Bienvenidas and Despedidas (Hellos and Goodbyes)

I would say that I’m continuing to settle in to Meteti life here. At the same time, around a week ago, I started getting a little cabin fever. Enter gringo* weekend.

I haven’t left site much at all during my first couple of months in site. I would attribute that less to my level of commitment as a volunteer and more to the fact that I refuse to sit in a freezing bus for 6 or 7 hours one-way just to get a taste of the city. (That’s not to say I’m not super-committed to my Peace Corps work.)

Because I haven’t really been out much during the past month, I felt that I was starting to get a little loopy. Good thing July 4^th happens to be Independence Day in my native country (USA! USA!). I told my co-workers and host family that I’d be out of school that day to celebrate with the gringos and got all my ducks in a row to be able to take the day off.

Worth it! It was especially great to see some of my G72ers (volunteers from my training group). I’ve missed those guys! Between July 4^th and my trip to La Palma, I felt refreshed and ready to work when I came back to Meteti.

Side note: I have also figured out how to get my hands on a map of Darien. I have been promised a giant map by the cartographer himself who has an office in Meteti. Those can be hard to come by. It took me awhile to figure out how to get one, and now I’m so excited! I like maps. I’m going to go so many cool places (when I’m on break from school, of course).

Furthermore, I met the previous volunteer that had lived in my site for two years. She’s on vacation from her teaching job in the States and came back to Meteti to visit this past week, since she missed the province so much. Hers is the house I’ll be renting when I move out of my host family’s house at the end of the month. I had heard a lot about Liz from people around town, who really loved her. I was excited to meet her because she’s kind of a Peace Corps cheat sheet, if you will.

Liz is really cool! I hate that I only met her four days ago and I already had to say goodbye. She was super helpful in helping me figure out my housing situation and just giving me tips on how to do this Peace Corps-Meteti thing in general. I mean, she WAS in my shoes a couple of years ago. We could have been bffs in an alternate universe in which both of us were in Peace Corps at the same time.

In addition to saying hello and goodbye to Liz in such a short time, I also had to say goodbye to my Regional Leader (RL), Molly, who finished up her service and headed back to the States this past weekend. Regional Leaders in Peace Corps Panama are volunteers who extend for a third year of service in order to be Coordinators for Peace Corps, kind of being Peace Corps’ arms and legs outside of the city, serving as a coordinator for a particular province of Panama. I happen to live in the same town as my Regional Leader, so I got to know her a little bit while she was here. She’s another person that I think I could be good friends with, so I hate that I had to say goodbye! She’s an awesome RL.

As far as the ‘hellos,’ I got to meet a few of the new Peace Corps Panama trainees that arrived in the country less than a month ago. They will be moving to their sites next month. This group will include about 10-11 new volunteers in my province  (since they are Sustainable Agriculture and Environmental Health volunteers, who tend to serve in more rural areas like Darien). Since not very many people from my training group live near me (I’m the farthest East), I’m really interested to see who in this new training group gets placed near me. These are the people I’ll be spending the next two years with, essentially.

In other news:

My mom in the States mailed me a huge package, so now I’ll be introducing Darien to American delicacies like Skittles and Cheez-Its.

I went on the radio again. This time, listeners were treated to a few bars of Katy Perry’s “Part of Me,” courtesy of yours truly. I wish I was kidding. I wish I could tell you it won’t happen again. I knew my knowledge of pop music lyrics would come in handy one day. I mean, I don’t know if I possess any skills more marketable than this, my knowledge of Katy Perry lyrics. I’m not proud of it.

*The word gringo is a little bit difficult to accurately translate into English, but for purposes of this blog post, gringos are Americans (fellow Peace Corps Volunteers).

Work

So this post is about work.

Have I talked about what my primary assignment is? Here’s a review: I’m an English language education facilitator for the K-9 grades at a public school in the Darien province of Panama. Outside of primary projects, Peace Corps Volunteers also are expected to take on secondary projects in their community based on the needs/wants of the community.

With respect to work these past two weeks, I feel like I have been being pulled in different directions. Every day I have needed to be in at least two different places at once. Ahhh. Needless to say I slept well this weekend once I got a little time off.

That being said, let’s all remember that I’m in development work. What does that mean, class? That’s right. It’s going to be a minute before I see any actual results from the time I put in. I’m only finishing month two of being in site, which means a lot of what I do is still getting to know the community and building relationships. The good news is, I do feel like I’ve been setting myself up for some productivity down the road. This past week I visited some local agencies and have begun forming projects with them (I’ll be more specific and explain projects in my blog as things come to fruition).

