We slept in a bit today (aka 7am shower) so we could go to the festival and hopefully have churros for breakfast. We made our way down to La Pista and discovered that nothing was ready yet. Super sad. I was gonna ride the Ferris wheel too. Discouraged, we headed to the square to see what was happening there. On the way we bought some candy since we were banking on churro breakfast, and we ran into the princessa (who's election we involuntarily watched the week before). The square was dead, and Sarita was closed so we went back to the hotel. Sad. 

We waited around for a bit for the truck to take us to El Aguacate, and man was it good to be in a truck again going through the mountains. I had really missed that having such an urban water project. 

We pulled up and bam, there was a bridge! It kinda felt like I didn't build it- it's that feeling that (I imagine) you get when you slack on a group project and you show up to class and the whole thing is put together perfectly thanks to your teammates. Oh well.  

The bridge was super great though, and the community members had decorated it all over. Everyone was there and we had a big lunch after running across the bridge several times. The vice-mayor (the mayor had obligations at the festival) gave some words, along with several members of the community, and Mark even got a chance to talk. It was super cool to just relax with everyone we had been working with. Before we knew it, it was time to go, and the community members gave us beautiful local shirts as gifts. Super cool. 

I had one last amazing ride in Mincho's truck on the way to the hotel. Then we headed to Mass which lasted a while and we ended up being so hungry that we stopped at Sarita. Always yummy. We made it back in time for a full-team dinner of tamales and beans and rice. Super good but I was so full. We had time to go to La Féria after dinner, so I waited around to hang out with the later crowd (versus the crowd that wanted to check it out then head back). Everyone in my crowd was waaayyy more drunk than sober little me; I didn't realize that was the vibe we were going for. Oh well. Dr. Federle banned us from riding the Ferris wheels, so my dreams were already crushed. We walked around a bit, but there's nothing gringos would like if we're not allowed on the Ferris wheels. We ended up hanging out a little restaurant tienda, and I was pretty set on not drinking so I could have fun in Antigua the next day. That is, until I thought of my favorite thought- tequila. We got a couple of rounds going, probably not a good thing for those already drunk, but it was a-okay for me. Most of the boys left for the bathroom at one point, and then all of a sudden were getting liters of beer bought for us by a nearby table. (Disclaimer: we watched the bottle get opened by the server in front of us) We thought it was the normal "oh we're girls" thing, but later the table of guys came over to us, kinda not our number one goal, but it turns out they recognized me. I happened to be the only one at the table from the water project, and they said that they recognized me from taking GPS points the day before, and they wanted to say thanks for helping out their community. Maybe not the most professional way to say thanks, but they were extremely grateful and literally could not say thank you enough. It was really cool to get to hang out with people our age that we'll end up working with over the next few years. It was really really special to make that connection and get to hang out as friends and not gringos supremos/needy townsfolk. That was really really cool and made the night really special (even if I didn't get to ride the Ferris wheel). 

We walked back and it was only 11:30 but the gate to the hotel was up. Kinda a moment of panic thinking we'd have to sleep on the streets, but finally we found a doorbell and a staff member came out and got us. We finally got inside, and I had a good chat with my buddy Adam before heading to bed, knowing I'd have to get up at 5:30 the next day