Bloggings, Food Blog, Snorkeling, Travel

Belize-Placencia Village

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We woke up today pretty early around 7 but just laid in bed kind of fell back asleep until 8ish.  Then we decided to go out and snorkel for a bit since the water was calm.

Before getting in the water a woman approached me and asked if we were staying here.  She said she had hitch-hiked from Placencia.  Then she asked if I wanted to look at her crafts.  I told her I had no money on me now so maybe later. When we got in the water we didn’t see much because it’s mostly sand.  Then we saw a few fish and we were getting further out and I heard Don say “Andi come back!”  We’ve been snorkeling quite a bit in our lives and I’ve never heard him say this so I was scared…like was there a shark??  So I just started swimming back to shore fast.  In my head I was a little disappointed on the swim back like…”man if there was a shark out there and he just made us swim like this and draw all this attention to us!!”  I wanna see a shark so bad and if it’s far away and you just stay calm it should be alright…but we when got closer to shore he told me he saw a big jellyfish and I was swimming right for it.  So that ended our snorkeling this morning.

Then we came back in and got cleaned up for breakfast.  Don had a dish called Belizian Fried Jacks.  It had black beans, scrambled eggs and these pastry like things.  I had a Bacon Egg Burger.  It was good.  It was just bacon and 2 eggs over easy on ciabatta bread. During breakfast we could see the woman spreading out all her jewelry and trinkets on the beach to sell.

After breakfast we talked to the hotel owner about our tours.  Now I think we are adding another snorkeling trip.  It sounds pretty awesome. We also made friends with the Maya Beach Hotel cat..
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Then we decided to take the bus to Placencia Village.  While waiting for it though….guess who caught us.  The woman selling her crafts.  She was also waiting for the bus.  But she convinced us to look at her items.  I ended up buying a bracelet for $10, because I am a sucker. The bus came around 12:15 and you get on by waving it down.  It was an old school bus painted blue and it said “Richies Bus” on it.  The ride was $1 per person.  It took us to the end of the peninsula.

Once we got off the bus we walked around a bit.  We looked at the beaches and then just walked around.  It was sooo hot!  We decided there wasn’t really much there so we planned to take the bus back at 2:30, which is the last bus of the day on Sunday.  We decided we wanted to try a different restaurant so we tried a place called Wendy’s.  It was good.  The quesadilla I had was great.  
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After that we walked the town some more just basically waiting for the bus.  The bus was so crowded on the way back but the driver dropped us right off at our hotel.  Can’t really beat the price of $1 for a bus ride.

Once we got back I wanted to go for another swim….so we went back out to the beach and snorkeled again.  We love snorkeling.  We didn’t really see anything too crazy just a few fish here and there.  The water felt so good, it’s so nice and warm.  After our swim we got cleaned up again and decided to walk about a mile to a different restaurant.

On the walk there the hotel owner saw us and said she would give us a lift.  That was nice of her.  The restaurant was Mangos and it looked really cool.  The food was good.  I had nachos. Don had fried chicken. The problem was when the food came immediately we were surrounded by flies.  It was so annoying.  We just ate so fast.  I feel like all we did today was eat hahaha.  
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We had to walk back and it was pretty dark.  But it was a nice walk.  When we got to the hotel the whole front of the building had little lizards on it.

Now we are back and we are just getting ready for our excursion tomorrow to the ruins.

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Bloggings, Travel

Belize-Getting There

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Today we woke up around 3 am so we could make it to our 6 am flight at ohare.  We got to the airport and our flight was on time….so nothing really crazy to tell from Ohare.

We had our connection flight in Dallas/Fort Worth.  We ate breakfast at a taco bar.  It was pretty good.  Then an alarm started going off.  It was a siren with a computerized voice saying “There has been an emergency reported in the building.  Please stand by for further instruction.”  No one knew what was going on and it just kept repeating over and over.  Finally a real voice came on and said the emergency was taken care of so to keep going about business.  Even though he said this the alarm continued to go on until we boarded our flight for Belize.

We sat in the aisle that had 3 seats so we were sitting next to a woman.  She had the window seat.  Eventually one of her friends came and told her they had an open seat by them so she could sit next to them. I was excited because then we would have a giant space…but when I moved over to her seat it was a little damp and kind of smelled like urine, not really sure.  Luckily I only touched the seat with my hand…and I had hand sanitizer.  So for the flight we did not use that window seat.   It was funny though because I saw her when I was exiting the plane and she said “You didn’t sit in that seat did you?” and I said “no” and she was like “good because it made my pants damp”…..

