Catch-up: October 21st-October 31st

So I got behind in my posts on this blog during the last week of my first two classes and because of limited internet access it has become very difficult to get caught up. So! here is my solution: here is one long post which will incorporate ten days worth of information, October 21st through today October 31st.

Oct. 21st:
I created a large maps so that I could practice for our map quiz on Monday. I also hung out with Leslie, another Casa Herrera student, and I invited myself on her trip with some friends to Monterrico for the weekend. at night I color coded and mapped out my poster map for studying.

Oct. 22nd:
Three people from Casa Herrera, two Icelanders, a Dutch gentleman, and I all took a shuttle and boat to Monterrico, the black sand beaches on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. We stayed in a hostel called Delphin and spent a good amount of the day lounging in hammocks and swimming in the very aggressive ocean. We also visited a turtle sanctuary where they take care of turtle eggs and help the babies get to the ocean. I had a fantastic time enjoying relaxing for the day (other than the trying not to drown part).

Boat ride to Monterrico

Oct. 23rd:
Sunday was our second and last day in Monterrico, and we spent the majority of the day in the water, though I didn't stay in as long as everyone else. We chilled and enjoyed ourselves and I got a bit of a tan! We got back to Antigua around 5, and I headed home to study up for the map quiz in the morning.

Oct. 24th:
Had both classes. Archaeology: map quiz, Olmec-sacred landscape, San Lorenzo, "mother culture" or "sister culture"?, cave paintings in Oxtotitlan, and La Mojarro Stela. Hieroglyphics: the several variations of the name K'inich Janab Pakal. Due to the cruelty of a malicious pie, I got food poisoning before Spanish class and had to spend the evening at my home stay.

Oct. 25th:
Archaeology: Kaminaljuyu- right in the middle of Guatemala City, we discussed the site to prepare for our field trip to the site on Wednesday. We started with Monte Alban, San Jose Magote, and El Baul to get us ready for our discussions of Kaminaljuyu. Hieroglyphics: We discussed the 260-day and 365-day calendar systems in class, but we did not have time to get into discussion of the Long Count Calendar as of yet. 


Oct. 26th:
We went on a field trip to Kaminaljuyu and got a special tour of the site from the archaeologist who is currently working there. We got to go down into some of the tunnels in the temples and we got to go into the lab and look at some of the artifacts that they have from the site. In the afternoon we had Spanish class and took a quiz, which actually was ok... surprisingly.

Kaminaljuyu

Oct. 27th:
Thursday Prof. Stuart left to go back to Austin, so we had our TA Edwin and a grad student working with Edwin named Nick, teach our two classes. Edwin told us about the site that he and Nick are working at, El Zotz, and Nick gave us an intro to the Long Count Calender and did an overview of the glyphs from the sites around and at El Zotz. We also got a tour of the place where they do some of their work and I talked to Nick about working with them. After lunch I spent four hours working with Nick, which was monotonous and wonderful! I had an amazing time and I am so glad I have this opportunity!

Oct. 28th:
On Friday I spent the day getting some chores done around Antigua and also prepared for my birthday present to myself for Saturday. I also worked on research for our first paper in Archaeology on Teotihuacan.

Oct.29th:
My first piece in my Maya Portfolio, Self-Portrait #1, is very important for me and for a long time I have wanted my original figure, whom I call my spirit guide, tattooed on to my leg, and so, here, in the place where it all began, I am getting the tattoo for my birthday, which is also the date 1 Imix in the 260-day calendar, which is a variation on my Mayan name, Naab', both meaning "Waterlily," (my name "Susan" derives from the Hebrew for "Lily"). I got the tattoo on my right leg, corresponding to my right, dominate hand. The tattoo is a terracotta color and looks amazing. I am very satisfied with it at this point in time, though I believe when it is healed I am going to have some details added to bring it closer to the original drawing.

Right back leg

Oct. 30th:
I spent this day finishing up some chores, working on my paper, and attending the completion of my friends tattoo for her birthday which was this day. I didn't stay with her for very long, and I spent the evening working on my paper due on Monday.

Oct. 31st:
Happy Halloween!! Monday classes, and paper due! and this evening is horror movie night at the Casa! We are also celebrating both mine and Annie's birthdays during the break between classes. Spanish this afternoon!

Day Fifty-Five, Antigua

On Thursday the 20th we learned about the "early formative" period in Mesoamerica. The transition of cultures from archaic to formative includes the domestication of crops and a switch from hunter-gatherer communities to agricultural populations. We discussed what was needed to transition people into sedentary groups; there is a conundrum, does agriculture lead to sedentism or does sedentism lead to agriculture? Some of the necessary materials that helped transition the people of Mesoamerica to sedentism were: corn, beans and squash, tools made of stone and obsidian, the invent of ceramics, and jade, all of which would have lead to the separation of "classes" of people; who has it and who doesn't. The development of religion would have influenced the progression of community structures as well, with the furthering of class differentiation taking place as religious figure heads (ex, priests and kings) would come into greater power in the community.
In hieroglyphics class we talked about variation in glyph design and some of the important people in the field of glyph studies. We talked about Morley, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and Ian Graham.

