My New Little Friend

Ok, before you bust out the box of tissues, this is not a cute story. In fact, this is yet another story of me complaining about the fauna here in Panama. I have a new little friend, correction: new MAN-EATING-SPIDER friend that has started to hang out on the rim of my latrine. And by man-eating-spider, I mean the largest tarantula I have ever seen in my entire life. Yes, even larger than the one in Home Alone, *man scream,* which by the way, was my favorite part of the movie. The first time my new little friend and I met at 3 am in the pitch black with a sorry excuse for a headlamp (thanks dad), he gave me the closest thing I've ever felt to a heart attack. I learned that he only comes out during the middle of the night when I'm the most disoriented and vulnerable and can swim through human feces like Michael Phelps in chlorine, which makes him something straight out of the X-Files. I knew that show was on to something … So anyway, after several nights of urinating behind the house at 2am I finally grew a pair and brought a death-stick into the latrine to … well I wasn't quite sure exactly how I was going to yield this death-stick … but the second it came close to Mikey, he took a beautifully executed swan dive 15ft into the stinky abyss, only to wait patiently with that evil, shit eating grin on his face (literally) until I naively thought it was safe enough to come back later and use the bathroom … and there he was, again. So tonight, after a So-Panamanian chain of events happened exactly halfway through me typing this very story, Mikey met his end. And this I will describe next because it is now 1am instead of 10pm when I started to write this story and it deserves to be told.

 

So in the middle of typing about how Mikey was quite possibly the scariest thing in my life right now, there was an explosion of water 5 ft outside my window and 2 horses ran away naying and doing their scared-horsey sounds… so I knew it had to be good. I run outside to see a geyser of water in the front yard from where, I have speculated, one of the horses tripped on the water hose and broke the cheap-plastic-tubing-panamanians-use-for-everything in half. As I'm watching the yard quickly fill up with water, I'm faced with the decision of whom to wake up, so I choose my neighbor Fula- my first host family right across the street. After feeling terrible from waking her and her husband up, we start walking into the yard so I can show her what happened and a huge dog fight breaks out in the jungle next to the house. Well with my aforementioned sorry excuse for a headlamp, I think its MY puppy, Pulgita, and I flip out and run over to stop it catching myself on the barbed wire fence my headlamp conveniently did not illuminate. However, I come out unscathed and find out that it wasn't Pulgita but a coyote pup, which piques my interest and I go on a jungle hunt, alone, to search and locate it. This proves futile and so I return to the matter at hand. Fula and I go to 4 houses total (and at this hour the ENTIRE community has been asleep for hours already) and have to wake up the families there. Finally the owner of the house where Jonathon (the previous volunteer) lived wakes up and agrees to help. In the middle of him repairing this geyser I nonchalantly tell him that I think there is this man-eating-spider that is dwelling in my latrine, can you please save me thank you. I walk away and he kills it with his machete and then parades around with it hanging off the end telling me that if it had bitten me (in the ass) I would have had to have been hospitalized (marinate on that one for a hot second). Gee thanks. Now that I know Mikey is gone, undoubtedly bestowing his three hundred million eggs nestled under my toilet lid, which are probably hatching this very moment, I can sleep soundly tonight, to the serene, gushing sounds of nature 5ft outside my window. Oh Panama.

 

On a lighter note! Here is some information about the previous weeks here in the beautiful country of Panama.

 

So we recently had an All Volunteers Conference (AVC) in a city close to my community (close = 3.5 hours). Every volunteer had to attend and it was at a really nice hotel with a bar and pool and the whole shebang. It was 3 days of meetings and conferences and opportunities to share your ideas or projects with other volunteers. Not to mention we had an opportunity to meet all the volunteers from other groups. There was a "prom" which was just an excuse to drink a lot and throw everyone in the pool with their nice clothes on. We also had "Campo Olympics" which was super fun and our group 65 (the newest) won the whole thing! The champions win the "golden machete" which I guess has been passed on from champions to champions. The day included a round of games from the backcountry of Panama. For example, there was "solomaring" which is a call and respond type yodel-esque song the men do here during a hard days work to raise spirits – a pair from each group was picked to perform the solomar the most accurately. There was also an orange peel contest where you had to peel an orange with a machete the prettiest (they take a lot of pride in how pretty they peel oranges here). In addition soccer, chicken fights in the pool and a food eating contest of bananas and sardines from a can (food staples in the campo). Overall I had a blast and can't wait to practice my solomaring because I come from the part of the country where it is used all the time, so I gotta represent group 65 next year.

 

In addition to AVC we went to the beach afterwards to "unwind." It is a world-renowned surfing beach so the swimming was a little scary but the hostel was filled with Israeli and Argentinan surfers and was a great opportunity to just kick back and relax. After the beach another volunteer, Mary, and I went to a community of a peace corps married couple who were helping put on an eco-fair in the school. We had stations to play games demonstrating how to re-use, reduce, recycle… which the first two are redundant here in the campo – all families here use very little because they can't buy a lot, and they naturally reuse everything that's humanly possible because they cant afford to buy a lot of new things, so the most pertinent is to teach about recycling because there aren't even garbage disposal systems here, let along programs to collect recycled items… so to raise awareness among youth is the first step. My station was to paint a jungle scene mural on one of the walls of the library … which was interesting because the first group of kids were kindergardners and it was more of a tornado of paint vomited all over the wall, so after all the groups were done and a lot of nasty looks from the teachers, we had to repaint a lot of it to make it look pretty, and it was very pretty. The group that put on the eco-fair was a woman named Ruth, she is a graduate from Princeton and she is doing research on spider monkeys here in my part of the country and part of her grant requires "environmental education" which was the eco-fair. I got her information because, of course, I am interested in research with primates and she is SO CLOSE to me. We'll see what becomes of that contact!

