Day 5

Day 5: Wednesday, Belize City, Belize.

By the time I woke up we had already arrived, (got up at noon tho) and people were offloading and heading ashore. We didn't dock like last time, this time we had to take a ferry to the mainland and we anchored off the coast.
I decided to figure out my day over a hearty breakfast. Unfortunately despite their many advertisement about mealtimes being 24 hours a day, you don't find breakfast anywhere after noon. So I resorted to eating lunch instead. I decided to go with Phil and his parents to an island off the coast of Belize instead of going to the actual city. In a way I didn't really want to because I had just done the whole beach thing yesterday, and now I wanted to explore a forigen country. But since I had nobody to go to the mainland with I decided to stick with Phil for now. True to my libran nature I had a change of mind when we met up with Maggie and Abby who were going to the city. Phil had been to Belize city before and didn't want to go, but I decided to go with the girls instead.
(In order to understand the rest of this post you have to realize that before this I had never left the country, the things I say about this place I say from the perspective of a full 100% American having never left the country he was born in)
If you want to see some pictures from Belize check out Ambie's Blog. We took the ferry to the docks, and so far things seemed pretty normal. It was rather tourist oriented since so many tourists stop in this area. This certainly wasn't what I was expecting.
We headed into a large gift shop that had a back door which served as an entrance into the city. I thought it was insanely cool that several armed guards watched the door. The second we stepped through it actually felt like we had stepped into another country. We were swarmed by locals all offering us something, particualarly taxi's. We put on our best, "we're not stupid tourists" face and, drawing from the information of various movies portraying third world countries to guide us, headed down the street into the city.
Several others afterwards were very dissapointed in Belize mostly because of how grubby everything was. I myself thought it was amazing. Every street and building was 3 or 4 times more run down than the dirtiest ghetto I'd ever seen. The locals were dirty, sweaty, their clothes were stained and torn. I guess I would've felt bad for most of them, if they hadn't been trying to rip me off. One woman in particular got on my nerves. She insisted that I braid my hair in little Belizian braids. (This was after I had cut it by the way) I politely told her no, but she wouldn't give up, after all 3 of us had said no at least 10 times, she said "I'll wait until you come back", and left. A little ways down we met up with Linda who was having a great time playing tourist. Not too much else happened there in Belize. We walked around the city, me oohing and ahhing over all things dirty and poor, and the girls spending a buttload on knick knacks and other random junk. This is not to say that I wouldn't have spent any money, (I didn't of course) but that is only because I had only 1 dollar to my name and as you remember was already in debt to Phil.
After about 3 hours of walking around we'd had enough, and decided to head back to the ship. On the way back we met up with several other people, and ran into the hair braiding lady again. She was more persistant than ever this time, in her ranting that we needed authentic Belizian braids in our hair. The conversation went something like this.
BRAID LADY: Common hunny, you look so pretty with these braids in your hair, you really need to git them.

JESSE: No thanks, not interested.

BRAID LADY: It's real cheap, only 10 dollahs for yo' entiah head, I give you good price because you have such pretty hair.

JESSE: Thanks but I don't want them.

BRAID LADY: Common you gonna impress all ya friends with authentic Belzian braids in your hair.

JESSE: I don't think my friends would appreciate that.

BRAID LADY: You don't like braided hair? I do it like, ya know, rows in ya' hair.

JESSE: You mean cornrows?

BRAID LADY: Yea' those, corn rows.

JESSE: Dear God.

BRAID LADY: So whadda ya say baby?

JESSE: Absoloutly not.

BRAID LADY: Ya don't like corn rows?

JESSE: I don't think those would look good on me.

BRAID LADY: Truss' me dah'lin they look beautifool on you!

JESSE: No they look ghetto on me.

BRAID LADY: Ya don' like the style?

JESSE: Not on a white guy like me no.

BRAID LADY: Just do the braids hunny.

(at this point I noticed a t-shirt hanging on the wall of a small kiosk {the lady had followed us to another shop in an attempt to sell us on her idea} which read...
NO I don't want a Taxi

NO I don't want my Hair Braided

NO I don't want a Coconut

NO I don't want a tour of the city

NO I don't want weed

BELIZE

I laughed and pointed to the shirt on the wall to which the lady replied?

BRAID LADY: You wan' the T-shirt insted of mah' awsome braids?

JESSE: No I don't want either one, I'm trying to get you to take a hint "NO I don't want my hair braided".