With respect to my primary assignment, I feel so behind! I’m still observing teachers and doing feedback forms. I have eight co-teachers, so it’s going to be at least another month before I finish up observations. I’m anxious to begin co-teaching and co-planning with them, but I need to get through observations with all of my teachers first! I feel good about working in my school, though. My teachers are all good people, and I get along with all of them really well (even the one that I never see, because all us English teachers know that finding him is like finding Sasquatch, seriously). Any other Teaching English Volunteer knows that having co-teachers like mine is a huge help. As busy as I may get, it’s good to know that getting along with my co-workers is one less thing to worry about.

Other things in life right now:

In the future, if I ever need to introduce myself to a middle school class, I should just start out with “Hi, my name is Aja. My hair is real.” There’s an eighth grade class at my school that has known me for two months now, and I think that until today some of them thought I wore a wig or something. I’m not sure I’ll ever stop having people ask if my hair is real or stop having random children touch it and giggle when I’m riding a chiva.

I’m LOVING J. Cole’s new album right now. It’s clearly Grammy material, I’m not kidding. Go listen to “Let Nas Down.” But actually, tho, listen to the whole album.

Also listening to a lot of Allen Stone. If you don’t know who he is, please go listen to his live recording of “Figure It Out.” When you fall in love with that, you can listen to his entire second album.

Today the bananas came in at the produce stand. I been waitin on those bad boys. The lady at the produce stand knew I was coming for my guineos (bananas) and had my plastic bag ready when I came in the door. Her produce stand is right next to the house that I’m renting when I move out of my host family’s house, so I forsee a beautiful friendship forming in our future.

Random things:

I find myself speaking to the pets in Spanish.

I count things in Spanish.

When I talk to myself (i.e. when I’m looking for something I lost or when I’m planning my schedule) it’s in Spanish.

My English and my Spanish are both getting worse. I’m beginning to speak English like a Panamanian. I’m also beginning to speak Spanish like a Panamanian. Neither one of those is good for professional situations. 

I’ll be destined to work in the campo after this.

I will be getting some quality gringo time in on July 4^th. Some of the volunteers in my province are meeting in another volunteer’s site to roast a pig. . .because that’s the kind of the that you do when you’re a Peace Corps Panama Volunteer who lives East of the Canal. . .or, you know, if you're in North Carolina. It’s a thing.

Too Much Food (Jazon Mraz, anyone? No? Ok, then.)

About the amount of food I ate yesterday. . .

It was ridiculous. Somewhere my grandmother is looking down upon me, giddy with joy because I ate five meals in the same day. Yea, I said that. Five meals in the same day.  Let that sink in, let the wave of shock and/or disgust/approval wash over you, and then also consider the ice cream, Jell-O and three pieces of cake I had after that fifth meal.

It wasn’t my fault, allow me to explain:

Panama happened.

First, I woke up like any other lazy Sunday. I had been my definition of productive (kind of) during the other six days that week, so I thought Sunday might be the day to sleep in, catch up on some laundry, maybe pasear a little bit. I contemplated going to mass with my host mom, but laziness won over. Instead, I stayed home and washed the mountain of dishes in the sink and cleaned my room while blasting some clean-up music. I had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, which is normal, but then after I cleaned up the kitchen, I thought to myself “Hey, I’m already here, it’s about noon, maybe I’ll fry a couple of eggs and a hot dog, because why not.” My host mom came home and decided that this would go well with fried plantains (because plantains go with everything and are a superior alternative to eating eggs and hot dogs alone or with bread), so I finally fried my OWN plantains for once. (They were delicious.) After eating all of that, I was fuller that I wanted to be, but that’s cool, because I just wouldn’t have to eat again until dinner, right?

Anyway.

A girl that lives down the street from me called to invite me to her house for Father’s Day, so of course I went. I didn’t have anything else important to do that day. I didn’t take into account that that her family would feed me my second lunch in the middle of the afternoon. And it was Father’s Day. This was not just any lunch. There was beef, pork, regular rice, rice with coco, and potato salad. If you’ve never been to Panama, let me just tell you there’s not really a way to opt out or say ‘no thank you’ when someone invites you over their house and offers you food. I ate it.

THEN I came home, and within a couple of hours, it was dinner time. I had a birthday party to go to that night, so I ate a little dinner just so I wouldn’t be hungry at the birthday party. On Panamanian time, you never really know when those things are gonna start/end, and I don’t wanna sit around hungry or be rude and leave because I need to go eat.

