so they could experience it and it was awesome. Students wrapped up their first term, and started second term… which we found it odd to us that term exams happened with a few weeks before Christmas break, but the Ministry has it set up that way. Now we’re into Christmas Galas and Variety Shows– last night we all went to Ocean Academy’s gala and it was AWESOME. LICA’s is next week so we’ll have updates to follow when its time!

Also, can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but Abbey and I live together and we’ve really focused on shopping locally from the stores fro food to avoid eating out ALL the time and its helped to save a lot of money. For those of you coming here in the future, theres shops EVERYWHERE that have food to buy so we usually buy breakfast and lunch foods to help save money and cook ourselves. It’s common handy and we’ve also been able to find things for really cheap.

As far as our free time, we’ve done a few snorkel tours and sunset cruises. On our last one we saw dolphins, manatees, sea turtles, sharks, fish and coral… which seeing ALL of those in one trip is nearly impossible so we got really lucky. There’s a lot of companies on the island that do tours. We prefer to use companies/shops that our students families either work at or run as a way to support them and their business! All our tours have been with Ragamuffin, which one of our student’s moms works at, and each time we go it has been nothing short of incredible!

I’ll talk more about the actual school side of it all in a later post. Lots to say there. Cant believe we have 2 weeks left!!!

One of the sea Turtles

 

 

this was cultural day with standard 3 and standard 2 girls!

News From Caye Caulker

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I waited longer to do my first blog post as I really wanted to allow myself to take in my surroundings and find my footing here before I openly talk about all of it. We’ve been here now for two weeks and have completed 10 days at LICA and have also gone on one snorkel excursion this past saturday! So far, everything here has been within walking distance, although having a bike to get around makes it much easier and quicker. All of the places to eat are reasonably priced as well…and also plenty. There’s so many restaurants here and food stands that you could eat at a different place for every meal and not run out of options the entire 8 weeks. We’ve found some of our favorite places to eat, we’ve made friends with a few of the locals and restaurant owners and its come in very very handy. Money here is also nice because the conversion is 2BZE=1USD, so you’re spending less money than it seems but it definitely adds up– we’ve al started shopping at the markets to get food for a few days instead of eating out every single day 3 times a day, its made it much easier to save money but also gives you more options as well. The 6 of us also get together each wednesday and cook dinner for each other!

Now for the school part of this post. LICA is a small private academy on the island for primary school ages 3-13/14, with only about 50 students. I’m working specifically with Standard 3, which is ages 8-10, and I have the largest class size with 12. Theres 6 standards, similar to grade levels in the US, where students will not move on to the next standard until they are ready academically, which is why there’s an age range in some classes. There is Infant 1, Infant 2, Standard, Standard 2, Standard 3, Standard 4, Standard 5, Standard 6. After standard 6, the students would go onto high school. This is a new experience for me as I am a PE major and just student taught in Somerset and have never actually taught in a classroom type setting. So during the rest of the classes for the day I act as a para, occasionally teaching some classes. For example, I teach critical thinking class every wednesday and thursday, PE during the last class block every day, and assist with all of the other lessons. Their “Specials”– art, IT, PE, Drama, Music– all happen during the last class period of the day from 2-3:00, so Abbey and I leave our class for that time period and teach the class that has PE that day. Our schedule for PE classes is Monday is infant 1/infant 2, Tuesday is standard 1 & 2, Wednesday is Standard 3, Thursday is standard 4&5, Friday is standard 6. The class sizes are very small which is why they are combined classes except for Standard 3. LICA is very under resourced and has a limited number of supplies like paper, markers, crayons, text books, reading books. I’ve also found that there is a much different standard for teachers here than in MA which has been a very big adjustment. I feel as though we may have a more experience than some of the teachers we are working with right now. They’ve all been very excited to work with us and include us in the school and its activities. One other thing I’ve noticed, at least in the primary level (secondary– liz, emma– let me know if I’m wrong here or what you’re experiencing), is that students with educational needs or developmental needs, such as ADHD/ADD or Autism, are not receiving the care or resources they need to be successful. Im attributing that though to the small staff, I can imagine its hard to find specialists to come work there when the island is this small and distanced! But nonetheless, those students seem to be forgotten about sometimes here so I’m finding myself to be more of an Aid/Para to those students to keep them academically matched (which is something I have ZERO experience doing as I teach PE and that’s slightly different than teaching children how to read but I’m finding connections). I’m looking forward to the next few weeks with the school and seeing what is going to come with each day!