First Blog from Guatemala!

Hello!

So first off, I have to say that it took Caitlin and I about 5 minutes to find out how to create a new blog since all of the options were listed in Spanish and we both took French in school.....But here we are with the first blog of the trip!

We arrived at the hotel around 10 PM last night only to find that the hotel only had 2 rooms available instead of the 4 we reserved....But the girls shared a room and Evelio stayed with his mom, so all turned out well there. When Caitlin, Catherine and I walked into our room, however, we were greeted by a HUMONGOUS spider above our beds....And I mean larger than the size of my hand humongous....After a Raid shower and a very long pole, the hotel employee saved us from certain doom. Somehow we still managed to sleep after this traumatizing event.

Today we went into the village. We had a long discussion with some of the men of the community (who actually remembered me - I never would've thought!), and got a LOT of questions answered - awesome progress already! After talking to them for at least an hour, we decided to hike across the river and walk through the crop fields. We ended up walking pretty far through their crop fields and ran into the river further downstream and it was BEAUTIFUL. Definitely my idea of paradise, it was so serene.

After that we went into the town of Malacatan for lunch and also picked up a bag of cement for strength testing. We went back to San Jose Petacalapa and whipped up a batch of concrete! The men of the village mixed the concrete the way the normally have in the past - it was a really cool process to watch! We conducted the slump test today...it failed miserably! We couldn't even measure the amount of slump because the concrete was SO soupy. We still filled six cylinders so that we could conduct 7-day and 28-day strength tests. Some of these samples will be left to test here, and the others will come home with us and we'll test them at home.

After that we just chilled with the community...Stephen, Evelio, and Guillermo played soccer with some of the guys in the community while us girls played with the cutest little girls! Now we're back at the hotel relaxing a little.

Stay tuned for the next update! :)
-Kelley and Caitlin