Katie’s blog

Well, I know that I have been gushing about my host mother, but recent developments certainly deserve some more air time. At the first homestay, what I usually ended up getting was rice, beans, tortillas and the occasional mixed vegetable stir-fry thing. Well, the past 3 days I have gotten SOY with every meal. Needless to say, I am on cloud nine with her food. 2 nights ago she made empanadas with soy, which is a pierogie type thing with fillings, yesterday's lunch was spaghetti with soy on top mixed with some tomatoe and on the side were french fries and a small salad. Then this morning, as if things couldn't have gotten any better after those two meals alone, I got potatoes, peppers and some tomatoes all sauteed together with ... yep ... .SOY! Ahh. Its wonderful, and I love how everyone thought that all I would be able to eat down here were some twigs with lettuce and beans. :-)

Today was the official start of the evolution course, and also the wrap up of the Tropical Bio final. Yep, it was soooo long that we had to take it in two days. Now all that we need to do for that course is write our papers when we get home. Have to admit that it is a little imposing having the Evolution course be only 3 weeks of class time, with a research presentation worked into that, and then a paper that we write when we get home, especially since it is a capstone course for the majority of us on this trip.

Yesterday, a group of uswent to the market down by Centro. It was huge! We spent 3 hours there and I'm certain that we did not see everything there. I was able to invest in a sweatshirt poncho type thing so I do not freeze to death in the mornings and night, and also picked up some gifts. ;-) After lunch today, I actually think we are going back to the market to finish the second half of my gift list.

It's all starting to sink in that the semester is coming to a close, especially with all the things going on at school back home: housing, work over the summer, reapplying to the Ambassador program, just alot of stuff that is looking ahead to the summer and year to come. Kinda scary to think that in a few weeks, I will be a junior, and therefore halfway finished with my college career. Where did all that time go? It will also be interesting in the fall semester to go back and have the majority of my class be abroad, including the majority of my friends. Hmm ....

Alright, well, time to go get some more amazing food at my homestay and read some more Selfish Gene for class tomorrow. More on that to come, I'm sure :-P

Hola!

Apologies for not being able to keep up with posts, but jungles aren't really conducive to wireless internet access :-p After almost a month in and out of jungles, we are finally on the last leg of our trip in the mountains of Chiapas at the city of San Cristobal de las Casas. Kiuic, back in early February was ....... interesting, and I have decided that there is no way that I could live at a field station for 30 years without any other human contact, the Lost Cities of the Jungle "tour" was truly remarkable! The Mayan cities we visited truly were in the jungles in the middle of absolute nowhere! Then, it was off to La Selva Lacandon, to live in the veritable stick huts for 4 days. There were mosquito nets around the bed, and while there was a door, the other half of the hut was completely open. We had some fun scaring some of the other people into thinking a tapir was attacking their hut in the middle of the night, but no real other mischief. Yesterday, we spent 8 hours on the bus - first to drop off Rebecca, our Mayan professor, at the bus station in Palenque, and then we were off to the winding roads up and over the mountains. I'm pretty sure that just about everyone passed out in an attempt to combat motion sickness. I have to give many many props to Cezar, our bus driver. He was able to get that bus into so many tight places, and make almost 90 degree left turns in the city. It was incredible. My homestay is very nice, and I have a 12 year old "brother" named Aaron and a 16 year old "sister" Cristina who are just too cute. Aaron almost NEVER stops talking and rambling, and Cristina is a little more soft spoken, but we had a very nice conversation on the way to school today. I was teaching her random English words, like how to say how old she is, hello, goodbye and how to say my name. (Btw, in Mexico, I am not KAtie ... I am Kah-ty (phoenetically at least)) I am always worried about how to tell people that I am vegan, but my host mother was perfectly fine with it. Lunch today was AMAZING - I had some fresh vegetables, rice and these incredible rolls that were roasted vegetables in some sort of seasoning. So needless to say, am very excited to see what else she has up her sleeve :-)

Right now, I am at the language institute, Instituto Jovel, using the wireless internet. Tomorrow we have a trip to the Tuxtla Zoo, our Tropical Bio final on Thursday, and then the official start of the Evolution course on Friday. Cannot believe how fast time has gone, and that in 23 days we will be on our way back to the States! Hope everything is going well with everyone, and cannot wait to come home and bombard you all with over 5 GB of photos!!! :-D

I'll try to be better about posting now, since we have wireless and civilization.

