Chichen Itza day 2

 

We depart Cancun on the morning of March 20 at 10:00 a.m. Our next stop will be famous Chichen Itza. Built by the Maya, dates from the early Classic period, these ruins tell a fascinating story.

Shown here is the Temple of Kukulkan, known as El Castillo, or the castle. This famous structure has a fascinating history, and some architectural features that will amaze you. We have arranged our trip so that we'll be standing at the base of El Castillo on a very special day – the Vernal Equinox. In fact, we're staying overnight in order to witness the sunset. Sunset is always a beautiful occasion at Chichen Itza, but to be there on the Equinox is truly unforgettable. As the sun sets, the corner of El Castillo casts a shadow in the shape of the plumed serpent Kukulcan - along the west side of the north staircase.

 

 

 

 

 

After sunset, there will be a music and light show. The presentation offers an entertaining and informative look at the history of Chichen Itza, as well as an introduction to Maya culture and customs. The brilliance of the visual effects against the night sky is something you will remember forever.

 

The program will be presented in Spanish. For those who need it, we will provide recorded translations in English and French. The show will be followed by a late-night supper back at the hotel.

Your guide throughout the Yucatan tour is Elena Navar. Elena was born in Merida, the capital of Yucatan. She is looking forward to sharing her culture and some of her favorite places with you.

Trip blog

Your tour guide, Elena Navar, has set up a blog you can post to add pictures and stories about your trip. This is a great way to share your experiences with family and friends back home. It also allows them to get to know your new friends and co-travellers on the tour! Many of you will be travelling with laptops or smartphones, and a courtesy laptop is available to all our guests.

We encourage you to post pictures, stories, impressions, recipes… anything that strikes your interest as you travel through the charming villages, awe-inspiring archeological sites, and breathtaking countryside. Even before our journey begins, feel free to log on and post a picture of yourself, and any information you think might be of interest to your fellow travellers. To log on to the trip blog:

1. In any Web browser, visit www.yucatantourblog.blogspot.com.
   
2. In the tour blog, click the sign in link, as shown here:
   

   
   

3. Enter the username and password provided as part of your Welcome kit.
   
4. Once you are logged in, begin typing your blog.
   
5. When you are finished, save the post. Elena will then review all posts and complete the posting process. To save instead of publishing, click this button:
   

   
    

 

 

 

 

 

 

over the rainbow

It’s the first anniversary of Dad’s death. We’ve all arrived in our cars. Some of us brought things to read. Lizzie arrives a little late. Rick and Deb bring a bottle of wine and a candle. Mom has an excerpt from dad’s journal. I have glasses and a corkscrew. We gather around the grave. Rick pours everyone a glass. Liz says, “Wait!” She runs to her car and puts on this recording of Over the Rainbow, and opens the window and turns up the volume. We stand around and toast and drink. We read our little things and laugh. Uncle George says a prayer. Rick pours the last of the bottle into the dirt at the gravestone and says, “This is for you, Pops.” We leave the bottle on the stone. Over the Rainbow is Mom’s favorite song, and Liz thought she’d like this arrangement. Of course, we all talked too much to really appreciate it then, but Liz plays it again for me afterward, when we’re following Uncle George to another part of the cemetery, so he can say hi to Grandma and Grandpa. Then we go to Armands, for lunch.

Another test?

Is it even possible? Apparently, yes.

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this is a test.

New post to test

Finally, for experienced hikers who want to see

Complex Suzy; or, “Write for five minutes beginning with ‘Once Upon a Time I’”

Once Upon a Time I lived without the notion of writing one true sentence. Now, thanks to this assignment, I question every word I consider writing. But that’s not what I want to say about Once Upon a Time I. I mean, how many times in life do you get to say Once Upon a Time I? I don’t want to waste it.

Once upon a time I could have always counted on my eye to wander toward the prospect of a perfect man, a better relationship. I realized this morning, I feel above that now. I think I'm actually, fully happy. But that's not grand enough for Once Upon a Time I, is it? And my first thought, Once Upon a Time I thought things were much simple, is too obvious, too trite. Though it’s funny, just how many ways there are for each individual thing in life not to be simple.

Take Suzy S— at the reunion, for example. Simple version of Suzy: privileged, liberal daughter of important Oak Park family. Wait, was she privileged? I only assume that because her house was on the right side of the tracks and mine wasn’t. I assume they were wealthy, but for all I know her parents worked all hours to make ends meet. But what does privileged really mean anyway? If they did work seventeen jobs between them and still manage to instill social consciousness into their kids, would that make the kids even more privileged?

