I woke up refreshed this morning in the hotel and ready to face the day. Kassie unfortunately was still not feeling well, so she hung back at the hotel again. I felt so bad that she had to miss another day, although at least these days are free-bees. 

I got ice cream and waffles for breakfast, probably not the smartest idea since I was still suffering a bit from last night, but it tasted good. Four of the students with us went back to the job site at 7:30, so wit Kassie being sick and Michelle keeping Kassie comfortable, the only ones left were Mark (Federle), Clare (our translator), and me. José came and got us at 8:00, and as we were walking out, we realized it was market day. The plaza outside the hotel was jam-packed with vendors, this time selling authentic goods. I'm glad I could finally see people selling their own products. I guess people shop on market day if they are really buying anything. 

The truck finally came and we hopped in, headed to the spring source of our project. Man was it a drive!! It was almost an hour and a half away, up and down through the mountains. Tough on the butt but insane views. I was warming up the GPS's on the way, and I just watched the elevation rise and rise. We started at 1400m and ended up at 6200m, about a 15,000ft change. We got to learn more about José on the way up which was fun since he's new to EWB and Joyabaj, and we talked with one of the concordes whose name was Mary and who was 21 also. Weird. She was super cute and funny. 

We finally came to a stop and hopped out in front of someone's house. We walked through their cornfield down to "the source". They had built a foundation with a retention wall and everything, not sure what they're gonna put up there but it looked nice. Just to the right of it was the spring. The water was so clear!! They said they had been excavating it back and Francisco said he's known about this site since the 80's, and I guess now is the perfect project and/or the owner finally sold the land. I wanted to check things out more so after asking a handful of questions I walked the flow of the spring. I was concerned on how taking this water would effect the watershed, and similarly the people downstream. There was a line of trees at the end, and Mark said I wasn't allowed to go past that, but that was fine by me. Francisco said that it flowed into a river and that no one besides the owner was using this water... I wasn't super believing this cuz it's a pretty good flow, but I couldn't go far enough to see or hear a river. I did spot some tubes though (tubo = pipe), and I wanted to test the flow rate. I found a good spot in the trees, so I took my nalgene and dumped out the water that was in it and started to time the full-up rate. Unfortunately this took like half a second, so I was in the process of giving up when my notebook fell in the stream. It was floating down and I was already farther than I was supposed to be, so I threw myself into the creek and snatched my notebook. Luckily the notebook and my boots are waterproof, but the boots not so much when the water comes in from the top. Darn it. I walked back up and followed some more tubing and found another spring on the other side of the foundation. This one was much smaller and slower, but I was told that we don't own it. At least some is saved for the people there. I finally circled back to our spring, and hopped in it this time to take some water samples. Wow it was so pretty. I don't think I've ever seen an exposed spring before, and it was amazing. The water was so beautiful and clear, I had to take videos in place of pictures because the water would disappear in a photo; you needed the sound of flowing to understand there was water there. It was gorgeous. From the source looking out, it dropped off a bit to seem like there was a mini waterfall, and the team had put arches over the site for the festival. It was incredible. Definitely check out the photos. Maybe I'm biased. 

When we were finished, we hiked back up to the road where one of the concordes gave us some peaches. We washed them off with water and called them good? Oh well. Apparently this was just a checkpoint, cuz after that we hiked an even greater hill to get to the spot where they want the distribution tank. It was in the middle of the woods on the side of a mountain, but if they wanna do it, it's not my problem. Mary (one of the concordes) wanted to take photos with everyone, and I am in a handful of her selfies now. It was fun getting to do all this with everyone. We hiked back down and finally made it back to the truck. Wow that was a lot at high altitude for a girl who doesn't work out. I'm so glad I got to see everything though. 

On the way back we drove the route the pipe would follow and we stopped at various important locations. One of these was the spot we went to yesterday for their preferred distribution tank location. Mark and I were still not in it if we were to start our project at that location so far from the city. 

We finally made it back to town, and José sat down with me and eventually Kassie (she was feeling a lot better!) to share data. Mark started to call Steve while we were wrapping up with José, so we rushed straight from José to the phone call with Steve. Steve was saying that yes, he agrees that anything outside of La Tribuna's boundaries should not be our responsibility, and all we need to worry about is taking the water from where it meets the boundaries, whether that's by conduction line or another tank. Wow was that a relief!! I was talking with Kassie last night about how we need to start mentally preparing to accept the fact that we might have to turn this project down. That was a really sad moment. But Steve turned it all around, which gave us direction on where to go next. Now we know we just have to worry about surveying the homes (ugh) to prepare for design. I'm really glad we had those two extra days for La Tribuna so when it comes time for the official visit, we can be focused and productive. 

Mincho showed up at about 1:00 to take us back to El Aguacate, but first we decided to have lunch at the hotel. After a yummy ham sandwich we were off. I love Mincho's truck cuz you can stand in it. And this time especially cuz there were only three of us in the back. Usually we're absolutely packed in there. Yesterday was especially painful for me. 

We got back to the site and everyone was all covered in dirt digging trenches (that's not what they were doing but how should I know, I wasn't there). I felt kinda bad coming off of my own little trip back to a place that some people haven't left in five days. I felt kinda gloaty when people asked how it was because it was so darn beautiful. I was flashing around pictures of the spring like none other. Ya they kinda have a reason to be jealous. Hehe. 

After like 30 minutes it was time to clean up the tools and head home. Well that was easy. Makes up for my huge hike today. 

We got back and everyone was kinda done. I sat out on the ridge and looked at the mountains by myself in the silence. It was so nice. A lot had happened in the past few days. Then Kate and Adam came over so it was nice to talk to them, and then unfortunately another fell victim to the vomiting sickness. There wasn't much we could do at this point, we're kinda used to it. Someone else got sick as we were leaving the construction site. At this point you just gotta let it take its route. I sat in the sun for a bit, and then it was time for dinner. Cata made us chicken with veggies and pasta salad. Yummy!! After dinner we just kinda hung low, I tried to reflect a bit with Adam but I was too tired. After being in bed for about fifteen minutes, the girl who got sick earlier got sick again, so us girls hung outside with her. During which time we got a message that the bridge mentor had gotten sick too. Great. Dr. Federle was very very kind to come and take our place outside and sit with her and let us go to bed. Ugh an exhausting day and I'm kinda done with seeing people get sick.