Check us out at the Ministry of Education office in Belize City. We arrived after an 1.5 hour boat taxi ride from the San Pedro Island (Caye Ambergris- which I still don't know how to pronounce). The Minister himself was not available to meet us but one of his four cabinet members was, and she was delightful and eager to speak with us. She is the only woman in such a high position and she manages the teacher certification process for the country.
Her name is Carol Babb. She showed us some info at the office but then quickly accepted our lunch invitation and led us to one of her frequent lunch spots, right on the water just up the road.
The group included the graduate students and three UNCW faculty. On the way to the restaurant, Ms. Babb called her colleague Rose Bradley, Literacy Coordinator. The two women enthusiastically listened to us describe our background and goals for building a partnership with the country and spoke at length of the great needs in the schools to improve instruction for reading, writing and special education. It was almost too much to take in, as we all wanted to have a plan in place to get to work helping this country transition quickly in this direction of increased accountability so that all students are learning. For long and still for now, many students with disabilities sit in classrooms but are simply ignored by teachers who have no preparation or knowledge of how to serve them. I witnessed this in my school visits (that I will describe in another post).
A big challenge in this visit is being in the listening seat, attempting to take in all of the information of this different culture and of the needs of their educational system. I am accustomed to being in the driver's seat and taking action. So I am practicing my listening skills quite a bit. But more, I am watching constantly. Not just watching for the biker or golf cart that always appears to be about to run me over but just watching the thousands of new sights all around me. There is so much to take it everywhere. Different plants, animals, foods, accents, smiles, behaviors, houses, and on and on. This bird was just chillin' on the dock as I waited for our water taxi. How can you not stare at him? Look at that face!
But then there is this little guy. A woman had her as her pet, on a leash in a bike basket. Her name was.....oh, now I forget. But she described the kind of animal as a cross between a raccoon and a squirrel. I was thinking that neither of those animals sound like they would make great pets but she seemed to very much love this little thing. It's called a coatimundi, and it lives in packs. But so do dogs, I guess, and we keep them as pets too.
Anyhoo, it was this giant and beautiful. It was my first time snorkeling (I think) and was harder than I thought. Lots of us kicking each other in the face since we were in a group and all looking at the fish and not each other. Here is the link to the album of the underwater pictures I took:
And seriously LOTS of rays and our guide grabbed a shark and let us pet her, though I didn't really see him right away and was startled and scared to see this shark right in front of me and didn't reach out. But I did (David, be proud) touch the rays. 
So we walked around and found a cheapy lunch spot for beans and rice. We will try again there for breakfast tomorrow.