And come to think of it, I assume they were important people because my mom, who worked a clerical job at the village hall, talked about them like they were. She really looked up to Mrs. S—. Said she was so kind and classy. But what does that mean? Did Mrs. S— nobly fight to advance the rights of minorities in our grudgingly integrated suburb and mom read about it in the meeting minutes she typed up, or was it just that Mrs. S— smiled when she came in to pay her parking tickets? And having paid some huge and I’ll still say it unfair and unwarranted parking tickets in my life, never with a smile… well, you see where this is going.

And I haven’t even gotten to complex Suzy yet: Successful journalist, Pulitzer-nominated, and in the same breath reminding you she didn’t get it, who’s moved on to repping a woman’s rights organization, divorced and raising her kids back in the finally integrated Oak Park. This is not what I imagined for the Suzy I knew. I pictured the perfect family in a wealthy but conscious burb like Wilmette. Big house, loving husband, suitably appreciative but it reads more like a comfortable sense of entitlement.

At the reunion Suzy said, “Yeah, I had this idea that when you make a vow it’s permanent, but he didn’t feel that way.” So here she was. This woman who as a student managed to both ride high in a sorority and date the coolest artist on campus, and help the local Hmong population get acclimated—did I mention she was also a student teacher? Here she was, twenty years later, at the bar where we all used to drink, having a beer and shaking her thick choppy hair and moving to the next subject. Maybe once upon a time things were complicated, and the older I get the simpler they became.

T to J: Do I have a drug problem?

I was so angry and annoyed and just ready to s-n-a-p snap, not for big reasons, just smallish. Like, because they laundered my curtains instead of dry-cleaning them. So my lovely floor-length curtains I hemmed so they’re be truly floor-length are now six inches off the ground – five inches in spots, it varies. Oh, and as I was hanging them up, before I realized what was so wrong, I was annoyed at how the Dry Clean Only tags always stick out so I cut each one off. Then Dave came in and we gradually realized that what was wrong was that they’d been laundered instead of dry cleaned. And they’d charged me forty bucks.

Fifty-six originally, but I’d gasped, spontaneously, when he said, “Fifty-six dollars.” I said, “Huh?” And he said, “How about forty?” and I said, “That sounds better, thanks,” feeling rather proud to be my mother’s daughter. But my mother wouldn’t have said, “huh,” when she thought the fabric looked kind of puckery. Me, I just thought “oh they must have pressed pleats into them” or something vague, not dealing with what was right in front of me. So when we realized the curtains were ruined and we’d have to take them back down and at least bring them back to the dry cleaners – not because they could undo the damage, but because we had to do something for gosh sake and we might as well try to get the forty bucks back -- I thought, this would never happen to Mom.

Then I remembered that I’d just cut out the Dry Clean Only tags. The tags were vital, because if she tried to go with the “You didn’t specify dry cleaning” defense I could avoid the blustery “Why would I bring them here to pay for having them thrown in the washer when I could do that at home?” which she’d reply to with “I don’t ask why people do things, I just expect them to specify” and simply point derisively to the tags, each of which says in two places “Dry Clean Only.” End of discussion. Except that I couldn’t. Because I’d cut them out.

So I sewed them back on with invisible thread and I didn’t do a very good job. But it was still hard, and then I ate some leftover Thai food while Dave made pumpkin bread, so I didn’t really feel like I ate but I wasn’t hungry, that weird timeless feeling that Dave says he has after every Thanksgiving, that longing for structure without really wanting it enough to achieve it, and hating your lazy self a little for that. And knowing I needed a shower and not wanting to get in there. Reluctant to step into the cold of the tub, just not knowing what I wanted to do, when suddenly I thought, “I’d like to get high.” For the first time in years, it seemed like the only reasonable next thing.

So I started hunting for the little embroidered change purse of Amy’s with the tiny one-hitter, that I’d taken for her once when she had to ride the ferry and didn’t want to get searched. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I thought of every little spot where someone like me might hide a little embroidered purse containing a miniscule amount of a controlled substance. My house-shaped wooden purse, my package of Kotex, my jewelry box, my old train case that I always take to Watervale to serve as the medicine cabinet. I became sure that I had left it somewhere or thrown it out, and this made me more annoyed. So I finally gave up, after checking Grandma’s toolbox, my sock drawer, my letters box, and my wizards can, and I got out the glass pipe Tracy made me long ago, and my Trader Joe’s Green Food jar, which contains some weed from a million years ago, and then I double-checked in the white cabinet, and under the sink, and even in the kitchen junk drawer, which is way too public but I was stumped.

