I started the day out by helping in the adult clinic. “The clinics” are all in one building and it includes a pediatric hallway, an adult hallway, and a small emergency room. This week has been pretty slow due to the highschool graduation coming up. Graduation here is a huge event. People spend a lot of money, butcher their cows, rent hotel rooms for visiting family and have lots and lots of food. The entire town is involved in graduation and the parties are really large. Anyway, so since everyone saves their money for graduation, oftentimes this means that they don’t have enough gas money to drive to the clinic since most people come from far away. I worked alongside the doctor here and saw a few patients this morning. Around lunchtime when the clinic got really slow our professor decided that we would take the rest of the day to go to Navajo National Monument. It was amazing!! We hiked down the Sandal Trail to the lookout and it was unbelievable! The canyon is 560 feet deep and across from the lookout at the bottom of the canyon you can see the ancient Betatakin ruins of the Anasazi people. (Betatakin means “House built on a ledge” in Navajo) In an alcove of the rock they built a small city with various dwellings that included 135 different rooms. It was estimated that about 125 people lived there. They lived in this area for about a century beginning in the year 1286. After that time it was essentially abandoned. It was amazing to see such an old civilization still standing. We also watched a video while we were there on the history of the Anasazi and Betatakin. They had ancient artifacts as well including rugs, weapons, pottery, and even a replica of a traditional dwelling. Outside the building they had a hogan and a sweat house that you could look at as well as dinosaur footprints that were fossilized into the rock. On our way home we stopped at a couple trading posts and bought some really cool things. We also went to Navajo Market which is near Monument Valley. It was amazing! It was lots of little stores run by Navajo people selling handmade arts and crafts. They had very beautiful jewelry, dream catchers, pottery, sand paintings, and many other things. They also had a little food place in the center so we shared a piece of fry bread. The Navajo man making it suggested that we put honey on it so we did and it tasted even better. Haha. Then we headed home to cook dinner. I’m extremely exhausted tonight but very excited because tomorrow morning we are leaving for our weekend adventure! We will be traveling to Antelope Canyon, the Grand Canyon and probably a few places in between. There was recently a landslide so the route that we would normally take is closed. Where the landslide occurred the road is split in half and one side of the road is about 9 feet higher than the other side. So needless to say, we’ll be taking the more scenic route! I’ll try to post as we travel and keep you all updated. Have a great weekend! 🙂