Monday, June 16th

As we drove up a small side street of the town, we finally arrived at the church. This church had a big front wall wall painted purely white. Despite the beautiful outside, it was easy to see that the inside required plenty of work in order for it to match the outisde. Upon sleepwalking out of the bus, we took a group picture with Father Tony on the sidewalk in front of the church. Father Tony wanted us to take pictures there, as well as in front of the church. After we took the pictures outside of the property, we walked to the entrance of the church for our second picture. As the first members of our group walked through the iron gate of the entrance of the curch, the blare of a trumpet and the rhythmic beat of drums broke out as a greeting. This caused all of us to stop in our tracks in order to fully comprehend what was happening. Two members of the church were playing music to greet us! From then on, we attracted plenty of attention throughout the day. As we worked on the church, walkers took long peers to see what we were doing. Locals brought all of us fruit cups for lunch. While walking through the town, glances and stares towards our group of sixteen Caucasians were common. The place where we attracted the most attention was at the ¨palace¨ in which we were invited to. There were reporters recording audio and video while the mayor talked with us and individual pictures were taken in a chair in front of two very important paintings of Mexican history.
We had a good first day of work and a very news experience with all the positive and the bit of negative attention given to our group.

- Thomas
PS. ¨don´t be sassy¨