So I came downstairs and smoked in the bathroom. I knew I was high when I asked Dave, “Didja ever notice how cold the shower is?” And he laughed and said I must be high because I’d said, “Didja ever notice.” And he nervously looked at the bathroom exhaust fan and said, “A state trooper is probably out there smelling that and going ‘Hm’” (because of them living across the hall to guard the governor). And I said he was probably out there going “Hm, how do I get some of that?” Then I sat on Dave’s lap and we talked about how disordered his Mac’s desktop was. And he said, “Look at this document that’s been on my desktop for years,” and as he opened it he said, “This is a list of…” and I thought he was going to say, “A list of everyone I’ve crossed off my list,” and started to laugh, but he said, “A list of concerts going back to—“ but then he realized the list was woefully incomplete and useless anyway, so he might as well delete it. Then I mispronounced widgets (hard g), which was good for some laughs.

Then I told him about my dream with the very nice doctor who’d said, “And now let’s talk about your drug problem,” and he said I should write it down. And I said, “Why, it doesn’t mean anything. Nothing happened. I told the doctor, I never tried heroine, and sure maybe very, very occasionally pot but that wasn’t a problem. And he said, “How about morphine?” And pointed to the morphine drip he’d put me on. And I said, “But I’ve never had that before, you put it on me.” And he said, “Yeah, but your body responds to it just like an addict’s.” And that was it. So what’s the meaning in that? And Dave said, “Well, tomorrow you should write it all down and say I told you to.”

But what for??

And why tomorrow?????

You May Blame Me

Dave, I’m here to say that I take full responsibility for the events that occurred in our home this evening, during your absence. A pizza of the rising crust variety was undoubtedly removed from the freezer, baked, and consumed. Yes, fully consumed. I was the only one home, ergo I am accountable for its disappearance; also for the cave-like arrangement of pillows and blankets on the couch. Turner Classic Movies was certainly playing when you walked in, and I’m the last person to suggest that the dog could have turned on the TV, much less made the pizza or left the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the dining room, plugged in, with the cord stretching to an outlet in the front hall. I’m sorry you tripped.

Although I have no idea what the cord was doing there, I regret any damage to your knee and chin. If there’s one thing I despise, it’s people who start cleaning and then stop halfway through, leaving things worse than when they began. I don’t know who in our household would have the nerve, since it’s only you and me (and the dog) who live here, but I just want to make clear this is something that never should have occurred and it wasn’t me. As for the pizza, the buck stops absolutely right here. I have no idea how it got from freezer to oven to my stomach in its entirety, but if as you say the evidence seems to point my way, then let’s investigate. Let’s get to the bottom of it, so we can get back to the real business of our relationship, the fostering of trust, understanding, and personal growth. My priorities are one hundred and ten percent us, and I take offense at any implication that my eye was off the prize.

Yes, I know your parents will be here first thing in the morning. In fact, the importance of a caring relationship among in-laws and couple is second only to that of the core relationship itself, and anyone who says I don’t seem to give a shit does not know me or what I stand for. I had every intention of not only vacuuming but laying the table for brunch. Details like these tell guests they are not just expected but warmly welcomed. True, the dining room table has a bunch of laundry on it right now – careful, that’s dirty laundry – but I hope you know me well enough to understand I don’t know what it’s doing there.

Dave, after you take the dog for a walk – do you mind? she’s been inside all evening – I think we need to talk. We’ve been together almost three years now. Our relationship has the potential to be a beautiful, lasting haven of comfort, peace, and healthy passion. Or, it can be a tiresome series of blame games, with two MVPs and no one cheering in the stands. I don’t want that; do you? I take it that by walking to the door, you are merely heading out to walk the dog. Bring some bags; the neighbors have been super-bitchy when she craps on their lawn. Don’t even think about not coming back, because I have no intention of giving up on you. I believe in us, and this institution, and I made a vow I aim to keep ‘til death do us part.

Wait. How about this. Go ahead and blame me for everything, period. The pizza, the messy house, the bump on your chin, the Macy’s bill, the virus in the computer, the long brown hairs clogging the bathtub, the lack of brunch fixings, the fact that I have a spa date with my cousin tomorrow at 10 – tell your parents I said hi – the war in Iraq, the confusion over how many planets there actually are, just lay the blame for everything right on my shoulders. I can take it, and continue looking at you with love and acceptance, because I know in my heart of hearts I have done nothing wrong. We are all standing on the ground, Dave, but some of us can see the forest through the trees. Speaking of rural settings, can you pick up some Rocky Road ice cream while you’re out? I have a taste for something sweet.