Second Week In Belize
Week two and we're feeling good.
We got straight back into digging on Monday, waking up at 5:15, having breakfast at 6:00, and getting to site at 7:00. We kept taking our unit down, and had lunch at Miss Juana's in Maya Mopan every day. After our long day at site, we came back to base and had lab, where we washed everything we found (mostly ceramics) and all had nice showers before a tasty dinner by Miss Elta.
There was a thunderstorm and the wifi was hit by lightning, so we didn't have any for about 5 days this week. A lot of people freaked out. Come on homies, it's Belize! There are so many other things to do, and so many other things to worry about, like how many bugs are eating the ever-loving heck out of my legs. I also had quite a bit of trouble sleeping, so I had a lot of midnight strolls looking for critters. I found about 20 tarantulas in the 'compound' we're staying in, and we have little frog friends that hang out outside our room.
The rest of the week was more of the same, except we had lectures instead of lab on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I also have been washing my own clothes, since I don't want to pay to have them washed, and I tried the Maya women way of washing clothes finally, going down to the river where they have set up big rock slabs, and scrubbing clothes on there. Just like these ladies.
On Friday, after lab and dinner, we watched another movie. This time it was a National Geographic documentary about the Crystal Skull and how it is fake. It was really interesting, I would definitely recommend it!
Saturday was beach day! Everyone was looking forward to it all week. We woke up early again, and drove to Placencia, the touristy beach town on the east coast of Belize. We got there around 9:30/10:00am and we all had the day to ourselves. It was overcast all day, but never rained too hard. We all wandered around, and I had some nice alone time wandering by myself. I stopped at a little shop and chatted with a Kekchi Maya girl who was manning her uncle's stall for about 45 minutes. We talked about everything from archaeology to religion to education. It was an awesome conversation and I bought one of her uncle's slate Maya calendar carvings. At noon, a bunch of us had lunch at a place called Wendy's. We all spent the afternoon at the beach.
We had dinner at a place called Barefoot Bar (right on the beach) and I had some tasty enchiladas. The original plan was to leave at 7:30, but Kristine had started throwing up at noon, and no one wanted to stay too much longer, so we all voted to drive back early. Good thing we did, too, because on the drive two others got sick as well. And it was all downhill from there. By the time the morning hit, every single person had gotten sick except for myself and one other student. Yikes!
The next morning, since everyone was sick and it was a rainy day, we cancelled our plans to visit some archaeology sites and just stayed at camp. I had so much energy, I had to go for some walks and do a little workout, and in the afternoon there was a class on how to draw artifacts.
All in all, it was a great week, and it was kind of nice to end on a chill note.
'Aastoj samal (?) I'm not sure about the spelling, but it means 'see you tomorrow' in Maya Mopan. Bye!