9Feb08

Well, it is our last full day here in Mérida. What have I done to celebrate you ask? Woke up at around 9, took a shower, packed my huge suitcase, went to the park with free WiFi to do some last minute emailing, came back and cleaned some more, had a nice talk with my host mother Mimi as we cooked lunch together for ourselves (mmmm … panuchos J), some Mayan studying for a few hours, and now back to the park to post all these back blogs (apologies by thway for not being more conscientious with posting – sketchy internet connections and time constraints in general); all while everyone else is at the beach :-P. This past week has been pretty eventful though – although it screwed with most of our internal clocks – usually we take day trips on Saturdays, but this week we took one on Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday’s trips were to the ruins of Acanceh, Tecoh ad Mayapán. The city of Acanceh was actually built on top of/around the ruins of the ancient Mayan city. There was a pyramid almost in the middle of the town square with incredibly preserved stucco masks on the top level. Across the city, there were more ruins that held nicely preserved carvings with many of the aspects that Rebecca has been teaching us these past two weeks – “goggle” eyes on animal depictions and we even got to use our bird identifying skills to recognize a carved cormorant. The next site, Tecoh, was a beautiful church that looked to me like something that one would see on the moors of England – it had an almost castle-like appearance from the outside. Lastly, the ruins of Mayapán were more like the other sites that we have been to thusfar – was a very condensed city setting with pyramids and temples.

More eventful, was our trip on Thursday to Campeche to tour a few museums. We first went to a museum that looked like a castle – complete with a moat and one of those doors that can be brought up so people cannot enter the fortress (I’m sure there is a word for it, but it escapes me at the moment – think of castles and the door that spans the length of the moat when down and is attached to the walls with chains that can be raised or lowered). We learned that since Campeche is on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, that the moat and likeness to a castle was because veritable pirates would come and attack the area. This museum held incredibly preserved artifacts, mostly from the site of Calakmul – there were stelae (carved stone monuments) with extensive hieroglyphics, tools, incredibly colorful pottery, skeletons in recreated burials and countless other artifacts. It was such a great reinforcement to actually be able to see the vast majority of the things we have been learning about in class. On the second level, there was an amazing view of the Gulf of Mexico, complete with cannons and turret-looking things on the roof.

After going to lunch at La Parilla, which was the first restaurant we ate lunch at when we arrived in Cancún back in January and we also noticed that we have all eaten at the one in Mérida more than a few times so that was quite amusing to realize that we have eaten at one in every Mexican state that we have been to so far J, we got on the bus only to find that it had broken down. After some calls to the bus company and getting whistled at by these guys in a truck who drove by numerous times, Hugo told us that we were going to take public transportation into the city and hang out there until the situation could be cleared up. One thing that I have noticed on this trip is the amount of trust that is placed in the people here. Many times that I have been on the bus, I have seen people get on before paying – some don’t even pay until they get off. They might have bags, fiddling with children or something of that nature. In the states, there would be NO way that you would get on public transportation without paying (especially a bus). Another example was the beginning of the week when I dropped off Ash’s and my laundry at the lavendaria. There were 8 kilos of it since we had not been able to do laundry for over a week. We were told that it would be done by 8PM that night, so we went to the park to get some work done, and when we returned home at 7:30 our laundry was already on my bed – cleaned, folded and everything. I still do not know how they knew where we lived, but Mimi said that they came by and dropped it off a little while before. Bear in mind that we had not paid yet, and it was a pretty good bill of 56 pesos (aka 5.50 USD). So I walk up there and pay the bill and thank her profusely for dropping it off. It just really floored me how trusting some people can be in certain situations that would never, at least to my knowledge, work out the same way at home. Anyways, back to Campeche when the driver let us all on the bus without asking for payment until Robert, the last one on, paid him and therefore started that whole tangent. After getting off the bus, we walked through this huge archway opening in a wall that looked like it surrounded the city, and found an entire city inside its walls! It was incredible! Since every city is laid out essentially the same with a main plaza and the rest of the city laid out in a grid work from the center, we found the central plaza with a gorgeous cathedral, governor’s building and a really pretty old house that we were able to take a tour of. After the tour, we were told that we had free reign about the city, and to meet back at 5:15, when there should be more news about the travel situation. A group of us broke off, went into a few stores, went inside the cathedral, with some of the most beautiful Stations of the Cross I have ever seen and eventually wandered out to the coast. Going back to the cathedral – the Stations that I had seen so far have been small sculptures, but these were gorgeous and vivid paintings that had to have been as tall as I am. As I remarked on them, I explained to the non-Catholics of the group what they were and what they meant. On a religion tangent here (again about what I have seen on buses – one can obviously glean a great amount of controversial topics from the daily bus ride to and from school :-P) I have noticed that in almost all the buses or cabs that I have been in, there are rosary beads, pictures of Our Lady of Guadelupe an numerous other religious symbols out in plain sight … and I have yet to hear anyone say that they are offended or feel discriminated against because there are images of Catholicism everywhere. I think that if someone were to actually say something, he would be met with an incredulous stare and told that that is his problem and to find something else to worry about. Again, just something that struck me as very different from the States. Back to Campeche … we had to cross out of the “fortressed” city to get to the coast, so we eventually made it to a wall that we all sat on. That part of the city had been built on the water, so the water was literally 4 or 5 feet down from where we sat. It was such a gorgeous day with the water lapping at the sides and a beautiful sunset. Although we all felt pretty sticky after being next to the humid air coming off of the water …

When we returned to the meeting spot in the center of the city, Rebecca informed us that there was this really great museum that held great examples of the different types of architecture that we are going to be seeing. It was a very interesting museum that did a very good job explaining what we were seeing. The styles of architecture that are our main focus are Puuk, Chenes, and Río Bec. Puuk architecture is characterized by intricate frieze work and stone carvings; Río Bec has these false temples/towers that are placed very high up, usually on a palace structure; and Chenes is more of a mix between the two. Lastly, Petén architecture has high temples with staircases on the sides and also carries some elements of the other styles. There were some incredibly preserved stelae that we got to try our hand at decoding – which we found that it was infinitely easier to use the line drawings next to the monument :-P

Returning home to rainy and overcast Mérida, 3 hours later than anticipated, we had a wonderful time trying to catch a bus, but we all had to admit that overall, Campeche was not a bad place to get “shipwrecked”.

