One Year In

A couple of days ago marked one year since I first flew into Panama.

The fact that this date also coincides with the beginning of a new school year here in Panama makes it feel like some things are coming full circle. A year ago I didn't even know where the Darien was, a few months later I was super salty about being placed there to live for two years, and fast forward to today and I'm here making it work (well, ya know. . .me and cartucho!).

Walking up to the school for the first time in a few months gave me flashbacks about what it felt like to be in a new place, seeing everything around me with new eyes and wondering about the kind of people that I would meet in Meteti. It's so strange to now feel some sense of normalcy and to feel (at least a little) like I belong in the group of teachers. This time around I'm not a newbie at school!

The new group of Teaching English Volunteers have already arrived in Panama, and I'll be recieving one of them to visit in my site in a few weeks. It'll be exciting to have someone visit my site who actually wants to. . .ya know. . .visit my site. (I have a lot of people crash at my house who are just looking for a bath, a place to sleep, and maybe a few beers.) I'm excited to share my new home with someone and tell them about my work and the province in which I live!

Random shout out to Robin Thicke. I'm listening to some solid R&B right now while I'm writing this post.

What have I been up to? Random bullet points:

--GAD Camp (Youth Leadership Camp) about 45 minutes down the road from me. A week long, had a blast, got tired of kids by the end of the week. Brought three kids from my community to the camp, and I'm making them help me form my frisbee team. Yay, mwhahaha.

--UWB Camp (Ultimate Frisbee Sports/Leadership Camp) on the other side of the country. So many bus hours. Had a blast being a lazy facilitator. Brought one kid from my community to UWB camp, and I'm going to make him help me with my Frisbee camp, too.

--Panama Missions (Missionary Group that does medical tours) 30 minutes down the road from me. I hung out with them, ate their free food, enjoyed their air conditioning, and interpreted for the locals that came in to get a little free medical attention.

--Ambassador visited again. (You know, just to see me, because we're besties.) That parenthetical part was a lie, but still, it was pretty cool to see him and the Public Affairs diplomat that has been so helpful to me (she helped me get the boxes of books I have in my house). Ambassador and diplomat visited the Panama Missions clinic and took some PCVs to dinner and were present at a little graduation ceremony that was held for the students in the Saturday English class that the Embassy funded, held in the private university where I now sit taking advantage of free internet. The Ambassador (or, as I like to call him, J-Swagg) (ok that parenthetical part was also a lie) is mad cool, and so is Kristin (the diplomat that travels out with him), and they make me super excited about doing Peace Corps projects when they visit.

Ok, there's the word vomit about my life. More exciting things:

--One of my homies in Meteti just got transferred to work in my school as an English teacher! This is super exciting. Imagine that feeling when you find out one of your friends is now gonna be at work when you go there. BAM! Now when I have nothing to do at school, I can just hang out in his classroom and it counts as doing work. YESSSSS.

--I had such a good time at GAD camp (and hanging with my 'roommate'/GAD Rep Danielle and doing GAD things) that I decided I want to run for GAD Board. (GAD=Gender and Development Committee of Peace Corps Panama. They do warm fluffy things like youth seminars and camps, and workshops for women's artisan groups and whatnot.) More on this later.

Sorry y'all, I realize this is a super drab blog post, I just haven't had time recently to slow down and think. Writing is an introverted activity, and all of the extraversion I have been exhibiting lately is not really conducive to blogging.

Much love to everyone back in the States!!! Mwaaaaah!!

KINDLES and hikes

1. I gotta Kindle*.

8 year old me is validated right now. Aside from radio, another thing that I've always loved since I was a child--libraries.

When I was little, I lived about a mile down the road from Hickory Grove Public Library. It's a small library where my mom would take me with my sisters, and we would  bee-line straight for the kids books. One day mini-Aja entered the library and all at once discovered that the kids books no longer held her interest. They were too easy. . .so that day I LITERALLY went up to a librarian and asked her if they had any more books. She simply grinned and gestured with her arms toward, well. . .the rest of the library.

And thus a love was born. I used to think that the library had a rule that I could only check out three books at a time. When I got a little older I discovered that this was just my mom's rule, not the library's. It was her way of making sure that my sisters and I didn't check out gazillions of books and lose them in the house somewhere. (Good thing there were three of us chilluns checking out books at the same time. If you collaborate with your two counterparts, you can essentially, for all intents and purposes, check out nine books at a time and never go without a book to read.)

Dude, they let you take home books for FREE in there. And even though you're not even old enough to drive yet, you can have your OWN library card. So legit.

