Well, we are at the airport in Dallas waiting for our flight to St. Louis. Somehow, our flight left early from Belize, got into Dallas early and now we are probably slightly delayed because our plane got stuck in Cedar Rapids. It probably had to be de-iced. We have about 5 hours here in Dallas. We got some very expensive, but pretty good, hamburgers here at the airport, then I went to a French cafe to get a cup of tea. The only tea they had was Lipton and I paid $5 for it. Worst French cafe ever! They didn’t have any good dessert either.

On our way to the airport, our taxi driver stopped in front of some fake Mayan ruins at an adventure park and offered to take our picture (see above), saying that it would bring us good luck. I hope that’s true because Bill and I are not going to end up in any fashion magazines with this picture.

Our last couple of days in Belize were pretty quiet. We went into town on a quest for brownies but failed to find any. Someone could make a fortune selling brownies and chocolate cake on the street. We did find some banana bread at a Chinese grocery store that was pretty good. I’m sure someone local makes it. I met an American couple on the beach yesterday who live in Belize, and they confirmed that there are no brownie shops. We weren’t even looking for “special” brownies, just some chocolate ones. I did learn from the American couple that you can buy boxes of Ghirardelli brownie mix at one of the grocery stores, so if we go back, we will look for that. Bill and I had been debating whether we would get searched by Customs if we packed a box of Ghirardelli mix to bring with us if we came again, but now we don’t have to try that out. Based on the picture above, it looks like I need to cut back on brownies anyway. I have to sign up for strength class again when I get home.

Yesterday, we went to a restaurant down the street and had some good pan fried shrimp po-boys in fry jacks. They were surprisingly good. I went for a beautiful walk on the beach that morning. There is a long stretch of beaches with hotels and houses, but the beaches were mostly empty and no one seems to care if you are walking on their beach, which was great. The American couple I met had a house right off the beach and they were out with their 4 rescue dogs.

We tried to snorkel yesterday afternoon, but the water quality was terrible. We really had no good water on this vacation. I did see a spotted jellyfish. I have only seen moon jellies previously. This one also has a mild sting but it’s not harmful to humans.

Overall, this was a very pleasant vacation. It wasn’t one of our more exciting vacations, but the location was beautiful, the weather was really nice, and I had some good seafood! This morning, before we left, there was a dolphin in the lagoon that we could see from the balcony of our apartment. We are headed back to weather in the negatives.

It is currently 7:30pm. Our flight is supposed to leave at 9:15pm. We’ll see what happens!

This trip is already winding down, we didn’t do as many adventures on this trip as we have on other trips. The water is rough and can be cool at times. There aren’t big enough waves for boogie boards, the water is just choppy. Choppy water also makes for cloudy water so visibility is lower.

The other day we did a hour boat ride out to an island/caye (key) and snorkeled around it. We had a young gal in our group that was not a very good swimmer and initially she tried going without a life jacket, I think since Emily and I had not wanted one. She ended up needing one, shortly after starting out she fell behind and it took a little bit to get going again. To be fair the water was pretty rough. I debated if it was worth going myself after I had swum back to check on her. It probably wasn’t in the end but it was good to be in the water for a while.

There were a few lobsters and a barracuda, the lobsters were not very easy to see even with some picture enhancement. Mostly I got pictures of Emily swimming. She said that our readers have seen plenty of those already. But here’s a few more.

The tour usually goes to a second location after lunch but because the water was so rough they opted to stay in the same place and about half of the people didn’t snorkel including us. It was nice to just hang out and enjoy the sun and fresh air. After we went to see sharks, rays and turtles. It was horrible. I stayed in the water only for a short time. I had gotten in and seen a fairly large eagle ray and a few nurse sharks and I only seen shadows where the turtles were at and most of that was probably the mob of people swimming around trying to see them, so I went back to the boat.

There hasn’t been a lot to write about as it’s been pretty laid back. We went into Placencia village a few time, swam in the ocean from the resort beach and in the pool. We have seen a few things off the beach here but not a lot.

I don’t think the trip has been too fast or too long. It’s been good to have time to relax. It would be nice to find a location that always has good water for snorkeling and diving, but also have a good area to walk around and restaurants to try. Supposedly the water is better in the summer, though last time we came to Belize in May/June I only got one day that the dive company went out. We will have to see. The sargassum does also come here then as well.

Here’s some more random pictures from our trip to the village yesterday.

Sounds like I will be coming home to subzero windchills. That’s going to be a big change from what I’ve been used to. At least I have a few days before I have to go back to work.

Be safe.

