Day Fifty-Two, Antigua

Monday the 17th of October was the first day of our new classes! At 9am we start with the history of Mesoamerican Archaeology, then at 11am we have Hieroglyphic writing, both with Professor David Stuart. I have been looking forward o these classes from the moment I heard about them, so I was pumped for the beginning of class!
In the first class we did a quick hour and a half overview of the history of Archaeology broken down in a very (very!) generalized timeline of Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Teotihuacan, Mixtec, Toltec, and Mexica (Aztec). As we went over the loose time periods of the different ethnic groups we also got an introduction to some of the names of the archaeologists who work(ed) with these different groups; also a generalized timeline. We also discussed some of the terminology of the time periods and the groups of people.
In hieroglyphics class we looked at a general history of writing systems and the ways that they manifest. There are generally three types of writing systems: logographic (symbols which mean whole words. Ex: Chinese), syllabic (symbols which represent consonant-vowel sounds. Ex: Cherokee), and alphabetic (symbols for consonants and vowels. Ex: English). The interesting thing about Mayan hieroglyphics is that there are both logographic symbols AND syllabic, which made it very hard to decipher for a long time.

My written decipherment

At the end of class we did our first decipherment as a class of the hieroglyphs for "His bone, Holy Tikal Lord" which are incised on the surface of a bone instrument found in Tikal in the 1960s. We are going to do decipherments every class as a group and soon we will also be doing them for homework. We are all suppose to get a new notebook specifically for our hieroglyphic decipherments so that we can keep track of them, so after class I went to the store and got myself a small note book to work in.

After lunch I did some studying for Spanish class, then went there early to have my Spanish teacher go over my workbook and correct the activities I have been doing on my own time in the hopes of bettering my Spanish. Class was difficult again, and I am getting very discouraged, but my work in my work book is getting better and I am hoping it will help me make the final push to comprehending the work in the class better.
I spent time with the girls from my home stay and we are very much enjoying each others company; another girl also arrived and is in the room next to mine. We are all learning Spanish, but I have been doing it the most so I have become the go to person for translating and communicating with our host, Olga, which is also helping my Spanish a lot.