Paget's Belize Journal

The Preliminary Trip - It Begins - First days - A tourist trip - Flying, sand crabs - San Pedro 1 - San Pedro 2 - Braids, snakes, dogs - Leaving Dangriga The Actual Stay - Help for library - Books; departure - Arrival; weather - Sensations, housing - Security, more housing - Security, snorkeling - Dock activities - Day-to-day life 1 - Day-to-day life 2 - The Quadrille - The apartment! - Cleaning and culture - Hurricane Irene - Too much reality - Hopkins Village 1 - Hopkins Village 2 - Weather - Minimum wage - Transportation - Food Experiments - The Brits; furniture - Meeting and greeting - Night noise, Settlement Day - Dragonflies! - More noise - A good 19th - Wrapping up the 19th - Traveling to Mexico - Thanksgiving in Mexico - Cockscomb Basin - A Belizean week-end - Tobacco Caye - Is it really Christmas? - This is the life - Christmas wishes - Headwear - Christmas Experiences - Lottery - Caye Caulker haircut - Caye Caulker 2 - Geckos - Red Bank - The last few days		How it all began My adventure working and living in Belize for four months in late 1999 and early 2000 began with one of those late nights between two friends who haven't seen much of each other for several years. My friend, Dawn, was visiting from Alaska, here to help her elderly father decide on living arrangments and had managed to cut out one evening for catching up. We talked, ate, talked, drank wine, talked, listened to music, talked, danced in the kitchen, talked, etc into the early hours of the morning. And somewhere in there I said I was really interested in an adventure, really wanted to go to live somewhere else for a while, but needed to be able to earn some money while having this adventure. And Dawn said she knew a guy who had a brother who had an Internet consulting business in Belize and was having a difficult time staying on top of all the business he was getting and an even harder time hiring people to help. So e-mails were exchanged and eventually I decided to take a two-week vacation in Belize to see if there was a possibility for a longer relationship. The Internet consultants, Tony and Therese, live in Dangriga on the central coast. Therese's family owns the Pelican Beach Resorts facility there in Dangriga and Tony and Theres live at the facility with their three children. They were willing to give me a (very) good deal on my two-week stay and I was willing to do a little work for them to see if we had any kind of match. That's how it all began. As a measure of my interest in this project, you should know that I passed up my 40th high school reunion to check out the possibility (and now you also know approximately how old I am). You also might like to know that I'm single, have two grown children and one grandchild. I have my own web development and Internet consulting business, based out of my home. And I wasn't willing to sell all my worldly possessions for this adventure. I left for Belize the first time on June 10, 1999. As you can see from the first few messages, getting email messages off took a several tries. Here's the first message that actually arrived. Jun 16, 1999 Testing the web interface Some of you may get several of these exploratory messages, sorry. For this message, I am trying the onelist.com (PagetInBze) list web interface. Belize Telecommunications Ltd does not seem to want to let me send out any e-mail, so that's why things have been silent. I won't repeat general info here except to say things are going well and if I discover that this method of communicating gets around the barriers I will send more later. Next