 

So after talking with some volunteers and assessing the community history and needs, I've decided to start up a Girl Scouts group (Muchachas Guias) here in my community. There has already been a group here with the second to last volunteer and there still remains a lot of interest from the parents and girls of the community. I attended a Parent/Teachers meeting (Padres de la Familia) and at the end I brought up the idea of a Muchachas Guias group again in the community, and right as I began talking this huge downpour of rain came (remember all the roofs here are tin) – meaning no one could hear anything I was yelling. The entire room of 40 parents were just staring at me completely lost, if there was no rain you would hear a chorus of crickets. Fortunately a woman that I've worked with got up and repeated what I said and all of a sudden all the parents were all excited and agreed that it would be a great idea. I'm starting to think of really cool activities to do with the girls and possible field trips, but I have to contact the head of the group here in Panama first to talk about how to establish an official group and also I will need to start writing grants to fund all the activities and field trips. Overall I'm very excited because I think a lot of women here lack self-esteem and the drive to be independent because of the "macho," male-dominated society. But I see a lot of strong, smart and curious girls in my community and I think this could be a really fun group to have!

 

And last but not least Pulgita is growing fast and chewing everything she can get her little mouth on. I call her my little exterminator man because she is a fierce cockroach/beetle hunter. I have applied her first dose of Frontline which seems to be working quite well so far, along with her first dose of de-worming medicine. Its super nice because here you don't need a prescription for anything to buy from a vet, so I can just restock whenever I want, not to mention its super cheap ($8 per does). She absolutely hates getting baths, I'm sure it sounds like am slaughtering puppies every day down the road. I have this special soap that does a pretty good job at killing the adult fleas and I went to look for it yesterday because I was going to bath her again but I couldn't find it anywhere… I know it fell off the sink outside a couple times before but it wasn't anywhere on the ground…. Hours later I was fixing Pulgitas bed (2 big sheets) and deep inside the sheets, neatly hidden with little puppy teeth marks was the bar of flea soap… I wonder who hid that there? Sounds familiar Mom (glasses + cheese isle)? This is foreshadowing of the next 8 months of my life I'm sure … but I've already taught her how to sit and come to her name in both English and Spanish so I feel like she is going to be a smart one ;)

 

Heeby-Geebies

Two life changing events have happened at site already. The first: whilst dressing myself the other morning, I got stung in the boob by a scorpion. Yes, a scorpion stung me in the BOOB. Let me preface this anecdote with the fact that if you know me, you know that I love all god’s creatures, I really do, but scorpions are one of the ONLY invertebrates that haunt my dreams - NEVER in my life will I ever want to come anywhere close enough to a scorpion for it to touch my skin. I would rather be bit by 354 non-venomous snakes than be stung ONCE by a scorpion… and this I’ve thought about a lot here in Panama knowing it was just a matter of time before this fear became a reality. I haven’t met one volunteer that hasn’t been stung at least once by a scorpion. The weirdest part of this story tho, other than the location of the sting, is that I was even THINKING about scorpions as I was getting dressed because my host sister had found one in her clothes the day before. I was thinking “hmm, I really should start checking my clothes before I put them on. It would be just spectacular to go these 2 years without – ouch – what the hell was that? Ouch, OUCH OUCH – MY BOOB IS ON FIRE” And I looked down to find that little p.o.s. ready to fight 5 inches from my face, perched on the piece of cloth right above the ball of fire that was now my boob. A little dramatic I know, let’s just say I momentarily became the world’s fastest contortionist as I ripped that sports bra off without letting it touch my face, arm or shoulders. Impossible? Definitely not. Then I pulled a Jess move and felt too bad to kill it, so I left the room as my host parents did. Sometimes I wonder? But nevertheless, this has been a fear of mine since childhood and if you are going to get stung by something that scares the shit out of you, what worse place than in the boob? So I guess I got that fear over with pretty quickly. And if you thought I took forever to get ready before, you should see me now … especially because of my 2nd life-changing-event:

This one isn’t so painful, just really f*ing gross. There really isn’t much explaining other than last night I reached into clothes drawer without looking (terrible decision #195 in the tropics) and grapped a GIANT cockroach instead of a pair of socks. Now I’m sure you are thinking “ew cockroaches, that sucks” but I want you to fully understand the size of this thing. Look at your hand … yeah. It’s literally that big. Its not even the same species as the ones we are used to. And yes, it flies. So the other volunteer at my site walks in my house as I’m ready to stab it with my machete sharpener, and I suffer another Jess moment and have him do the dirty work. And if that doesn’t give you the heeby-geebies, later that night as I was preparing my now very fragile psyche for bed in the bathroom, which is totally across the house from the kitchen, and I hear a scratching in the kitchen sink. The second I heard it, I knew, it’s another one. They are so big that they can’t even crawl out of sinks. *shudder*

But anyways, these two life-changing events that were really not so life-changing just made me realize I need to toughin up a little bit because this country is full of the creepy-crawlies. God bless you Panama and all your idiosyncrasies.

