PG Life

Life is definitely different here in Punta Gorda; it's a small town (less than 6000 people in the greater area) in a small country (less 300 000 people), everybody knows everybody. English is the official language but when people from PG speak to each other they mostly speak in Creole, which almost sounds like English until you realize you haven't understood anything.
Life is slower here. The sun comes up at 6 and sets at 6, which sets the tone for how the day. At 6 the rooster start crowing, the birds squawking and people moving. The sun falls in and out of the sky; it's dark and then its light; its light and then its dark.

Wished I would have seen this sunrise

PG looks like people just started showing up beside the ocean and building houses, throwing together shacks, laying foundations, and in not finishing half of it.
There doesn't seem to be a rush of things to do here, maybe because I have only been here for 5 days and don't have a lot of work to do yet, but the working day goes like this: Show up at 8 take an hour or an hour and a half at lunch then go back until 5.

Some of the partially built houses left to get moldy

 There doesn't seem to be a rush of things to do here, maybe because I have only been here for 5 days and don't have a lot of work to do yet, but the working day goes like this: Show up at 8 take an hour or an hour and a half at lunch then go back until 5.

Down by the water, the shore is just covered in beach glass, rocks and garbage

Most the fresh fruit and veg come from the market, where villagers take the bus or drive in to sell their product. The big market days are Wednesday and Saturday. Front Street (the one right along the water) get crowed with people, fruit stands, buses dropping off and picking up, and the dogs that seems to roam around the whole country.
Like any small town it is filled with a large cast of characters. I've been getting to know all the ex-pats living down here. Rick and Darla are from Idaho and own the beautiful Coral House Inn, Gomier is from St. Lucia and has a fantastic vegetarian and seafood restaurant and the edge of town and a rasta hat that is so full of dreadlocks (he told me about the time he went cross country skiing in Banff, I would have loved to see that), Mark is the President of Plenty Belize and real local force, he moved here 10 years ago and decided to stay. People coming here and deciding to stay seems like a pretty common theme among many. Jill who run the library moved here two years ago to retire to something different after living in NYCs east village for 25 years, Jack was a modern dancer who travelled all over the world with the best companies decided to stay 30 years ago and is very involved with much of the community work.
I was out shopping with Genalee (i have no idea how to spell), one of the local girls who works for Plenty,  to get a few things I needed to go to Graham Creek, and she summed up what shopping in PG is like "Most you have to go into every store because you never know if what you want will be there". There doesn't seem to be much theme to what the stores sell and you cannot tell at all from the outside.
Genalee and I were talking and she asked me what it was like to go on a train, there are no trains in Belize, only school buses and little hopper planes take you around the country. As Genalee describes it "Everybody knows your business here, if I was walking around with a boy right now by the time I got home my father be asking me which boy I was with".
I am enjoying it all right now, but I can say life here is nothing like life back home.


Mariel