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Published: March 9th 2011
When we were in Roatan Honduras where it is burning hot, it was freezing cold and snowing in Lake Tahoe where my mom was staying in our house. There was 5 feet of snow so my dad and I decided to go home for a month to shovel snow and so I could do an early birthday party with my friends. But when we came home to shovel there was no snow. So when we were there, there wasn't snow but when we weren't there it was snowing. It was like we were a good luck charm that made the snow stop snowing. When we were there I went in to my class to do a presentation on the Panama Canal. Other than playing with my friends and having my birthday party 30 days early I didn't do too much. After our month stay was up we decided to go to Guatemala where we would do a Spanish school. Once we left Lake Tahoe it started snowing again which I thought was weird. We flew into Guatemala City and almost missed our connection in Houston because the plane we arrived on was late. When we got to Guatemala City we went
to a hotel. The next day we got up pretty early to take a taxi ride to Antigua. When we were in Antigua my dad got sick because of the airline food and wasn't better until we went on the longest bumpiest bus ride in the world. We started out this amazingly long bus ride by getting up at 8 in the morning and catching the bus. Since we were in Central America everything was 15 minutes to a half an hour late. When we did get picked up and everyone was settled we had to wait another half an hour for the guy to change his tires. When we finally got moving the streets were so bumpy that every minute you would be jumping off your seat because of the bumps. After we got out of the town the roads were paved because it was a highway but it was still bumpy. When we got to San Pedro it was nice to stretch my legs because we were cramped up in that tiny bus. First we went to go get internet. Then we tried to find a hotel; which we did. And after that we rested a bit we
went out to look for the Spanish school we were going to start on Monday and end on Friday. After we passed the place maybe 5 times we found it. When we did, we checked in so we didn't have to do it on Monday. The next day we got another hotel because the one we were in was really noisy and the new one we got had free kayaks which we used that day and we saw a mountain called Indian Nose that looked like a face of someone looking up into the sky. After we got back from the kayak we played Rummikub (a birthday present from my parents). That night I got sick and I wasn't able to go in the morning session of the Spanish class but I was better by the afternoon session. In the Spanish school you pretty much just went to a little palapa and a teacher would talk to you in Spanish. Since that week was the schools 15th anniversary they had a party at five every night and that night's party there was a pinata and cake which was fun. After that we went to our host family that we were
staying at and she was a really good cook. The next day we just went to class and did all sorts of games for the party after class. In one of the games you would pick a name of a fruit in Spanish. Then they would call you by the fruit name and tell you to switch seats. They would always take a chair out of the circle each time someone one would have to stay in the middle. After that there was supposed to be a bonfire were we roasted marshmallows but it started raining so we had to stop. After that we went to the host family and had a good dinner and then we played Uno with Caterine (Caterine was another person staying in the house), my dad, and Tully (Tully was the daughter of the host family). Tully won then we went to bed and did our Spanish homework. The rest of the week just went on like that, my dad and I going to class then going to do internet so I could do my other school work. And then at night going to the party. Then we would go eat dinner at Leti's house
and we might play Uno and all the games I played I couldn't win. The week went on and when it got to Friday everyone who was leaving the school could do a speech. You didn't have to, so me and my dad chose not to because we didn't know enough Spanish. Then we went back to Leti's house one last night before we left to have dinner and get our stuff and then leave in the morning. After we were ready to go in the morning we started walking to the bus station. When we got on the bus to Antigua it wasn't that full but it was a small bus. We had to do the same bus ride that we came in on but this time we were leaving not coming in. When we finally got to Antigua it was a Saturday so all the hotels were full except one and that was the one we were staying at. The next morning (or you could call it this night) at 3:30 am we got on a bus to go to Copan, Honduras. That bus had no room left on it and there was so many people that there
wasn't an inch of space in the whole bus. And the bus ride was going to take 6 hours (not counting the extra half an hour we were going to be late). And I couldn't sleep the whole way because I couldn't lie down. When we finally got to Copan, we found a hotel and went to sleep!!! After we were all rested up we went looking for the Mayan ruins. The Mayan's were like the native Americans in the US except they lived in Central America. Mayan's of Honduras and a lot of the other tribes were devoted to building tall sculptures of kings, serpents and temples. When every they captured prisoners in a battle the priest would sacrifice the prisoner to there god by rolling them up into a ball and rolling the down the stairs of the tallest pyramid and into a pool filled with 2 live alligator and the Mayans didn't feed the alligators anything other than the prisoners so the alligators were always very hungry. They played a game of ball were 3 to 4 people tried to through a heavy ball at a statues eye and the first team to hit the statues eye
certain number of times won and the captain of the losing team would be sacrificed to the god and the captain of the winning team would get jade and other valued materials not gold or silver because in that time only the Incas had gold. The Mayans were smart in there time because they were the first to figure out that the sun was the center of the universe and they discovered Venus Jupiter and Mercury 700 years before Galileo looked into the telescope. After we fond it we went back to our hotel and rested and I did a little school work. The next day we went to the Mayan ruins of there temples pyramids and statues in honor of their god and king. There were statues of the 16 kings of Copan and statues of demeans and monsters like the 2 headed giant serpent. We started out the tour by our guide explaining where the temples were and other stuff like that. Then he showed us a mound was the house of a medium class Mayan that had collapsed then we saw a statue of a monkey head. Then we went into the center which was like a
town square to the Mayans where the Mayans would sell their crops and such. Our guide showed us a statue of one of the 16 kings and the Mayans made the statue so that there were 2 sides on one side there was the king looking very young and he is facing the rising sun on the other side he looks very old and he is facing the setting sun. Then we went to the ball court. When we were there are guide told us all about the ball court. Then we went to the foot of one of the largest temples and just beneath the temple archeologists found the king Eighteen Rabbit and his tomb. When the archeologists first found this temple it just looked like a huge hill but when they got closer they found out that it was a huge pyramid but all the stone blocks were out of place so they had to put it back together. After that he took us to the astronomy tower and if you looked at the sky from the foot of that temple it looked like the sky was really close to you then we went on top of the
tower and we saw the whole city. Then we went to where one of the kings would make announcements to the city. Then we walked to a place where they found another tomb but there was nobody in it and archeologists think that the king that it was for was the king just before the Mayans vanished so that nobody could put the king in his tomb. Then we went to the last part of the city that was uncovered. The part where only the rich people lived. Then we went to the museum and saw some cool stuff nothing to special though. Then the next day we went to the bus station and went to pick my mom up and then fly to Roatan. Stay tuned for Belize and Mexico.
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Renae & Dave
non-member comment
Great Blog
Andrew, You are doing a wonderful job writing your blog! Plus, you are having an amazing adventure and we enjoy reading about it. We are still in Panama and just returned from Bahia Pinas and the Perlas Islands. Great fishing at Pinas! We caught many dorado. We will be heading south to Ecuador in a week. We will be taking a cruise to the Galapagos in April. Fondly, Renae & Dave (BELLA)