Back in Site!

After two weeks of socializing-overload, it feels good to be back in site where life is tranquilo.

In-Service Training (IST) proved to be more useful AND more stressful than I anticipated. I will say, a couple positive things about IST were:

1)      I got to see some faces from G72 that I hadn’t seen in awhile. I love you guys!

2)      The town where we had training was in the mountains and therefore 20-30 degrees cooler that the town where I live, therefore I wasn’t sweaty every second of every day and could therefore take one shower a day instead of two or three. I also had hot showers, a giant bed, and freedom from the worry that everything I own will grow mold.

That being said, I was super happy to get back to good old Darien. My first few days back, I went to go help out one of my fellow volunteers in the comarca with some youth intiatives she’s doing in her site in the indigenous comarca (reservation). I had a great time in her community (the stillness was a nice contrast to the relative bustle of IST and it was good to hang out with a couple of my East Side volunteers).

Immediately following that, I came back to my site, where our Regional Meeting was being held. Regional Meeting is a mandatory meeting that all PCVs have every 4 months. My region is the most spread out one, including everybody East of the Canal, which is about 30-something people, including the 9 newbies that we just got a few weeks ago. More bustle! So many gringos. I was happy to meet the new volunteers, aka G73. They seem like chill people, so it will be fun to get to know them.

We also killed another animal. . .cuz that’s what we do. This time it was a goat. It was delicious, especially the liver.

Now that everyone has left my site after Regional Meeting, it seems like my site again, so it’s good to be home! I was surprised that a lot of people in my town actually remembered where I was when I was missing for two whole weeks, so kudos to my gente.

Now that I’m fresh from coming out of IST, where I got to use some children (and teachers) as guinea pigs for teaching techniques, I’m anxious to see how much work I can get done before the holidays hit in November. That’ll be a challenge given the pace of life here, and I might come out of October stapling pancakes to the wall, but I’ll give it a shot! Wish me luck, and I’ll keep you all updated!

Time Flies

Every time I turn around, it’s been a couple of weeks since I updated my blog. Time is starting to move along kind of quickly here.

Since we last talked, I had a great time visiting the sites of one of my good friends in the group, brought my sister to visit my Peace Corps site, found out I have a new cousin that entered the world, and got excited about another potential secondary project.

It was nice to take a little vacation and travel outside of Darien for a bit, and I was really excited to see one of my G72ers that I hadn’t seen in a while, so my mini-vacation was thoroughly enjoyed. When I came back to site, it was with my sister, so that was exciting. She went around visiting other people’s houses with me, came to school one day with me, met some of my fellow Darien PCVs when they came through my site, visited one of my friends in the indigenous comarca, and even learned a lot about Panamanian community pharmacy when she visited the medical center in my town and met the pharmacist that works there.

I put Ebony on a bus this morning to get to the Panama City airport to get back to the old US of A, so she’s probably getting ready to arrive to the airport as I write this now. It was really cool finally getting to travel with one of my family members and having her see where I live. Hopefully she’ll come back at least once before I finish my service (hint, hint). I’d also be excited to have other visitors and have them meet people in my community (hint, hint).

Now I’m gearing up for life post-Ebony which includes things like:

-Giant all-day quinceañera celebration at my neighbors’ house. In a lot of latin cultures, a girl turning fifteen is a BIG deal. One of my neighbors is getting ready to celebrate her 15^th, and my neighbors literally had a BULLDOZER in the yard yesterday in order to create the space where the cow will be killed (yes, you read that correctly). Today the menfolk are over there raising the shelter that will be used to house the guests. I’m ready to party it up before I’m dragged off to. . .

-In-Service Training, aka IST. The day after the quince, I have to haul out to Cocle to spend two full weeks of Peace Corps doing everything in their power to bore me to death with training seminars. Really, I just want to learn to write a grant and go back home, but at least this gives me a chance to spend two weeks bugging my project coordinators to put another Teaching English Vounteer in my province. That I will be doing.

-Youth development activities in the comarca at a friend’s site. As soon as IST ends, I’m coming straight back to Darien to participate in some youth charlas and Frisbee-ing at a site that belongs to one of the Environmental Health Volunteers.

