It is the holiday season again and this will mark my second Thanksgiving and Christmas in Belize. Thanksgiving went by a few weeks ago and my mom and I did celebrate with friends here in Belize. Thanksgiving is, for me, easily the hardest holiday to be in Belize and away from family. It is almost surreal – the weather really doesn’t change here, and it is extremely hard to even realize that Thanksgiving and Christmas are here. I am so used to seasons; in my mind those two holidays mean cold, snow, rain and real pine trees to put up in the house. Here in Corozal I’m still sweating and the trees are plastic. So this year we had two turkey dinners with two different sets of friends. The first came the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and since Scotty’s was closed that day we were able to go out to our friend’s house for a potluck style turkey dinner – my mom made the pumpkin pie and mashed potatoes. Since we are not surrounded by our family it is common to create a pseudo family comprised of close friends we meet here – not quite the same but the practice does take away some of the loneliness I feel when the holiday season arrives.

Mom and I picked up our manager, Vanessa and her family and headed out to the party. The event was even more fun for me because my very tired boyfriend (yes, this is a fairly new development) had just arrived the night before from a long trip back to Belize and was going with us to the event. We arrived with a truck full and ended up being unintentionally, fashionably late. The night was fun; good friends, good food and good conversation.

The second Thanksgiving event was at Scotty’s. My mom had planned to prepare a turkey dinner and we were selling each plate (turkey, mashed potatoes, candied yams, stuffing, bread, salad and pie) for $20 BZD. Our main group in that day was a totally different set of friends here and it went off without a hitch. There were a few other options around town for turkey dinners so it is common for some Belizeans to go out and eat a Thanksgiving dinner on this occasion. Our dinner was a hit although that night I got really sick with some sort of stomach ailment; my mom was terrified that she had poisoned everyone but luckily that was not the case and I just had the stomach flu. Sadly for me this meant I missed out on all the leftovers since I was not eating for a couple days. We did sell a handful of dinners the next day as well so all the food was consumed and enjoyed.

After Thanksgiving I was going to get a dose of Christmas in the cold on a week-long trip to CT with my boyfriend. His family has an annual Christmas party during the first weekend in December and I was going along with him this year. I was understandably (in my opinion) nervous having never met any of his family but the trip was outstanding. I got my dose of cold holiday weather which put everything in perspective for me; I got to participate in a snowball fight, wear sweaters, worry about icy roads, go to a Christmas tree farm and drink lots of red wine (not abundantly available in Belize). Since a trip to the States also involves a list of items to bring back to friends in Belize, for the first time in my life I made two trips to Wal-Mart in one day. Even though I do appreciate the cold weather it was very nice to fly in to Cancun and enjoy a day on the beach in the warm, sunny conditions. The day we flew back was a 60 degree temperature swing for us.

Next comes Christmas. My dad flew in to Cancun yesterday and will be in Belize tomorrow evening so he will be here with my mom and me for Christmas and to bring in the New Year. It is tremendously exciting to have him here for awhile; I can’t wait to see him tomorrow. The plan for Christmas day is to go to a big party at our friend’s place at Progresso Shores. There will be no real Christmas tree or traditional gift giving, no snow on the ground, stockings on a mantle or any other family but there will be a carefully selected group of good friends who are all in the same boat as me, laughter, good food and conversation. A new experience is created which is certainly different than the one I am used to during this time of year but nonetheless very special in the sense that we are lucky to still be surrounded by love and friendship when we are missing everyone at home.

The first American family holiday that we would be in Belize for was Thanksgiving.  None of us know exactly how we would react to not being home for this day.  We knew what everyone’s plans were back at home and after being in a strange country for a little over a month it sounded really nice to be back in Oregon with friends and family and the food we were used to.  Expats who had been in Belize for awhile gave us a general timeline for our emotional journey of adjusting to Belize – they said it was a broad rule.  The first couple months are all about being excited to be in a different country and experiencing new people and customs, after that the homesickness usually sets in and it can be bad for awhile.  During this homesickness period a lot of people decide to go back home because they start to feel it’s not worth it.  Then after a few months people tend to go in and out of being really homesick and embracing Belize which takes them in to a year and that is typically when people have gotten settled in and decide to stay for awhile.  At this point we were still under the two month period and excitement was definitely still in the air for us.  That being said we were starting to miss home and we didn’t even really know how to treat Thanksgiving as far as the restaurant went. 