And then I discovered the Dewey Decimal system and the downtown library. You can look up a book that you want in the catalogue, find out if there's an available copy of it ANYWHERE IN THE CITY and do thinks like put it on hold or get it sent to a library close to you. (The librarian at my school thought I was clever for not buying the 5th Harry Potter book, but instead putting it on hold at the library down the street and reading it when it came in.) Finding a book in a library is like a treasure hunt. You catalogue search an author or a title, write down the call number, and go through the shelves on different floors to find what you're looking for. You can even give the product a little test-drive. . .ya know, read a few pages of the book to see if you like the writing style and stuff.

Later in life I discovered used books and Amazon.com, but that's another story.

So, being anti-technology, I was not initially impressed with the idea of a Kindle. I like BOOKS, not .MOBI files. Then I moved to Panama, where the reading culture is. . .less present. I miss libraries! Getting my hands on a book I wanted to read proved a little more difficult. (Although I did get it in on some books circulating though the hands of fellow volunteers.)

Given the context of Peace Corps Panama, a Kindle is AWESOME!!! I have like 70 books on mine right now, plus an edition of Economist magazine. (What up news source? There are no papers in my town.) I just KNOW my productivity will go down following this new development. I am SO EXCITED about all the books I'm going to read. Some of the East Siders have already been giving me a hard time about straight up ignoring everyone around me so that I can go read on my Kindle.

I'm foreseeing replays of elementary school, when I didn't want to do my homework because I was reading library books. I mean, who wants to work on an English teaching seminar when I have. . .I mean. . .books? (Is 'book' really the proper word to use if it's on a Kindle? I'll ponder that, later.)

Anyway, Kindle=Awesome. I broke down and read Hunger Games among other things. #teampeeta

2. I went on a hike. It was so fun. Don't kid yourself, hiking is not Aja's strong suit, but she had a great time.

*Shouts out to my fellow G72-er/East Sider/wanna-be Darienita (but you feel the struggle tho) Danny for bringing me the Kindle! I ordered it online and had it shipped to his house in Ohio so that he could retrieve it for me when he visited Ohio for Christmas.

You've got mail!!

Shouts out to the 704, 803 and 919. . .and. . .well, 252, I guess.

What I mean to say is, Ebony Kennedy wins mad cool points.

Every once in awhile I buy some cheap international minutes to call my sister in North Carolina. As the holidays approached and I knew she would be seeing a lot of the fam, I told her to tell everyone to write me letters and to send pictures if she could. I also commented several times that I didn’t actually think anybody would do it.

Welp, Ebony took it upon herself to collect letters for me at Christmas and mail them all to me herself! It was a huge surprise. She didn’t tell me that she was mailing anything, just shot me a message 2 weeks after sending me the mail, letting me know that I should have mail arriving soon.

In the package, I found letters from a bunch of my family members. (I have a huge extended family.) There were even some scribbles from the babies. :) The package also included pictures of the family from Christmas dinner, and a picture of the ‘WRITE TO AJA’ box that was evidently circulated by my sister. . .which was wrapped in shiny, glittery, green paper and decorated with a red bow.

It was SO AWESOME to hear from everybody. A couple of my Peace Corps friends that were present when I received the package laughed at my immediate reaction upon opening the package which was displaying the letters and exclaiming ‘LOOK! PEOPLE LOVE ME!’

Thanks so much to everybody at home in the Carolinas who didn’t forget about me on Christmas. :) I love you all and can’t wait to see you whenever I get back to the States!

I ALSO have to, of course, give a shout out to my co-dictator of the free world and  fellow globetrotter Shelby Lake! I received a letter from him at the post office the same day I got letters from my family. As a fellow globetrotter, he understands how special it is to get a letter in the mail when you’re overseas. AND it was written on bright, ridiculous Japanese stationary. . .what more could you want? Shelby, hurry up and figure out where in Asia you’re gonna be next year so I can look at plane tickets!

The letters are the most exciting thing to happen to me, recently. Other than that, I’ve just been enjoying the summer (read: dry season) weather.  It’s the same temperature, but without the rain, and it actually gets chilly at night so you don’t wake up sweaty. :) I’m spending my time reading, hanging out around my community and with other volunteers who pass through and trying to get prepared the best I can for the end part of my summer, which promises to be super busy. . .I’ll keep you all updated!

Much love to you all at home!

We killed a goat, so I got a table.

I'm pretty sure that I mentioned before in this blog that we East Side PCVs get together and kill things.

This time it was a goat. . .again. (It was DELICIOUS!)

