Aaron Visits the Chocolate Museum To Learn About Mayan Prostitutes

Yesterday I finally took an opportunity to go see the Museo Xocolata, which is about ten minutes from the school. I´d meaning to go and I finally grew tired of not entering any of the buildings (although I did see the Roman Ruins on Sunday).

The museum actually gives you a chocolate bar for a ¨ticket¨, which is a nice and delicious idea, but the museum is really mostly downhill from there as its not very large and not very interactive.

Once you get past the cafe-chocolate store, you enter a big room which takes you around in a circle past three types of objects:
1. plaquards which tell you about the history of chocolate dating back to its Precolombian-Mayan roots.
2. chocolate sculptures of various Spanish-related objects including the Arc de Triumf and the windmill scene from Don Quixote.
3. old tyme machinery for making chocolate (and chocolate sculptuers)

Sprinkled here and there are some other interesting artifacts, like unroasted cacao beans and plants, as well as early 20th century bar wrappers, advertisements, and photographs.

The factual information was pretty strange. For example, the museum points out that Mayans used the cacao as currency, and lists the price for various things, including mentioning that ¨a prostitute costs ten cacao beans,¨ which is either a very extraneous or very useful factoid about Mayan culture, depending on your perspective. I wonder if that was ten cacao means for just a ¨standard¨ prostitute, or a high-class one?

Either way, you´ll have to go there if you want to find out any real information about chocolate. The only other thing I´ll mention is that I have a new historical context for Roald Dahl´s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as promotions inside chocolate bars was apparently a fad in Britain for a while.

The best part of the museum complex isn´t actually part of the museum at all: right next door is a confectionary school with large glass windows so you can watch what they´re doing inside. You´re not allowed to go in but it was fun to watch them work with chocolate, even for just five minutes. It looks like you can also book expensive tours there and walk through the school and have exotic chocolatey drinks and such.


I have been called out several times (by the students) for nodding off in class. This does not bother me, but this morning I was preemptively pinched ¨awake¨ by the person sitting next to me, I guess because I lowered my head for about 5 seconds. This is completely unnecessary and I will get considerably more annoyed if that happens again. If I´m snoring or missing something important or about to be caned by one of the tutors, fine, elbow me, but don´t elbow me just because I have a bad rep and it´s the morning. That crosses the line from concern to straightforward physical abuse.

Another frustrating moment from yesterday with another American student:
Jane Doe: Hey Aaron, I noticed we´re the only two people who sleep in class.
Me: Hmmm. (none of this is true, we´re not the ¨only two people¨ and ¨sleeping in class¨ is a rather extreme designation. I have not slept in class. I´ve had the fuzzies about three times over the past few weeks).
Jane Doe: Do you think its because of the British people?
Me: What ever do you mean?
Jane Doe: Well, they get up there, and they just go ¨Wa Wa Wa Wa.¨ You have this problem, right?
Me: .....No.