Eating dinner at home was another HUGE miscalculation on my part. If she had drawn upon her useful Panamanian stereotypes, our protagonist would have realized that at EVERY family celebration in Panama, arroz con pollo (rice with chicken) and potato salad WILL be served, no joke. When you’re the guest, they always serve you first. A HUGE portion. So what did I do? I shoveled it down. All of the potato salad, and then about half of the rice was all I could manage. I took my leftovers ‘para llevar (to go).’ And then they served me cake. There were THREE CAKES. I was anticipating being served a single slice of ONE of the cakes. Instead I was served a good sized slice of each of the three cakes, PLUS chocolate ice cream and raspberry Jell-O. Even as I write this the next day, mid-morning, I feel really full. My host sister and I came home with our stomachs about to burst and went to bed immediately.

For anybody in the States who may have been worried that I’m not eating enough: Just don’t.

Meteti Life

Nothing groundbreaking to update on, I just felt like I should write a blog post.

Lately I’ve just been hanging out in Meteti, still meeting people, showing my face around and whatnot. Since I last updated, I’ve been to another medical gira in order to translate for the Army, and had a chance to catch up with the other two G72ers that I hadn’t had a chance to see since we’ve moved into site. It was nice to see some familiar faces!

Other than that, I’ve been meeting some new Darien (and Panama Este) PCVs (mostly Darien), since they come through Meteti fairly often, traveling back and forth. We also had our regional meeting this past week for everyone East of the Canal, so I met a few volunteers there, too. I’ve decided that when I return from Peace Corps, I will no longer understand what ‘professionalism’ means. The Peace Corps office is so laid back that, DURING our Regional Meeting, a couple of the guys in our region decided it would be appropriate to recite ALL of the lyrics to Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake’s first hit. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it.) They literally did the entire song. The Country Director was not phased: all of us on the East Side tend to be just a lil bit crazy, or ‘rough around the edges’ as he puts it.

After regional meeting, we all hung around the hostel where we were staying in Panama City (Casco Viejo), and then went to hang out at a spot just down the street from the hostel. There were $1 beers, but who cares? There was a jukebox. Game. Over.

When I came in I was a lil bit of a crowd favorite because I grabbed one of my colleagues because of COURSE Prince Royce was playing (he’s everywhere). There’s an available dance floor, DUH, so I had to bachata. (My sister taught me well.) The Panamanians were quite entertained by/supportive of my dancing. (Eso es! Eso!)

Back to the theme of the jukebox. I never contributed a penny to that jukebox, but because other people are less decisive than I am when it comes to pop music, I got a few of my choice tracks on there. I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time.” Some of my PC peeps got educated that day. (‘Oh my gosh! This video is like a mini-movie. Whoa! Look at MJ’s dancers!’ And I’m like ‘Yo, this is like every Michael Jackson video. They are always this amazing.’) Also, nobody else knew that track existed. I was humbled. I am lucky to have had the quality Michael Jackson/Motown education that I grew up with at the hands of my father, so shout out to Anthony Kennedy. He may be tone-deaf, but there’s no denying his taste in music. (Luther? Smokey? Really, tho!)

Since Regional Meeting aftermath was the first opportunity I’ve really had to dance since I’ve gotten to Panama, I made the most of it. I was only out for a couple of hours, but that was all I needed.

When I got back to the hostel, I literally didn’t sleep. You know when you start the week knowing that you won’t get any sleep? Yea. When I had traveled TO Panama City, I woke up at 2:30 am to catch the early bus, and that night when I got back from going out, I just took a shower and caught a cab with some other PCVs to the terminal so that I could get a bus back to Darien. The trip back? I’ve never slept so hard on a bus.

Why did I need to get back? Regional Spelling Bee (in English) hosted in my town. Being a native speaker, I was drafted into being the announcer for the words. That was exciting/fun. A girl from my school got second place. (She should’ve won, though! She did SO WELL. I was super proud.)

Then that Friday there was the Black Culture Festival at my school. Each grade level had a princess to represent their grade, and each grade had a corresponding color. We invited other schools. There was dancing. I learned about the Black Culture/History in Panama. I went to a black history lecture. I watched the Afro-Antillean dances that are a part of Black Panamanian culture. That was pretty cool. I wore some kind of African print scarf that I stole from my momma’s closet in the states since everyone else dressed up for the event and I didn’t have anything to wear. Some other PCVs came to support. There was food. It was a fun time.