Two of the East Siders had family from the States coming out to their sites around the same time, so because I am in the travel hub, somehow it came to be that my house hosted a goat roast. As in we killed and roasted a goat outside of my house. (And by 'we' what I really mean is Mateo, Laura, Danielle and Rachel because I did nothing, I just live in said house.)

Really I just wanted to mention this event in order to provide context for an anecdote of how things work in Panama. We roasted a goat at my house. As goat is being chopped and prepared, the construction workers that are building a hotel behind my house (yea, that's a thing) decide that on this day, I really need a table outside my house to wash my dishes (which I do). The conversation went like this (directly translated):

Owner of hotel/store across the street: "You need a table outside your window."

Aja: "Yea, I would like that, but where am I going to get the wood from?"

O: "We have wood over here."

A: Ok, cool.

Translated into more direct language, the conversation looks like this:

O: "You want me to build you a table?"

A: "I don't have any wood. Are you gonna give me wood, too?"

O: "Yea."

A: "It's a deal, then."

So then a couple of the construction workers hop across the fence and hammer the thing just under my window. Another indirect conversation takes place.

Worker: "I hammered a nail into your wall. It needs to be hammered from the inside."

Aja: "Oh, ok, go ahead then."

W: "But my feet are dirty."

A: "It's okay, I'll clean it up later."

--Really it was like--

W: "I'm gonna walk all up on your lineoleum floor with my muddy feet cuz I gotta hammer those nails in, just to let you know."

A: "Alright, thanks for letting me know. Hammer away."

And thus the table is given unto me, and henceforth it has been written that I will give them goat at some point. That's fine. All the leftovers are clearly staying at my house, and we had a lot of goat, so if all I have to do is give some leftovers and I get a free table, that is what's up. Ahh, Panama and your social traps. Old clueless Aja would not have realized what was going on. Looka me and my social skills!!!!

I got rid of all extra goat this morning when I heated it up and sent it across the fence in a pot along with some plastic plates, napkins and barbecue sauce. In a matter of minutes, goat was gobbled up and pot and sauce were returned unto me.

Pana-people, y'all are a trip sometimes!!! Gotta love it. AND gotta love this table that just happened to my house.

AIDS on your radio/HIV+

I told you all I would keep you posted whenever some project idea came to fruition, so here it is.

I was on the radio again. This time I wasn't singing Katy Perry.

International AIDS awareness day was on December 1st, and in order to celebrate, one of my fellow volunteers (shout out to Danielle!) decided that we should do something in Meteti to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS.

DONE. We decided to have a radio show to educate about HIV and AIDS. We all know I love radio. (I live across the street from the station, remember?) A third volunteer decided to help us (thanks Kerri!), and then I realized. . .we're discussing a sexual health topic with all female voices on the air. We need some testosterone up in this!

Luck was on my side, as there happened to be a lot of Peace Corps Volunteers floating around my site during this time. (I live in the travel hub for Darien and the Comarcas Emberá-Woounán, remember?) I asked a couple of the guys if they would help out, and we ended up drafting two volunteers (Nate and David, whaddup) and a staff member who was in the area who works in the Peace Corps office (Ben is awesome!). Vóila! Just like that, we have two genders evenly represented (in the binary sense, at least ;) ).

So the show happened. We scheduled and hour long show beginning at 7pm, when a lot of those campesinos who don't have TVs are listening to their radios. During this time of night, the radio normally encourages people to text the radio station and send shout-outs to their friends and family. We decided to use that for the AIDS show, and we asked the radio station if we could borrow the phone for our program and instead of shout-outs, have people text in their questions about HIV/AIDS. Two of us in the program were on phone duty, taking listeners' questions and reading them on the air so that the others could take turns answering. People in Darien began not only to text, but to CALL the radio station's phone with their questions (that means they SPENT MONEY on a phone call to ask a sensitive question)!

THE SHOW WAS SUCH A SUCCESS! We covered what the HIV/AIDS virus IS, how it is and isn't transmitted, and how you can protect yourself from the virus. In the beginning, Danielle and I were a little worried about how a sensitive topic would be recieved coming from what is technically a Catholic radio station--this was Peace Corp Panama's first venture onto the radio--but the response has been overwhelmingly positive, so far! People have been commenting to Peace Corps Volunteers about how much they learned. One older man even called into the radio to thank us for providing answers to some questions he had been having for years. The benefit of our arrangement on the radio is that people were able to anonymously ask questions that they may be too embarrassed to ask otherwise, and recieve answers.

