Belize

For the next week or so, we'll be doing some stand alone countries, in that they won't be going with any of our other lessons. We've got a Jeopardy to get to, and I have another theme week to put together, so in the meantime, we'll just get mostly 'B' countries, with a few sprinkled in here and there for variety. 

Today was Belize day! 

Belize is a tiny little country in Central America. It's capital city, Belmopan, is the smallest capital city in the Americas. The capital actually had to be moved from Belize City after a hurricane nearly distroyed it in 1961, and Belmopan was built just for that purpose. 

That was back when Belize belonged to Great Britain. It became a country in 1981 (cue my children making jokes about how I'm as old as Belize)! 

But for a rather young country (ahem, see what I did there), there's a rich history. Once upon a time, Belize was the center of the Mayan Empire, and our landmark Caracol is proof of that. Today it's an archaeological site, but it was once the political center of the Mayan Lowlands. 

And while the Great Barrier Reef gets all the glory, Belize is home to the second largest coral reef in the world, the Meso-American Barrier Reef. (The Belize Barrier Reef makes up about a third of that). 

With a diverse fish population, Belize is dealing with the invasive species of the Lion fish, and are encouraging chefs to cook them up. The lion fish get out of the ecosystem, and people get some yummies in their tummies. It's a win win! 

Also in the waters off Belize is the Great Blue Hole.  Basically a sinkhole in the ocean, it is the largest natural formation of it's kind in the world, and is part of the Meso American Barrier Reef. 

Not surprisingly, it offers some pretty great diving. Even Jacques Cousteau thought so! 

Another couple of fun Belize facts for you: 

Don't rush to call people by their first name until you really know them, it's kind of rude. 

Belize is also home to the world's only jaguar sanctuary (the only big cat species found in the Americas) 

Instead of a Big Foot, in Belize they have the mythical 'El Sisimito' who likes to eat people, and whose feet are backwards, so when you find footprints they may look like he's going away from you, but he's actually coming towards you! 

The boys earned some dimes for their jars with their postcards (maybe I should start taking pictures of each one, it seems like it might be hard to catch all the details in the three postcard picture). 

Now Belize is tiny, and it's just under Mexico, so we did have some things from Mexico with tonight's dinner. Target sells these product of Mexico drinks, and a friend of ours picked up the rum cake on her cruise of the Western Caribbean (Thanks Katie & Kevin!). Since Mexico day isn't happening for awhile, I thought this would be perfect for tonight. After all, Belize, like most Central American countries, likes it's rum. 

Along with that,  we had Belize BBQ Chicken with Belizean rice and  beans, Belizean Coleslaw, Belizean Johnny cakes, and Mangoes. 

This dinner earned five spoons up. 

It did remind us all a bit of the lunch we had when we were in Honduras. 

The chicken was the total star of the meal, everyone was a fan. Want to know something AWESOME about it? I got the whole package (6 BIG drumsticks) for $1.90! Even better I didn't have to gather coupons for it! It was one of the weekly deals at our brand new Sprouts Farmers Market. If you haven't been, you should totally go. Getting all these specialized ingrediants and different produce was getting expensive. But we got the meat for 4 dinners, plus a roast I think I'll be able to use for two meals,  and produce for the week, along with other snacks and drinks for $80. So awesome. 

Anyway, I could have gotten a mango or papaya for tonight's dinner in the Sprouts produce section, but I ended up with the jar of mangoes from the cold produce section at Publix since that went over well the last time. 

The bread was just ok, but full disclosure, even though I was really good about making a list, we are out of flour, and has to use cake flour. 

The rice and beans were pretty awesome. Asa made them from dry beans, which is usually not even an option since planning ahead is not his forte, but he set a google reminder and started soaking them last night. 

And some of us enjoyed the coleslaw, others not so much. 

But overall, a winner. 

We also got some new nailpolish colors at Target. We're still debating what to do about Russia (any guesses on how many bottles that would take?!), but we got yellow, and even though it's tiny, the boys wanted to use it for Belize. 

36 countries down, 157 to go! 

Next Up: Benin (It's a little tiny country in Africa, in case you were wondering, like Asa who just said 'what the crap is that?')