COS Conference

The last leg of my trip out of site was my week long COS Conference.

As a Peace Corps Volunteer nearing the end of my service, I am required to attend what is known as a ‘COS’ (Close of Service) Conference. This conference is the last time where my entire training group will all be together. It’s kind of like a ‘full circle’ moment. You see all the volunteers with whom you first arrived in country, with whom you formed your first Peace Corps friendships, and with whom you went through all the struggles of the first two months of training and the awkwardness of adjusting to your new sites.

Needless to say, it can be a little weird. (As in. . .wait. . .what? We’re leaving this place? Like now-ish?)

The conference serves several purposes. Being a governmental organization, we must (of course) discuss all the administrative paperwork and medical tests that will need to be completed before we leave the country. Second, we discuss several options of paths we’ll take following our Peace Corps service. Will we pursue graduate study? Enter the workforce upon our return to the States? Seek employment abroad? Extend our service with the Peace Corps or seek a position with Peace Corps Response? There are several options, and although it’s hard for us to imagine that our training group will be going our separate ways within a few months, it is exciting to discuss the different paths that our friends and colleagues have chosen to pursue following Peace Corps service.

Finally, the Close of Service Conference is a time for all of us to have some closure with the volunteers in our training group and with the Peace Corps office staff. We take some time to thank each other for the close friendships formed over the two years and for the support provided by the Peace Corps office. The conference ends with a dinner at the Country Director’s house, were the office staff graciously serves us our last office-provided meal. (I had grilled chicken in a mushroom sauce!)

In my training group, whenever we get together, music happens, and this meal was no different. Michael brought his violin, Danny brought his guitar, Kelsie brought her ukulele, and Sez and Mel brought their beautiful voices. Even I pitched in background vocals for a number. Again, it was kind of one of those ‘full-circle’ moments that kind of makes you reflect on all those moments that group 72 (my training group) has gotten together over the past two years.

What may have been the icing on that cake for me is that my group members voted for me for an award!

Last year, PC Panama training staff created an award called the Brandon Valentine Leadership award. Brandon Valentine was a member of PC Panama’s training staff who passed away almost a year ago now. He served in the Peace Corps in Jamaica and Panama before becoming Peace Corps staff and he was just an all-around incredible human being. Anybody who had ever talked to him for two seconds could tell you that. It’s just in his spirit.

In his honor, the training staff created the Brandon Valentine Leadership award to commemorate the spirit of Brandon and to recognize one volunteer from each training group who embodies the positive leadership of Brandon.

Volunteers are chosen for this award based on a vote by their peers. Our group is so amazing, there wasn’t just one volunteer chosen—there was a two-way tie! I won the award along with Max, another volunteer in my training group. We were both incredibly honored. To be voted for an award from volunteers in G72 is pretty special to me. I think very highly of them and they’ve got so many cool talents, so I wasn’t expecting lil’ ol’ me to get an award like this. Like I’ve said before, I’m just surprised my group members aren’t tired of listening to me talk after two years!

All in all, COS was a whirlwind of a week in which I realized that my service really will be coming to a close soon, and it made me stop and think about all of the things I’m thankful for in my Peace Corps service—the personal and professional growth I’ve had. The community members in Meteti that I’ve gotten to know and work with. The kids that are always a blast to be around. The Peace Corps staff that have supported me in my work and in my future goals. And of course, the Peace Corps Volunteers that will continue to be my friends long after I’ve left Panama.

This crazy ride isn’t over yet, though, so I’ll stop being sappy. My official COS (Close of Service) date is April 10, 2015, so I’m still enjoying the ride up and until that date when I am no longer a member of the US Peace Corps.

Much love to everyone in the States! Have a Happy Holiday season! I’ll be givin’ you all hugs and kisses pretty soon!

What I've been reading:

Kaffir Boy -- Mark Mathabane
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking -- Malcolm Gladwell
Living History -- Hillary Rodham Clinton

Darien and Chiriqui--Traveling Adventures

I’ve just been on a crazy whirlwind of spending three weeks out of my site traveling, working, and spending time with my fellow PCVs that I don’t get to see very often.

It’s been exhausting and exhilarating and—I’m not going to lie—emotional. I don’t have too much time left in Panama with my crazy new gringo friends. After all we’ve been through, our little Peace Corps family will be spreading across the US and across the world pretty soon!