-Beginning to drum up interest in creating an Ultimate (Frisbee) team in my site! Ultimate Without Borders (check out their site) was created very recently by some Peace Corps Volunteers that have now finished their service, and a couple of the coordinators hosted a Training in my site for PCVs who are interested in creating a team in their community. The point of the Ultimate Without Borders program is that the sport of Ultimate is used as a medium through which to teach things like emotional intelligence, leadership and conflict resolution. There is an entire curriculum that goes along with the team practices, so it’s kind of a bait and switch. Give kids a fun sport to play and then teach them to be better people. J Win-win. I’m excited to get started.

That’s about it for the updates. Wish me luck for a banging quinceañera and a quick IST so that I can get back to Meteti and start doing things! Suerte. J

I live by myself. :-/

I moved into my new house. This means that, for the first time in my life, I live by myself! I don’t have a roommate or anything. I live in a house. By myself. Forget moving to a new country along with new language/food/culture/whatever, nothing’s really thrown me for a loop so far, but this whole only-I-live-in-this-house-and-nobody-else thing. . .this could be interesting. I’m a people person. I like to talk, and I’m not used to having very much privacy or personal space anyway, so living in host families for me has been easier for me than it has been for some other volunteers, and I’ve actually really enjoyed that kind of life. Moving out on my own, however, may prove to be a different story. Hopefully this will not be my Achilles’s Heel.

Don’t worry, though, people! I have awesome neighbors that will make sure I don’t go crazy and that will come visit me in my house to make sure I’m still here.

You know what else happened that is super sad? I adopted a kitty from my host family’s house. She’s super cute and I named her Luz and she was content in my house for about 3 days. Then I stupidly left her out at night while I went to go hang out with some PC Volunteers, and when I got back she was nowhere to be found, and I haven’t seen her in the past three or four days. There’s a chance she may have gone back over to my host family’s house. I hope so, because that means they’ll let me know so I can come get her. Otherwise, I just have to take some time to get over that kitty before I get another one. I know a volunteer who has a pregnant cat, so I could get another one. . .bottom line, I need some other living being in my living space. The chickens that run across my floor and the neighbor’s cat who looks for food in my kitchen do not count.

Ebony-watch: Haha, see what I did, there? We spent a weekend in Casco Viejo, before I came back to Darien for work. She’s been to Cocle and Los Santos, and she’ll be in Chiriqui and Bocas Tel Toro before she comes to Darien, where I live. (These are all names of Panamanian provinces, by the way. Google a map of Panama if you want to actually understand that sentence.)

So, work. . .did a few charlas, that was cool. They were a little bit of a logistical nightmare, but now I’m learning the difference in the way I need to go about organizing things in Panama. Other than that, Adult ESL classes are still a lot of fun, and they make me feel like I’m actually doing something in my community, which is nice. My primary project is kind of at a stand-still as we come to the end of the trimester (exam time), but I’m hoping to get the most I can out of  my school work during late September and October before November starts. . .November in Panama is essentially one long feria (festival) aka almost no classes.

At the beginning of September I’ll be going to Cocle for Peace Corps In-Service Training. I feel like we just finished Pre-Service Training, so I am extremely annoyed that I have to leave my community for two solid weeks in order to spend long days sitting and listening to seminars. It’s not my idea of fun, but hey, ya can’t always get what you want. Before that, though, my sister will be visiting my community where I live, so I have that to look forward to! That’s going to be a lot of fun.

Welp, life is pretty much igual (the same), here. I bought a cheap guitar to start learning, so I can be even 

more of a stereotypical hippie (Peace Corps? Dreads? Teaching myself to play guitar? Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself.) Life’s good. Hit me up, people! What’s going on in the States? Got any questions about my life in Panama? Comment, Facebook, call me!

I Moved/Ebony/Luzita

1) I moved to my new house. Man, that was work. I still have a few things to buy to put in my house, but the hard part is done. I have free public Wifi on my porch, so I decided to write a quick update.

2) Ebony's coming in two days. I hope she enjoys my new home! :)

3) Since I'll be in the city this weekend with Ebony, I decided to leave my roommate (Luz, my new cat/rat killing machine) at my host family's house until after I get back. I kinda want her to live in my house now so I don't have to be by myself, but I don't want to have her move in and then ditch her for the first few days.