Yesterday was our last day of classes at CIS and in Mérida, and tonight will be our last night. Quien sabe what we will do tonight, but tomorrow starts the next phase of the semester, sleeping in hammocks, but supposedly there is wireless internet, although I’m sure 18 people cannot be on it all at once. I’m actually pretty excited to see how sleeping in hammocks will work out, and also excited to start the next part of the semester. We’ll see how life goes in the hammock and wireless internet field station in the middle of the jungle. (Still sounds like an oxymoron to have hammock, field station, jungle and wireless internet all in the same sentence :-P)

Apologies – internet access has been sketchy and persnickety, so the ensuing posts are the past week’s events J

3Feb08

This has been such a great weekend! It started off with visiting Chichén Itzá, which was really interesting. I don’t really know what I was expecting to see/feel, but the Castillo was simply incredible. Of course since it was named a Wonder of the World, we were not able to climb it, or really anything else for that matter. It was also by far the largest site that we have visited as of yet. What was really cool was that we were able to actually have some sort of grasp on what we were seeing and apply what we have been learning in our Maya class. As we were looking at glyphs and architecture in general, we were able to see the differences in styles and what each part signified. At the Temple of the Jaguar, we saw two columns – one had a man and symbols of life, such as live animals, and the other had a woman with skulls and crossbones. I found it really interesting that the pillar with the woman had symbols of death and the man had symbols of life. While I am by no means making a generalization that women were always portrayed with signs of death, it was thought-provoking to see that because usually women are signs of fertility and life. A great deal of the site was roped off for consolidation and upkeep, so we only grazed the surface. A common theme across everything we saw was the feathered serpent. It was on everything from the Castillo to the ball court. In fact, the way the sun shines on the Castillo during the equinox looks like a serpent slithering down the side of it, ending with the serpent head at the bottom. Our guide, Hugo, is also incredibly knowledgeable about everything in the site, including all the birds flying around :-P While everything at Chichén was really amazing, I think the reason I wasn’t in complete awe was the amount of people. There were SO many tourists there from Cancún that it felt almost sacrilegious.. These sites were very revered in their day, and commoners were not allowed in the majority of them – it was quite an honor to even be allowed to see the site. That was something that Hugo mentioned on our way in – that we should considered ourselves very privileged to walk on the grounds.

After leaving Chichén, we drove about an hour and a half to the city of Valladolid. Since all the cities are set up the exact same way, with a central plaza and the rest of the city set up in a grid formation, at first glance it looked like a smaller version of Mérida, with less people claro que si. We checked into the gorgeous Meson de Marques, with water pressure and hot water almost immediately after turning it on! We were all in heaven – the first thing we told each other as we met up for dinner was about how amazing it was to take a shower with water pressure and not have to wait 5 min for the water to heat up! The simple pleasures that so many of you over there in the States take for granted – water pressure being a much underappreciated commodity ;-P We then decided to take a stroll around the plaza to both explore and find a good place for dinner. As we were walking to the governor’s building, picked up a little friend – Fidó (yes, there is an accent on the ó) He followed us into the building and up the stairs as we were looking at some of the artwork, and even to the Lonchería where we ate dinner. Each of us was able to buy dinner for fewer than 20 pesos, aka 2 USD. Afterwards, we all went back to the hotel to watch some TV and veg. I think by this point we are all getting a little homesick, so anything that is in English is a welcome diversion. We ended up watching The Fugitive IN ENGLISH with Spanish subtitles. The irony :-P

Call time the next morning was 6:30 AM, so we were all given box lunches – my vegan self got 2 bananas, an apple and some boxed apple juiceJ, and we were off to Río Lagartos to do some bird watching. We went out, 6 to a boat, into this gorgeous lagoon. The drivers were extremely knowledgeable about birds and pointed different species out to us. We all got very good at identifying Great Blue Herons, Little Blue Herons, Ibis, Sandpipers, Brown Pelicans, Frigate birds, Wood Storks and Double Crested Cormorants. We also got to see and feed a crocodile that was literally a foot away from our boat. The guide slowed down and started tapping a fish in the water to get the croc’s attention. At this point we were all in awe of seeing one that close up and a tad afraid that our guide was trying to get it to come closer! After feeding it a barracuda, we went to this area where the water was so salty that one could simply float. The water had a pinkish tint to it from all the tiny shrimp that lived in it, and there were flamingos off in the distance. We were told to go in backwards and to be careful not to get any of the water in our eyes because of the incredibly high salt content. Personally, I was very skeptical and wondered if it would even work, but it did! It was so surreal to be able to “stand up” in the water without my feet touching any bottom and float! The ride home was a good 10 min, and Aakash and I were at the bow of the boat taking in the amazing scenery, and the beauty of the water. It really reminded me of the times when I was a kid and we would go to Lime Lake in upstate New York. My grandparents had a house on the lake, as well as a boat and a dock. I used to be scared to death to sit in the front of the boat when he would go fast because the way it lifted out of the water made me think I was going to fall out :-P Eventually, I grew to love it as we would go in and out of the inlets and into the deeper waters in the farther ends of the lake. It also really reminded me of how much I love the water and want to hopefully live on it one day (Sleepless in Seattle anyone J)

