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Day 13: Holy Mole!

Alright folks I promise to make this blog post much shorter than my last one, so I hope you stick with me on whatever day you are reading this.


Today is Sunday, a day in which people who practice Catholicism attend Mass. If you don’t know, Catholicism is the largest practicing form of Christianity in Suchilquitongo, so while we were consuming our breakfast of tostados, we decided to go to the 10 AM Mass. After all, it should only be one hour, so we should still be able to finish everything we set out to do for that day (Hannah Ilan made a physical calendar with deadlines, so we can’t let her down). To make you read the rest of this, I will tell you that only one of those statements ended up being true (I think this is called foreshadowing).


We got to the worksite at 9, got set up, cut a couple pieces of wood for the trays, and headed over to Mass. For the Catholics in our group, it was cool to experience Mass in a different setting in terms of being in a different country abd different language. Even for the non-Catholics, it was also cool to see the community Church and overall setting. However, it was Pentecost Sunday today (end of the Easter Season), and because of this, Mass ended up taking 2 hours (end foreshadowing).

Drying Racks and Trays completed!

So, once we ended we ran back to Mine’s car and then to the worksite because we needed to finish all the madera! Since Team Base finished their work yesterday we had all hands on deck for Team Wood. We’ve been working on these drying racks and trays for so long that we had a perfect system down. The PUC team cut the leftover wood that was needed, handed it off to the Xuchil team members who constructed the leftover trays with breathtaking speed, and then finally we sanded down all the wood and hammered down any mesh that was sticking out of the trays. After 10 days at the worksite, we had 2 big racks, 2 small racks, and 20 trays all ready to go. We have a few more adjustments to make tomorrow, but after that, we’re going to deliver those guys to their new home in the PSD.


Between Mass and the end of the workday we also did other things to keep us from working all the time. One of them was lunch, which was extra special today because we went to Mine’s family’s place to eat a hearty meal of mole. I guarentee that mole is not what you think it is because it is a specialty of Mexico with a recipe of (this is all the team can remember, there was probably more) chicken, peanuts, chocolate, cinamon, apples, bananas, crackers, and almonds. David ate more for this lunch than all of his other meals combined, and we all enjoyed the tortillas that they were making right off the comal, so you can accurately say that we had a splended time.

With a full stomach, we got to see another demonstration of a prototype developed from the previously blogged about DCC workshop. We walked right downstairs to Mine’s place to observe the group she had made a prototype with. As previously blogged about, she does a lot of work with amaranth, and her team made a very functional prototype that separates amaranth from dirt using the fact that amaranth weighs less than dirt. The amaranth and dirt go down a small staircase with water making it flow. The dirt is collected in the stairs while the amaranth flows all the way down. Filtering with gravity. Just another brilliant thing going on in Suchilquitongo. Can’t believe we’re leaving here in a few days.


Peace, love, CO2 bug killer,

- Archik y Team Mexico

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