Lately we’ve been doing a project
that involves filming some of the Young Dreamers and their daily routines. A
week ago I tagged along to see the morning routine of Juan Jose, a 14 year-old
Young Dreamer in Vuelta Grande. My dad and me, one of the volunteers, the
assistant director, and a video production team went up to Vuelta Grande at
4:00 in the morning to see Juan Jose waking up and getting ready to go to
school. When we got to his house he was already awake since he gets up at 4:30.
Let me tell you that at 5:00 it gets very, very cold in Vuelta Grande. Juan
Jose usually gets up and takes a shower. Before he takes a shower he has to
heat up some water on the stove since there is no shower with warm water.
Imagine having to take a bucket shower outside in the freezing cold at 5:00 in
the morning. Once you imagine it you would think, I wouldn’t like to do that
every day. After the shower he changes into his school uniform. A lot of times
Juan Jose doesn’t have breakfast and if he does it’s usually a piece of bread
and coffee. A lot of the families there don’t have tables or chairs so they
either eat standing or sitting on the dirt floor. After breakfast he brushes
his teeth and gets all his school supplies into his backpack (he does his
homework the day before.) At 5:45 am he heads down a hill to wait for the bus
to pick him up. I think that this was a great experience for me to delve deeper
into the Young Dreamers lifestyle and the culture of Vuelta Grande. I hope you
guys also understand more about the Young Dreamers life and that you’re
learning as much as I am to be grateful, very grateful, for what we have.
Last weekend
we went to Tikal! For those of you that don’t know what Tikal is, it was
one of the biggest cities of the Mayans in the Classic Era, built in the middle
of the jungle. A few weeks ago I talked about some ruins called Iximche. Tikal
is much much, much bigger. It is estimated that only 30% of the whole city has
been uncovered. The other 70% is covered by jungle. A lot of times you’ll walk
by some huge hills that don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the jungle and
you’ll immediately guess that it is some building that hasn’t been excavated
yet. Tikal is huge so I won’t be able to tell you about all of it, (you’ll have
to look it up) but I will explain to you some of the most important places.
First of all, there’s the Grand Plaza, home to temples 1 and 2, a palace, and
several houses. The most important buildings in the great plaza are the two
pyramids, both were built by Ha Sawa Chaan-K'awil who
brought Tikal’s rise to power. Because he had brought Tikal back to its
position of power after a war with Calakmul that resulted in a hiatus in Tikal’s
power for 130 years he built the new temples to add to the image that Tikal was
powerful again. Ha Sawa Chaan-K’awil was actually buried under Temple 2.
Another really cool place in Tikal is what they call the Lost World. The Lost
World is believed to have been built in 500 BC and was the main part of Tikal
before the Grand Plaza. The Lost World has some different style pyramids
because when it was being built Tikal had an alliance with some Mayans in
Mexico and the Mexicans showed them their architecture. I think the Grand Plaza
and the Lost World were my two favorite plazas in Tikal because you could
really see the Maya buildings. Not far from the Lost World is Temple 4. Temple
4 is by far the tallest temple and when you climb to the top you have an
amazing view of all the temples and a lot of the rainforest. I think that on
top of Temple 4, having a magnificent view of all of Tikal, is my favorite
spot. The whole time I was on the trip I was wondering how the Mayans could
have lived so long ago, been so advanced, and then suddenly disappeared. I'm
really fascinated by the fact that a huge civilization could have fallen so
quickly.
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