After returning to the shore and eating lunch, it was time to venture out to Ek Balam. This site was completely different from the ones that we have seen before. It looks so much more like an actual town and a place where people could have lived. There were so many trees, and the Acropolis had some AMAZING friezes that were incredibly preserved. The Acropolis was also 1 meter higher than the Castillo at Chichén. We were all joking with Rebecca asking if they sent word to Chichén that their temple was 1 meter higher. From the top of the Acropolis, off in the horizon we could see the vague outlines of Coba, another site that we are going to visit later in the semester.

An overall observation I have made is that the Mexican people really know about their history. Talking with my host mother, she is really knowledgeable about the sites and also Hugo, our tour guide really knows his stuff as well. Granted, he is a tour guide, but I have noticed it in other people as well. They really seem to take an active interest in their history, and even if they do not know all the ins and outs of the sites, they know each one that exists and a general idea of the history of each. I’ve also noticed that they are way more in tune with politics and the happenings in the US than most of us are. This got me thinking about how many people in the States really know our history. While he is by no means a historical reference, I remember watching an episode of Jay Leno when he did one of his “Jay-Walking” things. He would go out on the streets of US cities and ask seemingly elementary questions about our history or politics. I do not remember the exact questions he asked, but I do remember being completely appalled that there are so many people who do not know the Bill of Rights, or even the Pledge of Allegiance after grade school. What does this say about us if the people in a completely different country know more about what is going on in ours than us, the people who actually live there?

Well, there’s my 2 cents. On Tuesday we leave for a day trip to Acanceh, Mayapán and a few other small cities. Thursday it’s off to Campeche for some museum tours and then on Sunday, we depart for the field station of Kiuic and 15 days of total field work.

29Jan08

The other day, a group of us visited the MACAY – the Museum of Mexican Contemporary art. What I’ve come to realize simply about Mexican architecture, is that almost everywhere one goes, it is an open courtyard with balconies and rooms all around it. Although this has been quite apparent from all of our other excursions, not really sure why I was expecting a museum in the sense of an art gallery in the US. Right as we walked up the stairs, there was this huge piece that was a patchwork of corrugated cardboard, numbers, and just random colors just thrown together – very abstract looking. The first exhibit we were able to see was one dedicated to people with Down’s syndrome. Some pieces were abstract, a few were black and white, but what really struck me was that the majority of them were very colorful, while still conveying a sense of sadness. As we went upstairs, after being chastised for taking pictures, there were many rooms, each with different exhibits and collections. The first room we went into held prints of many very well known pieces: Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s Academia was on a wall, as well as a few Frida Kahlo pieces. Not sure why, but I found it sort of odd that they would have prints of all these well known, and not Mexican, artists in their museum of contemporary art. Many of the next rooms held sculptures made out of iron. The majority were bulls, with a few being of people. While walking through, I started to wonder what actually defined Contemporary art – granted, it is easy to tell impressionist and modern apart, but what is the defining characteristic of contemporary? As we continued on into the ensuing rooms, I personally decided that contemporary simply means something that makes people think about what the artist was trying to convey. Personally, I could never be one that critiques art, because for the most part, what I think a painting could mean is usually way out in left field to what the artist was trying to say. Anyways, the one room that really caught all of our attentions, started off with semi-normal paintings of royalty with really interesting gold relief in the majority of them, as we continued on, they started to get odder and odder – very strange S&M type pieces along with an entire room of one set of paintings all set against the same backdrop. It was a view of a room with 4-poster bed and a table. In each progression, the people were in different arrangements, and small little details were changed. In a few I remember seeing that an arrangement of 3 oranges on the table was different, the mirror was wrapped up in another and I’m sure if we analyzed it further, we would have found many more subtle differences. As we got the end of that exhibit, the artist had actually made the mirror that hung on the wall, and had put all of the pieces of that set inlaid in the mirror itself. It was very strange to say the least. I think we were all expecting to see something that clearly said “Oh, this is Mexican art”, as weird as that sounds. While it was somewhat apparent with many of the pieces centering around bulls and a few other aspects of life that are clearly Spanish. I decided that contemporary art is simply something that makes you uncomfortable and stop and think – usually with a very confused sense of what the art is trying to say. At least that is how I felt walking through :-P. I started to compare what I was seeing to the other museums I had been to in the States, and found that it really wasn’t all that different, with the exception that the captions and such were all in Spanish. Art really does have the same effect that music can – no matter where in the world you are, everyone can find a common theme or thread that ties that they can apply to their own lives.