Other than that. . .next week is English week. I still have yet to get anything constructive done on my primary project, so how about I let you guys know when I DO get something constructive done, and until then let’s just assume that nothing productive is getting done when I go to school. Next week is English Week, so hopefully during the following week things will begin to approach some level of what I perceive to be ‘normalcy’? (Maybe normalcy IS children running around the school with multi-colored balloons in anticipation of an upcoming festival? Panama DOES have a lot of ferias/festivals/random holidays.)

Welp, I know that update was less than eventful, but ya know. . .maybe at some point during the next month I’ll actually sit down to write a GOOD blog post. I’ve been getting pretty lazy out this. Love me, anyway!

Much love to everybody at home in the Carolinas! 

On Taking a Shower

I don’t know what it is with me and taking showers. I’ve never really enjoyed taking a bath. I like being clean, but taking a bath is just one of those annoying chores that you do every day. I think it’s because I’m a big picture person, and all those daily things that you have to do to function (like taking a shower and eating) are just constant nuisances that cloud my thinking space. Do you know what I could be doing with all those hours I’ve spent showering? (Probably just sleeping or listening to pop music, but, ya know. . .the principle. . .)

Once you take a shower for the day, you can’t just check it off of your things to do like you can finishing a paper for work or going by the bank. Nope. If you take a shower, you’re still gonna be dirty again in the next 24 hours. (Or, if you live in Panama, less than 24.) So there’s that. You gotta do it every day, it takes up time, and it’s not even fun to do. In order to take a bath, you have to take off all your clothes, bathe with soap and all of that, and then dry off and put on MORE clothes that are just going to get dirty again. There are other toiletries involved. Deoderant, lotion, shampoo, whatever. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I bathe regularly because I enjoy being clean, but I don’t like bathing!

So where did this observation come from? After a sweaty morning pasearing around Santa Fe with my host mom, I came home, took a nap, and then realized I was too dirty to continue living my life until I had bathed. I never liked bathing, but my reluctance is compounded by the fact that bathing now involves dumping a bowl of cold water over my head/shoulders. Every day. If it’s a school day, that means at 5:30 or 6 in the morning, the first thing I do is experience this, my Panamanian bucket shower. I actually hop around a little bit every time the cold water hits me for the first time. I don’t know why, it’s a knee jerk reaction. It’s not gonna make the water any warmer.

The good news is that, if this is the hardest part of my life right now, I’m in pretty good shape, right? Hey, I have Wi-Fi, remember? That’s all that matters. What more could you want?

I'm a grown-up. I take showers, I swear.

I'm allergic to Panama!

I wrote this post a few days ago. I’m just getting around to posting it. J

Before I start talking about how my face rebelled against me this week, let me talk about more successful things in my life, like translating for the US Army.

Monday through Wednesday of this week, I decided to participate in a medical event that the US Army was having in Platanilla, a town that’s a 2-hour trip from my site. I found out from my regional leader that a group of army medical officers (reserves) would be staying in my town and traveling to Platanilla every day to provide medical care for the community and dispense medicine. A lot of them don’t speak Spanish, so they are always happy to have some extra interpreters there to help things run a little bit more smoothly. Since this week is exam week at my school (aka not ideal for observations/doing my job), I decided to go help out the army.

It was really fun. I love translating because it makes me feel super useful. I was impressed by how some of the army officers got along really well with their Panamanian counterparts without spoken language. There were some Kodak moments. While there, I interpreted for optometry for a day and then for pharmacy for the next two days.

While interpreting for pharmacy, I met this amazing Pharm Tech who works in the Medical Center in Platanilla. He has been working there for 18 years and he knows EVERYONE in town. Watching him work with the people in the community was pretty inspirational. He would joke around with people when they came to pick up prescriptions, but he would also dish out some tough love sometimes. (He straight up called this one old man a liar for not being honest about his medical history.) I could write a whole paper about how awesome this guy is (he wrote a song to thank the Army for coming out and then sang it for everybody), but to sum it up, I told my pharmacist-to-be sister about him, and we’re going to go visit him when she comes to Darien.

