After two weeks of socializing-overload, it feels
good to be back in site where life is tranquilo.
In-Service Training (IST) proved to be more useful
AND more stressful than I anticipated. I will say, a couple positive things
about IST were:
1) I
got to see some faces from G72 that I hadn’t seen in awhile. I love you guys!
2) The
town where we had training was in the mountains and therefore 20-30 degrees cooler
that the town where I live, therefore I wasn’t sweaty every second of every day
and could therefore take one shower a day instead of two or three. I also had
hot showers, a giant bed, and freedom from the worry that everything I own will
grow mold.
That being said, I was super happy to get back to good
old Darien. My first few days back, I went to go help out one of my fellow volunteers
in the comarca with some youth intiatives she’s doing in her site in the
indigenous comarca (reservation). I
had a great time in her community (the stillness was a nice contrast to the
relative bustle of IST and it was good to hang out with a couple of my East
Side volunteers).
Immediately following that, I came back to my site,
where our Regional Meeting was being held. Regional Meeting is a mandatory
meeting that all PCVs have every 4 months. My region is the most spread out
one, including everybody East of the Canal, which is about 30-something people,
including the 9 newbies that we just got a few weeks ago. More bustle! So many gringos. I was happy to meet the new
volunteers, aka G73. They seem like chill people, so it will be fun to get to
know them.
We also killed another animal. . .cuz that’s what we
do. This time it was a goat. It was delicious, especially the liver.
Now that everyone has left my site after Regional
Meeting, it seems like my site again, so it’s good to be home! I was surprised
that a lot of people in my town actually remembered where I was when I was
missing for two whole weeks, so kudos to my gente.
Now that I’m fresh from coming out of IST, where I
got to use some children (and teachers) as guinea pigs for teaching techniques,
I’m anxious to see how much work I can get done before the holidays hit in
November. That’ll be a challenge given the pace of life here, and I might come
out of October stapling pancakes to the wall, but I’ll give it a shot! Wish me
luck, and I’ll keep you all updated!
