Friday, April 2, 2010

Gone To The Dogs

So the schools are on Easter break right now, which means that we have two weeks off. This has been the first of those two weeks. In our second week, we are going to travel inland to see Mayan ruins, caves, and jungles. I'm really excited about that even though I'm not sure I'm going to have much time to blog then. Then again, I really do stay online a lot, so I'm sure I'll find a way to keep everyone updated!

Anyway, before we go inland, this week has been taken up with various service projects. We're meant to spend about 20 hours working in the community. The high school teachers were all going to paint the school, but the paint from the ministry of education seems to be running on what we call "Belize time" here. Therefore, I've been going around trying to find more creative ways to get my hours in.

One of those ways has been to walk dogs for the local humane society. It's just an hour a day, but it's been really rewarding. San Pedro has a lot of stray dogs running around, and the humane society has captured a lot of them and, given them shots, and put them up for adoption. There are a lot of dogs, though, and they need people to walk them every day, so a group of us decided to go and ask the workers there if they needed help. Of course, they did.

The dogs are quite rowdy, and mostly female. The first day I took out a huge white dog with a large black spot over her eye, appropriately named Pirate. I've never had to actually walk a dog on a leash before. All my dogs back home were able to run free since we lived so far off the road. It took me awhile to get control of Pirate, but eventually she was pretty cool and we just walked around the block near the inn where we're all staying.

Marina, who is pictured, was way more difficult to handle. She's only a year old, and was extremely hyperactive (not unlike the guy walking her, of course). But eventually I was able to calm her down, too, and we got a nice picture of her. It was definitely a fun day and we're going to do this every day between now and Monday, when we go inland. Right now the island is pretty chill because of the Easter holiday, so I will blog more when more stuff happens!

1 comment:

  1. What a pleasant way for a trip to go to the dogs. I hope Marina appreciates your in-common personality trait.

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