Blogging is like laundry, the longer you put it off, the more you have to do and it gets to the point where you don't want to do it. But unlike laundry, you don't have to be naked when you don't blog for a while. Thank goodness.
Speaking of being naked....just kidding, Mom. But really, clothes here become your worst enemy. It is just so hot you don't want to do anything or wear anything. But I'm not a total weirdie, so I still wear clothes. The hottest I've ever felt in my life was not this weekend, but the week before when we went to Chichén Itzá. There was not a cloud in the sky, and we were there at noon day so finding trees to hull under was just a big joke. We were there for 3 hours and everyone drank all their water in the first hour so it got real rough near the end. The sun just poses a problem in general for me. If I'm out longer than fifteen minutes, unless I'm wearing my trusty SPF 70 sunscreen, I will get sunburned. But it also poses a problem when you are just continuously sweating off any sunscreen you put on. Every fifteen or twenty minutes I would use my shirt and wipe my face, arms and chest off so I could reapply.
Chichén was a crazy experience, other than being ridiculously hot, there were some other things that caused me to think how I really felt about the experience. When I first got there, I was just so stoked about the whole thing. I mean, this is one of the main reasons I came on the study abroad it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see one of the "new" seven wonders of the world.
First hiccup. New? Isn't the point of the seven wonders of the world to be kind of, oh what's the word, wonderful? We're going to take the seven coolest things we could find, but don't worry, you'll have your turn too. Why not just have a or magazine, or TV show or movie devoted to all the cool things of the world? Oh wait, that's what National Geographic and Discovery Channel and Planet Earth are for. Why choose 7, then change them? I guess I had just never really thought about that before.
Secondly. There were workers on the temple givin it a little touch ups. It was so weird to see and we were talking with our professor about it and he was explaining that everything on the temple was reconstructed. It's not even the original! The Mona Lisa was destroyed, we have Bob Ross' version instead, puzzle edition. What are the criteria to be a Seven Wonder of the World, anyway? I keep thinking the big deal about these ruins is that they've stood for thousands of years, but no. They have all been reconstructed using the original stones and glyphs according to the records they have. Meaning if it's not explicitly detailed in the record, they don't reconstruct it. So it is exactly as it would have been in the ancient days, but it's still reconstructed. The ironic thing is the people working on the temple were most likely Mayan....I'll let that one simmer for a while.
Thirdly. It was a hay day for street vendors. I assumed there would be street vendors, but on the street, not within the archaeological site. But come to find out (to the best of my understanding at least) the property is not owned by the Mexican government, but privately by a family. So I'm guessing they don't really regulate the "Hand Made Crafts" that are sold there (Hecho en China was printed on almost every one of those dang crafts). It just made it worse that earlier in the trip in my Mayan Culture class we had a professor talk to us for a bit on human trafficking and how it is a real thing and at places like Chichén if you see little children walking around selling goods, most likely the people they report to are not their parents but someone that has contracted them to sell these crafts each day to earn enough money to take back to their parents. He advised us to not buy from them because in a way we are in turn supporting human trafficking.
Now look at all the cool stuff I did so I could take pictures and make everyone see how cool I am.
One of these things is not like the others.
Just makin some friends in the biggest ball court in Mesoamerica.
Something famous? Someone take a picture of me doing a cartwheel in front of it.
I don't know exactly what I was expecting to get out of that trip, maybe get more in touch with my Mayan side. You know, feel closer to my ancestors. Maybe I was expecting to want to become an archaeologist. Booooring. But none of my expectations were met. I'm not saying at all that I didn't love the experience, I just learned different things than I was expecting. Which I kind of love in and of itself. I love having to search for a lesson. When it's not laid out in front of you, you have to stop and look around, stop talking and just listen. Maybe there's something better than you ever thought. I didn't learn a whole lot of profound life changing things, but I still learned something. Bring 2 water bottles. Parasols don't look so dumb anymore. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.* Tourism is a huge market all around the world. Always bring cookies. Tourists are attracted to shiny objects, kind of like kittens. I'm not good at taking pictures, so I just leave that up to everyone else.
*One profound thing I learned, I had already learned from Ferris Bueller.
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