Phenomena at Dzbichaltun

Sorry that these pictures came out backwards!!!
The phenomena is already over...it lasted about 2 minutes.

Here is is!!!! Yay! It was sooo beautiful!

The sun is starting to rise just a little bit...

Good morning! It was about 5:30-45 at this time.

This was probably at about 5:15 when it just started to become light enough out that a silhouette of the building could be seen

This has been one crazy, tear-filled week, so I'm sorry that I haven't caught you up on what has been going on the past few days. This week started with Sunday morning waking up after a dream that my Grandpa that I was very close to was alive and I got to talk to him. However, this is not reality and I woke up thinking it was and was super excited but then I knew it was Grandma and Grandpa's anniversary that day. It would have been 59 beautiful years together. So to begin with, the day was already not a great one and then I saw a dead dog on one of the sidewalks closest to the house which made me think of Barklee, my puppy (not so much a puppy in size but he sure acts like one!). So needless to say Sunday itself wasn't that great except for the fact that I got to talk to both of my aunts and uncles as well as my Grandma on Skype Sunday afternoon. What a blessing! I am becoming more and more thankful for Skype as time keeps ticking faster and faster down here. (Sunday also marked 4 weeks that I have been down here. It has gone by so fast already that it is crazy to believe I only have a little over 10 weeks left!) But finally, Sunday was over when I went to bed early because our whole group was getting up at 4:30AM, mind you (on Monday, the easiest day to get up early, right??). We weren't just getting up that early to get up. If any of you know college students really well, this is not our ideal situation!

We got up and were on the road by 4:30AM Monday morning to drive to some very old ruins called Dzbichaltun. Back in its day, which dates back to when Christ was on earth (crazy to think about, right?!) this city was a hopping metropolis with about 40,000 people! Over the years, archaeologists have uncovered ruins here and broke away layers of a temple/pyramid because the mayans used to believe that the world came to an end every 52 years, so they would build a bigger and better temple around the previous one. The building in the pictures above is called the House of the Seven Dolls which was named by the archaeologists that found 7 miniature figurines inside. The preciseness of the mayan mathematics and observations of the sun's movement are exemplified very clearly in this building.

Twice a year there is an equinox which means that the sun is directly over the equator. One of the days is in the fall and the other is in the spring. When the equinox occurs, the sun beams straight through the two doors of the House of the Seven Dolls which I said before demonstrates the preciseness of mayan mathematics and movements of the sun. It is quite a phenomena to see so I was not upset about getting up very early to see it! When we got to Dzbichaltun, the stars were brighter and bigger than I had ever seen them before. It was a great morning for lots of prayer and reflection on how great my God is and that I am one of His daughter's even though I do not deserve it. He created the universe and everything in it. I think most of us forget that or when we read it in Genesis we just skim over it because we have been told that our whole lives. However, it truly becomes a fact and something very meaningful in a situation like I was so happy to be in on Monday morning. Praise God! One last thing, I guess we waited for 2 1/2 hours to see the phenomena take place, but being so wrapped up in glorifying Him who created the stars and sun, I had no idea it was that long. It only felt like 30 minutes to me. Maybe it was also because I took 130ish pictures during that time frame!! Haha....I just didn't want to miss a thing!