Part Forty-three--Etiwanda Jones and the Quest for Quetzalcoatl, part 3

MYSTERY OF THE MAYA

Our opening day of our study of the Mayans began with a visit to a Mayan princess, 

played by Deena's daughter.

She taught us about her culture, and then we did several group inquiries.

The students learned how to prepare some Mayan food.

And there was some collaboration among groups of students, and performances.

It was a fun way to kick off the component!

Our next event was at our home--a lecture by Hal: The Book of Mormon and Organic Evolution

Suzanne and Autumn

After the lecture the students made some Mayan food...

including corn tortillas. We bought a press and used it constantly throughout this school year.

Another quick outing was lunch at Vallarta, 

and purchasing some Mexican food to take home.

More food--making Mexican hot chocolate from scratch.

The girls went with another family to a Mayan exhibit at San Diego's Museum of Man.

The girls took a lot of photos shared with me some things they learned at the museum. 

I'm glad they had the opportunity to go there.

Our neighbor, Maria used to send us tamales at Christmas time. This year she taught us how to make tamales for Christmas. She spoke very little English, but she told me what to buy and then came over to teach us. 

She didn't need English to teach us how to do this.

She showed Giselle how to make a corn husk doll.

Maria brought over her big pan, and after the tamales were steamed, we gave her some to take home to her family. After this we would exchange tamales at Christmastime. Yum!

The girls really wanted to go back to Mexico, and they wanted to take some friends too. 

Hal was excited to be our guide and help us find good food.

Hal's favorite is gorditas. He asked around for the best gorditas place, and we were led here.

We also found some other fun shops we hadn't seen before.

Sadly, we still didn't go inside the cathedral.

But we found this alleyway of food and products. There were some fun things here.

We got our donkey-zebra photo again. 

Curiously, this year I also found this photo of my dad's family, taken about 58 years before.

That zebra has been standing there a long time! 

One of our favorite field trips was learning about the Mayans in El Salvador, with Cecile Echegoyen. She showed us slides of the pyramids near her home in El Salvador, she taught us about the culture of El Salvadorans, and she made us an El Salvadoran lunch of pupusas and chocolate and more. 

Her mother was there too, and she taught us how to make dolls from corn husks. 

This was a fabulous learning day!

We loved the pupusas, which are a little like tamales that are pan fried instead of steamed. 

We tried recreating them as best as we could.

They were a hit!

We had so much fun learning how to make food from the various cultures we studied. In Southern Mexico and Central America tamales are made in banana leaves as well as corn husks, so we made some in banana leaves.

Banana leaf tamales are so moist. I like them better than the corn husk variety.

Yum!

One of the last big things we did during our study of the 

Maya was learn more about their writing system--the glyphs. 

And then we made some. We put plaster of Paris in plastic containers to harden overnight,

 and carved glyphs, like the ones carved in stone in Mexico.

Autumn carved a glyph like the one she saw in the Museum of Man

My glyph's interpretation is, "And it came to pass"

I don't remember what Giselle's glyph means,

Farewell to the Mayan culture!