➡️ 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: travelling
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 ❤
Adventages of covid/lockdown situation
This year has been tough to all of us, for sure. We’ve been scared 😖, we’ve been anxious 🤯, we’ve been sad 😞, heartbroken of cancelled plans 💔 etc etc.
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But maybe there are some advantages of this situation too? 🤷🏼♀️
I’ve talked about it some time ago that Covid-19/lockdown taught us to appreciate what we got 🙏, taught us to appreciate our health and family ❤, it made us slow down and live day by day.
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But now, couple months later, I see some other adventages too 😀 We all were forced (in a way) to get to know our countries more, to travel within our borders 😁. You know the saying „the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” 🌱– but what if it isn’t? What if you haven’t looked at your grass properly? ☺
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I’ve heard/seen so many stories even here, on instagram, of Polish people who always travel abroad for holidays and because of Covid-19 they were forced to stay in Poland for the summer so they visited some cities they’ve never been to and were totally charmed!😍
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I’ve read about an American girl who always goes to Greece for the summer and this year she couldn’t so she ended up doing a trip around the US visiting some of the states she’s never been to before and she fell in love with her own country! 🤩
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Another positive example is how this whole lockdown showed us that so many things can be done online 📩, that people don’t need to meet face to face all the time and e.g. go for a conference to another continent every couple months 🤷🏼♀️.
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Even at my work they kept telling us that we can’t work from home, that it is not possible to make it happen system-wise as we wouldn’t be able to use our systems from home and wouldn’t have access to common disks/folders 📂. Covid-19 happened and suddenly it was all possible and I’ve been working from home for 5 months now 😅
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I’m not saying that 2020 is a good year and that it is all great, of course it’s not. But let’s try and see some positives! 😊
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! 😊
Travelling
Do you travel? Is it just pleasure to you or something more?
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For me travelling is so much more. It is pleasure and chill from work obviously but when I travel I feel free 🤗. I forget about all my problems back home, I forget about my „to do” list, I stop worrying, stop planning, I am trully free just enjoying here & now 🙏.
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This is why I have „Travelling sets me free’ tattooed on my arm 😉
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Setting all the chill and pleasure aside, I still think travelling has so much more to offer. What? Knowledge. Openness. Distance. Courage. Respect. Oh and more and more and more! 🙏
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Thanks to travelling I not only learn geography, history of places I visit or about local cuisine but I also learn about different cultures. I learn about different people. 🙏
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Thanks to travelling, or actually thanks to the time I’ve been in living in London in years 2013-2014 among many different people of different natonalities, different races, I got more open. I started learning about different cultures, different religions, different habits. I learned that what may be obscue and totally weird for me, for my culture, may be totally normal for other. We are all people but we are all different. And that is beautiful. ❤
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Thanks to travelling I gained even more respect towards different cultures, different natonalities, different races. Sadly many people in my country are homophobic, xenophobic or even racists 😡. Me? Totally not. For me you can be afro-american gay Jew and I still will have respect for you 😘. Because this is what it is (or should be) about – respect. 🤝 We should all respect each other and as long as you won’t be rude or unfriendly to me I will respect you and be friendly to you. That is my rule.
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Travelling teaches a lot, not only about places but mainly about the people and the fact that we are all different and that it is ok.
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What do you think?
Do you agree?
Terrorism
How do you handle the threat of terrorism? Are you scared of e.g. travelling now? Are you afraid of going to concerts due to past events?
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As cold and insensitive as it may sound I think we should just live.
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Of course we live in scary times and we hear about terrorism more and more but you might just as well get hit by a bus in front of your house, you know?
I know it sounds horrible but we never know our day and hour that we’ll have our last breath. This is why it is so important to LIVE. We can’t get fear control our lives.
Am I supposed to cross off New Zealand or Sri Lanka out of my „places to go” list because of what happened there lately? Those are beautiful countries with lovely people and I still want to see them!
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Do you remember this horrible attack in Paris during a concert in November 2015? I remember I cried whole day cuddled into my Mom’s arms. It was really horrible to me because I used to call myself a ‘concertoholic’ and I used to go to 20-30 concerts a year then. I travelled to different countries to see my favourite bands so it could’ve been me. A concert is a moment of catharsis for me when I forget about all my problems, all my duties or tasks to do and I just get lost in the sound of music. I remember my Mom telling me to stop going to concerts after this attack in Paris but I didn’t. I won’t let some horrible people who do those horrible things make me change my life and the way I live it. I won’t let them make me live in fear.
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As I said, we never know when our time on this precious planet comes to an end and we need to make the fullest out of the time we got. ◾◾◾
What do you think? Do you agree?
P.S. REMEMBER THAT OTHER PARTS OF THIS BLOG AS POSITIVE QUOTES, PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTS, POSITIVE MOVIES, INSPIRATIONAL STORIES OR SMILEY SOCIETY QUOTES ARE ADDED HERE DAILY. YOU’LL FIND THEM IN BLOG’S MAIN MENU. New stuff added!
How to be HAPPY 