Jade

One of the fun things we did that I didn’t blog about (because I didn’t have a photo to remind me) was that we went to a jade museum in Antigua. Back in the day, the Spanish conquistadors wasted time, money, and lives looking for gold in Guatemala, along with every other country in Central America. According to our tour guide (there are tour guides for everything here) there was never any gold found in Guatemala. The conquistadors missed the fact that there are all kinds of other precious stones here though, including imperial jade, which is actually worth more than gold. The guide showed us a bunch of different kinds of jade – it comes in a variety of green colors, as well as orange, black, white, lavender, and baby blue.  Black jade is the hardest, and people believe the Mayans used it to carve the other kinds of jade. Nowadays, jade is cut with diamond blades, but we’re pretty sure the Mayans didn’t have those. The guide warned us that street vendors will try to sell us “jade” jewelry, and that we should try to scratch the “jade” with a knife before we buy it. If it scratches, then it’s not really jade, just one of the other green stones that looks the same. I really don’t understand jewels – they kind of strike me the same way placebo drugs do. If the drug works (or the jewel looks nice) why do you care if it’s “the real thing” or just psychological? Sorry, I digress.

At the end of our jade museum tour, the guide showed us a Mayan calendar sculpture and explained how it works – in CYCLES! So no, the calendar doesn’t say that the world is going to end. It just says that it’s basically a new millennium, and that the cycle starts over. So now we’re about to start Mayan year 1 again. While we were talking about that, the guide explained about Mayan Nahual (sort of like zodiac) as they play a major role in how the calendar works. Then we looked up our Nahual, and mine is I’x – the Jaguar.  
Link to Jaguar Info...
So that's kind of cool.