Dec 17

It's Tuesday everyday?

The day began at 7AM when Cristian and Abdullah began cooking breakfast with the supervision of Jenny and Dr. Basha. They cooked/prepared toast with almond butter, as well as eggs and bacon, the usual. Today was the first day coffee was available for the group, so Angel and Dr. Basha were beyond ecstatic. Almost everyone got to breakfast on time but Giselle, who decided to sleep in and have cereal for breakfast. Once our dishes were clean, it was time to go to the local school for our first time and work on our projects.

On our way there, we had to climb up a street with a 40 degree slope and after 15 minutes, we arrived at the school! Firstly, we received a tour of the entire place. The tour first started off with showing us the school's water filtration system and our tour guide, Robin, showed us how basically every part of the school was made from inorganic trash/material and tires. The tour took about an hour or so and it was really nice to hear about the history of the school and of Long Way Home (the organization we were working with).

After the tour, we met up with Adam, who is the site engineer/manager and defined our projects (through Bryna, the volunteer coordinator). He gave us a little spiel about the electricity shortage problem in the classrooms, aluminum forge, and the inorganic trash compactor. Since Adam was only on site for today, we had to ask him as many questions regarding the projects as possible, so we would hopefully be prepared enough for the rest of the week.

Following a small brainstorming session, we then split up into groups and began to work on our projects. Dr. Basha worked on the solar panel system while Cristian assisted her. Angel and Jenny researched on whether there was sulfation in the solar panel batteries and reading the battery voltages to see if the shortage problems could be due to the batteries. Giselle and Abdullah worked on figuring out where the short circuit was located in one of the four classrooms near the solar panel system.

After a while, Angel and Jenny figured out that the batteries should not be the problem for the circuit shortage. On the other hand, Cristian and Dr. Basha questioned whether the solar panel system was accurate or not.

As noon approached, Abdullah and Giselle were having difficulty identifying the problem of the short circuiting. And so, as everyone else started helping and working together, we finally figured out the source of the short circuiting after many experiments using the circuit breaker rooms, multi-meter measurements, and a water kettle. We felt so relieved!

After that, Adam poured more electrical problems on us. Our next challenge was to figure out why some LED lights in another region of the school weren’t working properly or at all. There was one bulb in particular that just did not work at all, and after Angel and Dr. Basha did voltage and current measurements on various spots, they concluded that the bulb was faulty.

At this point, the day was almost over and everyone was exhausted. At the end of the work day, everyone had their respective nicknames. Abdullah was the bearer of bulbs. Angel was the bulb bestower. Jenny was the stool stabilizer. Dr. Basha was the cardiologist. Cristian was the bully of the group. Giselle was the dog whisperer.

After walking back to the hotel, everyone had their introverted time before a local Comalapan lady came to give us a tortilla demonstration. It was a little challenging for some of us as the dough ball was prone to stick to our hands if left there for too long, but it was overall an enjoyable experience. We even got to eat the ones we made! We battled in Speed afterwards and then Abdullah, Cristian, Giselle, and Jenny ventured out to the night market for some tacos, churros, and pizza. They got locked out of the hotel as they approached their curfew, 9PM. Dr. Basha, hero of all and most importantly el capitan, then came to the door to save them.