Cancun and the Ruins

Wednesday, May 11, Troy and I flew to Cancun.  (Getting my passport was quite an adventure, let me say... so I won't tell that story, only if you don't have one, get it now!)  Cancun is located in the Yucatan Pennisula in southern Mexico on the Gulf side.  It is a larger city than I imagined, larger than Cabo.  Again, most of the Mexicans speak at least a little English, but Troy chose to speak Espanol to EVERYONE!  So I brushed up on my Spanish so that I could follow along with the conversations.  Troy is such a good missionary.  After some getting to know you questions, he would tell the Mexican that he had 6 kids.  They would reply, "Oohh... you Mexican Hombre!  hahahah..."  They thought this was pretty funny, because in the last generation of Mexicans, they all had large familias.  This is not the case anymore.  I tried to make to joke that it was the Catholics and the Mormons that had large families, but they didn't get it.  They figured they had large families because they were Mexican (although most we talked to were also Catholic... go figure.)  Anyway, this would lead Troy to tell them we were Mormones and how we feel about families.  Lots of questions would follow.  Troy would now like to serve our mission in Mexico.

Thursday the 12th, we took a tour bus to Chichen Itza, one of the new seven wonders of the world.  This place is fascinating.  You MUST visit it!  The newer part of Chichen Itza dates 500 A.D. to 1000 A.D.  The structure below was built around 900 AD by the Mayans.  This structure houses another smaller structure.  The larger one represents the 365 day solar calendar and was built to remind the Mayans of the Spring and Autumn Equinox dates by mathematically structuring it so that a snake can be visible in the shadows of the sides on those two particular days.  REALLY.  The building inside, which we couldn't see was built to represent the 260 day lunar calendar.  Although it is referred to as a Mayan Pyramid, it is in fact, not a pyramid.  It has 4 sides, 9 levels and no telling how many steps.

The older part of Chichen Itza dates from 200 BC to 500 AD.  The pictures below are from older Chichen Itza.  Those ruins/buildings are incredible to me, because they were around during the time the Book of Mormon takes place.  In that book, you read about the cities, the roads, the trades and then you see this archeological site and then you truly understand.  These people were amazing...

Possibly an observatory...

Archeologists believe this was a church

The Mayans have a word that literally translated means "a white man coming down from the sky surrounded by light."  This image depicts a man surrounded by rays of light. (The arch around him represents the rays of light.)

Either a baptistry... or a bath in the middle of the city

As you can see from these pictures, this was a large city!  The Archeologists have uncovered 60 acres of buildings, roads and other structures in this site alone.  They have also uncovered 80 miles of road near here... 

 Here is a photo of Troy and I on vacation!  See how white we are!  Everyday it was 90 degrees and very humid.  Behind us is a Ceynote (see-no-tay).  One of hundreds of entrances to underground rivers that flow to the see.  You can swim in them and if you are a good diver, you could dive in them.  This one didn't look appealing, so we didn't go in.  We went here the same day as the ruins tour.  By the way, we learned that:
     The Mayans don't believe that the world will end in 2012.  They stopped the calendar there, because they believed that every 7000-something years (I don't remember the exact number) all of humanity changes.  So on December whatever, 2012, that date will end the period we are currently in and humanity will change.  So we won't all die and the earth won't end...  just some event will signal the change of humanity.  (And perhaps humanity has already begun to change -- my opinion here --  Think how fare the world has strayed from God in the past 40 years...)
Also we learned that:  When Spain conquered Mexico in the 1500's and on through the 1800's, hundreds of these Mayan and Aztechan villages and cities were demolished, because the Spainards/Catholics thought they represented evil.  Sad to lose that much evidence of flourishing cities in this continent from 600 BC to 400 AD.
Day 3:  Friday.  We had to do our timeshare presentation.  an hour and a half, listening to a desparate Time Share sales man tell us about this "one time" deal and for $9000, we could come vacation at the OMNI hotel for one week a year for 30 years.  Of course we told him "NO."  However, because we listened, we stayed in that hotel for 6 nights and 8 days, with breakfast, lunch and dinner included for (hold your hats...) $432.00.  That's it.  All our meals, a nice room, a nice gym,  pool, towels, snacks, shows, the ocean, boogie boards...Not too bad.  After the time share, Troy went snorkeling and I went to the gym to run (it was too hot outside!)  Then we sat on the beach, ate Sushi (as part of our package), swam in the pool and ate dinner.
Day 4:  Saturday was a trip to Xcaret (esh-caw-ret).  This is the eco version of a Mexican theme park.  We arrived, put on our swimsuits and entered an underground river, where we swam/snorkeled for about a mile (took an hour) through caves almost to the ocean.  It was beautiful and sometimes a little frightening (dark, claustrophobic).  Towards the end, there were many colorful fish to see.  The park included some more ruins that dated from 200 BC to 500 AD, but none as "whole" as the ones at Chichen Itza.  Xcaret had a bird hatchery, where they raised baby Scarlet McCaws and Green Parrots with red or yellow or blue and flamingos.  They had a replica Mayan village.  A botanical garden (a bit boring). A really great Mexican restraunt with a horse show.  The evening ended with a Mayan show that took us through the Mexican time-line as they knew it.  (It was REALLY GOOD!  Better than the PCC in Hawaii)  They demonstrated an ancient Mayan ball game.  By the way, all the ruins that are found throughout Mexico and Guatamala have these ball courts:

Notice the ring at the center top of the wall...

