246
JUAN FRANCISCO BLANCO
“Why would outsiders want to learn about the Mayan
culture?” asked Ronú, not understanding why other people
would study, and try to learn from an ancient culture.
“I like to learn new things, it’s interesting to me. This
expedition to a different planet has been exciting for me. The
Mayan glyphs on the stone stelae outside in the plaza, I would
like to know how to read them. Being an archeologist would be a
stimulating profession. I could discover something that’s old and
forgotten, letting people in ancient times be seen as more
resourceful. The glyphs mean something; they tell you of things
that occurred in the past. To convey ideas by that type of
pictorial writing looks very difficult. I’m glad our writing lessons
that we learned in grade school were simple,” said Jonathan.
When Bardala and Tital came into the room where the crew
had set up their NorthFace tents, they had one of the LED
flashlights pointed up at the ceiling bouncing shadows on the
walls when anyone moved.
“Tital, just who we needed, would you please calculate the
Mayan days of each of our birthdays?” asked Viviana, looking up.
“Sure,” Tital said when he and Bardala sat down on the
blanket they had laying on the stone floor. “We can do
Jonathan’s birthday first. When is your birthday as we say on our
Gregorian calendar?”
“It’s December the twelfth, nineteen hundred and ninetynine,” Jonathan told him.
“First, you look on the Year Chart,” Tital said pulling out the
information stored on the Dell laptop computer they brought
with them, “and you add the corresponding number for 1999,
which is 36,159 to the number on the Month Chart. Your month
is Decembe