That's all! Quick update!

Def Poetry Slam and Embera People

1) Did you know that Def Poetry Slam was a thing in Panamanian high schools and middle schools? Panama has several national competitions during the year for school kids (English Spelling Bee, Spanish Spelling Bee, Storywriting Competition), and one of them is a poetry competition. When they say poetry in Panama, they really mean group spoken word. I did not know this until I showed up at the regional competition being hosted by my school this past week. Kids were THROWING DOWN. I mean like, I was not ready. It was awesome. I want to see more. There were groups of kids doing choreography to the poetry they recited. The poetry all had the theme of the discovery of the "Mar del Sur," which is a source of pride for Darienitas, in which this place (Darien) plays a huge role in the history of not only Panama, but all of the Americas. Maybe I'll tell you about it when I get a better grasp of history?

2) I went to the Embera comarca. The Embera are an indigenous group in Panama that have two comarcas (reservations) located within the Darien province. Peace Corps has several volunteers placed in communities in the comarcas, and I visited one this past weekend in order to give an English teaching seminar to some teachers who requested it. First of all, the teachers I met were amazing people who were really excited about the seminar and really dedicated to helping their kids (I mean, hey, they REQUESTED for Peace Corps to come give them a seminar during their Sunday, when they could have slept in or traveled or relaxed at home). The seminar went amazingly, and I plan on trying to set up some more in my region in the future.

Secondly, though, the community I visited was AWESOME. The people were super welcoming, I got to ride in a piragua (a tiny boat; the community is located on a river, so I had to take a boat to get there), and it was the most rural place I've ever been. The only places in the community with electricity were the cantinas (bars) that run off of a generator. We bathed in the river, where people also wash their clothes. (I won't go into all the uses for the river water; there's a reason there's an Environmental Health volunteer there), but I loved my visit and I hope to make more trips to the comarca. I bought a few of the woven pieces that the women make, and I bought some earring hooks for them from my town, because I think their artwork would make super cute earrings, and I told them that if they make earrings, I would buy them (and so would other people). I'm fully expecting to come into possession of some cute earrings soon.

I now have a paruma (a skirt that the Embera women wear) and it's purple and cute and it's probably made in Japan, but I plan on collecting more during my two years as a Darienita. I also plan on picking up some of the Embera language. Peace Corps and I are going to have beef soon, because they gave me no Embera book from which to begin learning, but I did get to pick up two or three words/phrases this weekend, and hopefully within a year or so I'll be able to at least have really simple conversations.

Welp, that's it for now. Ebony's coming this weekend! Also I'll be giving more charlas (talks) this week at a youth center AND moving into my house AND doing my 3-month write-up for my boss. Busy week!

Life is Happening/I Feel too Busy to Be Writing This Blog Post Right Now

I actually feel like I’m getting kind of busy now, like now is the time where I actually feel that I’m doing work. (Woo-hoo!) Several things are going on in these few weeks. I’ll touch on a few of them:

1)      School Entry Needs Assessment (SENA)- After the first 3 months in site, Teaching English Volunteers in my group receive a visit from our APCD (the head of the TE project, aka our boss). Each volunteer must organize a meeting with all the English teachers with whom s/he works. The APCD comes to the meeting, talks with the school principal, and then goes around seeing the school and meets anybody else in the community with whom the volunteer is currently working. Essentially, the point of the visit is to check the progress of the volunteer in his/her adjustment to the community/school and how work is progressing during the early stages of service.

Not that I was TOO concerned about this meeting, but I was a little anxious about it because 1) It can be notoriously difficult to get Panamanians to come to a meeting at a set time (I’m not picking on Panamanians, they’ll tell you this stuff themselves), and 2) In a way, I was kind of breaking new ground by having this meeting.

The TE project in Panama is a new one, and this is the first group of volunteers that have had to do the SENA presentation. For this reason, my group was a little unclear about what exactly was expected of us in this presentation. On top of that, in terms of getting around to all the sites geographically, the APCD had planned his tour from East to West. Why is that relevant? Well, pull up that map of Panama you had saved and find Darien. I’m the only one out here . . .it’s all the way to the East by the Colombian border. . . .meaning I get to be the guinea pig and blaze the trail as far as SENA presentations go.