Salvador and Vanessa (our employees) told us that some Belizeans actually celebrate Thanksgiving – which I thought was very bizarre.  Apparently not many of them take part in the holiday but there are some.  Along with that the various American expats (as well as some Canadians with American friends) all had their own Thanksgiving parties planned so we knew they wouldn’t be in either.  In fact we had been invited to one of these Thanksgiving parties but had decided to pass because it just felt so weird to spend Thanksgiving with a bunch of people we really didn’t know that well.  None of us really wanted to be open because we knew it would be a hard day of missing home so ultimately we decided to open and then based on business that afternoon we would decide to either stay open or close down early. 

So the Thursday of Thanksgiving came around and as expected it was very difficult.  As soon as I woke up there seemed to be an unspoken sadness in our house.  We all knew that we were missing family but we also really didn’t want to talk about it because we knew that it would just cause tears and we were all trying to be strong.  This holiday was especially hard for my mom; it had been harder than expected for her and my dad to be away from each other and along with that she has an extremely close relationship with both of my brothers who had both lived with them at home before she had moved to Belize.  Since I was here with Will I didn’t feel like I had the “right” to be extremely homesick – after all she was here without her husband.  So I tried really hard to be strong about it but that day it just wasn’t happening so I just gave her a hug and tried not to talk about it much.  We got a few phone calls from family that morning so we did get to talk to everyone and of course asked for a detailed description of what would be served for dinner – I can’t even tell you how good turkey and mashed potatoes sounded. 

I cried after I woke up for awhile – I got that out of my system and got dressed.  We got the bar opened up and as we had expected it was dead.  No one was coming in so we decided we needed a day to not have to entertain customers coming in – being in Corozal it’s nice that we can just decide to be closed and no one really minds too much.  So we wrote a note on the gate and closed up.  We decided to go to a local resort and use their pool for the afternoon.  We didn’t have a turkey, a ham, potatoes, stuffing or any of the regular Thanksgiving fare but my mom had made a pumpkin pie which we would enjoy later.  One of the local stores had been carrying pumpkin pie filling so she snatched up some of that and made a few.  We actually sold it at the restaurant for awhile too and it was a big hit.  That is one thing that Corozal does not have – good dessert – so my mom was starting to try and satisfy that need. 

We laid out by the pool for a couple hours, ate ceviche and drank beer.  It was not the typical Thanksgiving celebration by any means but we tried our best to have fun.  One some levels we didn’t even feel like it should be Thanksgiving – coming from Oregon it is not 80 degrees and sunny during Thanksgiving dinner.  There are lots of people around the world who spend this type of family holidays away from their families and now I know exactly how that feels.  It was different for me, I’ve always been lucky to be able to be around family for these celebrations and it is special to be able to do that.  I am the type of person who is very close to my family so based on how that experience went I wasn’t sure what to expect for the upcoming Christmas holiday – the good news was that my dad was planning a trip to visit us during the last couple weeks of December. 

After grand opening things slowed way down. We knew that business would dramatically decrease from that night just based on what people around town had told us about openings here in Corozal. Everyone comes out of the woodwork to check it out and then you will never have that many people at the same time again. The let down was a tad disappointing though, the rest of the week was painfully slow. The good news was we were starting to get a good mix of expats and locals which is exactly what we were going for. We were also getting some great feedback about the food. Everyone loved the burgers – ours were by far the best in town. We had found the the perfect blend of meat for the perfect juicy burger, we seasoned the beef ourself, we utilized fresh produce for all the right toppings and we even had our own special sauce to complete the package. It was a real, American style cheeseburger and it tasted just like I would get at home. None of the other restaurants in Corozal knew how to utilize the ingredients they had to mimick our taste. We really thought it would be great because we weren’t directly trying to compete on food, rather we were indirect competition as another restaurant. We may have been a little naïve to think this because it doesn’t seem to work like that here. Rather every restaurant in town wants all the business – it sort of makes sense since really all the places here have the same menu so they were all very used to competing intensely. The menues are so similar that at this point I could recite the standard menu at request. We actually got quite a bit of negative feedback initially that we weren’t going to do well without the local staples on the menu bas as people got more used to the idea that we were different they stopped trying to convince us otherwise.

