This post will be in English! Read about the beginning of my adventure here and here.

As I mentioned in the last post, Kids On Computers bought 22 new desktop computers, monitors, keyboards/mice, plus 2 projectors through our local volunteer, Hermes. The dealer doesn’t deliver to the village we’ll be working out of, so we had to figure out a way to transport them from Oaxaca to Huajuapan!

The original plan was for 5 volunteers to jump in a combi with computers on our laps. This plan didn’t make a lot of sense to me, especially since we might need to rent seats for the computers. We finally settled on a better plan and Hermes’ company rented an entire combi/van to transport the computers and the volunteers.

The ride was through gorgeous mountains vistas with good company. I chatted with Hermes, Fernando, and Alex in Spanish about programming, TDD, Ruby on Rails, and other technical topics. It was quite fun! Hermes and Fernando host a coding dojo (event similar to a mini code retreat) every two weeks and I’ll likely join them next Saturday in Oaxaca.

The ride was mostly uneventful, but we did stop for nearly an hour for a taxi strike that was blocking both sides of the highway. Around 1:00 PM we arrived at our new home for the next couple of weeks, García Peral, in Huajuapan de León. It’s a very nice hotel right on the center square of the village. I absolutely LOVE their garden.

We went out for comida corrida (late lunch around 2-3 that is the largest meal of the day) and then returned to the hotel to start installing software on all the computers. This took us well into the evening. On Wednesday we visited a school to try out our install discs on existing hardware. When we returned to the hotel (school closes around 1:00 PM), we installed the educational material on all the computers. Late in the afternoon Javier and his son joined us and we went out for a team meal.

On the way home from the school, I bought some delicious food from the mercado to save some cash and have delicious snacks de México. I really love checking out the markets in each new city I visit!

Stay tuned for more details on the schools we’re visiting!