Loss of a fellow gringo:( and the entrance of Pulgita:)

So the other volunteer that had extended in my site has completed his service and left this weekend … we threw a big despedida (going away party) for him and good times were had by all. There was a tipico band that played, and they were really bad but almost endearingly bad. I learned how to dance “tipico suelto” which is just where there is an inner circle of dancers which have partners in an outer circle of dancers, and both circles go around to the music, partners switching from inside to outside circles. Sounds complicated but it is actually really easy and very boring considering each song is like 20 minutes long. After a couple songs another volunteer informed me that if you dance with the same guy more than once sometimes it means you want to go to bed with him, so to avoid any confusion (because I wasn’t sure exactly who I had danced with how many times) I just took a break from dancing for the rest of the night. Things like that a woman (and sometimes men too) really need to be aware of because a ton of gossip can be started without you even coming close to realizing what you did wrong. The gossip in this culture is out of control, and if too much gets spread about you and another community member, sometimes the mother’s will lose respect for you and choose not to let their kid hang out with you or be a member of your youth group (or w/e group you have)… we’ve had a lot of cultural training in the beginning of service so this doesn’t come as a surprise to me, but I still have to be on my best behavior. This is why I choose not to drink in my community, only on special occasions like Jonathon’s despedida, where I only had 1 beer.

I’ve moved into a temporary house by myself which is the “summer house” of the daughter of my first host mom. It’s a really cute little house, but they occasionally come on the weekends and spend about 3 months here in the summer when the kids are out of school (which is winter for us and is coming up soon), so unfortunately I will not be able to continue living here, even tho this would be considered a SUPER nice house for Peace Corps standards (it has an indoor shower!!!!! Doesn’t have an indoor toilet but most Panamanians don’t anyways). But I’m taking advantage of it while I start to repair the actual house I will be living in, definitely not as nice and very old … but I will make it look nice. And its got a really beautiful view of the mountains, already picked out a prime spot for my hammock.

So having more time to myself leaves more time to think about stuff, which is not always a good thing. So since Jonathon’s left I’ve thought a lot about what the next 2 years are going to be like, and it’s pretty scary. I feel that I got lucky with being able to have another volunteer in site to ease me into the role of a volunteer, but I also feel is has set me back because now I have to go through what all of my group members have already gotten over, the “oh shit, I am truly alone here and no one understands me” type realization. Don’t get me wrong, we all love our communities, but what we’ve signed up to do is not easy and it takes a lot of emotional control and mental reasoning. You are in a completely different culture that will right off the bat think you’re weird and not understand most of the things you do at first. When you try and explain yourself, you realize that you can barely speak the language and sometimes say something wrong and make yourself look even weirder. You don’t fully realize how nice it is to just be able to say what you want to say until you are in a place that doesn’t speak your language at all. That is why having a volunteer in site for my first 3 months has set me back in a way, because every couple of days when we hung out I could just say whatever I wanted as fast as I wanted and I knew he would understand every word, and when you are the only gringo in site that isn’t possible, and you end up building up all these thoughts that normally you would be able to tell someone, and its very healthy to tell someone … but you cant. One of the volunteers in my site years ago just couldn’t handle it and left a year early – and at first I didn’t really understand why because my community is so nice and hospitable, but now I have a house to myself I realize how easy it could be just to sit and listen to music or read all day long and not go visit the community. Specially that I’ve just started and don’t have a lot to do. But that is just the type of behavior that breeds unhappiness in the long run, and no matter how down you are feeling, or how lazy, the best thing to do is get off your ass and go visit people. It will always make you feel better.
But enough about the serious stuff … I finally got my puppy named Pulgita (little flea). And yes, she is covered in fleas which I feel really bad about but I have to wait another couple weeks to apply the flea/tick control medicine. So I’ve been bathing her every day in this special soap to kill them, but the water here is always freezing and its been pretty chilly and rainy the last couple weeks so every time I give her a bath she acts and sounds like I’m killing her so I feel really bad. For 20 minutes after the bath she just shivers and whines which makes me feel like a total douchebag but at the same time is has helped the fleas a little – so in a couple weeks I’ll be making a trip to the vet to pick up the new spray they have that supposedly works really well? We’ll see. Until then she’ll live up to her name well :)

All Things Panamanian

I’m taking some of these out of our Peace Corps “newspaper” that the volunteers send out every couple months – but all of it pertains to the Panamanian PCV:


Gender Roles, Shmender Roles

These are some things I’ve noticed about being a woman here in Panama:
-I can wear clothes way too tight for me and wear shoes way too tall, as long as they are all color coordinated
-I can stand around and watch the men do all the work because it would be harmful for me to work up too much of a sweat (I’m going to admit this one is nice)
-I should drink beer out of a vasito (glass) with ice because drinking out of the bottle is too “masculine.” Sorry Panama, F that.
- Its weird that I know how to drive a standard transmission, or even how to drive a car for that matter.
-I shouldn’t ever go into a cantina or jardina (bars) alone or I will definitely earn myself the reputation of a prostitute
- I shouldn’t ever ride in the front seat of a taxi unless I want the driver to also think I have said reputation.