This week has also marked the beginning of the Maya course, taught by Rebecca Hill from Tulane. Each day we start off with an hour and a half of Maya class, short break, Bio class, another short break, then end with 2 hours of Maya class. It’s really interesting to start to know about the sites we have already visited, and realize a bit where they came from and the mentalities of the people who lived there. There are so many unanswered questions about what happened to them, but it is amazing at the same time how much they were able to leave behind for us to find. This coming weekend we are going to visit Chichén Itzá and Ek Balam. I’m not really sure what to expect from Chichén, simply because from what I know, it’s an incredibly touristy site and was just declared a Wonder of the World. I don’t really know much about Ek Balam, so that should be really interesting.

27Jan08

Yesterday, we visited the Mayan ruins of Oxkintok (pronounced Ohsh – kin – tow-k, because in Mayan, “x” is pronounced like an “sh”). First, we got off the bus and had our first bird-watching session, which included learning how to use our binoculars and take field notes. We were the epitome of bio nerds – all decked out with backpacks, binoculars around our necks, field notebooks in one hand and camera in the other :-P I’m sure we were quite the amusing sight. We were able to observe a Mot-Mot, Turkey Vultures, Swallows and a few kingbirds. At first, I was overwhelmed trying to figure out how we were going to identify all these birds that look exactly the same on paper, but after observing them, you can start to discern identifying factors to tell them apart. Take vultures for example – we have to be able to identify Turkey and Black Vultures, which are usually found soaring/circling in the sky, so one doesn’t really have time to sit there and start at them, trying to figure out what they are. Black Vultures are completely black whereas Turkey Vultures have a red head and black and white wings, and it is pretty easy to tell which ones have the white on the lower half of the wings.

After bird-watching, we ventured into the ruins. This site was one of the biggest we have seen, and also one of the most gorgeous. There were temples, town plazas, a ball court, labyrinth, and many mounds that were buried temples that have yet to be uncovered. Oxkintok is really not one of the more touristy sites, so we essentially had the entire place to ourselves, which was a pretty awesome feeling. Being the adventuresome crew that we are, we of course decided to scale every single one of the temples. On many of them, there weren’t really stairs, so at times it was almost like rock climbing to get to the top. Once up there though, the view was breathtaking – as far as one could see was jungle and a few “hills” off in the distance. The Yucatan peninsula starts off at the coast as very flat and only a few feet above sea level, but as one gets closer to the interior and farther south, a few hills start to appear and the terrain is less and less flat. (Hills is in quotation marks, because when most of us think of hills, we think of our mountains or the hills of rural PA, but while these are hills in Mexico, they by no means compare to those aforementioned - are much smaller) After climbing down one of the temples, Dana, Amanda and I found this crawl space that looked like it opened up into a room, so we decided to check it out. We all got out our headlamps and after deciding that I would be the first to die, started investigating. I crawled through this little tunnel that opened up into a small room that was big enough to stand up in. The small “tunnel” continued into what looked like another room, so, naturally, we decided to crawl through. It did, in fact, lead to another room about the same size as the previous one, albeit a dead end. So as I’m standing there looking around with my headlamp, I look about a foot and a half in front of me and a tad higher than eye level, and I see an arthropod from the Order Amblypygii - a tailless whipscorpoin!!! Granted, since they do not have tails, they are not poisonous, but they are still pretty creepy/scary looking, and to be looking one essentially in the eye is a tad nerve wracking. At this point, Amanda was still crawling through and as I saw the scorpion I said something, and after it registered with Dana, we both decided to QUICKLY leave :-P After we got out, some more people had assembled, including the Dawleys, who of course had to go and investigate. They were pretty proud of us for going in and crawling under temples through our own accord. Robert of course had to get a picture of the scorpion, so he went in, and there was a another crawl space parallel to the one we went into, so Ellen went into that one along with a few other people. Ironically enough, in the entrance to the tunnel that I went into, there was a medium-sized tarantula sitting there and a wasp’s nest up above – both of which we neglected to notice before entering the first time …. After that little escapade, nothing really happened comparatively, but it was still really amazing to be there.

Next, we heard there was a newly discovered cave with Mayan glyphs, so we changed our itinerary to go investigate this cave. Our guides were actually the two men that have the credit for discovering the cave and the things inside. First, we saw the glyphs that were painted on the ceiling of the cave, and carbon dating determined them to be over 1,000 years old if I remember correctly. How did they get on the ceiling of the cave you ask? Well, all the caves were essentially cenotes – filled with water. So at the time they were painted, there was enough water for someone to be able to float out and paint them. It was also determined that they were painted from East to West, no doubt in accordance with the rise and set of the sun. Venturing by groups of four into this tiny little room, there was a small ceramic face that they had found (BTW – they said that all the things they were showing us had not been moved or touched) that almost looked like a face from a small doll. Next, there was a set of negative hand prints on one of the walls – negative being that the hand was held up on the wall, and the paint was “sprayed” around it. Usually, the paint would be in some sort of straw that they would blow through and the paint would then go on and around the hand, so when you lifted it up, the hand print was the cave wall, with paint around it. The cool thing about this was that the two prints were each of the left hand. Then, climbing through some more small passageways, we saw bones, teeth (of animals) and clay pieces laid out in some sort of order that looked like an offering. After seeing all of these, since the guides believed the cave to be sacred, we each had water poured over our heads to “cleanse and purify” us as we were leaving. It was really incredible.

