It’s my last week in San Cris, and guess what… I have no phone. I happened to drop it hundreds of feet down into the deepest part of the river. Don’t be like me. But anyway, I had a really packed week. This week we had to balance classes, working on our different projects, and coming up with a new project for the next semester while also figuring out how to enjoy our last week in Mexico. This week was honestly one of the toughest ones, and not just because I didn’t have a phone and couldn’t DUO into anything, but because of the amount of work we needed to do. Vonny, Isa, and I all went back to Cantaro Azul to talk with the workers so we could come up with some ideas for future projects centered around manufacturing.
This was honestly a very interesting experience for me because we were able to directly speak with real people who had certain problems they were facing every day that affected their work and lives. It was honestly refreshing at times because we were instructed not to come up with solutions and instead to find problems because it made it easier to not become attached to the ideas we would come up with for problems. It also helped in making these problems more general and open-ended.
As you can see from my previous blogs, we also did work with several other NGOs in Mexico, which was my favorite part of the work we’ve done so far for these courses. Their work is so important, and it was very cool to see how intertwined these NGOs were with each other. My view of nonprofit work changed in the sense that I could see how engineers could contribute to this work. Oftentimes nonprofits are mainly highlighted for just their social work and not really the technical work. On the opposite side of the manufacturing work we did, we did a lot of work on water treatment methods. We used treatments like SODIS, chemical, and even natural ones. I didn’t really have a prior view on water treatment, but I actually think it’s much easier than I thought it would be (on a surface level, of course, not in regard to things like heavy metals). I didn’t realize that there were so many methods; I guess I just assumed people just followed one specific way. It was actually really fun using a natural water treatment process, and I could see how beneficial it could be for remote communities with low monetary resources due to the accessibility of these materials in these communities.
Ashley and I working on one of natural treatment methods.
Lastly, for the activities we got to do this week. One thing for sure is that we got to see sooooo many cute cafes (mainly because I did most of my work outside the villa). Luckily, I had some saved on an app taken a week before the incident and can include them in this post. But even though we did a lot of work, we made sure to have fun this week and kind of bar-hopped. With some super cool music—from rock to jazz to real lovey-dovey music—I loved it all.
The entranceway to Amor Negro Cafe
Another frequented study-spot: Historico Cafe
I do not regret doing these courses with iSEED at all. I had the greatest time with everything. I loved this way more than doing classes traditionally at Rice, but honestly, this could really just be because of the location and the way our instructors set this up. Obviously this term was a lot shorter than a usual one for these courses, so work did feel like a lot at times, but that was also because we really wanted to have the time to appreciate all of the things around us, and we were able to do that! The one thing I do like more about a more traditional course is that we would get a full syllabus and breakdown. We did not get that for our program, but once again it is probably just specific to how things were run for this country and/or year. As I mentioned before, what I loved about this program is the way we were able to bring our classroom material out into the real world and actually do work with people doing amazing things for their community. I wish I had some more photos to share but at least I got to live in the moment! Please sign up for this program. I think taking courses like these is fundamental to becoming a better engineer!