BRAID LADY: Ahhh hunny, ya' know iss gonna look excellent on ya'.

JESSE: I DON'T WAN'T MY HAIR BRAIDED, I THINK IT'S A VERY UGLY GHETTO LOOK AND THE LAST THING I WANT IS YOUR GRUBBY FINGERS TOUCHING MY HAIR, NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!

BRAID LADY: You change ya' mind you come see me hunny.

After this the braid lady walked off and started pestering Maggie and Abby. I think their conversations went the same way.

Nothing else really interesting happened that day until dinner time. It was late and alot of people had already eaten, so us younger guys decided to go to Phil's room and have a "Room Service Party". I took orders for about 10 minutes (there were 6 of us eating) and then asked for this...
6 Waters
3 Milks
3 Iced Teas
2 Coffees
8 Pizza's
2 Fruit Plates
1 Ceaser Salad
6 Chocolate Moose's
10 Brownies
10 Cookies
and 1 Grilled Cheese Sandwich

The guy told me that he couldn't give me any more than 4 pizza's, but he ended up giving us 12 brownies and 12 cookies too.
We gorged, but the sweets ended up tasting awful, way too sweet. So much was wasted.

Day 4

Day 4: Tuesday: Cozumel, Mexico.

Day four started bright and early at 7:30 P.M or something like that anyway. Most of us had signed up for an offshore deal at a beach on Cozumel. The deal was 27 dollars for unlimited food, drinks (including alcoholic), snorkeling, kyaking, volleyball, and windsurfing. They also had 3 swimming pools, a restaurant, and various games.
Originally I had planned to not go for monetary reasons, but Phil loaned me the money, so I got to go to this thing and now I owe Phil a months allowance!
So like I said, we got up at around 7:30 and everyone was getting together and preparing to go off. By about 8:30 roughly 10 of us got off the boat. Immidiately 6 of them turned back to the boat because it was lightly raining and the entire sky was overcast. "We'll go later if it clears up", they said. Well after waiting for more people to arrive for nearly an hour, we had enough people to head to the beach. Ten of us hopped in a few taxi's and headed to this beach resort.
It wasn't till about 10:00 that we finally got checked in and our beach vacation began. We started with a prayer that the weather would improve, because nobody likes rain and no sun on a beach. We ate a delicious breakfast at the restaurant and waited. After no more than 30 minutes of praying the sky was perfectly clear and the sun was shining through beautifully.
We began our fun and excitement with kiyaking around in the ocean, which wasn't difficult by any means, but was not quite so easy as I thought it would be. I capsized probably 10 times.
A little past noon the rest of the group arrived. Out of the 26 of us on the boat only 5 didn't show up. The rest of the day was spent eating, drinking and swimming.
I tried a little bit of snorkeling but gave up for two reasons. The first was that rather than a sandy beach, we were at a rocky beach, and there were alot of big rocks under the water making it difficult to get to deeper water where there were no rocks. The second reason was when I finally got out to deeper water and took a peek in, the first thing I saw was a stingray buried in the sand. I thought it might have been a flounder at first but when I saw the tail whip up I was pretty certain of what it was. Needless to say I got out of there pretty fast. If it weren't for the Steve Irwin incident I probably would've continued snorkeling but after that, I honestly didn't want to take any chances.
This probably turned out to be the best day of the entire cruise. I had a ton of fun, soaking up sun, and sipping as many virgin drinks as I wanted. Despite Mexico's awesome drinking age of 18...I still don't qualify for that yet. But the 18-20 year olds certainly enjoyed the opportunty. They even had a drinking contest in which one of our party (who shall remain anonymous for his own sake) entered and, to nobody's surprise, won!
We left the beach at about 5 o' clock and the ship left port an hour later.
One interesting thing I noticed was that at this port we obviously weren't the only cruise ship there, but what I noticed most was that ours was without a doubt the smallest one. It stands to reason though, because of the cheap price and the fact that this would be the last trip this particular ship would go on, that it wouldn't be the best ship in the fleet. In fact it was their oldest and smallest ship. But I'm not complaining because it was still the largest ship I've ever been on.
Later on that night five of us had dinner at the "Terraces". My first night of the cruise eating at a restaurant other than the "Trattoria". This turned out to be a pretty amusing dinner for 4 of us, and probably the worst dinner of the cruise for one of us. Maybe I choose my company poorly, but one of the guys I was eating with has a special kinship with hats. Which is a nice way of saying he never takes his hat off. Of course one of the things they ask at a restaurant like this is to take your hat off. So as he's seating us the waiter asks...this guy (who is still nameless) if he could take his hat off. Of course he does, but only for about 2 minutes, when he gets bored and puts it back on.
So the five of us are sitting there, laughing and having a good time, for at least half an hour, when a grumpy old man who was eating alone approaches our table. This is what followed...
OLD GUY to HAT BOY: You know I've been watching you all and I'm appalled and disgusted by your lack of respect you are showing by wearing your hat in this restaurant, and I want you to take it off right now if you wouldn't mind.

