Unbelizeable

Hi everyone. I am in Belize currently for the second day. We arent at a port really in Belize. We're parked off the shore and taking tenders to the shore. I am really glad I got to tender because it is a neat experience. I just wished they ran canstantly instead of at certain times. Yesterday I went and did a service visit to the Belize Zoo. It was destroyed by Hurricane Richard when it came through last year, so we were fixing a lot of it. My crew was shoveling gravel... so we got the short end of the stick compared to the paint tables crew and the plant flowers crew. It was fun though. I was the wheelbarrow to maddies shovel. The gravel pile was at least half a mile from the site on a patchy path. Every time my wheelbarrow was full I thought I wasnt going to make it over there. haha. The animals at the Belize zoo arent quite like the animals in American zoos. Only the "problem" animals are contained. The other animals like the crocodiles and howler monkeys were completely free. They stayed in their area though since thats where they were fed. The animals were really people friendly though. The place where we were putting down gravel was next to a giant bird cage. Im not sure what kind of birds they were, but they would follow us around and watch us like we were the attraction... oh and they kept trying to eat the rocks.. dumb birds. When we got back we were planning on exploring the city, but everything shuts down for the weekend, so nothing is open or anything. It's a little like a ghost town. We did find a good restaurant though. We went to a restaurant called Bird's Isle which is across the bay. Not many Semester at Sea students went there so we were a little worried at first. It was really good though! and cheap! Tomorrow is when finals start so I've got a lot of work to catch up on when we pull up anchor.