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)