Jared signs off from Guatemala
We are a bit tardy in posting Jared Wehde's last dispatch (below) from Guatemala, where a group of international engineering students spent Spring Break. The students, who were working on water quality issues, are now back at UMR.
Before we left, a few of us visited a nearby neighbor to the site and were greeted with a warm welcome. The family was excited about a project to improve their drinking water. We spent a few hours talking with them about future projects and they offered us drinks and chairs under the shade.
P.S. Marian Christiansen and Casey Duncan have some final details about the other group that traveled to Guatemala for Spring Break-- the Women as Global Leaders, or WAGLs as they call themselvs -- after the jump:
Day 5... Most of the WAGLs went to 2 more public schools while Marian, Rachel and Casey went back to the orphanage to do some more construction on the platform. The goal of this was to make the water tank higher so others could not vandalize it. Walls were built the day before and we filled these with sand and rock before covering them with concrete. About midday, the rest of the WAGLs joined us. After a short lunch break, we started to mix the concrete. The rest of the WAGLs helped us. This took up the rest of the afternoon.
Day 6... We started out to the vans to go to Dr. Idida Hernandez Aguilar´s office, which is about 3 hours away. She is an OBGYN in Totonicipan. The hospitality there was much more than we could have asked for. We helped out a lot with taking names down and entering information into the computer. Dr. Aguilar´s sister took us out for a tour of historic Totonicipan and the market. Some of the others went back after the market but most of us stayed with her for a hike to see more of the rural areas. We went to see a hot bath house and took some back roads all the way back to the office. Most of these were uphill and made us realize how out of shape we are...and how much work we did the day before. Once we got back we ate a wonderful lunch and played some games. We had a drawing for some small prizes before heading back to Chichi. We also said goodbye to our friends from CUNOC. Tomorrow we will be travelling to Antigua for the day and leaving out early Saturday morning. We will complete the details of this once we get back to good ol´ Rolla.