Monitoring / Chichicastenango

Sunday, August 06, 2017
Chichicastenango, Quiché Department, Guatemala
This was my last morning waking up in the school, and man was I comfortable. No sarcasm. I figured I'd get up when I woke up cuz I should enjoy nature right? I headed out to the kitchen and chatted with everyone there- all the Marquette people were already up and talking, we were just killing time before it was time to wake up the Guatemalan students for breakfast. They were reluctant to get up at 6:30, but they seemed to enjoy breakfast. After breakfast we waited and waited and waited for the car, and in the meantime learned more about each other. I tried to learn a bit of Spanish off them. Finally the car came and we were off. 
Today we went to El Bosque, the pedestrian bridge built last year by our chapter. The hotel team had been there an hour before we got there, doing monitoring paperwork and stuff. We got the fun part of checking out the bridge without having to do anything real serious. One issue I did hear about was some erosion from storm water runoff on one side of the bridge that may be putting the foundation at risk. Otherwise it looked like a great bridge. The students liked it too, however they're really set on a static bridge, nothing that sways like ours do. I'm excited to see what they come up with in working with Steve and EWB. 
From there we split into trucks of going to the school and going to Chichicastenango, Central America's largest open-air market. I hopped in that one and said goodbye to the students, making sure they'd show up in Antigua on Sunday to hang out. 
The car ride was two hours. That's a long time for the bed of a pickup truck. We finally made it and split into two groups. It was crazy busy and we even saw some other gringos. We walked around for a long time and I bought a few things (and haggled a bit with Michelle). It was fun but very overwhelming and tiring. I almost fell asleep on the way back. 
We were dropped off in Joyabaj at the hotel where we met our three other mentors (Matt and Brooke for the water project, and Mike for the bridge). It was so good to see them and to see new faces and energy. 
I went to Mass at 6pm with Michelle at the church in the square. This church is insanely nice and modern, despite its façade. We had to jump through the market coming down, but we made it. This one guy in front of us noticed we were gringos and helped us through the Mass parts I had printed out. He was super nice and we talked to him a bit afterwards, until getting interrupted by the doctor who took care of Kassie. He was wondering when he'd get paid and we agreed on the next day. 
We got back to the hotel and ate dinner, then spoke with the La Tribuna team to get everyone up to speed (it literally changes every day). After that we were so tired that we wrote some bullet points for the meeting tomorrow and went straight to bed.  
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