From the 1920's to Superbowl Reggae Party in One Weekend

This past Thursday, Chita picked me up to go to the monthly Women's International Club of Belize meeting. This is a group of Belizean and ex-pat women who throw three to four fundraising events a year for Belizeans in need. They're a nice group of ladies who all have their hearts in the right place. The meeting was at Smokey Mermaid, a nice restaurant by the Tourist Village. The meeting started at 9:30am and lasted two hours. It was long and a lot of fun. There was lots of food, drinks and laughs. The ladies don't take themselves too seriously and know how to make a meeting go by quickly. My favourite part of the meeting, the raffle, happened three quarters of the way through. Most members bring some kind of gift bag to the meetings and then the gifts are raffled off. Five tickets only costs $5 BZD. I was very lucky winning a raffle prize at my first meeting. My gift bag had a back scrubber and a new makeup brush set. Good score. It was also quite informative to be at the meeting seeing the next night would be the organizations biggest annual event, the silent auction.

Last year, the silent auction was an unthemed, wine and cheese event. Following the event's success the Women's International Club decided to step it up. This year there would be a full dinner buffet and a theme, the Roaring 1920's. I had the inside scoop on the event being at the meeting, but more importantly I had the real inside information on the auction items. Most of the silent auction items were actually solicited and collected by Chita Andrews, my new best friend in Belize. She is no longer on the club's board, but obviously has the connections to get the good prizes, weekends away at local resorts. This was great for me as I had an insider's view to the real value of the prizes and by being at the meeting I was able to check out the different resorts being put up for bid in advance. Michael and I were ready.

The evening of the event we went down the street to the Mexican Institute ready for a party. The Roaring 1920's theme spurned some great costumes and brought swing music with it. The room was well decorated with hand painted 1920's pictures including a large mural. There was a large room in the middle with a dance floor, a room set up with tons of home cooked and donated restaurant food to one side and another room housing a silent auction section to the other. We spent a great deal of the night by the auction tables and outside.

The Mexican Institute has no air conditioning and I'm not used to the heat yet. It was a little embarrassing. I was shvitzing in a tank top and skirt and everyone else in pants or even long sleeve shirts didn't have a bead of sweat to speak of. Sitting outside did have it's pros. We managed to meet a group of people who work at the American Embassy. I know that American is not Canadian, but once I heard the Chicago accent of the drawn out 'a' from this woman Kim, I had the overwhelming urge to talk to them. Belizeans are unbelievably nice and welcoming but I needed a little resemblance of home. The people were great. They have get together all the time and we exchanged numbers in hopes of getting involved. It would be funny to need your passport to get into a party. We'll see what happens. Security is a little tight.

The auction was the other highlight of the evening. Michael and I were dedicated to winning our bid. We started off bidding on a couple things. There were quite a few weekend resort stays to bid on and I had my heart set on walking out with at least one of them. We bid on a resort in the Cayo District called Chaa Creek and our real favourite a weekend at Caves Branch Resort. As the night progressed so did aggressive bidding. People were watching their bids like hawks hovering around the tables with their full attention. It was a little exhausting competing in the mix for close to an hour, dedicated to winning the prize. Following some bids on Chaa Creek Resort we made the decision to abandon it and focus on Caves Branch. It proved to be worth it. After battling with another woman for the weekend away we scared her off with a jump in our bid price. Even though we upped the amount, we knew it was worth so much more. We won two nights at the jungle resort in an upgraded bungalow, all meals and an adventure tour. Michael and I have obviously chosen the more exciting cave tubing and waterfall adventure. We won the entire package for $315 BZD, about $175 CND. Absolutely fantastic!

The next morning I awoke with a hang over, too many rum and cokes, Michael awoke with a stomach ache, big surprise, and the sky was cloudy and grey. Our weekend trip to Caye Caulker and the beach was not happening. The grey sky was the result of a low pressure system that kept me with a terrible headache for the rest of the day. We decided to relax and do nothing because, here in Belize, we can. Michael did manage to actually play tennis in the afternoon and my headache and nausea subsided at around six in the evening. We had a home cooked meal and watched the movie Mean Girls. It was actually a great night.

Sunday, Superbowl fever was in the air. We hung out at the Pickwick Club for the day. We had a great work out and relaxed in the sun by the pool. Our only mistake was eating at the club. The chicken burger was greasy, nasty and caused a stomach ache in the record time of two minutes. That will never happen again. The club was unusually busy and we chatted with some of our new American Embassy friends, Marco and Kim, and a Canadian girl, Rachel, we had met at last weeks tennis tournament. It was an almost perfect day. Only to be topped off by what we were excited for, American Superbowl commercials. What we didn't realize during the day was the festivities that would take place at the park next door to our building.

During the day a large tent was set up and the music started blasting out heavy reggae bass by 4:00pm. At first we weren't sure what was going to take place, but we knew we'd find out. We were going to visit the park during its usual Sunday night family fun to get some local cuisine for dinner. Every week all the food stands get cooking, the music starts playing and families come for the little train ride around the park. This Sunday would be different. It was Superbowl time. We headed down for some dinner and we were pleasantly surprised by what we found. Extra Mexican food stands, pony rides, photo booths and lots of people. The best part was undoubtedly the tent and what it housed. A large television was playing the game, huge speakers were blasting Bob Marley and you can't leave out some heavily dreaded Rastas dancing the night away. Who needs game commentary anyways? It was a true Belizean moment I'll never forget.

I'll be spending the next couple of days getting ready for Michael's 29th birthday. It's this Thursday and I have some searching to do in order to get everything ready. I'll let you all know how it goes, it's a secret. I'll update soon! Love ya'll.