it has obviously been un buen rato since i wrote anything here, but i just got back from my semana santa 11 day adventure to the yucatan a week a go and i needed to write something to justify the time and mosquito bites. i am in the middle of a bad homework cycle, but i will write something now and save the rest for later. we went to mérida from puebla, in spanish called la ciudad blanca because of all the limestone buildings which are truly gorgeous. its an unbelievable city and it seems a world apart from puebla. the city is a fascinating mix of urban, traditional, maya, and a weird motley crew of north american, caribbean, latin american, and european expats living in a very hippy comune vibe. they busk in the city center and braid hair and smoke weed, seeming entirely out of place yet oddly at home in the capital of mayan mexico. and one day, we went to celestún. all you need know is that i swam with cocodrilos, which cutely enough means crocodiles and is almost the same word with rearranged letters (also, see: átun, which is tuna. its a weird pig latin conspiracy). technically, i swam with fish but DID see a cocodrilo in a body of water that was varying degrees of attached to the one i swam in, the story remains unclear. you go to celestun to see the flamingos, but you stay for the... actually, you dont stay. you go and its pretty then you leave (this is not fair. the place happens to be quite stunning and it was the river and beach that coined the term "ecotourism," but mexico's prettiest beaches happen to be on the other side of the yucutan, which is actually quintano roo. its all very confusing.).
i'll save the rest for later, but one last thing. while there, we learned many words in maya, then forgot all of them except for three randos. so'oki, which means i'm done. dios bo'otik, which is like thank you, and bisha ka'aba for what is your name. a lot of people speak yucateca maya (one of many) in yucatan state, many many more speak it in quintana roo. more than there is not one united states there is truly not one mexico. the country registers more than 50 languages still spoken as first languages, and parts of the yucatan absolutely feel like a different world. the maya in yucatan or the nahuatl speakers around here are not simple or traditional or naive, but much about how they see the world is profoundly different. i dont know that culture is ever really lost, maybe forsaken or adapted but its all very complicated to me. what is curious and interesting is to see what makes it down through the centuries and millennia. for instance: día de los muertos, having taken on a character a lot like halloween with more pozazz and food and sitting at graves, is descended from many cultures including totonaca festivities honoring mictecacíhuatl, la "dama de la muerte." in-ter-es-ting.