You know you are well integrated into Panamanian Society:

-when you own more pairs of machetes than you do shoes
-when it doesn’t matter what you’re eating, as long as you’re using a spoon (they NEVER use forks or knives, and will never understand why you would want to use anything else than a spoon – and they all their meat with their hands, no matter how messy)
-when you find yourself talking about the weather … by yourself … in spanish
-when you gritar (a type of call that all Panamanians know) in the shower. Or anytime alone for that matter.
-when you can drink a steaming hot cup of sugar with a side of coffee (they put a lot of sugar in their coffee) while sweating profusely after working all day in the sun, and enjoy it.
-Men: when you own a shirt with sequins/rhinestones on it. Women: when you own a shirt with a ridiculously racy English saying on it, only you actually DO know what it says.
- when you lend someone a nickel to get through the gate at Albrook (the bus terminal), you except it back
-when you listen to the lottery drawing regularly
-when you can pick your nose comfortable in front of an audience and not even think twice about it (this one is pretty nice too)
- when you’re dancing at a baile (dance) and you realize that the item poking you is a bottle of seco in his pocket (cheap ass, nasty vodka stuff that every man drinks)
-when you don’t even blink an eye as a giant cockroach runs out of your bookbag or think twice to check your rain boots for scorpions

... Just some observations :)

My new life in El Cortezo

August 2nd

Haven’t written in my blog in a very long time … every time I’ve attempted to upload a new blog from my memory stick, things have gone awry mainly because the computers here SUCK. But nevertheless, I am more than surviving and learning new things every day… I've moved out of my first family's house and into my 2nd... and in 2 weeks I move into my 3rd host family's house. Lots of moving ... then after my 3rd host family, I find a house to live by myself, and I'm still lookin because there are not that many options. If I can't find an unoccupied house in a month in a half, I have to build my own, yikes! Which a lot of volunteers have had to do and its not as hard as it sounds because the whole community helps.. but I still would much rather take over a house that is already built.

Here every thing is done by hand and that takes time, I’m learning the hard way. For instance, most of the cooking at my host families house is done on an outside stone stove which you need wood for, every day - so chopping wood is a daily activity. If you want eggs you have to own chickens - most of the time if you want chicken you have to go out in the yard and kill it yourself, which I have yet to do because I‘m the world‘s biggest hypocrite. I’ve prepared a chicken to eat after the killing - but I’m not ready yet to kill it myself. A lot of the food we eat is made of corn, which has to be collected, peeled and prepared by hand from the fields nearby. There are also endless ways to make things from corn and my 2nd host family is trying to teach all of them to me so I can't survive when I live by myself. If you wait too long to do laundry, you are shit out of luck because it has to hang dry in the sun long enough to dry, and guess what? Its rainy season! So the little sun you have you have to take advantage of, or you wear wet clothes … which I’ve had to do several times.
I’ve switched host families from El Cortezo to a smaller community next door called Agua Caliente. I love my new host family, and I’m a lot busier here than I was in Cortezo. There is an iguana project here that I help with every day, and this week is my host mom’s turn to feed and take care of the iguanas (the members switch off weeks). We also spent half the day yesterday catching all the big iguanas so that we could pick the ticks off them and wash them - THAT was fun! However, I ended up having a lot of scratches and welts on my body from their tails, those guys are touch! I've been trying to run every day, but if I wait too long it either starts raining too much or it gets way too hot to run. People look at me weird when I run, because NO ONE here runs for “leisure,” only if they are getting chased by a bull or something worse. However, one of the volunteers before liked to run and so some people know that gringos do weird stuff like that for exercise, and they always like to yell out to me while I’m running by “doing exercise?!”
Communication to the outside world is still very sparse - there is one place along the road that if you stand on a stump you can usually get at least one bar on and off - which is extremely frustrating sometimes when you are in the middle of an important call and signal cuts out suddenly and you have to wait 3 days until it stops raining to call again.
I’m finally starting to feel more comfortable with the people here, partly because my Spanish is improving a tad bit but mainly because I‘m just hanging out with them more often and I‘m getting to know their personalities. For instance, “pasearing” is becoming a little easier, and I don’t get as anxious before. There is a little old lady that lives alone next door, and I try and go over there every day and talk to her (even though I can’t understand most of what she is talking about) just to keep her company. I’m finding that pasearing to different people’s houses is the best way to learn Spanish because you are forced to talk about yourself and whatever is going on in the community - but I thought I could get away with not studying Spanish at all and winging in, but I’ve found that I keep running into words/phrases/verb tenses that I just cant figure out without looking them up. So I’ve made the goal of finding either new vocab or a new verb conjugation every couple days and practicing it though out the day. I’m still a little uneasy about busting out some of the technological “tools” I have, like my Ipod and laptop, which these people will never have. My host sister went into Cortezo today by horse to find a radio so the family could listen to music at night, and I almost just said “don’t worry, let me get my computer and speakers I brought and we can listen to that,” which I probably should have done to save her the time and effort, but I just don’t feel comfortable flashing around things that I so easily take advantage of.
So the volunteer before Jonathon was named Jenny, and my community LOVES HER. They talk about her all the time, and they are right, she was a fantastic volunteer and a really nice girl… but its really annoying because my name has become “Jenny, eh Jessi.” They are so used to talking about Jenny that it takes them a second to realize that my name isn’t Jenny, its Jessi - which I’ve shortened because its easier than “Jessica” and much easier for them to pronounce than “Jess,” I have no idea why, but it just is. All the men around here have sobrenombres (which I think I’ve mentioned before but I’ll mention again) which are like nicknames, but more girly, and its custom to always deny your sobrenombre if someone calls you it. For example, the sobrenombre of one of the men is “Azucar” which means sugar, and every time someone calls him Azucar he says “Fuera!” which means “get outa here!” I’ve told them I want a sobrenombre even though none of the women have them, but I want them to get to know my personality a little better before they give one to me. I’m expecting a name like “clumsy” because I fall a lot, but we’ll see
I’m starting to really appreciate the landscape of my community, rolling hills of cattle farms and mountains in the background. I feel like I’m straight out of a western movie sometimes because everyone uses horses for everything. If you go by the local cantina on the weekends (which are always just a roof over a bar) you’ll see several horses tied to the side and hear tipico music blasting out. There’s always a herd of cows plowing down some part of the road being moved to a different corral. When the sun does come out its such a beautiful place to take a walk. The walk from Agua Caliente to El Cortezo (where I’ll be spending my last month with a host family and hopefully find a house to live in for 2 years) is about 45 minutes but I really don’t mind it because it has such beautiful scenery. I should have more pictures put up on facebook, and I really want to open up a separate Photo Account so everyone regardless if they have FB or not can see them. Until next time!

