March 21 - Day 6

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Today we slowly woke, tired from our days of hard work, getting to sleep in a little later than usual, however today was going to be a jam-packed day! After breakfast and once all the dishes had been washed, we set off for a tour of ancient Mayan ruins! Our tour guide was a Mayan spiritual leader which made our tour an amazing learning experience for us! Learning about the ruins and the culture was so interesting and we learned so much! Our tour guide didn’t speak English so Susan, our tour leader, translated everything for us. We saw where the Mayans played a special kind of four on four “football” with their hips, heads, knees, and elbows! This game was a spiritual game, based largely upon the energy of the players, having to have good energy in order to do well in the game. We learned that there was about 150 thousand Mayans who lived in the area, but only 30 government figures would have lived in the place that we visited. We also learned that they place was only rediscovered forty years ago, the excavations took about ten years to complete, and it was originally built and inhabited in the twelve hundreds! We visited the ruins on a very special day, as it was the spring equinox, where there is equal daylight and night. This also meant that there was a special Mayan ceremony taking place in order to celebrate this special day!

After our wonderful morning at the ruins, it was time to head back to Projecto Somos! We got back just before lunch and immediately started our work, doing jobs such as oiling bamboo, so it will be ready to use for the playground that we’re building!

Lunch today was borscht, sandwiches, and carrot loaf! It was healthy and so delicious!

After lunch it was back to work, working on oiling and sanding bamboo, sanding other wood, making the bathroom walls of the community center out of eco-bricks (plastic water, pop, and juice bottles stuffed and packed hard with soft plastic garbage such as granola bar wrappers), working in the kitchen, and continuing to dig the hole for the three meter by ten meter hole (I believe) for the septic tank that had been worked on since the very first day of work! And guess what?!?! They finished it today just as it started to rain! Soon there was a complete and utter downpour, a spring rainstorm, heading into the wet session that starts in April here. The storm made the rain at home look silly, like a joke! Soon everyone was dancing and running through the rain! However, it became very heavy, at which point we came inside and played charades, waiting for the rain to stop, but the busses came to pick us up to take us to the house before it stopped.

After a delicious dinner of beans, rice, and salad, we had a group meeting, then went to the local grocery store, and local coffee shop again! Almost everyone who went ordered a “crepe nutella” also known as a nutella crepe back home. They are delicious!

After our time in the coffee shop, we walked home and had another group meeting, debriefing our time here so far. We talked about how children here seemed much more mature than children at home. We also talked about how for the most part the people who live here seem to be very happy and enjoy what they have. Furthermore, we talked about the fact that when people go on service trips, many expect the people who live in the area to be sad or feel sorry for themselves. The contrary is actually true. The truth is the people here generally seem genuinely happy and thankful for what they have, so when we go home, we won’t be grateful that we seemingly have so much and they seemingly have little or less than us; we will remember to always be grateful for what we have because they are grateful for what they have. All in all, today was an excellent, eventful, amazing, wonderful day.

Quotes of the Day:

“DIFD!”

“Wat?”

“I got the stuff!”

“Hallo? You dare?”

“Mine are the leopard print ones!”

“Buenas nachos!”

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