Today everyone decided to get up before 6:30am and not tell me... not that I was really even sleeping anyways but I woke up very confused. I went out to the kitchen and everyone was there, just hanging. No idea why they got up so early. Kassie accidentally got breakfast before it was ready, and everyone gave her a hard time for that. Cata killed it with the breakfast again- pancakes with eggs and tortillas. YUM.
Today was nice because we got to ride down to the site instead of hike. My truck riding skills have improved already. Since half the group stayed at the hotel for the night, my half was there working for almost two hours before the others showed up. Not bitter. We bent and tied more rebar, I spent a lot of time cutting ties. Timing worked out that we didn't have a ton to do when the rest of the group got there so we took it easy until lunch. I think we had been getting tired and hot (it was a hot morning) and things started to get a little tense. Lunch was good for everyone though, and Nate, our REIC (Responsible Engineer In Charge) gave us a good pep talk. From there we started filling the retention wall on the not-car side, so that took an hour and a half or so, but after that there wasn't a ton to do again. Rebar was pretty much done and the masons-in-training were doing the wall on the road side. So we took it easy again and came up with personality-matching animals for everyone. I got mouse, some said gerbil. After that we played with the kids a bit and went to the other side to sit down.
There was a lot of down time today. We stayed till 6pm waiting for the masons to finish and figuring out a way to cover the road- we had to excavate a portion of the road to make way for the cables. We had a hard time finding a solution to the gaping hole, Esther (one of the bridge leads) was very persistent of making sure it was as safe as possible. We finally came to the conclusion of planks on top of CMU blocks with tons and tons of caution tape around the edges.
Tonight was our night to stay in the hotel aka take a shower. Today was day 5 for me for not showering, and getting hot and sweaty every day does not help. We dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went to the grocery store to grab some cervezas, something we had all been talking about since landing in Guatemala City. We came back and drank the beers real quick before dinner (we weren't supposed to have alcohol). We ate at the hotel restaurant and I got a mixed meat platter... it was a house special and I wanted something more traditional than spaghetti (cough cough Dr. Federle). It was good but SO filling. Afterwards we ventured out to try to find the ice cream place, but it was pouring and apparently they were closed for the night. Oh well. Kassie and I will be back in town much more with the water project.
Then, the most awaited activity since O'Hare- the shower. Our shower was broken from the night before by our dear friend Noah, so Kassie and I used our other friends' shower. It wasn't warm, but it also wasn't cold, and the week of no water heater in my house in MKE prepared me well for this. I tried to scrub my hair as much as I could, but I'm worried some grease is still in there. Afterwards Kassie and I sat in the lobby to do some work and also reconnect with the world (aka this blog). Mary signing out- gonna go hop into a real bed!!
2025-02-18