Nov. 28, 2008
BELIZE CITY, Belize -
Editor's Note: The Illinois State softball team is participating in an international tour in Belize from Nov. 22-30. Throughout the trip, GoRedbirds.com will provide Illinois State Athletics fans with player and coach blogs, photo galleries and fun facts about Belize. Friday's blog comes from junior utility player Diciembre Vaca.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING, EVERYONE!!!!! This is Diciembre Vaca for Thursday's report from Belize.
This morning (Thursday), we woke up at 7:30 a.m. to eat some breakfast here at the hotel. We got all of our things together and walked down the block to the local pier, where the Belize Softball Federation arranged for a water taxi to take us and a few members of the Belize National Teams out through the Caribbean Sea to the Cayes Islands. We would like to give a huge "thank you" to the Belize Softball Federation for providing this trip for us. They arranged for us to take the trip and brought along a wonderful lunch and some drinks for us to have while we were there.
It was a 45-minute boat ride before we arrived at Caye Caulker (pronounced Key Caulker). Caye Caulker consists of three streets - Front Street, Middle Street and Back Street. We looked around for a while to see what everything looked like, and then a majority of the girls went on a snorkeling adventure.
They got all their gear, suited up and headed to the boat. There were three stops taken during the trip. The first stop was very shallow water just to get us used to snorkeling and looking around through the water. The second stop was deep water, where we saw a variety of marine life that included an eel and a barracuda. The third, and final, stop featured an opportunity to snorkel with several sting rays in an area referred to as Shark-Ray Alley. It was scary at first to see the entire school of sting ray, but eventually, it was great and also a fun experience to be able to swim with and touch them. This stop resembled an underwater aquarium.
At about 1:30 p.m., the snorkelers came back, turned in their gear and we ate lunch. We had some chicken, macaroni salad, chips and queso and some little sandwiches. We also had wonderful cake for desert. We ate this in an area of the island called the SPLIT alongside the sea shore. It's called the SPLIT because a hurricane came through and split the island. Once we finished lunch, we all walked down the island to the little shops to buy some souvenirs. A lot of girls liked the little bracelets and necklaces from the shops. We walked around a little longer, met at the boat at 3:30 p.m., and headed back to Belize City.
We got back around 4:30 p.m. and all went to sleep. It was draining being in the sun all day, so the nap was great. We left for dinner at 7 p.m. and went to "Old Belize." The Thanksgiving Dinner in Belize was great, but it wasn't the same as Thanksgiving in the United States, as hardly any of us ate turkey. We are now home and it's 9:30 p.m.
Our coaches brought in a cake to celebrate my teammate, Vicki Klopf's, birthday. That was delicious. It is now bedtime so everyone is hitting the pillow. Tomorrow (Friday), we have another full day of softball, and we play our last two games against the Belize National Team. It will be a great lasting experience playing for the last time at Roger's Stadium. Hopefully, we will be able to continue the friendships with the members of the Belize National Teams that was formed on this Thanksgiving Day. Now, we are off to bed, so Happy Thanksgiving again to Redbird Country; hope you enjoyed the holiday! GO REDBIRDS!!!!