Like many of our vacation destinations, Placencia has been a mixed experience and we are on the fence about whether coming back at a different time of the year would be better. It’s very quiet and laid back. The location is beautiful. Sunday, Bill had a pretty big gash in his foot because he has bad sandals, so we didn’t schedule any activities. I went for a walk in the morning, took a shuttle to town for lunch and booked a snorkel trip, then late in the afternoon, I went for a lovely walk on the beach. I got rained on while I was out for the walk, so I decided to swim in my clothes since I was already wet. I floated in the ocean while the sun was setting and there was a partial rainbow. It was lovely, and overall, it was a very pleasant day. I ate at Omars again and got more blackened fish. They really have delicious seafood. I would like to try their blackened shrimp before I leave.

Yesterday, we did a snorkel trip. It was okay. The weather has not been great for water activities. It’s windy all the time and the water is choppy and not super clear. We had an hour boat ride out on really choppy water, then some rough swimming during our snorkel trip. I also don’t love guided snorkel trips. We were in a pretty big group and a lot of people were not good swimmers. It’s hard to see much that way and it’s a good way to get smacked in the face with someone’s fin. The tour gave us a pretty good lunch on the tiny island where we snorkeled, then we docked beside a fishing boat where sharks, rays, and turtles come because they get fed the remains of fish. One the one hand, it’s a great way to see sea creatures up close. There were three big spotted eagle rays, which I love to watch! They are beautiful! Two of the biggest sea turtles I’ve ever seen, several small sharks, and a variety of other stingrays. That said, it’s not exactly natural to have those animals clustered together eating fishing leftovers. The rays are also really accustomed to humans so they swim close. They aren’t aggressive, but there were a lot of people in the group clumped in a small area. Many of them swim badly with a life vest and don’t pay attention to what’s under them. The rays don’t have a reason to sting anyone on purpose, but if you accidentally swiped one with your leg, that would be a painful accident and it’s an hour boat ride back to town.

Last night, after our snorkel adventure, I was craving dessert but our hotel does not have good dessert. So, I left Bill to make our spaghetti while I went to a neighboring resort to get some of their dessert. I seemed like a good plan, but the other hotel only had chocolate soufflé and crème brûlée, both of which I like, but the soufflé takes 20 minutes to make and comes with ice cream. It took forever to get everything and I had a 10 minute walk back with potentially melting ice cream. Half way back to the apartment, the restaurant called to tell me that I left the crime brûlée. I thought they had put everything in the same bag, so I had taken the bag they gave me and left but the crème brûlée was separate so I had to go back to get it. It was a very complicated excursion to get fairly simple dessert. I really just wanted a brownie or piece of chocolate cake. There is a chocolate shop in town that I want to visit, probably tomorrow when I go in for lunch. There’s a bakery down the street a little ways. Overall, I’m not impressed with their food, but they do have decent chocolate cup cakes so I may walk there in a few minutes to see if I can get some.

This is not our most exciting vacation, but it’s a very pleasant location. It’s a great place to read books and enjoy being outside. I understand why people retire here.

Hello All: We are having a very low key vacation, so I haven’t had much to write about, but we are in a lovely place! Our apartment has 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room with a big sofa. I’m currently on the balcony overlooking the lagoon. There is a nice breeze so it’s perfect weather for being on the balcony and the view of the lagoon is beautiful. This is the off season, so there are very few people at the hotel or in town, so it’s easy to book things and we don’t have to wait for anything.

It is cooler here than we expected. Apparently, December and January here are the “cool” months. That means it’s high 70s and low 80s all of the time. That’s great for being outside, but a little cool for water activities. It’s also windy here, so the ocean near the beach stays a little churned up and the water isn’t super clear.

We had planned to do snorkeling/diving today, but the dive shop didn’t get back to us. We probably could have taken a taxi into town to see if the shop was doing a dive today, but we decided to go down for lunch instead and try to book something for tomorrow. We still have several days to book some diving/snorkeling.

Yesterday, we did a cave hike and “blue hole”swim. I really enjoyed the hiking. After we did the first cave, I went on an additional hike by myself to find a second cave. I never found the second cave. It must have been further along on the trail, but I didn’t want to make Bill and the driver wait for me too long. It took me an extra 45 minutes as it was. It was a great hike though. The trail is fairly well-maintained and it’s covered in a canopy of vegetation. Part of the trail was rough steps cut into the side of a “mountain” so it was pretty steep. I was soaked in sweat and humidity by the time I got back, but it was fun. It also made the blue hole feel really good even though it was a little cold. I should have taken more pictures, but I have one of an easy part of the trail.

The blue hole was interesting. Mexico has better ones. This one was really more of a spring fed pond that flowed into a river that went down into a cave. The water was cold but clear and clean. I took my snorkel gear so I could dive to the bottom. It wasn’t very deep. There weren’t many other people there, which was nice. I came home exhausted and went to bed at 8pm. We had intense rain here last night that came in waves. It woke me up several times through the night. Like everywhere else, Belize’s weather is changing dramatically.

