Sea Turtles

An adult Olive Ridley Sea Turtle can weigh up to 100 pounds. A baby Olive Ridley Sea Turtle, however, weighs less than 1 pound.

Here I am holding a 24 hour old Olive Ridley Sea Turtle.

The Olive Ridley Sea Turtle is a threatened animal. There are about 800,000 female Olive Ridley Sea Turtles in the world. However, in places like El Salvador, their numbers have been declining. People are very worried about the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle and all the other sea turtles. There are 7 different species of sea turtles in the world. Four of those 7 species come to El Salvador to lay their eggs. All 7 species are threatened animals, with many of them on the endangered list.

There are many people working in El Salvador to try to save the sea turtles. I was able to support one group called, ATOPLOPC, and was able to release a baby Olive Ridley Sea turtle into the ocean.

People in El Salvador (and many places around the world) used to eat turtle eggs. Some people's job used to be to wait at night for a turtle to lay her eggs and then take the eggs to sell. Now, this is not allowed. In fact, there are laws that say it is illegal to bother a turtle laying eggs or take the eggs. Even though it is illegal, people still steal turtle eggs. In addition to people taking eggs, animals also eat sea turtle eggs. More recently, with climate change, some eggs are cooked before they can hatch because it is too hot.

As you can see, the sea turtle faces many risks. When left in the wild, only 1 in every 1,000 sea turtle eggs will hatch and make it to the ocean. That is why local groups like ATOPLOPC are so important. They work very hard to help the turtles. With their help, over 700 of every 1,000 eggs will hatch and make it to the ocean! I think it is amazing what wonderful things people can do when they work together!

The man who started ATOPLOPC came from a family of turtle egg hunters. Both his grandfather and his dad used to hunt turtle eggs when it was still allowed. He learned all about collecting turtle eggs too. One day, when he was 12 years old, he watched a turtle come on shore and lay her eggs. He thought the turtle was so amazing that he no longer wanted to hunt turtle eggs, but rather he wanted to save them. He has spent his whole life working to save the sea turtles! One person can make a huge difference in the world!

The founder of ATOPLOPC, Francisco, teaches us all about sea turtles. 

In order to help save the turtles, ATOPLOPC volunteers stay up all night and wait for turtles to lay their eggs. After the turtle leaves, they carefully scoop up the eggs and bring them to a special place where they store turtle eggs. They mark each nest of eggs with what type of turtle laid the egg and the date. People watch the eggs all the time to make sure people or animals do not take them. When the turtles hatch, they let people release them into the ocean.

This is where turtle eggs are buried by volunteers. The water bottles tell the volunteers which type of sea turtle laid the eggs and when they were found. 

It is amazing to watch the little sea turtles make their way into the ocean. They automatically know where to go. When these sea turtles grow up, the female turtles will return to the same beach in El Salvador to lay their eggs. In the future, I am sure there will be many more sea turtles!

Baby turtles automatically know which way the ocean is. This year ATOPLOCPC has released over 45,000 baby sea turtles! 

Click here to complete a fact and opinion worksheet all about sea turtles!

The Mayas

Just like Native Americans used to live in the United States, there were indigenous people who lived in El Salvador long before the Spanish arrived. One of the Native American groups of El Salvador is the Maya. The Mayas lived in Mexico and Central America, and there are still Mayas living in Central America today!

In ancient times, the Mayas built beautiful cities and ran successful communities. They learned many things and were very advanced. They understood a lot about science, space, math, and engineering. They were even one of the first groups of people to have the idea of “0.” The Mayas also developed a written language they used to communicate.

I was able to visit Belize a few weeks ago. In Belize, there are many Maya ruins. Some of the ruins are beautiful temples that were once very important places. Others are not uncovered and look like mountains. There are also artifacts that are found inside of caves. Archeologists and historians cannot know exactly what the Mayas were like, but they can use clues from these Maya sites to learn about their lives.

Here is a Maya pyramid at Xunatunich in San Ignacio, Belize

To see some Maya ruins you have to swim into a cave. I went on a
tour of this cave with MayaWalk Tour company, and they shared this picture.

There is not nearly as many Maya sites in El Salvador as there are in Belize. There are some pyramids here, but nothing nearly as impressive as in Belize, Guatemala, or Honduras. Even though they are small, El Salvador does have some very important Maya sites.

Throughout Central America there are Maya pyramids, but the only place there are still Maya homes is in El Salvador. The Mayas built their pyramids out of stone that can last for a long time. They built their homes, however, out of sticks and clay. Overtime the Maya homes were destroyed. At a place called, Joya de Cerén in El Salvador, however there is still some evidence of Maya homes. This is because a volcano erupted and covered all the homes in ash. This ash saved the homes. Archeologists and historians have learned a lot about daily life by studying the homes found at Joya de Cerén.

Here is the foundation of a Maya house in Joya de Cerén.

This is a shaman's (doctor) office. The shaman who worked
here was a woman. 