HAT BOY: Just curious, Why?

OLD GUY: It's something called manners, and if you don't have manners than you don't belong on this ship or any other ship.

Now if it weren't for the fact that the old guy was technically right, and that we were trying to be a good Christian missionary sample, I would've told this old man to take his salad fork and stick it where the sun don't shine because of the rude approach he used. Fortunately we all kept our cool, and Hat boy calmly removed his hat. That was the last night he ate at a fancy restaurant.

Day 2 and 3

Day 2: Sunday: At Sea.

The second day started when any good day should. Noon. That's around the time I woke up and got to the Sports Bar Buffet for breakfast.
Truth be told the days spent on the ship are mostly a blur to me. It was pretty hard to tell what happened one day and what happened on a different day. I'll try to keep things as accurate as possible but there won't be so many details on the days at sea as there will on the day's we were at port.
One thing that stands out in my mind about the second day was how choppy the sea was. At the end of the cruise the captain told everyone that these first few days were the worst weather they had all season. I remember at least two instances where all the plates and glasses in the restaurants actually fell off the tables.
As a result of this unfortunate weather most of our crew was sick and spent a majority of the day in bed. I was lucky to be one of the few people that didn't suffer from this motion sickness.
If you've been following my little dates you would also notice that it was Sunday. And not just any Sunday, Superbowl Sunday. So this is where I will add my super special SUPERBOWL SUNDAY SPORTS SPECTACULAR!!!
Let me start first things first. Remember what I said abut all that bad weather? Well if you've ever had satellite TV you know just how much it is affected by the weather. They played the Superbowl on the main stage using a projector machine. Unfortunately there was very few places to sit so instead of going with the big group me and one other guy went alone. The opening kickoff was a beauty, and the 80 yard return for a touchdown by the Chicago Bears was even more so. Unfortunately I didn't get to actually see this happen because the TV went out. Yes, I saw the football being kicked, and next thing I saw the score was 6-0 and Bears fans were screaming their brains out. This happened several times during the game.
The majority of the boat were Bears fans, and I being a Colts fan often found myself cheering alone or booing alone. After the first quarter I went up to the sports bar and finished the game with the rest of the football fans in our home, most of which were rooting for the Colts as well, so I felt a bit more comfortable. I felt extremely comfortable when the Colts won also. Manning deserved it, and I'm glad he's finally got a Superbowl victory under his belt.

We finished the night with a dinner at the Italian place, the Trattoria. This was my second night eating at this restaurant, not by my own choice however. You see, in order to eat dinner at a nice place you would have to make a reservation at a nice place, and nobody wants to make a reservation alone. Since all the people I had been hanging out with before (the few other teens in our crew) were all in bed moaning from sea sickness, I decided to go around and find out if anyone wanted to eat dinner with me. Fortunately I didn't have to do that too much because I found out that Steve had made a reservation at the Trattoria for 10 people and it was on a first come first serve basis. So I got over to that and ate dinner with nine others who were lucky enough to not get seasick.
Although dinner often signals the end of a day on a cruise ship, during vacation, ending a night so early would be utter madness. Unfortunately for me there was very little to do. After around 10:00 nothing really happens on the ship, the pools and Jacuzzis, sauna, and steam room are all closed so there is nothing else to do but hang out. But as I mentioned several times before, most people were sick, and those that weren't had a knack for hiding as, after dinner, I was unable to find any of them.
So I went back into my room, pulled out Joe's PSP, (which he had been kind enough to loan me a few days prior) and watched the movie "Stealth". After that I was plenty tired, and fell asleep.

Day 3. Monday. Progresso, Mexico.
CANCELLED!!