I’ve been on some adventures recently. I took a trip around some parts of Darien I had yet to see. That was another crazy and exhausting experience. It’s pretty amazing that Peace Corps has granted me the ability to visit and really get to know some corners of the world I may never have gotten to visit otherwise. (Tourists have to go through a lot of red tape from border patrol to get out into the Darien Gap/Sambu region, but as Peace Corps, I can hop on boats and travel out there whenever I want!) During this trip I attend anniversary celebration of the indigenous reservation, Sambu. The indigenous people out there know how to have a good time! It was a very fun, family-friendly environment. Basketball tournaments, dance competitions, hold-your-breath competitions, etc.

Anyway, I can’t just talk about Darien, because I’ve been EVERYWHERE during the past three weeks.

Among other things, I went to Chiriqui to give a youth development seminar on the Costa Rican border with a few other PCVs. My friend Logan had invited me out there to participate. I was glad he did, because his site is on the other side of the country from me! If he hadn’t have invited me for this seminar, I may not have made it out there. I was so glad I did come out. His site is BEAUTIFUL! I also had a great time hanging out with my chiricano PCVs (PCVs living in Chiriqui). Living in Darien, I never get to see them.

The seminar was given to about seventy ninth graders in Logan’s school, and it was a huge success! Those kids are smart as a whip and understood all of the big ideas we were feeding them—values, self-esteem, goal-setting and sexual health.

Following three days in Logan’s site (and after he bought us all delicious fried chicken. . .that’s another story), I took off for San Felix (another town in Chiriqui) to crash at another PCV house for a few days. I stayed with Ben and Rachel, a couple of East Siders who moved West a few months ago. It kind of felt like a little mini-reunion!

After that. . .three days in Cerro Punta, Chiriqui. Beautiful town. Nice and fresco (chilly) as we like to say. I went there for a two-day training of 45 PCV facilitators for the Gender and Development Board’s summer youth conferences. I also practiced for our World AIDS Day Flashmob and, of course—celebrate Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving for me went a lot more smoothly than expected, given the amount of work I needed to get done during the festivities. The playlist for the Thanksgiving dances was bangin’ (thanks again to Logan) and there were generally positive vibes all around during the celebration. Like I always say, spending Thanksgiving at a celebration with Peace Corps Volunteers isn’t like it is with your family back in the States, but is always a good time spending a holiday being thankful to have your new family in Panama. :)

Side-bar: I won a superlative!

At Thanksgiving we always vote for Peace Corps superlatives for fun. (Most Panamanian, Most Crushed On, etc.). I won ‘Most Likely to be a Future Politican/President’. And then all my Peace Corps friends told me they’d vote for my (decidedly non-existent) ticket and we all decided what their individual cabinet positions should be. (I’m surprised those guys aren’t tired of listening to me talk after two years! Gotta love those people.)

Yea, Thanksgiving was a blast this year. The party’s not over then, though. I still had quite a few things to do. After spending a day at the beach (because I can), I traveled back to Panama City to participate in the Gender and Development Board’s Second Annual World AIDS Day Flashmob. It’s exactly what it sounds like. We flashmob in a public place, then we hold up posters with information about HIV and AIDS in order to promote awareness. We flashmobbed four times in the Cinco de Mayo/Casco Viejo area of Panama City.

That happened. It was SO MUCH FUN. It was hot. I was completely soaked in sweat from head to toe. I ran around in various stores on the shopping strip with a 10 second blurb about why I wanted to use their speakers to blast five minutes of pop music so that my group could dance. The participants had a great time.

After that was over, I hauled all my personal belongings and all of the Gender and Development Board’s work supplies over to Ciudad del Saber, near the Peace Corps office in Panama City. I’d be staying there for a week for the last leg of my journey out of site—COS Conference.

Foreign Service Related Things

More updates from this aspiring diplomat—and it’s good news!

I passed the Foreign Service Officer Test for the second time. Overall, my score this year improved compared to last year’s. Here’s a breakdown of the sections:

Bio: My score in this section improved dramatically, which is what I was most hoping for this time around. The way this section of the test is scored is shrouded in mystery, so I was a little worried about coming out with a low score in this section again on my second try—if I couldn’t do it right the second time, how could I hope to improve? No worries, though, I seem to have cracked the code!

English Usage: This score was about the same as last year (about a couple of points higher). I’m happy with that, because I was happy about how my score turned out last year. No complaints.

Job Knowledge: This is a section that needs some lovin’. My score was atrocious. It was even lower than last year! (Not that I expected my score to increase in this section: I didn’t study for this test.) No worries, though. I have a plan! I noticed that most of the questions I couldn’t answer had to do with the structure of the US government and legislative processes, so I purchased a Kindle version of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to US Government on Amazon.com and I’m going to read it. I’ve also been getting into reading political memoirs lately, so I’m certainly picking up some things there. (I’m currently reading Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton, which essentially reads like an 800 page CV. If this lady isn’t making a run for president in 2016 then pigs must already be flying.)

Essay: My essay score got a little bump. I’m happy with my score. I think it was safely a passing score, and there’s really no need to focus on increasing my essay score. Increasing my Job Knowledge score is what could really make a difference.

Either way, I passed and I’m happy about my results. I learned a lot from taking the test a second time. I think I’ll really be prepared for the test when I take it again next year!

In the meantime, the fact that I passed this year means I advance to the next stage of the Foreign Service selection process and I have a second opportunity to write my personal narrative essays to submit to the selection panel. Last year my essays did not get me an invite to the Oral Assessment, but this year, who knows? I’d like to get a shot at the OAs so that I can get practice for next year. Only one thing to do then—focus on writing the best essays I can! (I’ve done research into this, and I’m going about it differently this time!)

IN OTHER NEWS:

Remember how I said that an Embassy program is going to send some of my kids to the States? Well, Embassy personnel came to my site this past Friday to interview candidates. (They were impressed with the kiddos! I’m so proud. Next week we find out the results of the interviews.) I finally met in person with a public affairs diplomat that I had been emailing with during coordination for this program.

I didn’t know she was black (I won’t pretend I wasn’t excited about that) AND her hair was AMAZING. We didn’t have much time to talk around all the business of meeting parents and running kids around for interviews, but I did get to talk to her for a couple of minutes. She told me that Panama was quite an adjustment for her, since most of her tours had been in East Asia, particularly in China. At that point, I probably started talking too much, because that made me SUPER excited. CHINA?!? That’s NUMBER ONE on my list of places to serve! Her Mandarin must be amazing!

Meeting Embassy personnel always makes me super excited. And GUESS WHAT?!? She offered to write me a recommendation! I could’ve died. Every time I meet a diplomat it’s such a positive experience. (You guys must know what you’re doing!) I’m considering having her write me a recommendation for a fellowship she recommended I apply for.

Welp, those are all of the updates I have for right now. Things are going well in the D! The next couple of months promise to be pretty busy, so I’ll do my best to keep you all up to speed.

Much love to everyone in the States! Hugs and kisses (mwah)!

What I’ve Been Reading Lately:

Black Boy Richard Wright

The Audacity of Hope Barack Obama

Endgame Frank Brady

Slaughterhouse Five Kurt Vonnegut

The Social Animal David Brooks

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn Betty Smith

I Gotta Wear Shades

Y’all, my future so bright.

Or, I hope so anyway.

I feel like these days, grad school has become my word vomit.

I’m going to be a diplomat one day, y’all! These grad school apps are the first step in my five year plan of gaining entry into the Foreign Service by age 30.

. . .Did I just put that in writing? Guess I gotta put my money where my mouth is.

Anyway, I’ve been working on applications to six different graduate school programs in public policy and public affairs. I’m ALMOST. DONE.  (With the apps, that is.) Recently, I have been spending so much time in front of a computer screen. For a second there, my eyes were starting to go all Googly and I thought I was getting slight carpal tunnel.

I have decided to apply to six schools: UC Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Harvard, Princeton, Syracuse and. . .at the last minute. . .I decided to apply to. . .d00k.

Yea, I know, I know. No, I will never wear d00k blue and I would NEVER cheer for the Blue Devils. Not even in a game of rock-paper-scissors. I have to apply there, though. It’s the only strong policy analysis program I’ve found in the state of North Carolina. (Carolina doesn’t have one—I checked.)

My recommenders have all been AWESOME in helping me out. At this moment there should be seven people in Chapel Hill and Panama City writing about my awesomeness. Hopefully this awesomeness combined with my essays/test scores/GPA will leap off the page and call to admissions officers and say THIS GIRL HAS THE REQUIRED LEVEL OF AWESOME TO EXCEL IN YOUR GRADUATE PROGRAM!

My goal is to submit these applications by the end of the month, and I’m well on my way to being able to beat my goal by about a week. Then I can focus on fellowship applications. (Yea, the process isn’t going to be over any time soon.)

In other news, I took the FSOT (Foreign Service Officer Test) again last week! Those of you who read this blog might recall that I took it blind last year and just barely passed. This year, I’m hoping to improve upon last year’s scores and pass so that I can have another shot at writing my personal narratives and hopefully get invited to the Oral Assessment this time around. This application is another practice round for when the time comes, but I still want to do as well as I can in all phases of the process. I’ll keep y’all updated on how this goes!

Everything’s going pretty well for me here in Meteti. As #presidentkennedy, I’ve been gearing up for some youth camps that the Gender and Development Committee will be hosting again this summer.

I’m also very excited to report that I’ve achieved the ultimate the Holy Grail of feel-good Peace Corps projects—the US Embassy is sending my high school kids to the States!

I’m just going to leave you all with that info for now. When I find out more information about the trip, I’ll let you guys know the whole story.

Love and hugs and kisses to everyone in the States! I’ve got about six months to wrap up my Peace Corps service and I’ll be in y’all’s kitchens eating your food and dancing to the music in my head in no time!

Schmoozefest 2014 and other shenanigans

I haven’t blogged in awhile. Why is that? Welp, when you’ve spent a year and a half living in the same place, those things that seemed crazy to you before suddenly become cotidiano (everyday). That’s not a bad thing, though! My life is certainly not mundane, and at the same time, if I update you every two weeks to let you know that everything’s still good, you’re not going to read that.

Cotidiano =/=Mundane. We killed another goat at my house, but I’m not gonna blog about that, for example.

Here's a really long update on things that happened recently that didn’t seem cotidiano:

State Department Visit

I have continued serving as a teaching assistant for the ‘English for All’ English class for high school students funded by the US Embassy and hosted at the private university (ISAE) just down from the road from me. Since the university has an Embassy-funded project (the English class), we make an effort to connect with the State Department when they make visits to the Darien (which tends to be every few months).

We traveled to Yaviza (the end of the Interamerican Highway, just before the infamous Darien Gap, but again. . .now cotidiano for a PCV in the Dirty D!). Once we arrived there, the State Dept personnel flew in on helicopters and attended a short event hosted by APRODISO, a community development organization in Darien. As an aspiring FSO with a touch of diplomacy nerd, I was super excited to be there to watch the small presentation and ceremony to welcome the diplomats to Yaviza. There’s not much I get excited about more than seeing people come together for a common goal, and I kind of internally flipped out during the APRODISO director’s calm yet passionate speech about the unique struggles faced by the people of Darien and the youth of Yaviza. Leaders like him, that are from the community in question, who have a vision of how to empower that community and who make the sacrifices to do it—these are the people that inspire me and they are the reason that I aspire to a career in public service. It was one of those days that kind of brought me back to square one and remind me why I do what I do.

As an added bonus, when I stood up during the beginning of the ceremony and introduced myself as Peace Corps, the State Department personnel kind of got that look like ‘oh, there is another gringo among us,’ haha. To reiterate what I’ve mentioned before, Yaviza is a place with a majority Afro-Antillean (i.e.: Black) population, so I blend in when I’m there, especially. I’m sure that before I introduced myself, the State Department thought I was a local.

The people from the State Department personnel that came to visit worked in the Narcotics Affairs Division. (It therefore makes sense that they would visit the Darien Gap region.) One diplomat was a former ambassador who is currently the global head of the division, and the other was the head of the Western Hemisphere’s affairs for this divison—what bad-ass job titles! (Please allow me some naivete regarding the danger and otherwise obvious lack of glamor associated drug-trafficking issues. Also, please excuse my French. I get excited sometimes and I couldn’t find an equally effective synonym to express the awesomeness of that job title.)

I got to shake hands, make small talk, and take a few pictures with the State Department personnel afterwards, and one of them gave me his card. After consulting my former roommate Danielle about the appropriateness of sending a friendly email, I sent this diplomat a short email to say thanks for his visit to the Darien and to express that, as an aspiring Foreign Service Officer myself, I was really excited to be able to attend the event and to meet him. The best part is—he emailed me back! I WAS SO EXCITED. Since I want to be a diplomat, talking to a diplomat is kind of like what most people experience when they meet an A-list celeb.

The diplomat was SUPER NICE and offered to mentor me through the FSO application process. Diplomats are the awesome-est people. For real.

Schmoozefest 2014

I was thankfully given the opportunity to attend a reception at the Ambassador’s house, or, as I like to call it, Schmoozefest 2014.

The Country Directors (i.e.: all the big bosses) of Peace Corps countries in the Americas, Carribean and the Pacific all held their conference in Panama this year. For this reason, the Ambassador was asked to host an event the Peace Corps staff. The Ambassador in all his awesomeness SPECIFICALLY ASKED: “Can we invite some Peace Corps Volunteers?” This is why Johnathan Farrar is awesome. Or, you know, as I like to call him, J-Money. (Cuz you know we’re tight like that.)*

Volunteers were each invited to bring one counterpart, so I took my co-teacher Veronica, who teaches 9^th grade English at my school. We were both SO EXCITED to go to the Ambassador’s house, and once we got there, we were attached at the hip trying to talk to people as much as possible. I introduced her to Peace Corps staff and she introduced me to some facilitator’s that she had met. Under pressure from Veronica, I even took a picture with her and Juan Carlos Varela, the president of Panama (and a Georgia Tech alum, go ACC)! It was a dream, we both decided. Highlights included:

• Meeting PC staff from DC who had recently lived in Afghanistan for three years heading up USAID’s mission there.
• Eating DELICIOUS snacks that were constantly circulated while we roamed participating in different conversations happening around the room. (The coconut chicken and lemon cheesecake squares were my favorite!)
•  Nonstop wine that kept appearing in my glass. The closer you stand to the open bar, the easier for the attendant to keep an eye on the contents of your glass and never let it go empty.    

·        

·       Not to harp on the material things, though. Yes, the Ambassador’s house was really nice and the snacks and wine were great, but what really excited me was MEETING PEOPLE! These are people that all work in a line of work similar to what I’d like to do with my life! They were not only awesome people with cool stories, but they were down-to-earth, patient, and genuinely interested to hear about my aspirations to study policy analysis and work for the State Department. It was a dream to be there! My counterpart and I had a blast, and I told her it was a little snapshot into my future life. I’m talkin’ about it, so I plan to be about it!

Also, I just wanted to mention that the global director of Peace Corps was there (aka, my boss’s boss’s boss) and she was TOTALLY warm and friendly and approachable and I was blown away. Peace Corps is kind of amazing sometimes.

Ovaltine

We killed another goat** at my house. I named her Ovaltine. I told people that was because if later, when we eat her, if you’re hungry and you want seconds, you can just say “more Ovaltine, please!”

Ovaltine and I begun our relationship under awkward circumstances. While on the porch of my regional leader’s house, I called Ovaltine’s owner to ask if he would be delivering the goat to my house that day. He informed me that he had, in fact, already delivered her and that she was tied to one of the posts on my house. I said ‘Great, thanks!’ and hung up the phone.

A little later, as it got dark outside, I left the regional leader house and walked down the road back to my own house. Now, once you leave the road and walk back toward my house, it’s a little dark at night, but I know where I’m going and I’ve made that walk a million times, so it’s no big deal.

This time was different, though. As I neared my house, I had an epiphany. Somewhere in the darkness there may or may not be a farm animal. Did he say he tied up the goat in the front or the back? Didn’t mention. Damn. What do I do? I have a little bit of an irrational fear of farm animals. I haven’t spent much time around them, so I don’t know what they’re going to do! Dogs? Fine. Cats? Fine. Squirrels, birds, bugs? I got that. Goats? No way.

The neighbors were all in for the night. Nobody around to help me through this. I can see the shadow of a large-ish animal moving in the distance. I don’t dare go any closer. I do the only thing I know how to do.

I call Amber.

“Amber. There is a goat. I’m afraid. It’s in front of my door so I can’t go in my house.”

“Aja. THAT GOAT IS NOT GOING TO HURT YOU. You can do it. GO TO THE DOOR. NOW.”

“Noooooo, I think I can see it looking at me. Why is it looking at me? My neighbors aren’t here. Maybe I’ll call Kramer (the regional leader) so he can walk me to the door. You think he’ll do that?”

“Aja, you DO NOT NEED TO CALL KRAMER. Just WALK TO THE DOOR. The goat is HARMLESS. It’s AFRAID OF YOU.”

Yea, this conversation goes on for awhile.

Then, Gracias a Dios (Thank God) my landlord’s seven-year-old daughter appears out of nowhere. She likes to come into my house and watch me do mundane tasks like eat cereal or brush my teeth. I talk to her:

“Hey, Nobelis. I need to get into my house, but there’s a goat in front of my door and I’m afraid of it. Are you afraid of the goat.”

“No. (In that ‘duh’/’wtf’ tone of voice.)”

“Well, can you walk me to the door”

“Ok.”

As I approach the door and look for my key to open the lock:

Nobelis: “Ok, is that it?”

“No. You have to stay here until I open the door and turn the light on so that it’s not so scary.”

By this point Nobelis’s dad and granddad had appeared on the porch wondering what was going on. I pointed out the goat to them and explained that I was afraid of it. They thought that was hilarious.

Even at the time, I thought this situation was kind of funny. It’s just another example of silly situations in which I would never have found myself were it not for Peace Corps.

Dirty D and the Samboozers

The day after the goat roast, a lot of volunteers were still hangin out on my porch. Being the hippie Peace Corps Volunteers that we are, we had a couple of guitars, and a harmonica in our midst in addition to my flute, so we started jammin. As we messed around on our instruments, one of our more comedically-gifted colleagues began to write some HILARIOUS lyrics about a couple of our Peace Corps friends in the Darien. We arranged and rehearsed the song for about an hour and a half before finally presenting it to our regional leader and recording it on an iPhone. When that recording makes it to the internet, I’ll be sure to post it on the blog! We had a great time being silly. We named ourselves “Dirty D and the Samboozers.”

Rainy Day Radio Show

Finally, my radio co-host Danny Vetter and I recently did another radio show! The theme of this one was Rainy Day songs (all Danny’s idea, he’s full of good ones!). We thought this was appropriate for rainy season. The show talks about the different meanings behind the theme of rain in American pop music, and we play some jams for the people of Darien. I’ll post a link to the show below if you’d like to listen. Obviously Danny and I speak Spanish on the show, but if you’d like to listen to the music we chose to play, that needs no translation!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18OtlFGxYuMdmo3a3JVczJnY3c/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for reading my blog! Hugs and kisses to all of my family and friends in the States. I miss you all dearly, and yet it does not seem possible that I only have seven short months left here in beautiful Panama. I’ll be hugging you all before you know it!

--Aja

*That’s a lie and we’re not tight at all, I just like to tell people that. He knows my face, though! (That’s something, right?)

**I learned recently that what we had been calling a goat this whole time is actually a short-haired sheep. Tail facing up = goat. Tail down = sheep. Go figure. We continue to all it a goat, anyway. It looks like a goat, alright? Either way, when it’s boiled, shredded and between two pieces of break it looks like my lunch, so that’s what I call it. Lunch.

What I've read, recently:

Shantaram--Gregory David Roberts
Lord of the Flies--William Golding
The Bottom Billion--Paul Collier

El Tiempo Sí Va Volando

Time Flies. . .

 

. . .when you’re having fun.

 

I can’t believe it’s been almost a month since I’ve updated this blog. Could somebody please tell me WHERE THE TIME IS GOING?

 

At this point in my Peace Corps service, I’m starting to feel that my time here is winding down! I still have so much to do! My life has definitely gotten progressively busier, recently. Here’s what I’ve been up to in the world of work, in no particular order:

 

1)      Phonics Seminars! – During the past few months, the East Side Teaching English Volunteers have been giving a series of seminars to English teachers. These seminars focus on training teachers in phonemic awareness (recognizing the funny sounds in the English language) and training teachers in how to teach phonemic awareness in their class using phonics activities. The seminars have been pretty fun and the teachers enjoy them. Last week I used a Beyonce song for the opening activity for the training seminar in my school.

2)      GAD Board! – Remember how I’m President Kennedy? Yea, I’m still up to that. I’ve been gearing up for a Retreat in Chiriqui next week (que fancy!) in which the Gender and Development Board will be sequestered in a library for three days while we do things like set dates for GAD events during the next year and edit all of the facilitator’s guides and manuals that we use for presentations, seminars and camps. Basically my job at this point equates to teeth-puller of the Gender and Development Committee (as in: ‘Hey, I was just calling to see if you inventoried the materials in your regional GAD kit. . .you done that yet?).

3)      Google Drive Seminars – In my attempt to help remedy the age old problem of loss of institutional knowledge within a constantly changing development organization, I’ve opened my mouth (like I normally do) and got myself waist deep in helping the Teaching English program organize itself for future generations of Peace Corps Volunteers. More specifically, what we’re doing is taking the more prevalent themes that TE PCVs tend to present in teacher training seminars, organizing the presentations via electronic documents, and throwing them all up on Peace Corps Panama’s Google Drive for all of us lowly peasants of the kingdom that is the Peace Corps Teaching English program. In conjunction, the program is also planning on putting a co-teaching guide for grades K-6 that aligns with the Ministry of Education’s English curriculum.
TL;DR: We’re trying to help future PCVs NOT reinvent the wheel. I’m the primary teeth-puller of this project right now. (“Email reminder: Remember the September 2^nd deadline, guys!” I’m sure my colleagues love me right now.)

4)      Other things: Frisbee, ISAE: Other things that don’t really require much of my time or much preparation include.

a.       Frisbee team: My Frisbee team kids keep bugging me that they still want to play pickup in the neighborhood soccer field, so I go out there with them on Saturdays and throw around a Frisbee, play pickup games, and demolish kids half my size in Frisbee tag. Nothing makes you feel more agile than running away from a Frisbee thrown by an eight-year-old.

b.      Saturday English class: I regularly attend a Saturday English class funded by the Embassy to serve as a kind of teaching assistant. The class is for high school students and it’s hosted at the local private university. I always have a good time in the class. The students are so much fun!

 

Other non-work related things. . .

 

1)      New volunteers! Several volunteers on the East Side recently finished there service, so many have now left the East Side and ventured on to bigger and better things. Darien is currently receiving six new volunteers, so maybe I’ll be making some more friends here pretty soon. They’re coming through my site today, so here’s to meeting the new East Siders!

2)      Visiting friends! I visited my friend Alex in her site in Darien over the weekend. Her site is very small, about 100 people, and is located about a two hour hike outside of a town that’s about an hour chiva ride down a dirt road from a city just off the Interamerican Highway. Needless to say, it’s a little more difficult to access that my site, but not hard to get to from where I am, so I’ll definitely be visiting her more often, now that I know how to get there! I love getting to visit other volunteers in their sites.

3)      Grad school applications open next month. I’M SO IMPATIENT! WHY WON’T THEY OPEN NOW?!?

 

Ok yea, so. . .sorry that was suck a boring blog post. I just needed to do an update purge on what I’ve been up to. I’ll write a post with more interesting anecdotes later this week, I PROMISE! Also after I travel to the West Side and translate for this medical tour this month, I’m sure I’ll have more interesting things to say to you all. J

 

Much love to everyone in the States! I love you all! MWAH!

What I've read recently:
Things Fall Apart -- Chinua Achebe
Confessions of an Economic Hitman -- John Perkins
A Brief History of Time -- Stephen Hawking
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks -- Rebecca Skloot (currently reading)

East Siders are more hard core than you!

Hello everybody!

Happy belated birthday to America. This post is late because the East Siders and I were too busy being awesome over the weekend and I was away from the internet.

By 'being awesome' I mean 'getting covered in mud'. Allow me to explain.

So July 4 rolls around here on the East Side of Panama, so what do we PCVs decide to do to celebrate? If you said 'kill something' you go ahead and give yourself a cookie: you've earned it.

This time the victim was a turkey. Also, this time it wasn't killed at my house. Instead, we killed it just West of the Darien border near Danny's site (another PCV, the one from the Motown radio show). We ate it. What fun! Whatever. On to the better part of the story.

After spending the night of July 3rd hanging out at the cabin near Danny's site, eight of us decided we wanted to do a little exploring into the Rio Congo area of Darien and strike out for the beach!

Now, this is no ordinary trip to the beach. We're East Siders, remember? This is no tourist destination we're headed for. We did not simply take a bus and get out at the beach. Instead, we got up before 5am and hopped into the back of a cattle truck that took us down a progressively less-well paved road. The ride was pretty bumpy, but progressing along relatively smoothly until the truck ended up getting stuck in a really muddy hole for two hours. At first the fact that the truck finally did get stuck was kind of funny--the driver was gunning it trying to make it across the hole and slinging mud ALL over the stuff in the back of the cattle truck in the process. (All us passengers had climbed out of the back by this point, in order to avoid being thrown around like popcorn during all of this.) After about a half-hour, though, we started getting worried when the truck could not move forward OR backward out of the ditch AND the exhaust pipe was submerged in the mud, so we could not turn the truck off for fear of mud running into the exhaust pipe.

We tried everything. We tried pushing the truck (didn't work too well--all the skinny little Peace Corps Volunteers didn't think to bring any linebacker friends). We diverted the mud from the hole down a path on the side of the road by digging with our hands and making what we dubbed "the Panama Canal." We got the neighbors to lend their horses to try and pull out the truck. We threw dried mud around the tires to give them some traction to climb out of the hole. We picked at the mud under the belly of the truck when we discovered the truck's tires weren't even actually touching the ground. . .

