The National Tour

So this past week, me and 55 students from Standard VI went on the annual National Tour to get some experiential learning based around the Social Studies section of the PSE. We left on the bus at a little after two in the morning and six hours later we were in Belize City for a whirlwind tour that would take us up the country, across the country, back across, and then down again.

The Met Service
Our first stop on the tour after breakfast in Belmopan was at the Meteorological Service, where we got to see their old equipment and new radar that they haven’t learned how to use yet. This was funny because our joke here is that the weathermen on TV seem to be telling you today’s weather as if it is tomorrow’s and hoping no one will notice. It was fun to see there stuff, though, even though the kids were already exhausted from staying up on the bus all night.

Oren checkin out the crafts at the HOC

House of Culture
Our next stop was at the House of Culture, which was cool because it used to be the Governor’s Mansion while Belize was still a colony. Now, it’s somewhat of a museum and art gallery displaying different kinds of art from around the country. The kids were far more excited about the two giant cruise ships that were parked out beyond the reef on the sea. I don’t blame them, though. Mostly it was old gubernatorial furniture and china.

The Museum of Belize
The Museum of Belize was our next stop and may have been one of the highlights of the whole trip. The Museum used to be Her Majesty’s Prison (talk about a name that asserts colonial power) all the way until 1993 when it was converted to house some amazing collections of Mayan art and jade, old relics from 19th century Belize City, stamps, and a collection of old woodcutting supplies. They had done a masterful job of remodeling the historic building and had even kept one of the old cells to show just crappy it was to be a prisoner at HMP. Another fun thing was that I had just gone over a story about Marcus Garvey with my students and they were able to recall it when they saw a picture of him on a trip he had taken to Belize. Yay for retention!

Old Belize
Finally, we went to Old Belize for a much appreciated lunch and rest. Old Belize is a fantastically strange tourist attraction built for people coming straight off of the cruise ships to “get a taste of Belizean history”. It is home to a beach with a zipline and a waterslide, a bar and restaurant, and life-sized replicas of a rainforest, a Mayan house, old nineteenth century industrial supplies and a recreation of a street in nineteenth century Belize City. The crown jewel in this collection is an actual old locomotive used to carry logs to Belize City. It was a fun way to get the students to see history as not just some artifacts behind a glass. The kids loved the restaurant, which is one of the only restaurants in the whole county big enough to house a group of 60. The other tourists there looked a little offput by the sudden influx of locals, which I found hilarious. The kids were weirded out by the historical recreations of their ancestor’s homes. At the “Garifuna exhibit” of a wooden shack with a dirt floor one of the students said “that’s not what my house looks like!” and one of the others replied “no it’s what they USED to look like!”

And Then,,.
By the end of the day we were all exhausted and took the bus halfway across the country to stay at the Belizean FIFA headquarters in Belmopan. It was an unimpressively small building with an unimpressive football stadium behind it. Actually, for Belize it wasn’t that unimpressive considering that football largely takes a backseat to basketball here. After we showered we took the bus across the rest of the country to have dinner at Hode’s (ho-dees) in San Ignacio, another one of the only restaurants to hold 60. Hode’s however, also had a video arcade and ice cream: pleasant treats after a hard day’s work. So we got back and the girls went upstairs to sleep in beds while we slept on cots on loan from the national disaster relief organization. I crashed hard and Mr. Nolberto was left to manage the 20 boys as their sugar rushes died into sugar comas