This was the first big let down of our trip. Unfortunately due to the 60 MPH winds, and terrible weather, the port at Progresso had been closed. The captain informed everyone on the intercom that if they had docked they would be a permanent hotel on the beach of Progresso, so that meant another full day at sea as we steamed on towards Cozumel.
Although it seems like an awful way to start the day it actually turned out to be pretty good. The sea's calmed down a bit that day, and most of the sick had risen from their beds brand new and healthy.
INTERESTING TIDBIT: I just wanted to point out about those 60 MPH winds that I mentioned earlier. Due to those intense winds and the way the ship was sealed up, opening a door to go outside was incredibly difficult. If you have ever tried to open a door with someone else pushing on the other side it would be similar to this. It wasn't impossible to get them open, but when you finally do you feel like yelling at the jerk who was trying to close it on you, only to find that it was simply the wind pushing against the door.
We spent this day doing a whole lot of nothing. I met a very odd guy that looked like he needed to be witnessed too, but I was so disturbed by the way he acted (I think he might have been high at the time) that I didn't. At least not then, a few days later I witnessed to him for a long time, more on that later.
This was also the first day I tried the sauna and the steam bath. That was quite something. I felt really clean after that. I ate at the Trattoria for dinner again that night. The third night in a row I'd eaten there. Not my fault again this time. This time a dinner reservation had been made for all 26 of us, and we were expected to show up in our best clothes. My best clothes were pretty casual though, as were most of the guys. Only a few guys dressed up really fancy looking. All the girls looked pretty great though.
Once again there was not so much to do on this night. So I found myself wandering aimlessly around the ship with Phil and Johnny.
We met these girls who had seen my say my name on stage when the magician pulled me up, and were constantly waving to me and screaming out "HI JESSE!!" whenever they saw me. When they said hi again this time I decided to get to know them a bit. I found out they were Mormons, who came all the way from Utah for this cruise. We played a few card games with them and got to know them some, they turned out to be pretty nice people, but a bit to ditzy to really carry on a decent conversation with.

Day 4. Tuesday. Cozumel, Mexico....Coming soon!

I'm all "cruised" out

Just got back from the fun filled week of cruising. It was oodles of fun. My first time out of the states, and I went to 2 different countries! I'm so happy. I think there's alot to talk about so first things first.

Thing 1: Happy Birthday David, hope you have a great year, sorry it's late.

Thing 2: Happy Birthday Clare, I wish you're birthday wasn't so close to David's, it would mean 1 less "Happy belated birthday" but nevertheless. Happy Belated Birthday!! I'm sure this will be the year for you.

Thing 3: I cut my hair

Thing 4: The Cruise.

This is where I'm gonna talk about the cruise, I'll break it up into a day by day synopsis of what went down, starting of course with...

Day 1. SATURDAY. DEPARTURE. Drove down to La Porte, TX with Jeremy and Kevin to where the cruise was leaving. La Porte is, in the words of one of the ships comedians, "not exactly the part of Texas you want to see. Smokestacks belching out black clouds of pollution as far as the eye can see, lovely brown water, the entoxicating aroma of refined oil." Needless to say it wasn't the best place to launch a cruise ship from.
Once I got on board the first thing I noticed was the smell. For any of you who have ever spent a week at your grandparents you know this smell from a mile away. Yes, folks, this was the scent of senior citizens. An entire boat full of senior citizens. I had no intention of being rude, but I am a man of impulse, and so driven by impulse as I am, the moment my brain processed this information I blurted out loud enough for all my companions (and perhaps the rest of the room) to hear..."Wow! This place reeks of old people!"
I spent majority of what remained in my day exploring the ship, which wasn't as big as I had imagined. I was disappointed about a few things, the "Basketball court" for example, was single basketball hoop with a torn net. Also if you've ever played basketball on the roof of a cruise ship (at least 100 feet up) goin at 30-40 MPH, with a headwind of 60 MPH it can be extremly hard to get the ball to go into the basket.
For the most part however it was good, I ate at a fancy Italian resturant the first night with some friends. Normally the dress is semi-fomal, but since it was the first day they let us in even though we looked like bums. I still laugh that they let in a hippie kid with long blonde hair down to his butt, a volcom hat, board shorts, crocs on his feet, and a dingy old beige jacket. After that we went to a magic show. The magician pulled me up on stage to help him with one of his acts, which is a nice way of saying, he pulled me up on stage more or less to make a fool out of me. However, after that several people knew my name and were waving and saying hi to me.

I'll write more about it later. Otherwise this post will be too long. Stay tuned for "DAY 2: SUNDAY: AT SEA!"