I live within the shadows of one of the most magnificent of Ancient Maya Temple sites in Latin America and in a very small impoverished Yucatan Maya Indigenous pueblo. I tutor English and have had the privilege of tutoring hundreds during the seven years that I have lived here.

It's a magical world filled with tales of magical prankster little holographic people called Aluxes who wonder freely. Aluxes are known to be hoarders and pack rats and people sometimes find their stashes in the woods. I've been told by a shaman type friend who can see them (While I cannot, children and other Maya friends often can) that one lives in my backyard and as of Sept. 2017 moved into my house and I am NOT Happy about that ... they are tricksters and move house things around! I hear dining room chairs moving and think my Maya girlfriend has arrived for lunch and there is no one in the house. They are also land guardians. While Westerners scoff, the Maya recognize the Aluxes as nature's guardians. I've been advised what to leave out for food and within time and money I'll host an ancient Maya nature ceremony. I've made peace with my Alux house mate but I've been warned by the locals that my Western houseguests might not be welcomed.

The Maya world remains a vibrant world which speaks of the Old Gods, of animals, birds and insects like dragonflies that dance and then herald the arrival of a friend or warn of the death of a loved one, of customs and rituals that date back over 2000 years, a blend of Inquisitional Spanish Catholicism and shamanic paganism, of over 300 years of both Church, Spanish and Mexican slavery to the current era of greater cultural freedom and inclusion in the Mexican Yucatan culture.

It has been only within the last two decades that the Maya have been permitted to speak their own language as well as attend Universities in Merida, the capital. Yet racism remains among the Mexican, Yucatecan and Spanish ... their previous owners.

It's a passionate yet vanishing world despite greater freedom as the near Maya are under extraordinary external western pressures not only to mention prying archeologists and anthropologists to TV images abandoning thousands of years of traditions for the "WalMart Cult".

Of course with poverty (the average family of four survives on about $200US a month) comes the Pandora's box of problems BUT where I am inspired and have learned is from the Maya almost zen like approach to these events and it IS a hand to mouth existence. One lives close to the bone and out of that too comes to a greater appreciation of simplicity and kindness.