So then we made our way into the airport to go through customs. There was a live band playing some music.  That was a first for me at an airport.

When we made it through customs and met our driver, Abraham.  He took us to his truck.  Abraham drove us 3 hours to Placencia…we had a private ride.  It was cool. He told us things about Belize on the way.  We stopped at a grocery store to get some drinks.  It was so weird.  It was a Chinese owned grocery store in the middle of no where.

The whole ride to the hotel all I could think was this place has really nothing but jungle.
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I didn’t really know what to expect but it is just land with trees, very rural.  We even saw Amish! Abraham told us the Amish settled here about 50 years ago.

We finally made it to Maya Beach Hotel and got settled in.  Our room is the Hummingbird Room and we saw a hummingbird outside our window!  
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We walked by the beach and relaxed on the deck for awhile.  Then we had dinner at the Bistro here at the hotel.  We had Spicy Fish Empanadas for an appetizer and we both had burgers for dinner. We also enjoyed a Belizian beer.  
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It was really good.

After dinner it was only like 8 but we went back to the room for bed!

Bloggings, Scuba, Travel, Videos

Getting our Scuba certification. Open water diving!

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Andi and Don’s PADI Open Water Scuba Certification Dive

Haigh Quarry, Kankakee, IL, July 2012

Yup so we got our scuba certifications. Pretty awesome. This is us on our final certification dive at Haigh Quarry in Kankakee Illinois. We went with Scuba Systems Skokie IL. We recommend using them. Message us if you want some info.

Bloggings, Dreams

Dreaming of Highschool and Theater productions

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So last night I had an odd dream.

Let’s see if I can remember the detail.

So the main part of the dream that I remember the most was where I decided to cross dress as an old lady; but that came later. The first part of the dream was me in some sort of post apocalyptic survival scenario.

I remember in the dream there being this abandoned factory like area. I was part of a group of survivors that was just hiding out. I’m not sure if it was aliens or zombies that had caused this post apocalyptic scenario, but there we were. I can’t remember if my wife was there, but I was running around trying to protect everyone. We were being attacked by survivor bandits. You’ve seen their kind in the movies, they steal and beat up other survivors even though the real enemy oppresses all. I had grabbed two folding knifes that were just lying there on the floor. I guess I decided that I’d be able to duel wield folding knives in some Dungeons and Dragons Rogueish attempt to protect my people. In chasing some bandits and cutting one of them I found myself guiding some survivors into a freight elevator.

We closed the doors and took the freight elevator up. I guess the idea of taking an elevator reminded me of my high school’s elevators. (I went to a big High School, we had about 4 to 6 elevators in a 10 floor building.)

When I got out of the elevator I had forgotten about the survivor bandits and lost the folding knives. I was late to class and we had a group presentation. I don’t recall knowing anyone in my group, but we had a list of dialogue that we were going to read and act out in front of the class in some sort of English literature skit.

My group members handed me my dialogue and told me to hurry up and get ready. Everyone went into the classroom while I was left in the hallway. In the hallway (which was very narrow) were several garment racks with all sorts of costumes. When I peered through the classroom doorway I saw several students sitting in the front in full Elizabethan period costumes. Thinking to myself, that I was way behind and had to get on a costume immediately I scoured the racks as fast as I could. Unfortunately, everything I found was like 10 sizes too small. As if everything was made for skinny female actors. Thinking off the cuff and knowing nothing I would find on the racks would fit me right, I decided to go with a haggered old wench layered in several undersized blouses and dresses that I essentially wore as capes. I layered just enough clothing to make the outfit look exactly how you’d imagine a haggered old wench in the Elizabethan era would look. Somehow this choice of costume was perfect for my group presentation. (Now that I think about it, I think I was going for that Junk goblin look, you know the one in the Labyrinth.)

Finally, with my costume complete, I walked to the classroom doorway waiting for my group to be called. But as I stood there waiting for my turn to get on stage I heard the teacher say allowed “OK class that’s all the time we have today for presentations. Sorry to everyone who could not do their skits. This won’t be counted against you as your individual research papers were really the main part of this exercise. Please make sure your papers are all on my desk before you leave.

And my dream thus ended with that parting throught “Fuck, I forgot to do my research paper!”

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