Trying to drink from a fire hydrant..

Its been too long since I’ve been able to write but each time I attempt to access el internet my endeavors go unanswered… but alas, here I am! I just wanted to say that I’m sorry if I’ve missed birthdays and special events but I can’t call out to anyone with the cell I have and for some reason I haven’t been receiving calls from the U.S. every time, especially if my phone is off. Sorry if each entry has increasingly more errors but I’m starting to lose my proficiency in English, not that it was that great to begin with ;)

Wednesday the 2nd was a huge day for everyone in our PC 65 group… we found out where we will be spending the next 2 years of our lives … before we even came to Panama we had to send an updated resume and an essay about our skills and experiences - these last couple weeks our group leaders have been reviewing that in addition to evaluating our worth ethic, our language skills and our personalities in order to best place us in the communities for the coming years. So on Wednesday we all met as a whole group in a nearby city to receive the news, along with a sex talk from the coolest doctor in the world (Lourdes) and more needles. I’ve had an idea of where they were going to send me but I was EXTATIC to find out that I will be going to El Cortezo in the Azuero of Panama. The Azuero is the large peninsula coming out of the bottom half of the country. We received packets of information on the region along with possible projects we will be working on. I’ll first start with info on the area straight from the packet…

I’ll be in the region of Los Santos at the bottom of the Azuero Peninsula. Below me and very close are several beautiful beaches known for good surf. To the west of me is a large mountain range and to the right is mostly land that has been heavily deforested for agriculture and pastures. However, where I’ll be is right in the middle and beautiful is its own way - lots of rolling hills and a nice river running right next to my community. The azuero is entirely latino (opposed to indigenous where some of the volunteers will be heading) and known as the land of the cowboys J “Azuerenses” (Azuerians) pride themselves on being very hard workers, as well as very intense “fiesteros” (partyers). I’ve heard that this region seriously knows how to throw down along with having the country’s most hospitable, nicest and outgoing people. The area is also the cradle of Panama tradition and folklore, and they are very proud of their heritage. They are known for celebrating tradition and have frequent parties and festivals featuring Tamborito and Tipico music, polleras and bailes. Polleras is a very traditional Panamanian dance where the women wear an extremely beautiful and equally expensive dress (thousands of dollars) and wear Tembleques in there hair which are really intricate beaded flower ornaments, which I will be buying as soon as I get there b/c they are friggin awesome. The region also has Matanzas, or literally “slaughters” of cow, pig, or even several dozen chickens and are prepared the whole day with music and lots of drinking (of course, it’s the azuero!) This might be something I have to get used to as I will be living with muchos cowboys and will become an expert on how to ride a horse and laso cattle, which we already had a lesson during tech week and I LOVED IT. They also have lots of Juntas which are all day work events that end in a small party. There are juntas for harvesting rice, building a house, just about anything that takes a large group of people to accomplish. Tamborito is a tradition call and response style of singing with strong West African influence and is very common the Azuero. Not to mention my favorite call EVER, the grito, which we will also be receiving a lesson on how to do, especially us future azuerians. It’s hard to describe but any man that has grown up on a cattle farm in Panama can do it. Its kind of a short yoddle-call thing that originated to animarse, or keep one’s spirits and energy up for a long day of work, but is also used to communicate across farms. They even recognize individual calls and who they are coming from, from really far away. I’ve almost got mine down … practice makes perfect. And last but DEFINITELY not least, Los Santos is where Carnival is celebrated, which is pretty much like Mardi Gras but the entire country goes to Los Santos to celebrate. My packet ’o’ info describes it as so: “The word Carnival has its origins in the latin words carne and vale, loosely translating to a despedida (going away party) of the pleasures of the flesh that one will be giving up for lent. It involves being drenched with water while dancing in the streets, food, song, and elaborate parade floats. Carnaval in Las Tablas and Chitre is by far the largest and most celebrated in the country.” The best part is - Carnival happens in my region of Los Santos so I don’t have to take vacation days to celebrate it while every other volunteer in Panama does (muaha). *hint hint* Anyone thinking of visiting me in Panama and is looking to have a good time, that would be the week to come (Feb 16-20)!!