The icing on the cake is that I HAVE A RECORDING OF THE RADIO SHOW. Ben, the Peace Corps staff member who accompanied us on the radio, suggested that I ask for a recording of the show. (I wouldn't even have thought to ask if the radio did that!) Thanks to him, I now have had the opportunity to listen back to the program and share the file that is our radio program. Listening back, the show sounded a lot more put together than it felt in the moment. On the air, you can't hear all of the silly faces and panicked gestures we were making to one another during the show!

AAAANYYYWAYYY. Welp, that was a success. I won't tell you about the charla the next day that nobody showed up to, but just know that even that wasn't a complete waste of time. . .I came into possession of quite a few Snickers bars among other things, AND got to make an AWESOME contact at the Ministry of Health. (Did you know my province has an HIV COORDINATOR who works with HIV positive patients? He's been HIV positive for almost two decades, so for the first time in my life, I know someone who is HIV positive.)

Welp, PC success stories. Those don't come at ya everyday, so it's always nice to feel like to actually got something done at the end of the day.

The holiday season is upon us, and I walking around in a skirt and a short sleeved polo! #teamnojacket
Christmas in Panama will be great. All my fam in the States, take pictures and send them to me! I want to see all of your lovely faces. I love you all, and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year's to you, if I don't blog again before then!

Mwaaaaahhh!

P.S. Cartucho says hi.

Vacation (All I Ever Waaaaanteeeeed)

I have seen the other side of the canal, and it was good. Before I get into that, boring stuff:

I turned in my Personal Narratives for Foreign Service (yaaay!). Given my less than impressive score for my first crack at the written exam, I highly doubt I'll be invited to orals, but one can only dream! I find out mid- to late January.

Until then: WORK! I've been trying to stay in contact with the US Embassy, because they have a lot of things that I want (books. . .drool. . .) so hopefully the contacts I've made there could be a help for the projects I'm trying to line up for my Peace Corps service. I'll blog about what I'm up to as these ideas come to fruition (or fail miserably). I'm also struggling to make sure I get my ducks in a row with the Ministry of Education so I can be set up to do plenty of seminars for this coming school year. AAAAND I'm doing a little somethin-somethin next week in my site for World AIDS Day. I'll let y'all know how that turns out.

Okay, fun stuff.

I just finished having an AWESOME VACATION out of my site. On the one hand, I am in Peace Corps, so I do things like sweat on a daily basis and poop in a hole in the ground, but on the other hand. . .I'm Peace Corps PANAMA. I can do things like spend Thanksgiving in the mountains on the other side of the country and then chill for a few days on the beach. . .all on a Peace Corps budget (which ain't much, y'all).

Being a Peace Corps Volunteer is a 24/7 job. Although that doesn't mean I'm LITERALLY working EVERY WAKING MOMENT, it does mean that I'm on the job every second I am in site. There is always some work that I could be doing, whether it be going to school, visiting organizations, or just being involved in the community at large. For that reason, you can never REALLY let loose when you're at home. . .I always have that nagging voice in the back of my mind that tells me I should be out saving the world, beginning with the streets of Meteti.

Taking vacation was completely different. I went shopping in the city and even met up and had drinks with an Embassy contact (on my way to Thanksgiving), and then crashed a couple of nights with one of my G72ers that I had not seen in months (we live on opposite sides of the country and he has a beach site). After that, Thanksgiving happened. I was so excited to see my group members that I never get to see (there aren't a lot of them out where I'm at), so needless to say, hugs happened. After Thanksgiving, I rounded out my West Side tour with a couple of days at a nice, affordable beach resort to celebrate the birthday of one of my East Siders. By the time I headed back to Darien I was SO RELAXED. If you know me, you know relaxation isn't a thing that I normally prioritize, but CLEARLY it needs to move up my list of things to do. Let me tell ya, taking a few days to unwind and take in the beauty of your new home can do wonders for your sanity. I was almost reluctant to come home to Darien, but once I hit the bus terminal, I was glad to be coming back.

Side note: East Siders are awesome, because our region intimidated everyone during the Thanksgiving volleyball tournament. We lost the championship game. :( But we made a tough showing and had a BLAST, and all the other regions were super impressed!

Now I'm back in the land of emails, trying to get back on track for work!!! I'm ready to get some things done in the Dirty D, and hopefully be able to collaborate with others on some projects. I'm ready to pull some people out here to the East Side!

Anyway, in other news I ate myself into a food coma yesterday. I got my hands on some culantro and lemon, so I made a bowl of pico de gallo and ate it with patacones (fried plantains). It was so good. I napped for a solid hour after that.

My kitty is getting fatter! Did I tell you guys I recently found out that she is, in fact, a female? Whatever, I'm a cat lady now, so she's happy hanging out at my house.