I have had some really good food here! We went to a restaurant called Omars a few days ago and I had some of the best blackened fish that I’ve ever had. I had really good grilled fish at a restaurant called Wendy’s too. I also found an ice cream place with delicious coconut milk ice cream. Dairy ice cream does not hold up well in hot climates. It melts and re-freezes so it has little ice crystals in it and it melts really fast. Coconut milk ice cream is super creamy, it doesn’t melt nearly as fast and it’s delicious! I got a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of mango. If we go back to town for lunch, I’ll may get some more.

Bill and I have been to several of the local grocery stores. We eat out for lunch and cook breakfast and dinner. Pizza at the hotel is really expensive, so Bill made us a really good pizza a few days ago. The fruit is good here so I’ve had delicious yogurt, fruit, granola bowls for breakfast, and we found some homemade sour dough bread and tortillas. It’s really nice to be able to cook some food. The hotel restaurant is fine, but the food is a little bland.

I have not had any migraines since I’ve been here. I didn’t have any in Roatan either which is not too far away. I’m not sure what is different here, but even with the wind blowing almost every day, I feel so much better than I do at home. It’s worth being here just to feel better for a while.

Hopefully, I’ll have some good snorkel stories in a few days.

I had a marathon day of classes and English conversation groups but I’m finished! My classes today were acceptable, not fantastic, but acceptable. I had to make a bunch of changes in my information to try to manage the student in my afternoon class who thinks he knows everything and won’t stop talking. So, I had less time to practice the information. The morning class was a little rough, but surprisingly the afternoon class went better. The problematic student dominated the first part of the class taught by my co-teacher, but I think he gave up on trying to talk to me, so things went a lot better. I still have a long ways to go to be really good at Spanish. I need a significant amount of time in a Spanish speaking country, but that’s not possible right now.

I had several people, even some students, come up to me today to tell me how much they enjoyed my AI presentation. It’s a topic that everyone is interested in right now. TEC gave me a nice gift for coming and a very nice thank you letter.

This evening, I helped with two English conversation groups. People are really enthusiastic about having a native speaker to talk to. In one of my sessions, I had a 12 year old boy who was pretty good! His mom was helping him in the background. He’s really into robotics so we had a good conversation about that.

I leave for San Jose around noon tomorrow and I fly back to St. Louis on Saturday. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day here, which is a national holiday, so schools and a lot of workplaces are closed. I’ll probably be the only one on campus, so just as well that I’m leaving.

Overall, it has been a good trip, not an easy trip, but a good trip. As much as I love it here, it will be nice to be back in my house in a more comfortable living space.

I haven’t posted in the last few days because I haven’t done anything super interesting or I’ve been wiped out tired by the end of the day. I spent last weekend at Heliconias Nature Inn enjoying the beautiful area and the thermal pools. Above is the adorable towel elephant that the cleaning lady made. She also made beautiful swans and a brontosaurus.

I came back to TEC on Monday morning and gave my first presentation at 9:30am. It was a presentation about the development of health and fitness culture. I gave the talk in English to students who are learning English, but I had PowerPoint slides in Spanish. It seemed to go well, and the students had some good questions, but I know it was challenging for them. I just gave my second presentation titled AI and the Human Future this afternoon. It was also be in English. I think it went well. I got some good questions and TEC managed to fill a big auditorium with people. The university president Zoomed in a welcome message before I started.

Tomorrow, I teach 2 classes and help with two English conversation groups. I’ve made significant changes to my class in an effort to reign in the student in the back who talks all the time. It will be a long day! TEC wants to bring a group of students to UNI next year so hopefully we can make that work.

My accommodations have continued to be somewhat challenging here. The AC wasn’t working when I came back from the hotel last weekend and a couple of nights ago the smoke alarm went off for a few seconds at 4am in the morning. Maybe someone else in the building was smoking. It wasn’t on for long but I didn’t have a plan for what to do if it hadn’t shut off. Who do you call at 4am if the smoke alarm won’t shut off? But, the warm water feature on my shower has worked the last couple of nights so I haven’t gotten shocked turning the hot water on and off. The food in the cafeteria is also good and campus is very pretty. There are parrots flying over my house almost every morning and howler monkeys somewhere nearby. There is an ice cream shop down the street, so I may go get ice cream after supper tonight. It’s also lychee season here and they are delicious!

It’s been a challenging trip but I still feel lucky to have these kinds of experiences. I just have to make it through my classes tomorrow!

I had a crazy long day yesterday and a crazy day in general! I taught my first class at 9:30am and it went pretty well. The students seemed interested, they helped me with my Spanish, and the professor for the class also helped me when I needed it. It was a fun experience. There were 10 students, which was a good number to manage.