So there is already a volunteer in my site (Jonathon) and I will be 4th volunteer to have served in this community, which is extremely rare to have more than 3 volunteers total in a certain community. Everyone tells me that the only reason Fransisco (group leader of my group CEC: Community Education Conservation) keeps placing volunteers there is because its his favorite community in Panama and it harbors the best chef in all the sites of volunteers, which I might add will be my host mom for the first couple months in siteJ As encouraging as this sounds, I would like to believe he has kept putting volunteers there because the projects are so important…. Haha. Some of the projects I will be working on are a group called Grupo Conservacionista Flora y Fauna which has gotten a pretty grant to start a breeding colony for Conejo Pintados, or Pacas. These creatures are part of the rodent family but are really large, one of the largest rodents on earth, next to the capybara. They are really cute and once domesticated are like little dogs. They are VERY endangered because their meat is considered a delicacy and some of the richest meat in Latin America… so they are hunted all over the country. When I get in site I will be getting hopefully approx. 25 domesticated Paca’s to start the breeding program. This program’s objective for the next several years will be mainly be to establish a healthy colony of Paca’s for future release into the wild and also to sell for consumption… which is someone that will be difficult for me to handle but I know it’s the best way to conserve the wild populations of Pacas in Panama. There is also a group called Ecologico Renacer which a Green Iguana breeding program already very structured and managed pretty well without the help of the current volunteer. It was established for the same reason: iguanas are hunted for their meat and are also endangered. The third project which I will be working on is the brain child and baby of Jonathon, who is actually extending his service until October this year to make sure I’m trained properly in all the hard work that will need to be carried out during my service, which is also very rare and I am blessed by this opportunity. This group is called Brisas de La Montana (Mountain Breezes) which is a cooperative which manages loans and credit along with discounted agriculture products for the camposinos (farmers) in the community. I don’t know much about it but Jonathon has lived there for 2 years and obviously knows the community really well and knows what they need, so I will be his pupil until he leaves in Octubre. Another possible group (if I have time) is to start a Panama Verde group, which is an environmental group for Panama’s youth to educate on the importance of conserving Panama’s biodiversity and resources. This would entail taking kids to zoos, camping trips, hikes and science fairs - which is sweet. But we’ll see, I wont know until I get in site.

Anyways, that was a lot of information. Trust me, I know. This whole training process has been one of the most mentally taxing periods of my life. Training here is described as “trying to drink from a fire hydrant.“ Not only are you bombared by massive amounts of information on technical training but you are continually switching from Spanish to English back to Spanish, sometimes in the same sentence if you are really tired. We are all losing our English and sometimes find it easier to use a Spanish word b/c we cant remember it in English. There are also words in Spanish that just aren’t a word in English, for instance: Pasear, which means “to go from house to house to hang out and get to know people.” That is an extremely important activity in panama and you will absolutely not be successful or respected in your community until you do lots of pasearing to every house you can go to.

We recently had our 2nd Spanish interview and I moved up from Spanish intermediate medium to intermediate high. There are 9 levels: novice low, medium, high, intermediate low, medium, high and advanced low, medium and high. You have to get to at least intermediate medium at the end of training, so I’m all good with that. But my goal is to get to advanced low in the next few weeks, which will make moving into my community A LOT easier. I’m to the point where I don’t need to translate anymore and its much easier to just relax and listen to what they are saying than to try and translate it in my head. It’s a strange feeling to just understand whats being said without having to understand it in English first. Its also reaaaalllyyy nice to not have to plan what you’re going to say in your heard before saying it, just starting to talk as soon as you have a thought and figuring out how to say it as you go…. that is a huge weight off my back. I’m also enjoying learning all the modismos of Panama, which there are LOTS. Like “Que Sopa?” which is just “Que Paso” (whats up?) switched around - it’s a popular greeting of the youth here. They like to switch around the spelling of some words, which confuses the hell out me sometimes. The more we speak the language, the more we are realizing how similar Spanish is to English and that we really have it easy compared to other PC countries. it’s a running joke that if you don’t know the word in Spanish, esp if it is a process or technical word, just say the English word with a Spanish accent and 75% of the time they will know what you are trying to say.

I would like to add that I have been moved to another host family in a the community of Santa Clara (10 minute bus ride from my other community) for reasons that I can’t really go into here, but I am extremely happy with my new family and Santa Clara is an AWESOME place to live. it’s the community where SAS (sustainable agriculture systems) volunteers are training from group 65 which is a super laid back chill group that I really enjoy pasearing with every day. Its also where “El Chorro” is, a really pretty waterfall and charco (swimming hole) is that I can go to whenever I want with the other sassers. It also has a loma (hill) where you can go up and see most of Santa Clara and watch the raddest sunsets you’ll ever see.. The skies here are extraordinary. Anytime during the day the sky is filled with a thousand shades of blue, white and grey and that mixed with a setting sun is just breathtaking each night.

Needless to say, this has been one of the most enjoyable and fun times of my life and I’m super excited for the upcoming weeks before we have Swear-In in Panama City.