Ok guys, that's about it for now. If exciting things happen, I'll try to remember to write it down and report on it. Much love to everybody out there in the Carolinas!!!

State Department/Best Weekend Ever

So this is what happened to me.

I was going to go to Sambu. It was going to be awesome. Then Peace Corps decided that none of the volunteers could go. That was sad, because I was super excited.

For people in my family who aren't into foreign relations. . .The State Department is the department in the government that handles foreign affairs. The US Embassy houses State Department workers (among others) who are US government employees working abroad. The Ambassador is the highest ranking representative of the US government in the country to which s/he is assigned. (In this case, Panama.)

The Ambassador was going to be visiting my province and staying in my town during a few of the days that I WOULD HAVE been in Sambu. Since I had turned down an invite from the office to meet up with the Ambassador when he came to my town because of my travel plans, I decided to call back and see if I could still slip in on the plans.

Great decision.

Originally a few of the PCVs had been scheduled to spend a little time with the Ambassador when he came through, before his lunch with SENAFRONT (the police). . .but that's not what I did this weekend.

Last Friday, I got a call at 7:20a from a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) in the State Department, asking if I wanted to tag along with the Ambassador and the team from the State Department for the morning. They would be leaving the restaurant RIGHT UP THE STREET from my house at 8a for the event, and they had an extra space in the car. My response was "umm. . .yes." I took a quick cold bucket shower, hurried to Facebook message a friend and let her know that I was flaking on our scheduled chat time, and powerwalked/ran up the street to be at the restaurant on time.

When I arrived, the FSO asked if I had eaten. I said 'No. I ran here.' and the whole table laughed. I sat down for. . .what else? Free food. God Bless America.

Next, we hopped in the car and drove over to an event. The Embassy had funded a wood processing facility for the indigenous population here in Darien, and was presenting it formally to the public.

The Ambassador arrived in a helicopter. Naturally.

After we held down everything at the facility so that all the decor didn't fly away from the wind created by the helicopter propellers, all the important representatives of various organizations approached the vehicle to greet the Ambassador. As I approached to shake his hand, I opened my mouth to introduce myself, but instead I was greeted with "Oh! I remember you! You're a great speaker." My life was complete. The Ambassador remembered my face from a full SIX MONTHS ago when I gave the swear-in speech for my group when we all celebrated becoming official Peace Corps Volunteers at the Ambassador's house. Basically, I have now achieved everything I've ever wanted out of life and I was so excited that small-talk after that was a struggle. Side note, though, the Ambassador is super personable and chill and didn't have any of those negative personality traits that you might be imagining a high-ranking government official might have.

Moving on.

There were a million cameras at said event. Naturally, I was trying to dodge them all. We all know how I feel about taking pictures.

Afterward, the FSO and I switched cars and jumped into the AMBASSADOR'S CAR. Driven by an embassy employee, this car was a huge SUV, all black with tinted windows. (All black everything--I don't know, it just made me think about Jay-Z.) Serious-looking. They bought my lunch and let me tag along to Yaviza and learn about other projects that the US Embassy has going on there. (Can somebody say. . .potential secondary projects? I was in networking frenzy-mode! Emails! Phone numbers! So many possibilities!)

Side note. . .riding in the Ambassador's car, I was sandwiched in the back seat between a Public Affairs FSO and the Ambassador himself. EXCELLENT opportunity to 1) Be a fly on the wall and listen to chatter about work at the Embassy and watch the FSO and Ambassador work together and 2) Pepper the FSO with questions about her career and the application process. As an aspiring diplomat, how often do you get the opportunity to shadow someone in your (hopefully) future profession? Godsend! I also talked about coordinating everything with her from getting books for a reading club at my school to getting college counselors for a girl in my neighboring town who wants to go to the University of Michigan.

The next day, I showed up at the private university to see the English class that the Embassy had funded, and say hi to the State Dept people before they left my province. . .whaddya know, they invited my Peace Corps colleague and I (shout out to my homegirl Rachel!) to tag along to Yaviza AGAIN. Yaaay! Again. So much networking. Those car rides are a great opportunity to have extended conversations about work that you can't necessarily have when too many people are around vying for recognition.

Basically, when I was done with those two days of AWESOMENESS, I kept having word-vomit conversations with Rachel about how AWESOME it was.

WOO-WHOOO! After having about a week of hitting my head on a wall in terms of my Peace Corps work and service, the State Department's visit gave me a renewed excitement about my Peace Corps service and further entrenched my resolve to keep applying to be a Foreign Service Officer. Woop, woop!

Much love to everyone in the States! Happy holiday season!