Whooah, were half way there (Livin on a prayer)

Saludos from San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico!

If I were a truck driver (aka taxi for the area in which paved roads do not exist), I'd be greeting you with some sort of code name such as Black sparrow, Huracan or Pluma roja. (You know how taxis communicate with each other through the radio).

Anyway, we are embarking upon our last couple of weeks in Chiapas. As of now all pre-measurements are done! Farah and I completed the last of the particulate matter measurements and spirometry this past week in Chuchtik, a small community consisting of 28 families. It is much more similar to Quexalhukum, and spirometry was more of a challenge here. The women are extremely shy, which makes it much harder for us to convince them to perform the lung function test. Basically with spirometry, you have to inspire until you lungs are absolutely full, and forcefully expire all of the air in your lungs in the first second (FEV1), then maintain that residual flow of air for 6 seconds. For many, it is an uncomfortable experience, and you also look like you're going to explode in the last 6 seconds. For this reason, the women get very embarrassed and cover their faces in the process. Some women can get it within the first 5 tries. For others, 10+ tries still isn't enough. Fortunately, women are also persistent so we've got a lot of data to work with.

A large part of the work has been done, and now we are waiting for word from Rudolfo so that we can hire a big-rig (rabon) to pick up the stoves in Hidalgo, a city near the border of Mexico and Guatemala. We are going back today and will be distributing cement blocks on Monday or Tuesday. To build the ONIL stove, you need 11 cement blocks as a base along with the stove parts. Thus, although we are receiving the stoves later than we expected, we can still use the time to buy and bring blocks to the families so they can start building the base of their stoves. We hope all goes well with the border, as history has proven that there is plenty of room for complication (like last year's Chiapas group experienced). Fortunately, we have their guidance and the help of Jaime from Medicos del Mundo to faciliate this process.

Looking beyond this, we still have to perform all post-stove measurements sometime in November or December. This will likely take 2 weeks. Afterwards, we will have to analyze the results and make sense ofour data. The stove project is large and a long term commitment, but we are already looking forward to our return trip. Building relations here has made this experience incredibly worthwhile and fulfilling.

After we are done distributing stoves, Anna, CB, and I may head on over to Oaxaca to explore more of Mexico! I am currently searching kayak.com for a plane ticket from Oaxaca to DF, since I made the mistake of buying my outbound ticket out of DF instead of Tuxtla, the capital of Chiapas. As for now, we will return back to Q and will likely be back to San Cris on Tuesday night or Wednesday to rent the truck and drive to the border. Hopefully, all of our GI issues will be resolved by then.

A little blurb about Junax and hippieland: Junax is a hostal for volunteers in San Cristobal. Thus it draws the hippiest of the hippies from all over, including Spain, France, Argentina, Mexico, Canada, New Zealand...many of who have interesting stories and projects. It seems as though most people are working with the Zapatista communities in some way, documenting human rights abuses. Junax is very communal, and we got to bond a little with the Junax kids last night playing this random game called Psicologia. Anyway, it is actually nice getting to do something like that since we are usually running around on trying to get errands done when we are in San Cris. After the game, we went to this "party" that some guy CB and Anna knew from an electronics store. He told CB that he would bring his female friends to the party. This party consisted of Anna, CB, me, and the guy and his wife. He was dressed up like he was going out to dance, cowboy boots and hat with a matching jacket. His wife was also dressed up. This guy, (Juan?), is like a man with ADD on crack...very very nice and friendly, but definitely strange and cartoonlike. They invited us to go to this place called Palace, a discoteca with lots of salsa, mariachi, and durangesa. It was a very peculiar experience, and I fell asleep on the couch when we were all talking, so we went home about an hour later.

That's all folks, updates will come again this week.

Con amor,
Yaquelina