Day Fifty-Four, Antigua

On Wednesday in archaeology we started in on the details of the history of archaeology. We started with an over view of the "late post-classic" period of Mesoamerica and some of the sites that were up and running during the time of the Spanish conquest: Tulum, Tenochtitlan, Iximche, and a small touch on Nohpeten. During the 1600s Mesoamerica was kind of a no-mans land in regards to archaeological information; no one was building/creating new things, and no one was looking/finding the old things. In 1790 a large monument of the Aztec deity named Coatlicue was found in Mexico city long with the famous "Aztec Calendar Stone" or "Sun Stone." During that time no one alive knew anything about these things and they became quiet famous and people were fascinated by them, so instead of destroying them, like what had happened during and after the conquest, they were set in places of importance. This was the first "archaeology" in Mesoamerica.

In hieroglyphics class we watched the long form version of "Cracking the Maya Code" a fantastic documentary based off of Michael Coe's book about how archaeologist were finally able to decipher Maya script. I have seen the short version of the film several times, but this version had a lot more information and explained things a lot clearer and in more detail. The film was a wonderful introduction to understanding where scholars are in the decipherment and what is happening in that field of research. I would recommend the film to everyone who has even the slightest interest in anything Maya.

After lunch I headed over to Spanish early to go over more of my Spanish workbook and try to get me up to speed with the class. Class was ok, but I am still very behind and very uncomfortable in the class. When I got home I did more work in my workbook and did some more readings, but I am feeling fairly discouraged with the Spanish class as it is going now.

Day Fifty-Three, Antigua

On Tuesday the 18th of October we continued our look at the general history of Mesoamerican Archaeology to prepare us for delving into the details later. We talked about some of the more important sites in Mesoamerica and there influences on other sites. A lot of the first two days was more of a quick review for me, since I have taken classes on this before, and with our first readings in Susan Evans book it is very much an introduction.
In hieroglyphics class we started by comparing iconography and writing systems in Mesoamerica and Prof. Stuart emphasized that, to understand one you really have to study both. We sort of continued our look at the overview of the history of archaeology in this class, because it is all so tied together in these cultures. We looked at Ian Graham in particular, a "crazy English guy" who would go where no one else would in the dense jungles Mesoamerica and photograph the architecture and details of the sculptures, particularly the hieroglyphic scripts. from our discussion of Ian Graham we seguade into his "rediscovery" of El Mirador, and how that has led to the work that is being done there now. What was really very cool was when Prof. Stuart showed us that you can actually see the "super-highway" of El Mirador from Google maps!
At the end of class we did our second decipherment of the hieroglyphics on a sculpture of a dog from Tonina, which say "his dog" to the amusement of the class. But it is important to say that the Maya seemed to love to label all of there possessions, maybe to show status or to keep someone else from using their stuff, everything was labeled, from a bone instrument, to a cup, to a portrait of some mans favorite pet.

View of Antigua from Cerro de la Cruz

After classes I went back to my home stay for lunch. After two weeks of crazy rain storms here in Guatemala, which have done some serious damage to some of the small towns and villages, it was finally a beautiful sunny day outside, so the girls from my home stay and I decided to go hiking up Cerro de la Cruz, a famous lookout spot in Antigua. The hike was maybe 15mins once we got to the other side of Antigua, then we got one of the most beautiful views of Antigua I have yet seen. It was four of us that went up and we had a very good time, laughing and enjoying the weather.
After we cam back down we stopped at a cafe called "Cafe Sky" and sat on the roof deck continuing our view of Antigua; we even saw Fuego erupt/hiccup. After that we walked over to San Francisco and I showed them the church and Hermano Pedro's tomb. We also bought some candles to light at the church: two each, one red for love and one white for family. We had a lovely time and it was nice to finally get out of the house for a little bit.
That evening I continued my Spanish practice in my workbook and continued the readings for both the Casa Herrera classes.

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.

Day Fifty-One, Antigua

Sunday was another relaxing day and I had breakfast at a lovely place called Dona Luisa, a common tourist spot for breakfast. Though it was a calm day it was also the day that two new people arrived in my home stay to actually stay in the house. For a few days it has only been myself and a girl from Canada, but as it happens we are getting new people and changing it up a lot.
I spent the rest of the day working on some new art projects, to be shown in pictures later. I am loving adding color to some of my designs that I have been playing with and these two new pieces are getting much more into exploring the addition of color to certain parts of the pieces. I also worked on my Spanish and talked with Olga for at least an hour in halting Spanish.

Day Fifty, Antigua

On Saturday morning I slept in. This is sort of our winter break between our two mini-semesters, so I took the day to relax and also do some more of my personal art, which I have not have enough time to do in the last two weeks. I spent the day in my home stay, reading, and starting a new segment of my Maya Portfolio; small glyph portraits with the addition of colored pencil. I will have pictures of these new small pieces up here in a few days, they are small but intricate and take a long time to work on. I also spent a good portion of the day working on my Spanish. The day was very relaxed but I also did take some time to go out; I had to buy a new umbrella.