Time Flies

Every time I turn around, it’s been a couple of weeks since I updated my blog. Time is starting to move along kind of quickly here.

Since we last talked, I had a great time visiting the sites of one of my good friends in the group, brought my sister to visit my Peace Corps site, found out I have a new cousin that entered the world, and got excited about another potential secondary project.

It was nice to take a little vacation and travel outside of Darien for a bit, and I was really excited to see one of my G72ers that I hadn’t seen in a while, so my mini-vacation was thoroughly enjoyed. When I came back to site, it was with my sister, so that was exciting. She went around visiting other people’s houses with me, came to school one day with me, met some of my fellow Darien PCVs when they came through my site, visited one of my friends in the indigenous comarca, and even learned a lot about Panamanian community pharmacy when she visited the medical center in my town and met the pharmacist that works there.

I put Ebony on a bus this morning to get to the Panama City airport to get back to the old US of A, so she’s probably getting ready to arrive to the airport as I write this now. It was really cool finally getting to travel with one of my family members and having her see where I live. Hopefully she’ll come back at least once before I finish my service (hint, hint). I’d also be excited to have other visitors and have them meet people in my community (hint, hint).

Now I’m gearing up for life post-Ebony which includes things like:

-Giant all-day quinceañera celebration at my neighbors’ house. In a lot of latin cultures, a girl turning fifteen is a BIG deal. One of my neighbors is getting ready to celebrate her 15^th, and my neighbors literally had a BULLDOZER in the yard yesterday in order to create the space where the cow will be killed (yes, you read that correctly). Today the menfolk are over there raising the shelter that will be used to house the guests. I’m ready to party it up before I’m dragged off to. . .

-In-Service Training, aka IST. The day after the quince, I have to haul out to Cocle to spend two full weeks of Peace Corps doing everything in their power to bore me to death with training seminars. Really, I just want to learn to write a grant and go back home, but at least this gives me a chance to spend two weeks bugging my project coordinators to put another Teaching English Vounteer in my province. That I will be doing.

-Youth development activities in the comarca at a friend’s site. As soon as IST ends, I’m coming straight back to Darien to participate in some youth charlas and Frisbee-ing at a site that belongs to one of the Environmental Health Volunteers.

-Beginning to drum up interest in creating an Ultimate (Frisbee) team in my site! Ultimate Without Borders (check out their site) was created very recently by some Peace Corps Volunteers that have now finished their service, and a couple of the coordinators hosted a Training in my site for PCVs who are interested in creating a team in their community. The point of the Ultimate Without Borders program is that the sport of Ultimate is used as a medium through which to teach things like emotional intelligence, leadership and conflict resolution. There is an entire curriculum that goes along with the team practices, so it’s kind of a bait and switch. Give kids a fun sport to play and then teach them to be better people. J Win-win. I’m excited to get started.

That’s about it for the updates. Wish me luck for a banging quinceañera and a quick IST so that I can get back to Meteti and start doing things! Suerte. J

I live by myself. :-/

I moved into my new house. This means that, for the first time in my life, I live by myself! I don’t have a roommate or anything. I live in a house. By myself. Forget moving to a new country along with new language/food/culture/whatever, nothing’s really thrown me for a loop so far, but this whole only-I-live-in-this-house-and-nobody-else thing. . .this could be interesting. I’m a people person. I like to talk, and I’m not used to having very much privacy or personal space anyway, so living in host families for me has been easier for me than it has been for some other volunteers, and I’ve actually really enjoyed that kind of life. Moving out on my own, however, may prove to be a different story. Hopefully this will not be my Achilles’s Heel.

Don’t worry, though, people! I have awesome neighbors that will make sure I don’t go crazy and that will come visit me in my house to make sure I’m still here.

You know what else happened that is super sad? I adopted a kitty from my host family’s house. She’s super cute and I named her Luz and she was content in my house for about 3 days. Then I stupidly left her out at night while I went to go hang out with some PC Volunteers, and when I got back she was nowhere to be found, and I haven’t seen her in the past three or four days. There’s a chance she may have gone back over to my host family’s house. I hope so, because that means they’ll let me know so I can come get her. Otherwise, I just have to take some time to get over that kitty before I get another one. I know a volunteer who has a pregnant cat, so I could get another one. . .bottom line, I need some other living being in my living space. The chickens that run across my floor and the neighbor’s cat who looks for food in my kitchen do not count.

Ebony-watch: Haha, see what I did, there? We spent a weekend in Casco Viejo, before I came back to Darien for work. She’s been to Cocle and Los Santos, and she’ll be in Chiriqui and Bocas Tel Toro before she comes to Darien, where I live. (These are all names of Panamanian provinces, by the way. Google a map of Panama if you want to actually understand that sentence.)

So, work. . .did a few charlas, that was cool. They were a little bit of a logistical nightmare, but now I’m learning the difference in the way I need to go about organizing things in Panama. Other than that, Adult ESL classes are still a lot of fun, and they make me feel like I’m actually doing something in my community, which is nice. My primary project is kind of at a stand-still as we come to the end of the trimester (exam time), but I’m hoping to get the most I can out of  my school work during late September and October before November starts. . .November in Panama is essentially one long feria (festival) aka almost no classes.

At the beginning of September I’ll be going to Cocle for Peace Corps In-Service Training. I feel like we just finished Pre-Service Training, so I am extremely annoyed that I have to leave my community for two solid weeks in order to spend long days sitting and listening to seminars. It’s not my idea of fun, but hey, ya can’t always get what you want. Before that, though, my sister will be visiting my community where I live, so I have that to look forward to! That’s going to be a lot of fun.

Welp, life is pretty much igual (the same), here. I bought a cheap guitar to start learning, so I can be even 

more of a stereotypical hippie (Peace Corps? Dreads? Teaching myself to play guitar? Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself.) Life’s good. Hit me up, people! What’s going on in the States? Got any questions about my life in Panama? Comment, Facebook, call me!