But I finally got there and met up with Shoshi in the AWESOME place we were staying -- the people at the hotel (which is adorable anyways) messed up our reservation and ended up giving us an entire house that they usually rent to groups! We each had our own rooms, bathrooms, and balconies, plus a cute patio, fully stocked kitchen, and comfy living room. Here is a picture of my room and the view from my balcony:
After a delicious HOT shower we went and ate American comfort food and drank fluffy cocktails; it was the perfect end to a long sweaty day.
The local NGO Arte Accion is our contact in Copan; they do art-based educational classes for kids in Copan and the surrounding villages. Arte Accion is run by Carin Steen an energetic, highly creative Dutch woman who has lived in Central America for about 12 years. She is amazing and the work she has done with MACHI is one of the most successful of our four programs. Hers is also the most similar to the program I'm trying to set up in Toledo, so it was really key for me to see what she's done and how she's done it. They have trained a couple younger Maya guys (Londin and Moises) to go to the communities and teach fourth and fifth graders with a handbook Carin made about the Maya site of Copan, and through creative art projects. Copan also has remodeled their children's museum, moving it into a restored fort overlooking town. We visited the museum with Londin, who was teaching a class there and then leading the kids through the museum.
This last picture is a headdress that Londin was using to teach the kids about the founding king of Copan, Yax K'uk Mo'. The feathers have questions on them, and he passes the feathers out to different children, and then has them ask the questions.The museum itself is pretty neat. It is the inspiration for the mobile museum idea that we're trying enact in Toledo. I'm not sure I've mentioned that before -- Cristina (director of Julian Cho Society, also my roommate) wants to try to renovate a bus and make it into a mobile museum that can visit the rural communities. I'll be writing much more about this idea later on, but the Copan museum is the inspiration. Here are some pictures of the exhibits on architecture, the calendar, stelae, gods, and the ballgame:
While it's not perfect, the exhibits are interactive and durable (i.e., they work even when the power is out) and the kids that I saw go through it had a great time. After the museum they played a game, had a snack, and explored the fort. Shoshi and I climbed one of the towers:
It was actually really nice to be in back in Honuras; obviously I took a lot of pictures! That evening we had a slightly random dinner crew, Shoshi, myself, Carin, and an ethnographer named Lincoln who I had met once during a previous Copan trip, and Ricardo Aguercia, who is the head of archaeology in Copan. We had had a meeting with him earlier, and he had some more ideas for us so he met us out at the restaurant. Copan is a fun town, touristy, but in a refreshing way if you've been without variety in food choices for about a month. There is also a bar scene, that I'm sure gets old if you live there, but I have always enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a bit too much that night, so I don't have any pictures of the trip we made to a village the next morning! It was a bit rough getting in a crowded cab at 7:15 am after only two hours of sleep.....Anyways, after some rest that night, we got up and went with Londin to Boca del Monte, the next village he was teaching in. Thank God I wasn't hung over because the trip up to this town was long and soggy, as you can see in this picture of our cab fording a puddle-lake:
But it was absolutely gorgeous. We took a cab as far as we could, and then hiked the rest of the way on trails. There is a road, but it goes around the long way so we took a few short cuts. Here's what it looked like:
It was a nice hike. We watched Londin do his talk with the headdress about the kings of Copan, and then the kids got to make their own headdresses, which was really fun. I made one too, but luckily no one got a picture of me with it on. :)
It was fun to watch a MACHI program in action! Londin has become a very skilled teacher, using songs and other creative tools to get the kids involved. All in all it was a fun morning. We had a longer meeting with Carin later that day, and then had dinner at her house. She lives up the hill from downtown Copan in a gorgeous house with a tower.
After a delicious dinner with Carin we went out for another night on the town. The next day Shoshi and I took a bus to San Pedro Sula; she had a flight out of there, and I wanted to take a different route home to see if it was any faster. The bus ride was very pleasant, despite the vampire slasher movie that was playing on the TVs. I'd forgotten how pretty Honduras is, especially in the rainy season. The place we stayed in SPS was straight out of the twilight zone. It's apartment-style buildings were painted bright yellow and lined up in eerie square blocks. It's close to the airport, which is the only reason I can think of to stay there. There were a couple big mission groups there too, which is also kind of creepy; they always wear the same T-shirts and speak really loud English to the waiters in the restaurant. The highlight of that place was the pancake breakfast I had. :)
So I tried the Honduran route back to Belize, and alas it is not faster at all. In fact it may even be longer. I spent hours on a variety of buses trying to get to the Guatemalan border, which is this really wide border crossing with only five people milling about offering terrible exchange rates for your lempiras; kind of odd. I finally got to Puerto Barrios, but I'd missed the last boat to PG, so I had to spend the night there. I was not excited about it; Puerto Barrios is a deep-water banana shipping port and not much more. I had a helpful cab driver that drove me around looking for a place to stay, everywhere had signs saying things like, "No ladies of the night allowed", and "No weapons allowed in the hotel". I had seen a sign on the highway for a resort, and decided that since I was traveling alone it might be a good idea to shell out the money for a nice, safe hotel room. So that's what I did. It didn't turn out to be all that expensive, and I slept very well in the A/C!
Now that I'm back in PG it's time to get down to business. I'm trying to organize a summer movie night to happen in each of the eight communities we'll be in during the fall. It will serve as an introduction to our program, and the whole community will get to see a movie about the ancient Maya. I also have to pick up the training for Morvin on different aspects of Maya culture and archaeology, and start designing the workshops for the fall. Tricia, my adivsor, is also visiting this week, so I'll be meeting with her to discuss how the project is going.
Here's a few parting pictures of the cacti and communal patio at our hotel in Copan (it's Casa de Cafe in case anyone is interested!).
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