Site Visit

So this weekend we were sent on a site visit to another volunteer to see what PCV life is like.. first off, I would like to write out some of the directions to Diedra's site which is about a 5 hour trip from where we are staying near panama city. This is how PC works, they kind of just throw you out there - trial by fire- have you heard of TIA (this is africa)? Well we have TIPC (this is peace corps). Now remember, Im terrible with directions in ENGLISH and I did this all alone - Im pretty proud of myself. Translation will be in ( ) when needed.

-take a chitre bus from the albrook terminal, preferably leaving around 7am and no later than 8am to be safe on time. (Keep in mind, peace corps made us take a bus into headquarters to get money for the trip before we were supposed to leave, and the office doesnt open until 8am, i didnt get into this terminal until after 9am...TIPC) about 3-4 hours, depending on stops.
-upon arriving to the chitre terminal, go to the line of buses (little ones) and find the Las Mina transport (it is a couple to the right of the Panama City departing bus spot it youre looking at the line of buses from the inside the terminal) about 1.5 hours depending on stops.
-when you arrive in Las Minas, the bus will leave you in the centro of town by the church and several mini-supers. Look for the El Toro transport(a pickup with a tarp over the back and benches inside.) There are several different pickups that run the route so itll either be a blue, silver, red or white pickup with El Toro on the windshield. The normal afternoon run times are 12:30pm and 2:30pm and it usually parks in front of the mini-super Melisa (the red bigger one directly facing the church) but sometimes parks in random spots. If its between the 2 run times it just might not have arrived yet. They usually leave pretty much on time, but be prepared in case they leave 15 mins early of 30 mins late - it happens (if full they might leave earlier, if emptyish they leave later.) about 1.5 hours, depending on stops.
-tell the transport driver to leave you at la entrada de La Loma donde vive la gringa en el toro (at the entrance where the white girl lives) its at the end of the line for this transport - if they dont leave you in my entrada, they will leave you down by a small tienda and the school.
-Once in El Toro we'll hike 45 minutes backcountry to my community.

So these directions we're just a WEE BIT unnerving, but dont worry Ma, I made it there and back safely (internet access is my proof). Her community was called La Loma de Montuouso and was BEAUTIFUL. It was nestled in the mountains in the Azuera Peninsula region of Panama. I was probably the 3rd white person these people had ever seen, and let me just put it this way, I was a celebrity for 4 days. Kids stared and followed us wherever we went. Their accents were way too thick for me to understand anything they were saying, so I just let my volunteer Diedra do all the translating. She is working on a reforestation project because her community is right on the edge of a forest reserve. The first day we went up into the jungle to collect baby pine plants for their project with several of the community women. I saw a coral snake and capuchin monkeys. They also let me ride their horse on the way down, which was scary because it was reaallly steep and muddy. The rest of the weekend we kind of just chilled out at her awesome little mountain cabin, and i decided that I want my site to be way up in the mountains, it was WAY nicer in temperature (fresca).

So I'm back in Nuevo and the next several days we travel to Chorrero for more needles and presentations, woo! Somehow they have lost all my vaccination records that I spent SO MUCH TIME looking for during the application process, so I have to go ahead and get everything again. TIPC.

Some Differences...

Panama is an interesting place... here are some differences that we've noticed thus far....

-every other house has a rooster and don't let ANYONE fool you, they crow at every hour, not just sunrise and sunset.
- lets just say the waste system here is a little "behind" and so you can't put your toilet paper in the toilet after you use it, you have to put it in a trash can next to the toilet
- there transportation system is quite possibly the closest thing to a video game that reality can offer ... they are called "diablo rojos" which means Red Devils ... each one is completely covered in really bright, colorful graffiti of either religious icons or trampy looking women, or both. They pimp the buses' exhaust system out with these huge pipes that come up from the bottom of the bus to far above it. Inside is the best part, they are trippier than my bedroom in highschool. They have black lights, strobe lights, blacklight paint, tassels, beads, you name it all over the bus, and sometimes there is salsa or reaggeton playing. Also, at night, you can't see where you are going, and the drivers are insanely ballsey so you feel like your on a amusement park ride.

Poco a Poco

Hey there! First off, I appologize for the horrible grammer and punctuation, but these keyboards are arranged a little differently an I'm still getting used to things... we completed our first couple days of pre-training and moved in with our host families in a community called Nuevo Emperador. Our whole group has been split up in to our different sectors in 3 different communities. Not sure what I mentioned before in my blog but we have 4 hour language classes in the morning and then 4 hour tech classes after lunch. We spend the rest of the day either hanging with friend or our host family ... my host family is awesome and super nice. They have been nothing but patient because my spanish sucks and communication has been pretty awkward. Every day gets a little easier tho, and in reality we are spending 80% of our day speaking spanish so we are all learning really quickly. My spanish has already improved more in 4 days than in 3 years of college classes, go figure!

