This weekend I spent some time going to the reserve right behind my apartment, Moxviquil, and exploring the city with my neighbor. Moxviquil is a reserve and botanical garden. It was so beautiful even though most of the orchids weren’t in bloom. But I was able to see quite a few of the birds local to the region!

San Cris has so much to offer. There is a wonderful farmer’s market on the weekends with delicious homemade food. There are tons of restaurants and cafes as well as museums lining the city. Not to mention the incredible churches I happen to walk by by accident! I am enjoying my stay in this city 🙂

At work, we have been preparing to go out to the field, beginning tomorrow! On Monday we gave our diagnostic a practice run at a school nearby. The school has 900 students making it a very large school for the area. The kids were so bold! They were so curious about my co-worker who is Korean-American. They kept asking where she was from and how to say words in Korean. And when I told them I was from Texas they all gasped and explained that they learned about Texas from their history class where they learned that Mexico lost Texas to the United States.

The diagnostic needed some tweaking, and we needed to learn how to perform water quality tests on the field. So today we had a boot camp with Héctor to learn how to do those tests. It was good getting to know the team I will be going to the field with, and also it was fun to be working with my hands.

After that, the office threw a surprise party for the organization’s founder, Fermín. The brought in a Mariachi band and I learned that the Mexican tradition for birthday parties is to hire a mariachi band and everyone has to give a hug to the person being celebrated. That was a fun break from work as well!

I am super excited to head to the field tomorrow with my team and see how things go. Hasta luego!