Again, amazing stuff to think about...  They all had similar courts and depictions of the games were carved on the walls.  They show also demonstrated another ancient Mayan game played with sticks and a flaming fire ball.  Lots of music and costumes, showed how when the Spainards conquered Mexico, they brought Catholism and civilized the nation.  Very well done show.

A cool carving of Jesus found in the Mayan village

A Cheetah (and a jaguar behind it)

At the Xcaret beach

A ruin at Xcaret.  Steps were so narrow, I didn't dare go up...

Day 5:  Sunday.  We took a taxi to the church.  We assumed church would start at 9.  It didn't start til 10.  Here is the thing.  In the U.S., our church buildings are nice, big, cozy comfortable.  Warm in the winter.  Cool in the summer.  Our pews are cushioned.  We have air conditioning.  In Spokane, we rarely have 90 degree Sundays, but we have A/C in our buildings.  In Cancun, the church building was of the older style of L.D.S. church buildings (probably built in the 70's).  The benches were truly the MOST uncomfortable benches I've ever sat on.  TRULY! Hard wood, and they didn't even sit up straight.  They kind of angled in.  And NO A/C.  It was 85 and humid out and there is NO A/C.  The chapel was cooled with fans.  Americans:  STOP YOUR WHINING!!!  In Cancun, the chapel was filled and the overflow opened.  People came despite the hard benches and the heat.  And I truly doubt they complain. 


Day 6:  Time to go home.  I got up this morning and walked about 2 miles on the beach, collecting seashells.  Then I swam for a while, then we had breakfast.  We headed for the airport about 11 am.  Great vacation in Mexico.  Come home to Spokane, where the temperature was 43 degrees...

Come In and Sit ASpell

The thing I miss most about Kentucky is the language.  Oh, I can still speak it.  The moment I hear someone speaking it (even if it is in my own head), it all comes back to me and the words flow out of me in true Kentucky drawl.  My kids think it is funny.  They think I'm making it up.  They don't understand how that  kind of talking can just be inside of me.  Researchers think that the Appalachian Mountain talk is disappearing.  They say that with better education and the influence of  television and radio Mountain talk will disappear all together.

I always tell people I'm bi-lingual.  I was raised by a Californian mother, who spoke proper English and by a Kentucky Hillbilly father who spoke, well... Mountain English.  I can speak both.  My husband couldn't even understand my dad when he first met him. "What he say?", he'd keep asking...

My grandma Witt raised my dad in Clover Bottom, Jackson county.  She used words like "Day Law" when you'd tell her about gettin' straight A's, or when she realized how much you'd grown in a week.  And words like "a'fixin'" and "fla'r" and "quar" "chillan" "dreckly" and of course, "come in and rest aspel".  My dad used words like rat, y'all, holler and "givin' me the deadset".

I delivered the Richmond Daily Register in Richmond, Kentucky from the time I was 10 until I was 16.  I had two different routes during that time period, the first about 2 miles through Norwood to BellevueTerrace (the projects) and back to Main Street.  That route including the poorest of poor and the wealthy widows.  Mrs. Burnam was my favorite.  Her mansion was huge and red and reminded me of a castle.  Her yard was gated with a circle driveway.  She would always have lemonaid for me on collection day.  Inside her home, the ceilings were high and she had an seat lift on the staircase because she was too old to walk up the stairs.  She had a gardner and a servant, but other than that, I never knew if she had any other family.  Her yard was beautiful.  Why did I never know anymore about her?  Sometimes my dad would load up a wagon of vegetables from his garden for me to drag along behind me to give to the people who lived in the projects.  They'd come out of their homes to take a bag of tomatoes or 4 to 6 ears of corn or some cucumbers. (Did I mention how well a garden grows in Kentucky?) They'd speak the language and we were all the same despite our upbringing or our homes or our circumstances.  I wish I knew more about them now.

The other was Willis Manor.  Willis Manor was a 5 story home for old folks.  I would ride the elevator to the top floor and race down the hallways, dropping papers in front of nearly every door, flying down the stairs to the next floor.  Fifteen minutes, tops.  But my fondest memories of that route are the people, whose names are long since forgotten, but were the old people of the Kentucky Hills. 

One day, I knocked on a new customers door.  She about fainted dead away when she saw me.  I had never seen her before, but she look at me as if she'd seen a ghost.  She invited me in and started asking about me.  Who was my daddy?  Who was his daddy and so on...  Turns out, she used to babysit for my great grandmother Fannie Minter Collier around McKee, Jackson County, Kentucky.  And, aparently, I looked just like my great grandmother.

It seems as if I have digressed.  But I can't help but think of these amazing mountain people and aristrocrats of Kentucky when I think of the language.  The way we referred to "catty corners" and "backer" and "carn", "aigs" and "malk" and "I was aimin' to" and "what fer?".  That's what I miss.  Hearing the talk, soaking it in, living it, breathing it.  Something to be proud of, even if the rest of the country found it backwards... It was who we were and slowly began to define who we would become.