La Península Bonita

Song of the day 7.28

olivialucille — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:43:37 +0000

I don’t know if you know this about me or not… BUT, I like Madonna. Like a lot. Some may even say I have a serious over appreciation of her talents and abilities. Check the title of my blog… a play on La Isla Bonita, Belize City is on a peninsula… get it?

WELL… my project is officially over, and Tommy and I are headed to SAN PEDRO! Thus… the song of the day: La Isla Bonita. I couldn’t decide which video to post, so the first one is from her Drowned World Tour, which I saw in New Jersey with my best friend from high school, Natalie. The second is from Live Earth featuring Gogol Bordelo, and it’s equally good. You can see why I was torn.

Rotary Club Belize

olivialucille — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:15:11 +0000

This morning Julianne, Lindsey, and I got up extra early to attend a sunrise meeting of Rotary Club Belize. We were invited to attend by a Mr. Gill Williams who also happens to be a mentor with Youth Business Trust Belize. We had the chance to talk with the Rotarians about our IPSP projects and future/potential partnerships with the Clinton School. While we were there we got to hear all about what the Club has been working on and what it has accomplished recently around Belize City. We also heard about an initiative from a member of the Cayo/San Ignacio Rotary. The Canadian government has donated hundreds of refurbished computers to the Rotary for schools and is working with Rotary to train teachers who have not necessarily completed teacher training. There’s lots of exciting and good work going on in Belize!

I like this.

olivialucille — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 19:51:45 +0000

St. Ive’s Apricot Scrub.
This stuff has done amazing things to my skin during the week I have been using it daily. The climate change did a number on my face. For a while my it looked like a plague zone and I was getting a little nervous about it. I thought even though I just turned 26, my face may have been reverting to childhood, more specifically to puberty – before I had a handle on skin care. I even almost considered having some Proactiv shipped down here to calm things down. But that was never necessary because St. Ives has worked a miracle on my once pizza-like face.

Tagged: Endorsement

pic of the day 7.17

olivialucille — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:46:10 +0000

just like Chik-fil-A

Tagged: pic of the day

Even more Belizeans for Obama

olivialucille — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:46:06 +0000

T-shirts: *33
Baseball caps: 3
Yard signs: 2
Bumper stickers: *5
Biden lives!: 1
Framed Portrait: 1

*Visor: 1

*Mini Obama flag that hangs from the rear view mirror: 1

*Wall: 1 (see below)

Pay no attention to the woman in the window.

T-shirts: *33
Baseball caps: 3
Yard signs: 2
Bumper stickers: *5
Biden lives!: 1
Framed Portrait: 1

*Visor: 1

*Mini Obama flag that hangs from the rear view mirror: 1

Tagged: Belizeans for Obama!

An Endorsement

olivialucille — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:39:38 +0000

Ladies and gents, may I introduce to you a new category on the La Peninsula Bonita Blog…. endorsements! The people, places, things, and ideas in this category are those that I can cosign on, those that I like would recommend you experience too, those that are, in the words of Martha, good things. I could go on. Without any further ado, the first endorsement from La Peninsula Bonita.

The Hotel Mopan is a quaint little hotel in Belize City on Regent Street.

This endorsement is completely unbiased and has nothing to do with this:

Tagged: Endorsement

long overdue

olivialucille — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:05:34 +0000

I have been a bad blogger. So here’s the short version of what’s been going on in Belize:

A couple of weeks ago Sr. Alejandro Aviles came to visit. We were supposed to go back to Goff’s Caye but it was icky out and we sat around the apartment and ate all the food we made for the caye trip instead. As I recall phase 10 was played. It wasn’t quite the same as going to the caye, but it was awesome hangin’ with jano (ir)regardless. Other than that life has been pretty boring: work, sleep, heat, mosquitos – repeat.

humidity + velour couch = ick factor

My boss lady at Youth Business Trust is president of the board of Belize Tourism Industry Association (BTIA) so I am lucky enough to get e-mails from her about happenings around Belize City. One such happening was at the Culture House, a place that used to be the governor’s house pre-independence and the place where the Belizean flag was first flown after indepedence from the British. Anywho, a Yucatan culture and tourism festival happened there and Lindsey and I were lucky enough to witness the opening ceremony where this happened:

Julianne, Linds, and I broke the cycle by celebrating my bday, Julianne’s bday,and America’s bday in Placencia this past weekend. We’ve heard lots of good things about Placencia and we were of course eager to have some r&r and see another part of Belize. Placencia is a beautiful peninsula with part of the coast on the Caribbean and the other half bordering a lagoon on the mainland side. We met lots of nice folks there from places like Alabama (RTR) and England. The highlight of the long weekend may have been my birthday present from the restaurant /bar Yoli’s… a Belekin beach towel.

Like I said, my boss lady sends me all kinds of events to go to in Belize City. Last night was the opening of an artist from Cayo, Paula Braun, at the Bliss Performing Arts Centre, so Linds and I decided to hit it up and get out of the house for a reason other than grocery shopping. The artist worked primarily in oils with a few mixed media peices thrown in. She also had a series of orchids (the national flower of Belize) done in water color that LB and I were quite taken with. Unfortunately, like most art in the known universe, the pieces were out of our budget.

As far as my project is concerned, I am in the thick of it now. The past couple of weeks were kind of slow for me because the office was preparing for the annual general meeting (AGM) and awards ceremony. The AGM is a meeting/ceremony/reception where the financials are publicly announced and approved and the auditor is also approved by the public. This event was supposed to go down the day after I got to work with YBTB, but the swine flu postponed that. I got the chance to meet some entrepreneurs, mentors, and board members that I hadn’t met yet which was a great experience for me.

Currently I am interviewing as many mentors as I possibly can in order to provide feedback on the mentoring program and finding ways to address major greivances of the mentors and reasons for lapses in performance. When it’s all said and done, I will have a document prepared with mentoring resources; mentor feedback, greivances, needs, and suggestions; and an action plan for addressing the mentor feedback and improved mentor recruiting methods.

Today Linds and I have taken ourselves hostage inside the Hotel Mopan (which brings me to my next post….) for reliable internet access and to crank out some w-o-r-k. Red bulls and canned coffee drinks were had.

So… that’s all folks! for now anyway…

Tagged: The Belize Life, YBTB

song of the day 7.8

olivialucille — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:20:32 +0000

Julianne, LB, and I celebrated the 4th with Placencia… this song… the Pickled Parrot… and QT time with a beach. Enjoy.

Obama Rama!

olivialucille — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:20:24 +0000

I need to document these before I lose count! There have been LOTS of Obama t-shirts in the past week or so, and there are even two new categories! At Teacher’s Day Julianne and I saw a BIDEN t-shirt which is super exciting because I have never seen one of those in the states! The VP never gets love! The other new category was a portrait of the first couple at the inaugural ball. I like to think that Beyonce was singing to them while this photo was snapped.
Full disclosure: six of these t-shirts are Julianne’s sightings on her way to Teacher’s Day from Punta Gorda way back on the 12th. But I feel like they count because they all went to Teacher’s Day -which I too attended- and were under their day of t-shirts.

*T-shirts: *25 (!)
Baseball caps: *3
Yard signs: *2
Bumper stickers: 3
*Biden lives!: 1
*Framed Portrait: 1

And because the Teacher’s Day t-shirts are worth sharing:

Inspirational, yet practical.

Tagged: Belizeans for Obama!

pic of the day

olivialucille — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:00:07 +0000

see above.

Tagged: pic of the day