My host family consists of Eloisa and Simon. who are about 45-50 years old. Eloisa stays home all day and takes care of the house and of the baby, who I will get to. Their daughter Lidia is married to Carlos or Monche (his nickname) who are the sweetest people on earth. They have a little baby who we call Carlito, who is by far the cutest little thing to walk this planet. Actually his birthday is today, he just turned one, and the kid is already running around the house climbing gates and furniture. He is wicked smart and knows exactly what he isnt supposed to do so he'll wait patiently until you are watching and then unplug something important from the wall to get a rise out of people. Rules are super lax here when it comes to children compared to the states, which is really refreshing, but they still take amazing care of Carlito and he has no lack of love from the family. And then Eloisa has a younger son that also lives in the house, Marcos, who is 11 and my new best friend. He is honestly the coolest 11 year old I've ever met and I help him with english every night, which he is improving really fast. He wants to be a vet when he grows up so have SO much in common, so there has been a lot for us to talk about when we are just chillin. One thing that has been difficult for me to handle tho is there is this little dog that got hit by a car outside the house and broke his front leg (very obvious break) and camped out under my window for the past 3 days howling and in extreme pain, and I just want to scoop him up and take him to a vet... but there are probably only 3 vets in all of Panama and way too expensive for me or my host family to afford, so I've had to fall asleep to this little puppy screaming all through the night. Marcos and I have been giving him food and the other night he spent 20 minutes collecting a bunch of things lying around he yard to make a baracade around the puppy so that no other dogs couldnt get to the food. The whole time he was talking about how people don't have hearts and they should take better care of animals, which just broke my heart. No one has the money or interest in spaying and nuturing the feral dogs here so they are every where, and usually are viewed as pests and disease-carriers, so to hear Marcos say that was really moving. Anyways, the house is very small for 7 people but they have cleared out a room just for me and feel really bad that I'm always pouring sweat ... so they actually follow me from room to room with the only fan in the house so that I'm comfortable. I feel bad for everything they've sacrificed for me and its extremely frustrating that I can't quite communicate my gratitude accurately yet in spanish, but after 3 months I will be way better at speaking and can let them know then. This Saturday they are throwing a huge party for Carlito and I assume all 300 family members that live in Panama will be there (Eloisa has 8 children total, all of them have several children... so on) so that will be interesting! When I arrived at the house for the first time there was a huge pig head just chillin on the kitchen table for the party Saturday that Eloisa started to tear apart with this huge butcher knife as she was describing the family - so we were off to culture-shock-filled start!

So, I have sooo much more to say but right now we're in a little city next to N.vo Emperador and mis amigos are all leaving the internet cafe to eat dinner so I must go... I will update as soon as I get back online!!

Safe in Panama!

Hello All!

Just wanted to touch base and let y'all know that I am safe 'n' sound in Panama! We all met up in Washington D.C. and had a grueling 7hr. orientation about the PC and got to meet everyone. After we went out for a drink and came back to enjoy all 2 hours of sleep (or lack thereof) before waking up and leaving the hotel at 3am. The plane ride from DC to Panama was something of a spectacle: all 54 trainees taking up half the plane and not ONE is conscious. I turned around and very single person I saw was completely contorted in their seat and mouth wide open. But we arrived in Panama around 1pm and got right to training. PC doesn't waste a second, well at least not in training. Headquarters is in this little fenced in community near Panama City right on the canal. We get to enjoy the views of the canal on our many walks to and from classes and presentations. The place is quite beautiful and convenient. We even found a bowling alley tonight. Meals are provided right now, and let me tell you, they are GREAT. Especially after a whole day of signing papers, taking pictures, giving blood and meeting PC staff. Today we learned what the different sectors do and the different projects that have been created. The sectors of our group are CEC (Community Environmental Conservation - thats me!), TEA (Tourism Education and something I can't remember) and SAS (Sustainable Agriculture Something). We also had language efficiency interviews and placement interviews today on our previous skills and experience. Tomorrow we get poked with a ton of needles and get our credit cards, sounds like a productive day to me!

We are staying in these cute little bungalow type houses which have AC, and we are all trying to take advantage of some of our last comfortable nights of sleep in a long time. At night there is usually soccer (futbol) and frisbee going on which is nice after sitting all day. Tonight we were throwing around and the frisbee went into the gutter on the road ... it wasnt our frisbee and Sammy who owned it wasnt there, so a couple of us walked all the way across the compound and found some cops to help us crow-bar the manhole up to find the frisbee. The cops was like "uh yeah sure... I'll do it tomorrow .... " and probably thought we were crazy for bothering him with something so trivial. But we found a security guard who viewed it as a challenge and they spent 15 minutes trying to get this manhole up for a freakin frisbee. There were 2 security guard cars, lights flashing, parked around this manhole. Every volunteer that walked by thought there was a terrible accident. Nope, all this for a frisbee. Anywho, they got it and we will continue to throw around every night ... away from the road.

Everyone I'm meeting is so friendly and cool, and I don't feel uncomfortable walking up to anyone and just starting a convo. In fact, several of us sat around tonight and talked about beaver deceivers (look it up) and sloth defecation for 2 hours. Totally my type of people. This weekend we take a field trip to somewhere they haven't told us yet, and then next week we move in with a host family to begin language, culture and skills training. Apparently it will be the most hectic, overwhelming time we've ever had - sounds like fun! I will be able to get online to update y'all here at headquarters, but then next week my access to the internet will probably be limited somewhat. Hope everyone is safe and sound and I'll be keepin in touch!

-Bless

It's Official!

Its official y'all - I'm leaving Tuesday for Panama! After a nightmarish 3 weeks of trying to deal with medical holds on my account, everything is sorted out and I've begun the arduous process of packing and saying goodbyes. Twill be a sad 3 days but I'll be keeping very busy which will make the transition a little easier. I'll be writing in here as much as possible so stay updated! Miss everyone already!

-Bless