Finally, we were off to the cenote to swim and cool down a bit. So a few minutes later, we arrive at what looks like someone’s house. We were told to walk into the backyard, and in the middle of the yard, there is what looks like a well, with a few steps and then a rope next to a ladder that we are all supposed to climb down. It turns out that as they were drilling for what they thought was a well, they came upon this cenote. So we all climb down, and it was completely different from what we had expected. The air was very humid and warm, and the water looked incredibly shallow. Of course, looks can be deceiving. None of us believed the owner when he told us that at one point it got down to about 15 feet, because we could all see the bottom, and it looked like no more than waist level at the deepest. After getting over the initial awkwardness of swimming in the backyard of these random people, we got in and to our surprise, where the water looked to be only a foot, it was actually up to our waist! And pretty cold too! After swimming and playing with Poncho, one of the little kids who lived there and was pretty enthralled with our cameras, we left and headed out to eat dinner. We stopped at this traditional Mayan restaurant that was made out of stick huts and where the oven was a hole in the ground, where they cooked the meat and whatnot in metal containers and then buried them. The soup was amazing (my vegetable soup that is :-P) and so was my plate of vegetables and tortillas. For everyone else, they had Sopa de Lima, and Cochinitas.

This week (tomorrow actually) starts the Maya course, the second course of the semester, with a few day trips, including one to Chichen Itza. Again, sorry about the lack of new pictures – this week at CIS I’ll try to upload some if the internet will allow me to do so … If not, I’ll just have to bore you all to death with trillions of pictures when I come home :-D

Today was another one of those days where we tried to cram as much Spanish grammar into one day as possible. We learned directional vocabulary (under, above, below, behind, ect.), the present participle, and present progressive. While I have seen the majority of what he teaches us, that by no means implies that I remember how to use it or remember all the conjugations. I am a little surprised he has skipped the subjunctive, but I remember last semester when we just barely touched on that, that we all had a very hard time trying to figure out when and how to use it because there is nothing like it in the English language. It is definitely exciting to talk to my host mother and also with others and hear them using tenses that we go over in class and gleaning the more subtle meanings from the conversation. Also, something I find pretty odd, is that if my host mother is just talking, I usually do a pretty good job of understanding the majority of what she says, but the minute she asks me a question, my mind goes blank. I have to sit there and make sure I understood the question and then try to formulate the answer in my head while conjugating the correct verb and using the applicable tense …. I’ve certainly gotten much better, but I still find that sort of odd :-p

This week, we switched teachers for our culture classes, and Lulu, our new maestro, is definitely more into the academic side than Roger was, but Roger definitely made it fun. Yesterday, we learned about hammocks – how they are made, what kind of material, and that the majority of people in the Yucatan sleep in hammocks at night. Most hammocks are handmade here and are out of algodon, nylon or henequen, with henequen being the most expensive and considered a luxury. Almost all of the tiendas that we have seen have carried hammocks for about 50 USD. Lulu was telling us that in her house, she has 4 – one in both bedrooms, and one on the front porch and back patio. They also make “matrimonial hammocks”, for married couples and apparently they are pretty comfy. ;-) Muy interesante. According to Lulu, for the matrimonial ones, it is worth the money to invest in the ones made from henequen. During our two weeks at the field station in Kiuic, we will all get to sleep in hammocks, and essentially live a glorified Mayan existence. That will definitely be quite interesting, because all I can see my clumsy self doing is getting all tangled up in it at night and then somehow managing to flip myself over and fall out. We’ll see about that one. I know two of the other boys in our house bought hammocks and set them up, but I have yet to see how they are set up. Today, we read random facts - “Did you know” type things, which translates to “¿Sabías qué”, using the imperfect tense of the verb saber, which means “to know”. HA! I am learning something down here.

Today was also the Arthropod quiz for the Bio 220 course. Did you know that the female mosquitoes are the only ones that suck blood and give you that lovely red, itchy welt? Yep, it’s true. Males have really “hairy” and bushy looking antennae. So the next time you see a mosquito, try to tell if it will suck your blood, or if it’s merely an annoyance :-P Also, I’m sure everyone has seen those huge bugs that look like incredibly anorexic mosquitoes on steroids, but they are actually harmless craneflies and harmless – they do not bite or anything. We ALL have already had our share of female mosquitoes feasting on us. I have all but slathered myself in Benadryll cream – and even with the self restraint I have to not scratch them, they still swell up to inordinate proportions and it looks like I was attacked by some monster bug rather than a teeny tiny albeit EVIL mosquito …. It’s wonderful being allergic to mosquito bites … I mean go figure, it’s not like I’m allergic to anything else :-p

I have definitely found my favorite food down here – as of yet, it is panuchos. I know I gushed about them in a previous post, but they really are incredible. They are amazing in restaurants, they are one of the dishes that can easily be made vegan by asking for it sin carne, huevos y , a veces, sin queso. Our host mother made them today, and we got to eat them for lunch and dinner. Yum. One thing I am finding out, is that while the lunch meal is the main one of the day, and inordinate amounts of food are prepared, dinner is usually the leftovers of lunch, in smaller portions. There really aren’t any leftovers, and therefore, massive amounts of food do not go to waste. While it certainly took some getting used to, eating a huge meal at 3 in the afternoon and then not again till 7 or 8 at night, it really isn’t that bad of a system.

