Days 32–who knows: Ghosts

I really don't have time to be blogging, but it beats the essay that I REALLY need to be writing right now.

Updates:
Wednesday, we went on a midnight bike ride through the city with 350 Mexican hipsters.  That's right.  Every Wednesday night, they go on a different bike route for 3 hours.  I didn't want to do it but I'm glad I did.  Pics.  (Most of these I stole from Laura.)

All of us pro bicyclists. 

Saturday, we went to another cenote.  I was trying out some of my old diving skills but then I tried a one and a half summersault and, well . . . I didn't make it.  Apparently it looked way worse than it actually felt.  It barely even hurt.  Next cenote, I plan to try again.

We also were able to visit a lot of artisan shops that weekend.  We've been refraining from buying things from lots of vendors at the sites because a lot of human trafficking is going on.  I'll probably talk about that later, but anyway, we didn't have to worry about whether or not we were supporting human trafficking when buying from these guys.  It was also fun to talk to the craftsmen about what they do.

Herb shop.

This man showed us how he makes his jewelry.  Cool stuff.  He speaks a Mayan language and so was teaching us some words.  We've been learning a lot about the Mayan culture in our classes and its cool to be learning a few things in a Mayan language, because we're learning them through Spanish.  It's like Inception, I'm two levels away from my native language now.   Here he is singing us a song in Mayan.  He sang the song again for us in Spanish so we could understand what it was about.

And more ruins of course.

That big one was only just excavated in 2003.  We actually got to see some painted glyphs on the walls. There are a TON of pyramids around here yet to be excavated because of lack of funds.  They just look like big tree covered hills but we know they're not because hills aren't a part of the Yucatán's geography

Taken from the other side from on top of that tall pyramid.

Oh this week a few of us also went to visit a ghost town, Misnebalam.  I'm not sure if there were any ghosts, but if not, the mosquitoes there sure would have made me abandon the place.  Dang.  My favorite part was exploring the abandoned hacienda.  I could picture how beautiful it must have once been.  We played on the swing sets and see-saws, found the secret garden, and heard some ghost noises, which of course turned out to be rocks thrown by some of our boys.  (Bradley still doesn't know it was them and thinks he actually did hear a ghost.)

abandoned house

secret garden!

'Til later.