El Salvador wasn´t it´s usual sunny self yesterday. When we all woke up at 6:30 am everyone had on long sleeves and all of the locals commented, "¡que frio!", even though it was probably only in the 60´s. Even though it was a bit chilly it was a very productive day all around. The surveying crew (Brian H, Chris and the stick holder of the day) completed their work in Nuevo Ferrocarril that they had been working on for 7 days. The bridge group started moving large stones into place for construction of the wing walls. For those of you non-engineers, a wing wall is basically a wall that supports the abutments by protecting against erosion and aids in drainage. The group finished putting all of the rocks in place and mortared half of one wing wall on each side of the ravine. The waste water treatment group continued to take samples at the treatment plant despite monday´s discovery of the broken spectrophotometer. Stephanie and Mike spent a large portion of the day trying to get the device fixed to no avail. However the filtered samples will be transported back home and analyzed there. The sampling also required a covert operation to the waste water treatment plant at midnight, which was a bit spooky but fun nonetheless. Probably the largest accomplishment of the day in my opinion was a meeting that took place between myself, Don Jaime (Jim) and the local health promoter, although I am a bit biased. We were able to obtain health records for the community of Nuevo Ferrocarril, which should prove extremely helpful for project evaluation and grant writing in the future. All together it was a very productive day and we all are looking forward to completing our projects.
¡Hasta Luego!