It was pretty interested hanging out with the Army people for a couple of days. I was very impressed by the positive attitudes that some of them had about being in a new place, and on the other hand, there were times where some the officers would say some things that would make me think, “you just don’t get it.” I’ve only been in Panama for 3 months, but even though I’m not Panamanian, I think I’ve started to think of Panama as that friend or family member that you rag on all the time, but if anybody else says anything about your family or your friend, you’re ready to fight them. Ok, I wasn’t gonna fight anybody, but I’m just saying. I talk smack about Panama all the time to other Peace Corps Volunteers, but even when I complain about how Panama’s out to get me again, it’s all good-natured. I’m going to be living here for the next two years, and I love Panama. When the Army officers talk about Panama, though, something inside me goes NO, YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT! Yea, you’re not going to have an easy time finding hot water anywhere, but so? Yea, there are stray dogs that wander into school classrooms, so? Yea, that bridge we have to drive over is pretty sketchy, so?* I know that I’m still American and I’m not Panamanian, so I can’t really give myself a license to say whatever I want about Panama either, but I couldn’t help but cringe on the inside at some of the conversations I had with the officers when they ask about my life here. I’m not sure if some of them understand development work, but then again I know nothing about the military, so that goes both ways.

In other news, I am allergic to Panama. I’ve never had a food allergy in my life, which makes me happy, because that means I can eat all the food I want to. I am fearful that my care-free gorging days are over, because I’m pretty sure I ate something that I’m allergic to. A few days ago my lips blew up, and then hives broke out over the bottom half of my face. It itched and burned and I had never had anything like this happen to me before, so I called the Peace Corps medical office. They said I probably ate something that I reacted to, and to take some Benadryl and drink a lot of water. I followed the doctor’s orders, and the burning/itching has mostly stopped and my face is slowly returning to normal. The meds have been making me drowsy, but I think I’m done taking them, so I can return back to my regular life.

This turn of events is pretty sad, because I’m suspicious that the papaya I ate caused the reaction. L That papaya was DELICIOUS, what do you mean I can’t eat anymore? I’m going to play it safe and stay away from mangoes because I’m afraid of breaking out again. Let me tell you why that is tragic: it’s mango season. There are mangoes EVERYWHERE. ALL OF THE TREES IN MY TOWN ARE MANGO TREES AND THE MANGOES LOOK DELICIOUS. It’s like giving a shopaholic a credit card with no limit. It’s like I’m an alcoholic living a bar. What kind of world IS this? Either way, I’m not COMPLETELY sure it was the mango that made me break out, I’m just suspicious. I’m just going to carry Benadryl in my bag from now on in case I accidentally consume the allergen again. . .since I’m not really sure what I’m allergic to. I don’t really want to have an allergy, because that means I’m not invincible anymore. L I haven’t had allergies since I was little.

Thus wraps a week of exhaustion. Between traveling to Platanilla to interpret and taking meds that make me drowsy, I am BEAT! I’m teaching the little kids tomorrow and then I’ll probably spend the day running errands and pasearing. I’ll be going over the university for the first time on Saturday (yay!). Other than that, next week is the break between trimesters, so there is no school. I have zero plans for that week, so we’ll see what I come up with to make my week interesting before we begin the new trimester.

I want to give another shout out to my Dad for keeping up with my life. I talked to my sister on the phone today (I needed to update her on my facial situation) and she mentioned that my dad has been consistently reading my blog. Kudos to you! I’ll try and keep updated pretty consistently.

Much love to everyone at home in the Carolinas! I miss you guys!

*Side note/anecdote: When I crossed that bridge on the bus the other day, the bus got stuck. We all had to get out of the bus, push it across, and get back on. I’m glad that happened on a bus with Panamanians and not with the army people. The Panamanians were griping about how the politicians need to do more for Darien and how this situation was a perfect illustration of that point, but they’re allowed to do that. This is their country and they can talk junk about their politicians all they want.

I stay on your radio station cuz I’m based in heavy rotations

My last blog post was only on Monday, but when you’ve just moved to site in Peace Corps, a week seems like forever. New things happen all the time.

What happened this week? A lot of things. Things that I want to share on this blog:

DISCLAIMER: I'm warning you right now, this blog post is REALLY SCATTERBRAINED. I'm not going to apologize for who I am, but I do apologize if you actually try to sit down and read this post and find that it's a frustrating experience.

First, pasearing success is beginning to happen. On Tuesday I randomly met a woman (Maribel) that works at the radio station here in town, Voz sin Frontera, which is by FAR the most popular station in Darien. It’s a Catholic radio station, and the community uses it in a different way that we use radio in Charlotte, where I’m from. Members of the community can pay to put announcements over the radio for different events that are happening in various places in the Darien. Peace Corps uses the radio if they need to track down volunteers in remote places because EVERYBODY listens to Voz sin Frontera. They also do things like have prayers over the radio in addition to doing things that every radio station does, like play music (mostly típico).

