Veggie Burger

The Veggie Burger

So this past weekend the Minnesotans and I finally went to Placencia! It was my first time hanging out with them, but they were actually a great group. It was fun to be with other teaching majors and be able to bond over gripping about lesson planning and the educational system in the States and dorky teacher stuff. Basically we got to talk shop. Beyond being able to find stuff in common, though, they were also a super fun group (as well as individually) in their own right. I had a great time hanging out with them and feel like I’m starting to have a network of friends. Yay for friends!

For us, the weekend spawned a new term that can succinctly describe our entire adventure: veggie burger. On Friday night, we went to a Mexican restaurant called Amigos. At said restaurant Ellen ordered a veggie burger. She asked for it with cheese and the server muttered “cheese on the vegetables…” under her breath. I was the only person who heard it and knew that this was probably not going to be a Boca Burger. When the veggie burger did show up, it was in the form of a hamburger bun filled with a slice of Kraft Singles, two pieces of iceburg lettuce, three slices of cucumber and a giant slab of tomato. We all thought it was hilarious and decided that the term “veggie burger” would be heretofore used for anything that is underwhelming.

Entertaining ourselves any way we can...

So we had a veggie burger weekend. Placencia is the beach spot of southern Belize, with possibly the best beaches in the whole country. We showed up having not booked any beds but found that outside of tourist season it was easy to get a cabana right on the beach that we could all split. It was already going to be awesome. Thusly, we were looking forward to sun and sand, especially after last week’s rains. But then, it rained again all day Saturday and we were pent up inside. We took a four-hour nap. We went to a bar with sand floors. We heard a cover band (I still have “54-46 That’s My Number” stuck in my head). We ate pizza. We sang Journey. We played cards. We didn’t tan. We didn’t go snorkeling. We didn’t bring rain coats. Finally, the sun came out Sunday and we were able to sit around and tan at least a little before catching the water taxi back to the bus. So the trip wasn’t a complete failure. The veggie burger, though unexpected, still tasted good.

The Coolie Rebels!

The funny thing about Placencia was the overabundance of white people. I saw more white people this past weekend than the total number of white people since I left Miami. This was a little unexpected since it’s out of tourist season with kids in school and people at work. So there were a lot of older white people, either retirees or ex-pats who owned business that catered to us folks with Yankee accents. Yup, with its actually existent nightlife, wi-fi hotspots, craft shops, seaweed milkshakes, and snorkeling packages, Placencia is the epitome of a tourist trap catering to the needs and desires of ex-pats, kids on spring break, and volunteers like us who are burnt out after three weeks and just want to unwind. Yeah, it’s a Disneyfication of the Belize I know in PG, and yeah its terrible that most of the money that comes into Belize comes in through wealthy foreigners rather than local industry. But yeah, I also needed to unwind, have a drink, listen to Girl Talk, and stick my toes in the sand.

Finally getting sun in front of the cabana