Today we woke up and didn’t have the other group staying at our hotel sing happy birthday before 7am! When we all met for breakfast our buffet today had French toast which was actually pretty good. We also taught Adithya about all the slang words we know in hopes he uses them during the trip. So far “skrt skrt” and “big brain” have been the most successful.
Then after filling up our water bottles from what Adithya likes to call a “bubble tap” aka just a water cooler that you see in waiting rooms we split our groups up to go to two preschools. My preschool was in PenaBlanca. While here we taught the students about mass and gravity using balloons, a golf ball, and play doh. I started helping a girl with her play doh since she was shy and sat at her own table. It took a lil bit for her to warm up to me but once she did it was all giggles and smiles. She must have gotten bored of me because she left me to go play with others. The boys in the group were very rambunctious. We rolled the play-doh up in balls and started passing them back and forth. We also started playing with balloons and trying to keep it from hitting the floor. One girl in particular is someone I’ll always remember because she was extremely outgoing. At one point she had me pick her up and pretend she was like an airplane to the point where I had to distract her because I was tired of picking her up.
Once we said goodbye to all the kiddos we split into two groups to install cookstoves. When we arrived at the house we realized we would need to level the floor. Which was a challenge with resources and Mayan Families rarely had to do this so we all had to figure it out together. It took us multiple tries to get it just right. We also had the challenge of trying to get to the hole on the roof since it was too far away to reach using a ladder and the structure wasn’t very secure at all.
During this time we also did an interview with the mother of the household. I took some notes of things I noticed since I couldn’t understand the conversation since it was in the Mayan language. I can’t wait to listen to the translated results later in the week.
Once we were done we finally were able to take a break for a super late lunch. I was so hungry so I ate my food really fast. We had some time to relax so we put on some music and enjoyed the fresh air. However, we are pretty sure we saw a coyote during lunch very close just chilling.
After lunch we went to install a water filter for one of the families of a preschooler. This family was so warm and welcoming into their home. Another interesting thing I noticed was that their family was so large they had two cookstoves already in their home. While there one of the kids was holding a very small kitten and I got to have sit on my lap during the entire interview. I felt so bad waking it up from it’s nap when we had to leave. If I could’ve snuck it back to the states with me I would’ve.
We walked back to the preschool where we installed our last cookstove for the day. This one was different because it was a “newer” version. The difference is that this one doesn’t require sand to hold in the heat but a ceramic piece instead.
After a long day we drove back to the hotel to meetup with the rest of the group. For dinner we walked to an Italian restaurant. The pizza and pasta was great. You could tell they made their own bread.
I can’t wait to finish out the rest of our trip!