A veces, it seems like the days creep by, with two hours of grammar, and then another 2 hours of culture, a half hour bus ride/walk to get home, but the weeks do seem to fly. Tomorrow is Wednesday already, and we have our Spanish final on Friday, then two more weeks in Mérida before we head out to Kiuic and jungle-ness. Ash and I just got back from walking a few blocks to an Extra! which is like a toned down Wawa (oh Wawa L) because Ash had a craving for vanilla ice cream, and after much label reading and funny looks I was able to find some cookies that I could eat. We decided that we have to indulge now, because in the jungle, we aren’t going to be able to find ice cream, never mind vegan cookies :-P Ah – another thing I have noticed down here is that they do not snack in between meals. There really isn’t anything that she keeps in the house to snack on besides fruit and plain tortillas. There is peanut butter, but I could only imagine what she would say if she saw us going all “Meet Joe Black” and eating it by the spoonful :-P .

Yesterday, we went to our first Mayan city - the city of Dzibilchaltun. It really was incredible. There was a museum that we went into first that had many of the artifacts that had been found inside the ruins. After that, we explored a few Mayan huts and then headed on our way through the woods to the city. You always see things like that on postcards or other people's pictures, but when you yourself are actually there, standing on the stairs, it's an entirely different experience. You get such a rush from standing on the top of one of the pyramids and looking out over the ruins of the entire city. It was really amazing. (Picture wise, my internet is really persnickety at times, so trying to upload pictures just gets frustrating, so when I have a better connection, I'll post an updated photobucket link) We learned that the main "tower" overlooking the city was built by someone who had a great amount of money, and the square in front of it was used for the townspeople to watch whatever "spectacle" was going on. More or less in the middle of the city was a structure that they used to tell time. It was a single obelisk looking thing in the middle of a platform that cast a shadow depending on the height of the sun - essentially like a sundial. There was also a Catholic chapel nearby that was built because there were so many people who lived there, that they had to construct their own church. It was not like a conventional church of today though - there was a steeple and everything, but the altar and cross were the only things that were under the cover of stone - the congregation would have sat out in front of it and observed the mass being said "inside". We then ventured over to the nearby cenote. This one was different that all the rest, being that it was completely open. Was still very pretty, and the water was incredibly warm. I remembered my waterproof case for my camera this time and took some amazing pictures of all the fish underwater. We weren't allowed to wear sunscreen because it would ruin the natural ecosystem of the cenote, so we all got a tad burned, but it was well worth it :-)
After returning home, my host mother and I ended up sitting at the table and talking for almost an hour. Just having a normal conversation about the weather, her family and grandchildren, where I'm from, my family ect. I am getting better at understanding her, and she is more than willing to sit through my attempts at responses :-P Sometimes I get a littler nervous trying to talk because I don't speak the language nearly as well as some of the other people in my house, but she always lights up whenever I make a valiant effort and she never really seems to get mad at the fact that I never conjugate the verbs correctly :-P

Today, I decided to get up early-ish and go to mass in the cathedral downtown. After my Type - A self stopped flipping out over the bus being late and the fact that I would be 10 minutes late to mass, I went anyways and ended up being right on time. The cathedral is absolutely gorgeous inside, and was surprisingly full for a 10 AM mass. I had neglected to remember the tiny little fact of since I'm in MEXICO the mass would be in SPANISH. So on the list of things to do this week is looking up all the prayers and such in Spanish, although of course I knew what was happening and actually understood a few bits and pieces of the homily. I ended up sitting next to this cute little old Mayan woman who was the sweetest person - she told me how happy she was to see a young person there and that she liked the dress I was wearing (at least thats what I thought I understood :-P) Coming home was even more interesting because first off, I took a different bus route - there are 2 routes that I can take to get home, but host mother told me that route 1 is better. So I took route 2 this morning just to see where it would take me. Well, about halfway home, the bus pulls over and stops. Apparently there was some problem with the axles that they were stuck and wouldn't rotate anymore (again, my broken spanish comprehension abilities). The driver told us that we had to get off and that he would flag down another bus to pick us all up. After a few minutes, an empty bus comes by (from the opposite direction) and turns around to pick us up. This driver was used to driving a different route, so this route was explained to him and off we went. Was a little nervous when he started going the complete opposite direction of my house, but I stayed on until I saw my cross street and thanked him profusely and got off. I was anticipating about a 10 block walk, but was surprised when I found myself in my area after only a few blocks.