For a long time, historians believed that the Mayas did not know about the wheel. They believed that the Maya people never had the idea to invent a wheel. However, in El Salvador, archeologists found a toy dog that had wheels. This proves that in fact the Mayas knew how to make wheels, they just didn’t really use them. The dog with wheels might be El Salvador’s most important Maya artifact.

Here is the dog with wheels, one of the most important Maya pieces
in El Salvador. 

I love learning about different cultures, like the Maya. Click the link below to do some Maya math! :) 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B91xK8CIpJ_tQloyRmUzY2NuRXc/view?usp=sharing

Corn

Have you eaten corn on the cob before? What other ways have you eaten corn? I would guess that you have also had creamed corn or corn mixed in with other vegetables. I am almost certain that you have also had popcorn! Did you know that corn was first grown in Mexico and Central America? El Salvador was one of the first places to ever have corn!

I eat corn every day in El Salvador, sometimes for all three meals! Although sometimes I eat corn on the cob, most of the time I eat corn tortillas. The tortillas in El Salvador are much thicker than the tortillas you use to make tacos. A traditional Salvadoran lunch or dinner always comes one or two tortillas, but some people love tortillas so much they will eat three or four! Another corn dish is also the most popular Salvadoran food! It is called a pupusa. A pupusa is made with the same dough as a tortilla, but a filling is added before it is cooked. The most common pupusas are stuffed with cheese and beans, but you can also put pork or shrimp inside a pupusa. Pupusas are served with a tomato sauce and a special coleslaw called cortido. Sometimes we eat pupusas for dinner or sometimes we eat them for breakfast.

Salvadoran tortillas are thicker and smaller than Mexican tortillas.  

Many people in El Salvador grow corn. Just like in rural Illinois, there are a lot of corn fields here. A big difference, however, is that Salvadoran don’t use tractors or machines that farmers in Illinois use. This is because El Salvador is very mountainous and tractors won’t work in many places here. It is very hard work to take care of a corn field by hand!

This hilly and rocky corn field needs to be taken care of by hand. 

We just celebrated the first harvest of the corn in El Salvador. In early August the corn has finally grown enough for people to eat it. Each stalk of corn can produce two types of corn: elote and maiz. Elote is what the corn is called when it is first ready to be eaten. If you leave elote on the corn stalk for a longer period of time it turns into maiz. You can make different food with elote than you can with maiz, and they taste different.

Picking elote from the corn stalks. If
we left this corn on the stalks longer it
would become maiz.  

When towns celebrate the first harvest of the corn, people can buy tamales, atole, which is a drink made out of corn and cinnamon and elote that you eat right off the cob. 

A quick snack of atole and elote. 

There is also usually dancing and singing! My favorite tradition, however, is electing a queen of the corn. Many rural towns have a corn-husk dress making contest. Girls and their families will work for over 3 months to create dresses made completely out of corn materials! There is a fashion show off all the corn dresses, and the winner becomes the queen of the corn for that year.

Contestants wait to show off their corn dresses! 

Here is the Queen of the Corn 2016 

 Abrazos,
Mrs. Mulherin


Here are some questions that go along with my blog. See if you can answer all the questions! 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B91xK8CIpJ_tVGpFNE9xT1VUSXc/view?usp=sharing

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to school. I hope that you are getting settled into your new classrooms and that you have made some new friends. I am sure that you are going to have a fun year with lots of hard work! I know that I will!

I miss everything about Evergreen. I miss seeing the teachers every day. I miss the students who come to school ready to learn. I miss the classrooms filled with great learning experiences. Even though I miss Evergreen very much, I am excited about this year.

Did you know that I took one year off from teaching to volunteer in El Salvador? (That means I’ll be back at Evergreen next year!)

Here I am working in my office. 

I know that starting a new school year can be exciting and a little scary. So is living in a new country! We both will have a lot to learn this year. I am going to have to do new things this year, and I hope that you try something new too! I will need to work really hard to improve my Spanish. I am trying to read as much as I can in Spanish because the more you read, the better you get at understanding a language. I also bought a workbook to help me with Spanish grammar.

I am volunteering with the Salvadoran Lutheran Church. My job is to connect American churches with Salvadoran churches. This means that sometimes I spend all day translating different documents to spend to the United States. Other days I go with American groups who visit El Salvador as a tour guide. Sometimes I go to different parts of the country to learn about different projects there. Last week I went to a place called Cara Sucia for a youth workshop. Students at the workshop were learning about how to write news articles. We worked in groups to write an article and take pictures to use along with our article.

This is one of the groups I helped. We are top of the
San Salvador Volcano in this picture! 

These are some of the students in the youth workshop.
Our classroom was outside! 

                                                                                                     

El Salvador is a very exciting place! I can’t wait to share with you about the wonderful country I’ll call home for the next year.

Best of luck this school year! Work really hard. I miss you.

Abrazos,

Mrs. Mulherin

Here is a map activity you can complete to learn more about where El Salvador is: