My Friends Left Me. And so did a French guy who never bathed.

There is bad news and there is good news. I’ll give you the bad news first:

THE BAD NEWS

My friends left me.

Due to heightened drug trafficking in the indigenous reservation  in Darien province, Peace Corps has decided to remove all Peace Corps Volunteers from the Cemaco area of Panama. This means that six Peace Corps Volunteers have unexpectedly had  to pack up their belongings and move out of the communities in which they live. (Hint: Some of those guys had been living in those communities for two years. Packing up and moving at the drop of a hat is not an easy thing to do.)

The moral of the story? Kids, don't do drugs. The demand you cause is what's driving this market! The money you pump into this business is the prize that drug cartels are out there killing people for, and it's what drug runners and innocent victimes are dying for.

Sorry to be dramatic. Back to the story at hand, and how this phenomenon is related to my little world.

So, obviously the communities and Volunteers in the indigenous reservation involved got the worse end of that deal. In order to get a moment to whine, I’m going to now talk about myself.

The sites that got closed are the closest ones to me, geographically. I live in the travel hub for those volunteers, and they come over my house to crash or hang out all the time. Not surprisingly, those six volunteers have come to be my closest friends in Panama. Now, the majority of them are moving to the other side of the country, and a couple may even possibly go back to the States.

So that’s the bad  news. It sucks when your friends leave.

THE GOOD NEWS

One of them is moving in with me! Danielle was one of the six who got her site closed, but she is now my new roommate! It’s me, her and cartucho for the next few months. This is super exciting! Danielle’s going to be an awesome roommate. We’ve already hung three hammocks in the new house and we made black bean burgers for the first meal cooked as ROOMIES!

More good news: I’m hoping to try and learn how to improvise (jam) to blues/jazz/pop music?? My struggle-buddy/East Side bro Danny came over to say goodbye to the Cemaco guys and to help me do an English seminar at the university. Danny plays the guitar and is a music snob extraordinaire, so he tuned my guitar, I whipped out my flute, and we listened to Stevie and Dave Matthews Band and Amy Winehouse and everything else and kind of gave Danielle a live concert, haha! Hopefully this improv thing is a skill I can pick up. Danny definitely gave me some helpful pointers.

Also there was a smelly French backpacker that overstayed his welcome camping behind my house. I let him pitch a tent in my yard for a couple of days and shared food with him one time, but then all my super-hospitable Peace Corps friends kept coming over and being nice and offering him beers, so then he kept staying. And kept staying. And kept staying. I was super annoyed by it, but I finally kicked him out today and  he’s gone forever!!! Yay!!!

THE NEUTRAL NEWS ABOUT LIFE

You know how I was indecisive? I don’t feel that way anymore. My mojo was killed just a little when my friends left, but I think coming back to Meteti in general made me realize that I don’t need to stay another year in Panama. I LOVE it here, but in order to move forward (because let’s be real: I’m a goal-oriented person), I gotta do the grad school thing. I think that’s what I’m gunning for.

I’ll be able to waive my fee waivers for both Berkeley and Michigan! That’s $130 saved. I’ll be writing a ton of essays over the coming year. Hopefully it’ll all end in grad school admittance and some money for mah studies. We’ll see where I’m at this time next year. Ya never know where life takes ya, sometimes.