No big, though, everything went well! My teachers showed up on time. (I LOVE them for that, a million times over.) The meeting went well (my APCD DOES love to talk, though, although that was to be expected), and my co-teachers said nice things about me. (Yay!) It kind of gave me new energy for my primary assignment (my school work). We visited some classrooms, visited two other schools in the area, went out to the port (my APCD knows very little of my province! He wanted to see Puerto Quimba), and we had lunch at the fanciest restaurant in Meteti, which may be the fanciest one in the Darien. (When the ambassador comes to Darien, he eats there.)

2)      Adult ESL classes-I started adult ESL classes for the community this week. I’m super excited about it, because it’s the only time I get to have my OWN class and do what I want to do with it, as opposed to facilitating with others (not that I don’t love my co-teachers, I just actually want to teach myself, sometimes). I put an announcement out on the radio about the classes, and a few people showed up and seemed really interested in the class, and I’ve already planned my first few lessons on basic grammar and sentence construction. I’m pumped! I even met one Embera (indigenous) lady from the comarca (reservation) who travels internationally for her job with the government at the culture center, who wants to learn English to communicate when she travels. There are some cool people in Meteti/Darien. The students seemed interested and engaged, they asked plenty of questions, which is great, because it means they’re not afraid of me or uncomfortable with the gringa who wants to teach them to speak Gringo. Check.

3)      Upcoming seminars/charlas-I’m giving a charla this weekend that could potentially become a huge secondary project for me, and as a project, it would go a long way toward helping my primary project’s cause. The other TE Darienita and I (TE PCV in Darien) are bringing a seminar to Darien that teaches basic English grammar to teachers in really rural areas that teach in multi-grade schools. Those schools are too small to have an English teacher, but the government says the students have to be taught English, so this seminar gives the teachers some tools to be able to do that—teach English. I’ll explain more about this after the seminar.

The other type of ‘charla’ (talk/seminar if you will) I will be giving soon is a set of charlas called Elige tu Vida (choose your life). This is a program that lasts a few hours, and is directed toward high school-aged students. The charlas address sexual health and goal-setting for the future. The purpose of the charla is to get young’ns to open their eyes and realize that they have options in life. That’s a tough thing to get kids to realize! We make the charlas fun, though, with games to keep them interested and to make it less formal. I’ll be traveling to a couple of youth centers in Darien to give these seminars. More on that, later!

4)      Ebony is coming next week!

5)      I’m moving into my house next week! I’m looking forward to getting settled in, and at the same time I’ll miss hearing my host brother singing along to bad pop music in the next room or having my host sister coming to my room to give me a book I left in the living room, just to have an excuse to knock on my door.

6)      My mango allergy has been confirmed. I ate two more mangos last week because my host mom gave me a mango after I told her ‘no, thanks,’ I didn’t want one. (You know how Panamanians/Southerners are, they gotta feed you.) I wasn’t sure if it was the mango that caused the reaction last time. It was. I know this now, after my second trial run with mango. MAN I suffered from eating that thing, but my face is back to normal, now.

7)      General goodness. Aside from the mango suffering and the fever I had a little while back, Darien has been giving me good vibes. I haven’t left the province in a couple months, so I’m thinking it’s going to be interesting traveling to the city to meet my sister. (They have movie theatres and hot water there, WHOA.) Life has been going well, though, this week especially has been a really good week!

Observations:

-When you sweat all day every day, you forget how many things your sweat gets into on a regular basis. Today I noticed that my BOOKBAG STRAPS are starting to smell funky. I gotta wash that.

-I’ve been spoiled in my PC life so far. I used a latrine for the first time in my life the other day, bathed outside for the first time ever, and I have yet to wash my clothes by hand.

-Tattling is a favorite pastime of Panamanian schoolchildren. I don’t think the phrase ‘snitches get stitches’ can be translated into Panamanian Spanish.

I'm not going to edit :(

As I was reading back over some of my old blog posts, I noticed something. They make me cringe. My writing can get pretty bad sometimes. Ambiguous pronouns, non-parallel sentence structure, and paragraphs that are just straight up difficult to understand.

I'm not going to edit.

I decided I have better things to do.

Much love to my blog readers!