Well, the end of the story is that we did end up getting the truck out of the mud. Looking back, it was HILARIOUS. We all got covered in mud, head to toe. At one point, one of the other PCVs even wrestled me in it--why? I dont' know. We were half crazy and already dirty, so why not? The Panamanians got a kick out of it.

The cool thing about this story is that it once again shows the awesomeness of Panamanians. When the people on the nearby farms found out that we were stuck in the mud, they hung around for about an hour and a half until we made it out of the mud. They even bought beers for everybody (because in Panama, you CANNOT do a job like this without tossing back a few brews).

Side note: I don't know how those beers were cold. SOMEBODY has a generator.

But you think that's awesome? Check this out. After we made it out, one of the guys who lives close by invited everybody to his house for fried fish and rice for lunch. What?!? Yes, please. Also, naturally, the entire time cold Balboas kept popping out of nowhere.

Set back by about a total of three hours, we continued on our journey and made it to the port to catch our boat to the beach. (I subsequently entertained everyone by screaming and nearly throwing myself around the boat every time we went over a big wave. Boats are scary!) Once at the beach, we met a school teacher in the town who cooked all of our meals and fed us on her porch for an extremely cheap price, arranged to have plenty of water for us to wash clothes and bathe, gave us free use of the empty rooms located across the street from our house (free place to sleep!), and kept our bellies full of free coconut water from the pipa trees that were around.

I'm trying to tell you guys, Panamanians set the bar really high. When I get back to the States, all of you guys are going to look like jerks by comparison.

All in all, it was a pretty great weekend. I got to relax and read on the beach and jam a little bit with my Peace Corps buddies (yes, I brought my flute on this adventure, because you can't take the band dork out of the girl). I'm not trying to pretend that my life is like this all the time, but I will say that Peace Corps has been good to me so far. What other time in my life have been on cool adventures like this one?

When was the last time I talked about work, guys? Maybe next post I'll talk about that. It's Year 2 and I'm less than ten months from finishing my service, I got work to do!

Much love to the old US of A! Special shout-out to Shelby! Good luck with your travels around the East Coast and during your move to Japan, soon!

--Aja


More books I've read recently:

Anthem - Ayn Rand
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There - David Brooks

And been listening to Sam Smith, so we can tack that on the list of people I'm listening to! :)

Everybody else is doing it.

I'm going to hop on the bandwagon. A lot of Peace Corps bloggers do this post, so far be it from me to break the mold. Here we go. . .

Books I’ve read (that I remember) since I’ve been in Panama (in no particular order):

Dreams of My Father—Barack Obama

The Mismeasure of Man—Stephen Jay Gould

The Fountainhead—Ayn Rand

Game of Thrones—George R.R. Martin

Clash of Kings—George R.R. Martin

Hunger Games—Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire—Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay—Suzanne Collins

Angeles del Olvido--?? (I forgot)

David and Goliath—Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point—Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers—Malcolm Gladwell

Lean In—Sheryl Samberg

Life of Pi—Yann Martel

Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Orange is the New Black—Piper Kerman

My Horizontal Life—Chelsea Handler

The Fault in Our Stars—John Green

Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me—Chelsea Handler & Friends

The Poisonwood Bible—Barbara Kingsolver

The Alchemist—Paulo Coelho

Ishmael—Daniel Quinn

Infidel—Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Defining Decade—Meg Jay
The Glass Castle—Jeannette Walls
The Time Traveler’s Wife—Audrey Niffenegger
The Great Train Robbery—Michael Crichton

Uhh. . .that’s all I can remember for now. If you want to know more about any of these books or about my opinions on them, hit me up!

Artists I’ve listened to a lot of during Peace Corps (in no particular order):

Bruno Mars

Mariah Carey

Whitney Houston

Ariana Grande

One Direction

Taylor Swift

Rihanna

Beyonce

Maxwell

Justin Timberlake

J. Cole

Miguel

Chris Brown

John Mayer

Kesha

Amy Winehouse

Allen Stone

Eric Hutchinson

Christina Aguilera

Adele

Prince Royce (willingly or unwillingly)

Joss Stone

Paramore

Pharrell

Bad Rabbits

Jesse McCartney

Michael Jackson

Carrie Underwood

Maxwell

Jay-Z

Usher

Eric Benét

Alicia Keys

Destiny’s Child

. . .that’s all I can think of right now. If you want my opinions on any of these artists, just ask me, cuz my personal opinions are pretty well-formed about the body of work of almost all these artists.

Ok, kiddos. Amor y paz!