I know I've become accustomed to the weather when I walked out of the house this morning and thought 72 degrees was pretty cold :-P Even now I'm in bed under the covers and in the long sleeved shirt I brought. Tonight we are all venturing over to the Dawley's house for some free food (Hopefully :-P) and in the interim I'll be working on my lectures notes and the arthropod taxonomy for the quiz on Tuesday. Speaking of taxonomies, every time I walk past a plant on my way to the bus stop, I am usually able to discern the phylum, order, family and sometimes species/common name ... thanks Dawleys for increasing my nerd abilities far beyond my wildest dreams :-P There is also this darned Aracacea (palm) that I have to move out of my path everyday on the way to and from school .....

So yesterday was not that interesting at all which is why I refrained from posting - we went to school, got eaten alive by insects, came home and passed out. But today, besides the fact that it is Friday, we went to the Museo de Anthopologia - a museum about Mayan history. It was really interesting to see all the artifacts, and ancients ways of life. We got to see how their numbering system worked, and many of their superstitions and customs. For example, the cenotes that we have all been raving about were actually believed, by the Maya, to be portals to the underworld. Remember that although many of us may associate the "underworld" with Hell, it was not the same for them. They considered it an honor to be sacrificed for one of their gods, and also that death was part of the natural cycle of life. After wandering the museum for a while, we ate lunch and then went out shopping and exploring downtown and Paseo de Montejo. Shoji, Emily, Ash and I explored the Governor's Palace, walked around some side streets and then eventually decided to trek over to the WalMart on Paseo de Montejo. I know what you're thinking - a WalMart in Mexico, but it was exactly like any other Walmart, with the exception that (this is where the "wow" in the title of the post comes from) one is able to buy, over the counter many many "interesting" drugs, and also, boxes of syringes are just sitting on the shelves ...... yes ...... SYRINGES......if i remember correctly, a box of 3 was 9.80 pesos, which is about 90 cents USD ..... AH! Seeing that just blew my mind. And it still does ..... Ah well .... major cognitive dissonance going on over here :-p ...

Tomorrow, we are visiting another cenote and also some ruins at Dzibilchaltun. Charging up my camera and remembering my waterproof case and goggles this time :-P

Every day in culture class we learn the history of some aspect of Mexican/Mayan culture and have a hands-on type activity. Today, we learned the history of Panuchos, a traditional Yucatan dish, and also got to make them. Panuchos are corn tortillas that have beans inside, are then fried and topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, avocado, meat (usually chicken or turkey) and a slice of hard boiled egg. Traditionally, they were only the tortilla and beans topped with vegetables, but have now grown to include meat and egg. Me being the trouble maker I am, ate the TRADITIONAL version :-P I also had these about a week ago when we all went out to eat at a restaurant for lunch. So far, I have to say they are one of my favorite dishes here! Next to just about everything my host mother has made, although for the life of me I can't remember the names.

Also today, was our Spanish Grammar midterm. It really is kinda scary that we are already having a midterm, but in a way, cool as well. I can see how far I have come in such little time - I am now pretty confident with the preterite (past) tense and am alot more so with the imperfect and future. I have a very good teacher, Adrian, and although I am the only student in my class (I'm also with the Dawleys, and two other adults), he does a very good job at making sure we all understand and gives us practical ways to apply what we learn. Yesterday we spent a good chunk of class learning idioms/sayings and how they translate over into Spanish. We all had to think up commonly used expressions in English, and then he would help us translate them over into Spanish. It was interesting trying to explain the concept of a Catch-22, "A watched pot never boils" and "Don't count all your chickens before they hatch". It was quite fun the see how a two word idiomatic saying could get translated into an entire sentence. Want to learn how to say those in Spanish??
Catch-22 - "Hagas lo que hagas el problema ya no se resolvio"
A watched pot never boils - "El que espera, desespera"
Don't count your chickens before they hatch - "No te adelantes a los hechos"

And my personal favorite image created, was for one that Ellen thought up - It takes two to tango
"Tanto peca el que mata a la vaca como el que le agarra la pata"
    Translated literally, it says"The one who kills the cow sins as much as the one that holds its leg"
    Meaning: That it takes two people to kill a cow - one to hold it ("it's leg") and another to actually do the killing

Yesterday we went to CICY, the Botanical Gardens and research center in the North of the city. We went around and between getting eaten alive by bugs, identified many of the plant families on our taxonomy that we have to know for a quiz tomorrow. Besides being ravaged by insects, it was really interesting to be able to see many of the species up close, instead of only in a picture. (If all else fails, call it a palm :-P)

It's so weird to think that everyone will be going back to school on Sunday, and that at the end of that week, we'll have our Spanish finals and then it's into Tropical Bio and the Mayan course. Insanity. We were also all talking about scheduling today, and that we will have to do it while we are here, so to start thinking about what we are all going to want to take. Then it finally hit me that after this trip, I will officially be a junior and my college career will be halfway over ....... AAAAAAH. Oh well, still have about 2 and a half more months to worry about that :-p