A very busy weekend

Lots to update today!

Arturo and I had a busy day on Friday. Arturo figured out that the Universidad Marista has a contract with Coca-Cola to only sell it’s products on Marista property, so we can’t do the purification at the community center, Centro Marista de Desarollo (CEMADE). But there is a little park two blocks away from CEMADE that they have been working on for a little while now. It was an overgrown, abandoned lot where people dumped their garbage a lot, but Arturo, Maria, and some people from the community bought it for the citizens of Emiliano Zapata to use and have cleaned it up quite a bit. There is a tiny house – la casita – there where we will set up the purifier.

So Friday morning we visited la casita – the little house – in the park in Emiliano Zapata with a technician from a company that sells water softeners. They took some measurements and such and figured out that it would be possible to install the water softener there. Then we went to visit Arturo’s friend at his chemical company to look at his water softener because it is very similar to the one we would be buying. They were very nice people. So we went home for lunch and then came back later to get 50 liters of water from him in order to do the test run that night. We also bought a battery and some plastic barrels to do the test in.

So that night we went to CEMADE to do a demonstration of the purification for some of the women who will be purifying the water. Everything went really well! The only problem was that there was less water pressure at the end of the process than there should be, but after talking with EDGE that night, I have some ideas about what might have been the problem. I’m not sure what the women thought of everything because they were pretty quiet, but I think Arturo was impressed. He commented that I was an engineer. Ha ha! It was great to actually get out the purifier and finally get to set it up.

The purifier runs off of a battery and a handful of salt. I read this story to the women (in Spanish), as is EDGE’s custom:

2 Kings 2:19-22
The men of the city said to Elisha, “Look, our lord, this town is well situated, as you can see, but the water is bad and the land is unproductive.” “Bring me a new bowl,” he said, “and put salt in it.” So they brought it to him. Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, “This is what the Lord says: ‘I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.’” And the water has remained wholesome to this day, according to the word Elisha had spoken.


Saturday I had a meeting with the internship director from Centre and the other students. After that we walked around El Centro a bit and had lunch in a restaurant overlooking the central plaza. It was really nice! I took the bus home and then Arturo and I went to CEMADE, where the kids were gathering for their weekly CCD class. Arturo said there are sometimes 200 kids there! The place was crawling with them – about 100 this week. It was so much fun to watch them and be around so many kids. This was a special day because they were giving the kids presents for El dia de Reyes – the epiphany. Mexicans celebrate the epiphany much more than we do. On top of gifts from Santa Claus, children get another gift from the Three Kings on the epiphany.

Sunday was a long day. I got up at 7:00 in order to leave the house by 7:30 to go to mass in the cathedral at 8:15. The cathedral is beautiful and they have a huge organ that is wonderful to listen to. I found it a little difficult to keep up with the mass because things were a little different, especially in the beginning. And I couldn’t understand a lot of what they were saying because of the echo of the speakers. When they go to communion, the people don’t go to the front in a single-file line, pew-by-pew. They just get up whenever they feel like it and walk up. I was kind of confused, but I managed.

After mass I walked around the central plaza (where a million vendors had their stands set up) to wait for my friends to arrive who I would be going to Chitchen Itza with. When they got there we walked to the bus station – about ten blocks away. Well we had trouble finding it at first, so we had to ask someone where it was. We bought our tickets and left Merida on a tour bus at 11:00. The ride took forever! The bus driver would stop in these little towns and pick up people who were going one or two towns down the road. And people selling snacks would get on and walk up and down the aisle rattling off whatever they were selling. I knew better than to buy anything because the people who prepare them usually don’t use clean water or hands. I thought it was safe to buy a can of Coke though. I got ripped off – it cost 10 pesos. So the bus ride was supposed to be an hour and a half but we didn’t get there until almost 2:00 and our bus back to Merida was to leave at 6:10. When we were about to go into the park a man stopped us and asked us in English if we’d like a tour. After talking with him for a few minutes we figured it was worth the 400 pesos (about $30) to split between the three of us. I realized after I handed him the money that we gave him 40 pesos extra. Oh well.

So Chitchen Itza is a famous Mayan ruin site with a huge pyramid in the middle. I’ve loaded pictures on my Picasa website here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mdraley. It was pretty neat to see how advanced the Mayan people were. The big pyramid was like a calendar because there are 4 sides with 91 steps on each side. If you count the top roof, that equals 365 days. We didn’t get to climb it because they stopped allowing it only 2 years ago. You can read more about what I saw on Picasa. One of the other girls who went wanted to go see the cave that was 6 kilometers down the road, so we paid for an overpriced taxi and took a “tour” of the cave. It was actually a self-paced walk through the cave with speakers of a recording and music. It was in Spanish and I didn’t spend the energy to try to figure out what they were saying. I guess when you’ve seen Mammoth Cave, everything else pales in comparison.

After that we took the taxi to the bus station. It was only 5:00 and our bus didn’t leave until 6:10. There was another bus that was leaving at 5:30 and I would have liked to take that one, but one of the other girls wanted to take our time eating. We went across the road to a tourist trap restaurant (buffet style) where they had dancers who balanced trays on their heads and a can of coke cost 30 pesos ($2.20).

When we left the restaurant at 6:00 we learned that our bus had left at 5:50. So we waited for the one that should come around 6:30, which didn’t actually come until closer to 6:45. The bus ride home took about two hours and the three of us walked back to El Centro where we could catch our buses home. They were telling me I didn’t have to walk so fast, but I was ready to be home. I went to my bus stop, but after 30 minutes the bus I normally take never came. I called Maria and Arturo to ask them if it was still running at this hour (which was not easy to do since I was so worn-out). Maria told me to take another bus that was labeled with our colonia, or neighborhood, and I did. I got home at about 10:00 and set my alarm on my phone. When I opened my phone there was a reminder from my calendar that I was supposed to take my malaria pill today. I was supposed to take it with food, but I was too tired, so I just took it on an empty stomach. I guess the combination of the tourist trap food and the malaria pill woke me up at 5:00 a.m. with some... digestive problems.

This morning Arturo and Maria knew I wasn’t feeling well so we waited a while before going out to the place that sells water softeners to make our purchase. I think we spent about two hours there talking about how things will be set up and making sure we’re getting the most economical set-up possible. Arturo can be very thorough, which is a good thing. So I bought the water softener, two tanks, salt, and some parts for 13,000 pesos, or about $980. When we left Arturo asked me what I thought and I told him I don’t like to spend money! Later on he asked me how my stomach was feeling and I said I felt fine. “So the purchase didn’t make your stomach feel bad?” he said. “Sí, un poco,” I said with a laugh.

Tomorrow we demonstrate the water purifier at the university! I think if I can demonstrate this purifier – in Spanish – in front of a bunch of professors and engineers, I think I can do just about anything. I think I’m going to brush up on some of my vocabulary tonight...