PCT Visit

This past week two of the new trainees came to visit. These trips are parts of our three month PST to show trainees how volunteers live and work; for mine, I had gone up north to Saltillo.

These two had been out here last week to learn about my primary assignment, so I focused more on the outside-of-work experience. Thursday we had amazingly great weather (it has been raining every day for the last three months!), and so we went for a hike near the two volcanoes, where there is a waterfall called Apatlaco. It's a fun hike. While we stopped for snacks, a hummingbird actually came up to us and hovered behind one of the trainees for a couple seconds--I caught it out of the corner of my eye, and it was a pretty amazing / shocking / hard-to-believe thing. Apparently the other guy who saw the hummingbird and I had such stunned looks on our faces that the trainee thought she had some scary-as-crap animal behind her!



Friday we spent in downtown Puebla, browsing museums and the artisan district. We got caught in a downpour the afternoon as we were coming back for dinner (another party with my friends down the street), and the streets flooded. Here is one of the many rivers that we had to wade through on our way back.



Saturday a friend from my office took us out to this ex-Hacienda northwest of the city called Chautla. The governor used to live there, and now it is open for picnic-ers, fishing, etc. The house had some nice hardwood floors and a great view, but was definitely a fixer-upper.

Random festival and visitors

Last Saturday night I said there was a stage being set up in the center; I actually wound up going. A band started playing around 9:30 PM, with a small crowd. The crowd kept growing, and the band's pyrotechnic guys kept lighting off fireworks. At one point, they introduced these paper-mache bulls with racks of fireworks strung on top...and invited people from the crowd to run around with them!!! So these two guys (one after the other), put the bulls onto their shoulders, lit the fuse, and ran into the crowd. I kid you not. I got some videos from my hiding spot behind the speakers (yes, the speakers are stacked about 3 meters high):



Also, this last week I got to meet some of the new trainees in Group 9! They have been down here for two weeks, and as part of their training, they came down to visit my office. I gave a couple of talks, we got some tours, and we signed the official memo of agreement for my center to accept volunteers. The new group seems really sharp and has some great experience / backgrounds, and I look forward to getting to hang out with them.