The second class was much more difficult. There were 28 students, and they were much more talkative. That could have been fine, but there is an older, returning student in that class. He talked almost the whole time, spoke very quickly and I didn’t understand anything that he said. That’s really unfortunate, because I know he was saying things that I needed to respond to. At one point, he suggested members of the US government were members of the neo-Nazi movement. That might be true, but I haven’t heard anything for sure. He also wanted to know what political party I was part of, and whether I thought Costa Ricans were white. That seemed like a trick question. It took me a long time to figure all of that out and that’s the small part that I understood. The other students were taking out phones  to do other things while I failed to manage this student. I really didn’t blame them. The professor of the class didn’t help me at all. He just let me flounder. I skipped a few slides so I could finish. At the end of the class, one student came to apologize for calling white people gringos. I wasn’t upset about that at all. He seemed like a good kid. He was just trying to be funny. Two other students came to apologize for the behavior of their classmates and to tell me they thought it was going to be a long semester. It probably will be a long semester. At least I only have to do one more class for this section.

I had to run from class to join an English Zoom conversation group at 4pm. I did it outside because I didn’t have time to go back to my apartment. I have mosquito bites and a bird pooped all over my computer. Most of it hit the track pad so that was at least easy to clean up. Marlon told me the conversation group was at 6pm but it turned out that there was one at 4pm and another at 6pm. I had to reschedule with my taxi to pick me up at 7pm. Everyone there really seemed to appreciate having a native English speaker to talk to so it made my day long but not bad. 

My taxi picked me up at 7pm. The driver is young with a tiny baby at home. His sister is expecting triplets! We had a good conversation and he let me stop at a grocery store to get a snack for supper and some yogurt for the next couple of days for lunch. The food at the hotel is really good, but I don’t need three huge meals a day. I made it to the hotel at 8pm. I’m so happy to be here, although currently there’s no electricity. Hopefully that gets fixed soon.

There was a bat in my room early this morning. It woke me up at 2am trying to get out. A thought it was a moth at first because I was barely awake so the bat and I were both confused. I opened the door and let it out so everything was fine. It’s nice that there are bats here! They eat mosquitoes. There is a colorful Costa Rican squirrel in the tree beside my room.

I don’t have any big plans for today. I’m reading this morning and I’m planning to practice my presentation, swim, maybe go hiking, and do hot springs this afternoon depending on the electricity situation.

I’m back at TEC! It’s been another interesting day. I left the hotel at noon. As you can see above, my accommodations are quite a bit different. The taxi driver who has been driving me is super nice and very safety conscious. He gets really upset about bad driving and people doing stupid stuff in general but especially on the road. He speaks very fast Spanish that I have a lot of trouble understanding him. Generally, I do pretty well here, but I have trouble with this guy.

My hotel is only about 45 minutes from the university. Google told me it was 1.5 hours. It’s really a short trip over, which is nice since I’m leaving for the hotel again tomorrow afternoon. My accommodations here at TEC are fine now. When I got here this afternoon, the AC wasn’t working. TEC evidently ended its contract with the AC repair company and didn’t hire anyone new. The AC in the building my contact works in is also broken. The university was able to give me a different room, but there is no hot water in my new room. I’m currently using the bathroom in one room and sleeping in another.

I just took a shower and that was also an experience. The shower has a switch to turn on the hot water but there is no way to regulate the temperature. It’s either scalding hot or cold. If I touch the side of the shower head when I turn the switch, I get a mild electrical shock. If I flip the switch back and forth, I get a few seconds of reasonable temperature water so it’s still better than nothing.

I met both of my co-professors today. They seem very nice. They asked me to get supper with them tonight but by the time they came by at 7:20 pm, I was sweaty and wiped out and didn’t feel like I could do an evening of Spanish. It’s much harder to speak Spanish like that. I FaceTimed Bill instead. He speaks English so it didn’t take up nearly as much energy.

Yesterday was Marlon’s (my contact here) birthday, so his colleagues had a small party for him with cake. I got to join. I understand pretty well when people talk to me, but I miss a lot when conversation is going on around me.

Since I bailed on dinner with colleagues, I ate at the student cafeteria. I had beans and rice with stewed pork and salsa, crunchy tortillas, and fruit juice. I’m always impressed by how healthy the food is. The fruit juice is real juice. It’s not flavored water with fake sugar.

I teach tomorrow morning at 8:50am and again at 1:30pm. The first class has 9 students and the second has 28. I hope it goes okay and I’m prepared enough. I’m leaving TEC tomorrow afternoon as soon as my class is over to go back to the nice hotel where I’ve been staying. I’ll be fine in my cabin here at TEC next week, but for the weekend, I’m taking the better option and going back to the hot springs!