A little bit of history

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Tonight I am sitting at home, having a very relaxing night, but am incredibly excited. Tomarrow Mish and I will go to Belize City to pick my mom and Scotty up from the airport! I am thrilled to be able to share my new home with them; to show them the culture, the food, the amazing water, and amazing people. The only sad thing about them coming, is that it means that Mish will be leaving me in only a few days. I cant believe how fast the last two weeks she has been here has flown by! We did manage to do a lot of things though.
Last weekend the four of us ventured into guatemala with the ancient mayan site of Tikal as our destination. It started out early on saturday morning at the bus station once again. We bused to the boarder town, and taxied to the boarder. Our taxi man friend told us that he had a pal on the other side who took people to Tikal all the time, and would drive us up there, wait for us, and then drive us back. Sure enough, once we made it to the other side of the boarder, his guatemalan taxi friend was there waiting for us. It may sound like we travelled in style by taking a taxi the whole two hour drive to tikal, but the fact that there were no buses, and the taxi only cost us $15 each, it was pretty doable. The drive up was fairly entertaining in itself, as he only spoke little english, and we only spoke little spanish. Needless to say, it was a great opportunity for me to put some of my spanish class knowledge to use! With short, broken phrases and chicken noises, we managed to communicate pretty good.
Once we got to Tikal we checked into a hotel, which was pretty high class for a low price in itself, and then headed into the park. We were all instantly in awe with the wild turkies, strange rodents, beautiful birds, and monkey noises coming from the overgrown, lush forest. This park is huge, and has dozens upon dozens of temples and other structures. When we first came upon some of the smaller buildings and what not, I was already blown away. The architecture was amazing, and no matter how many mayan sites I visit, I still cannot wrap my head around how it was done. After a few hours of mosying through the park, we came upon "downtown Tikal". To paint a little picture...To my left is a 200m high temple, to my right is another 200m high temple, behind me is the acropolis sturcutre, and in frount of me is another huge sacred structure. Along with this, there are also several sacrificial sites and monuments, and huge faces carved into the sacred structures. As if this isnt enough, there are monkies hooting and holering all around you, and when you stand in the centre of the place I just described, and clap your hands, to hear a strange and loud duck-like noise. We had to sit there for a good half an hour just to take this all in.
The next morning I woke early to the jaguar, monkey, and dozens and dozens of differnt bird calls that were coming from the jungle, just outside hour hotel door. After a delicious breakfast, we went back into the park and jungle to finish taking in the incredible mayan history. Then, when it came time, our friendly taxi man was waiting for us by our hotel to take us back to the Belize-Guatemala boarder. On the way back, we stopped on the side of the road by another parked car, and mr.taxi man got out of the car to speak to the man. We all started to wonder what was going on, but after a minute or two, he got back in the car and brought us back to the boarder. Turns out the man he stopped to talk to was his brother, and he told him to pick up a bag of Tamales for us to try from their family run tamale-making business. I wasn't a tamale person before this, but this experince totally changed this for me. Tamales, if you dont know, are a chicken filled, burrito-like but not really contraption, with a weird almost soggy-like texture. They are wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked, and incredibly tasty and spicy! The whole situation along with the amazing taste of the tamale made this a moment I will never forget.
After this, it was back to Belmopan, and another week of school... Which seemed to fly by just as every other week. This morning (friday) we went to the market as we de every friday. i spotted a big box of baby chicks at one of the vendors, and we all immediatly decided that we absolutly have to buy some of these for Granny P. Granny P's one dream she has told us about, is to have 100 chickens before she dies. A month and a half ago she had about six chickens, but the other day when we went to see her, she had only two and one baby chick. Just knowing that a couple baby chicks would brighten Granny P's day and help her achieve her dream, made this simple purchase of a couple chicks the best one of my trip so far.

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