Classes Begin

After my second day at Galen University I have taken almost all of my classes with the exception of one. Yesterday I had Consumer Law and Ethics with Professor Jay Ashman, one of the UVM professors who traveled with the group here. It will probably not be the most exciting class I take here, but there is certainly going to be a lot of important legal information presented and the way Jay sets up class should make it more discussion-based and analytical rather than being solely lectures. There are only five UVM students in the class with the other twenty students being Belizean. Hopefully this will lead to some interesting discussions and opinions that I wouldn't get back in Vermont. My other Monday/Wednesday class was Indigenous Perspectives on Development, taught by Dr. Filiberto Penados, a Mayan who has done a lot of work in this field here in Belize. The class started off on an engaged foot, if you will, we discussed some definitions of 'development' and debated whether or not it was necessary and good and got into a bit of a mini-debate on cultural relativism. My mind was electrified by the discussion and although it is mostly international students in the class, they are not all UVMers and certainly are an opinionated bunch, which should prove quite interesting.



Today I started off with Adventure and Eco Tourism with Dr. Colin Young. Apparently he is involved in the Belizean government's tourism department and is the leading expert on Eco-tourism in the area. He is clearly no joke, and set out some high expectations for the class, but not without lightening it up with some casual discussion about theories and perceptions of tourism. I imagine I am going to garner a lot from this class, not least an overnight field trip to a Manatee reserve and some caving!
Next was another class with Jay, Applications of Sustainable Development. This is the class through which we will be doing our Service Learning Project. As a major part of the program, all of the UVM students are teaming up with some Belizean students to work on a community service project that incorporates some of the learning and theories from class to the real-world environment of Beilize in a nearby community. We have not yet determined exactly which projects we will be working on this semester, but there are many exciting ideas in the works including; English as a Second Language, AIDS education, Conservsation education, setting up a local sustainable agriculture cooperative and many more. We are currently talking to a number of potential community partners in order to determine the needs and desires of the communities so that we can launch a successful venture that will likely span beyond our semester here. There will be much more details on this to come.
Finally, my Mayan Culture and Civilization class was, regretfully, cancelled for today on account of the professor being absent. Dr. Jaime Awe is the top Mayan archeologist in Belize and potentially in Mesoamerica, so I am really excited about him teaching this class. Apparently it is not one to be missed according to the students who were here last semester. We also get to go on a few field trips to nearby Mayan ruins with Dr Awe. I will be sure to post pictures!

Classes have been good so far in this tiny, three classroom University. The entire student body at Galen is only 265, including all of the international students! It will be an interesting contrast to UVM. The classes here are an hour and a half to two and a half hours long, depending. So, when I return to Burlington, 50 minute class periods are going to breeze by! We will see how my expectations hold up throughout the semester...