            Anybody that knows me knows that I think radio is mad cool. I grew up listening to Power 98 in Charlotte ever since I was in elementary school. Every morning from elementary school all the way through high school, I was listening to Power 98 while I was getting dressed in the morning, and once I started driving, I was listening to it in the car on the way to school. I always thought it would be REALLY COOL to be a Radio DJ for a day (I tell people that all the time). Naturally, when I found out that the woman I had just met was a radio announcer at the radio station, I told her how much I loved my radio station growing up. She invited me to come visit her at work, so I did that.

            A few days later I showed up to visit her at work, and I met some of the other people that work at the station. They all seem to be really nice people, and I had some good laughs chilling with them for a little while. One of them (Corina) speaks English—she studied environmental studies in Oregon for two years. I hear through the grapevine that she’s worked with an agriculture Peace Corps Vounteer before. She invited me to come to her house to practice speaking English. I will be taking her up on that. Yay for making friends!

            Anyway, before I left, Maribel invited me to come over on Sunday morning to be interviewed on the radio. Needless to say, I was pumped. When I came back on Sunday morning (this morning), there was a lady cleaning up and she talked to me about Ghandi and Jainism and how she tries not to kill the bugs when she cleans up because Ghandi says you shouldn’t kill bugs. Then she asked me a little bit about myself and asked how she could continue to improve her English level beyond the basic proficiency she has now. Random! It’s always nice to randomly meet people. Being a Peace Corps Volunteer does that; I have to remember not to be on autopilot or to put the blinders on when I’m trying to get something done, otherwise I miss out on cool conversations like that one.

            Anywaaaaaay, I went into the booth with Maribel to wait for a good moment for the interview. I watched her read off a bunch of announcements for the community and play some Samy y Sandra, and then it was time for the interview!

            She put me in the next room with a microphone, and then we kind of just started to converse on-air about what Peace Corps is, what my job is, and how I’m adjusting to life in Darien. Maribel is awesome, so it made the interview super easy. For anybody out there that loves the sound of their own voice, I highly recommend being interviewed on the radio. It’s the best. Afterward, was SUPER excited to have done the interview. You know how when you’re excited or angry or frustrated, your second language won’t really come out anymore? I literally had to stop and mentally translate how to tell Maribel that I had a BLAST at the radio station. She told me to come back any time. J Voz sin Frontera gets so many cool points for opening their doors to me. I’m thinking I want to make friends with everybody at the station; it’s a pretty cool place to be.

            When I left the station after the interview, the guy that works selling things at the stand on the corner was like “North Carolina? You’re a foreigner?” He had heard me on the radio talking about my hometown. He had seen me several times and I always wave and say hi, but he never knew that I wasn’t from here. I just thought that was a hilarious interaction. He then welcomed me to Darien, so that was nice. I have plenty of funny stories accumulating about how people don’t realize that I’m not from Panama until I tell them. If you want to hear some, hit me up.

            Other than that, things I’ve done include teaching English to tiny people (kids between the ages of 3-5). We sang “If You’re Happy and you Know It,” with a sing-along video and I’ve been creating some visual aids to bring along next week, as well as planning for other activities.

            I spent some time hanging out with my regional leader the other day. She’s really cool, so it’s sad that she’s getting replaced in a month, when she finishes up her service and heads back home. We talked a lot about future volunteer sites, about Peace Corps life, and about Peace Corps Panama in general. She also taught me a little bit of Darien geography, so that’s helpful to get my bearings on everything.

            I went to church this morning and my host mom introduced me to everyone at the end of service during announcements. That was nice of her. I don’t really know how to do the ‘church talk’ thing in Spanish (my church people, you know what I mean), so I probably sounded a little too formal when I addressed everyone, but hey, they meant well and they clapped for me.  There were unformed officers in church, by the way. . .I was not expecting that. I guess the po-po need Jesus, too.

            The US Army is in Darien! They’re here doing a medical mission. They do this from time to time, providing pediatric care and gynecology and internal medical attention and various things like that. I’m planning on helping out with their project, basically just serving as an interpreter. Over the next couple of weeks they’ll be in various communities, so I think it’ll be fun to tag along and be bilingual in ways that help people.

             Other important events? I bought an auxiliary cord so now I can pump music through the radio my host sister won at BINGO. It's improving my quality of life.

            Other than that, I’ll be continuing to pasear. It’s Sunday afternoon right now, so I’m about to get out there. I’ve got two houses on my list to go visit, so from there I’m sure I’ll find some more. Woo-hoo meeting people!!!