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After the plant we got a rare chance to hang out by a pool - after lunch (more beans, tortillas, rice, and meat) and a lengthy meeting with the local water board and a member of Agua Para El Pueblo. He mentioned that Cornell students should:
*Consider recruiting business students
*Link business people in so they convince their colleagues to help the developing world through AguaClara
*Consider hiring an expert fundraiser

Julie Pierce's Journal Entry

There were several things I took away from this trip. One of the most important was the opportunity to bond with some of the students who are working on the AguaClara project. I think new friendships were formed that will hopefully last well beyond the trip. I was also able to see how much everyone truly cared about each other even if they had only just met.

I think everyone should take a trip to a country like Honduras at least once in their lifetime, if not more, to remind them just how lucky they are. The things we take for granted are incredible. Clean water, laundry, safe food, a warm bed to sleep in, heat, warm showers with normal pressure, an ability to say whatever we would like without living in fear. Now I actively think about these things every day and hope that the work we are doing in Honduras will at least be able to provide one of those things.

One of the more memorable experiences was on the first day when we walked up a long, muddy trail to get to a small village. It was quite a struggle to get up there and it made us realize that the people who lived there had to do it every time they needed to leave the village. The children all came out of their homes and were fascinated by us. It struck me so much to be in such seclusion, to imagine what their lives are like being so hidden from the world.

It was also great to see some existing water treatment plants. I was able to see a horizontal flocculator (which is what I am working on for my M. Eng. project) in person! It looked almost exactly like the one I had designed using a computer, and it wasn't even an AguaClara plant. That gave me a lot of comfort that I was going about my task the correct way. It was also interesting and somewhat sad to see how many design flaws there were in many of the plants that had not been built by AguaClara.

I hope that anyone who goes on the trip in the future enjoys it as much as I did!