Now, here’s where the fun of owning a bar starts to happen. We were up and running and now would start to meet people. In my opinion this is both an upside and a downside to this industry because there are some people who I could have gone my whole life without meeting. Sadly, most of them are expats. Some of these bitter people would come in to our restaurant and wrongly assume that because we are American we completely agree with their ugly views of Belizeans. We heard it all and it was not pretty, the worst part was that here are our three Belizean employees who get to witness this ugliness. On more than one occasion we had to make it very clear that we did not agree with anything they were saying. To some of the expats, it was as if our employees, Vanessa, Salvador and Sherie, were invisible. For those expats who weren’t brazen enough to express their feelings in front of Vanessa, Sherie and Salvador they would wait and look out of the corner of their eye before they would spit out the most recent venom they had on their minds. Sometimes we’d just have to put them in their place and sometimes we would stand up and leave, but either way we made it clear that we didn’t share their opinions. This part of it made me really tired of being in a public place where anyone could walk in and spout off while we would have to civil because we didn’t want to scare everyone off. It also made me sad that this is how Americans were being represented in this small country.

Luckily there are another group of expats who are totally opposite of that. Otherwise I don’t know if I would have been able to make it here. This second group of expats stays to themselves though so they are a little harder to find. Everyone has to eat though so they came to us which was great. So here is when we started to make some friends and meet some very interesting people. The main characters in the story and people who would become regulars at our place will change throughout the months but to begin with the theme was English. I already mentioned meeting Ken and Dave at the Halloween party and they were in our first group of regulars. Both are single guys and over 50 and they couldn’t be more different. In fact, they rarely spent a lot of time together and they would come in to our place at different times during the day. The next couple who would become our English friends are a couple named Lucy and Anthony. They were a couple who had been together for awhile and they were both very outspoken and very animated. They were also friends with Ken and most of the time the three of them would be in the bar together. It was quite a scene – personally I had not travelled much before I moved to Belize and I have never travelled to England so living in Oregon did not give me much exposure to English people. It was great that here we were able to meet so many people from so many different places. The first thing that united our new English friends was their humor in making fun of Americans. Luckily I am a pretty easy going person and I can roll with the punches so I don’t take this stuff personally – especially when so much of it is a huge generalization. So most nights we would get in to arguments about the English language and the proununciation of the word aluminium. We talked about politics and religion – both of those forbidden subjects and we all had a great time laughing about it. It was great to get a different perspective on events happening around the world. I don’t limit my news exposure to the American media but I also didn’t have good friends from other parts of the world before I moved to Belize so that I can get a different, personal view of events and it was refreshing.

As far as our Belizean customers go, they were still checking us out. We greeted everyone who came in but they weren’t sure of us quite yet and frankly I don’t blame them based on the general expat attitude I was experiencing about Belizeans. I would be very suspicious as well. So these relationships would clearly take some time. We relied heavily on our fabulous waitress Vanessa to let us know what people thought about the food, the atmosphere and us. She is great because she is completely honest with us and will tell us whatever needs to be said regardless of feelings. She herself was sceptical about coming to work for a bunch of “gringos” and didn’t really expect it to last long but she decided we weren’t so bad after all and didn’t have the typical attitude so she stuck around. I love Vanessa – she’s a 25 year old extremely outgoing girl who has the best personality and smile I’ve encountered for a long time. We totally lucked out finding her and we’ll do everything to keep her onboard. She has original ideas, tattoos and doesn’t buy in to religion – I knew we would get along very well.

So as we continue along we would soon reach our very first family holiday here in Belize without our family, Thanksgiving would be a very interesting event and we were all a little nervous about how homesick we would realize we were.