➡️ 1. There’s still plenty Mayans among Mexicans and some of them will actually get a bit angry if you call them Mexican, not Mayan 😉.
➡️ 2. Mayans were VERY intelligent people who could meassure days, calendar and solar systems centuries ago just by observing the nature around them 🌹🌒🌓🌕🌖🌗🌙 and their calculations compared to nowadays’ calendars were mistaken by only 6 seconds! 🤯
➡️ 3. Mayan calendar is very complicated, it is actually a combination of 3 different calendars, and each day had a special name in calendar and everyone got a name after the day they were born.
2012 actually wasn’t the end of Mayan calendar. Their whole calendar cycle lasts over 5000 years and 2012 was the end of 1st cycle 😉
➡️ 4. The ancient Mayans believed that the world was created on 11th August, 3114 BCE. The Mayan calendars start counting from that date.
➡️ 5. Do you know how to write number 10 in ancient Roman numbers? It’s ‘X’, right? 😃 5 is ‘V’ and so on. But how do you write ‘0’ in Roman numbers? 🤔 There is no sign for that because the concept of number ‘0’ was invented later by Mayans! 😃
➡️ 6. There are plenty words in modern language that were invented by Mayans. One of them is ‘chocolate’ 🍫– ‘chocolhaa’ in Mayan that means ‘bitter water’
➡️ 7. Mayans kind of invented soccer but the rules were quite different 😅 – you could hit the ball only with your hips, forearms or calves and you had to aim the ball to a stone hoop that was couple metres above the ground 😃
Tag: travel
8 things I’ve learned about Mexico while being there
➡️ 1. Everything I knew about Mexican food was a lie 😬. Mexicans don’t eat burritos (they do only in the north part), they don’t eat quesadillas or tacos as we know it – this is all Tex-Mex cuisine, not traditional Mexican food 😉. Mexican cuisine is not that hot 😉, there’s less bean & corn I’d thought there’d be and there’s plenty seafood! 🦐
Dishes I got to know there:
🔸️Cochinita Pibil (shredded pork stew)
🔸️Mole (sauce made from dried chilies, tomatoes, chocolate, seeds & spices)
🔸️Flautas (traditional Mexican tacos made with rolled corn tortilla and filled with mashed potato, cheese, chicken, etc.)
➡️ 2. Mayans are still very much alive and there will be a seperate post about them 😃
➡️ 3. Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead 💀, is a beautiful holiday celebrated on Nov 1st & 2nd. Those are colorul and happy days because Mexicans believe that the souls of their close ones who have passed away come to earth to visit them ☺. Families set altars (like this one on the photo) with a photo of a lost one, fruit 🍌, special sweet bread they bake for that occasion called Pan de Muerto, characteristic orange flowers called cempasuchil 🏵 & something that this family member liked – e.g. some book, guitar etc. Later, they go to the cemetary bringing treats and they spend whole day at the grave talking, laughing and being close to their lost one ❤
➡️ 4. If you get a gift like a sugar skull with your name on it or they’ll give you some miniature coffins saying „those are for your family” it does not mean they wish you death and that they don’t like you! 🤭 This is a gift from the heart and you should accept it!
➡️ 5. Apart from tequila & hot peppers 🌶, Mexico is a big exporter of chewing gum as this is made from the tree that grows there!
➡️ 6. Yukatan peninsula is a big land that arised from the ocean when meteorite hit the Earth – this is why this land is totally flat (the highest peek of Yukatan peninsula is… 235 m above the sea 😳) and there are no rivers!
➡️ 7. Mexicans are sweet and loving people! 🥰
➡️ 8. It’s not a poor country!
I honestly fell in love with Mexico ❤
SELF-LOVE: Let’s travel…at home!
SELF-LOVE 🙏❤
Self love is about taking care of our emotions, feeling but it’s also about taking care of our needs, right? Well my need is to get back to travelling ASAP. After all if not coronavirus I would’ve been in Norway now 😫
So I decided to….travel at home! 😁
For last couple of days I’ve been creating sets of various countries/cultures at home and taking pictures so…welcome to our journey around the world!
Join me on Instagram as for next 2-3 weeks we’ll be travelling around the globe. Every picture will be from different country! 😉😊 You can guess what country it is in comments or wait for next parts of the collage on my feed for the answer.
Maybe we can travel together? We could do #SmileyTravelling hashtag and you can all tag your photos! Either a photo (taken at home!) with some symbols of your country or a country you’d like to visit. If you’d be intetested I may think of some prize for the winner 😉
Next stop: somewhere in Europe
When: Sunday! 😊
How to be HAPPY 