East Siders are more hard core than you!

Hello everybody!

Happy belated birthday to America. This post is late because the East Siders and I were too busy being awesome over the weekend and I was away from the internet.

By 'being awesome' I mean 'getting covered in mud'. Allow me to explain.

So July 4 rolls around here on the East Side of Panama, so what do we PCVs decide to do to celebrate? If you said 'kill something' you go ahead and give yourself a cookie: you've earned it.

This time the victim was a turkey. Also, this time it wasn't killed at my house. Instead, we killed it just West of the Darien border near Danny's site (another PCV, the one from the Motown radio show). We ate it. What fun! Whatever. On to the better part of the story.

After spending the night of July 3rd hanging out at the cabin near Danny's site, eight of us decided we wanted to do a little exploring into the Rio Congo area of Darien and strike out for the beach!

Now, this is no ordinary trip to the beach. We're East Siders, remember? This is no tourist destination we're headed for. We did not simply take a bus and get out at the beach. Instead, we got up before 5am and hopped into the back of a cattle truck that took us down a progressively less-well paved road. The ride was pretty bumpy, but progressing along relatively smoothly until the truck ended up getting stuck in a really muddy hole for two hours. At first the fact that the truck finally did get stuck was kind of funny--the driver was gunning it trying to make it across the hole and slinging mud ALL over the stuff in the back of the cattle truck in the process. (All us passengers had climbed out of the back by this point, in order to avoid being thrown around like popcorn during all of this.) After about a half-hour, though, we started getting worried when the truck could not move forward OR backward out of the ditch AND the exhaust pipe was submerged in the mud, so we could not turn the truck off for fear of mud running into the exhaust pipe.

We tried everything. We tried pushing the truck (didn't work too well--all the skinny little Peace Corps Volunteers didn't think to bring any linebacker friends). We diverted the mud from the hole down a path on the side of the road by digging with our hands and making what we dubbed "the Panama Canal." We got the neighbors to lend their horses to try and pull out the truck. We threw dried mud around the tires to give them some traction to climb out of the hole. We picked at the mud under the belly of the truck when we discovered the truck's tires weren't even actually touching the ground. . .

Well, the end of the story is that we did end up getting the truck out of the mud. Looking back, it was HILARIOUS. We all got covered in mud, head to toe. At one point, one of the other PCVs even wrestled me in it--why? I dont' know. We were half crazy and already dirty, so why not? The Panamanians got a kick out of it.

The cool thing about this story is that it once again shows the awesomeness of Panamanians. When the people on the nearby farms found out that we were stuck in the mud, they hung around for about an hour and a half until we made it out of the mud. They even bought beers for everybody (because in Panama, you CANNOT do a job like this without tossing back a few brews).

Side note: I don't know how those beers were cold. SOMEBODY has a generator.

But you think that's awesome? Check this out. After we made it out, one of the guys who lives close by invited everybody to his house for fried fish and rice for lunch. What?!? Yes, please. Also, naturally, the entire time cold Balboas kept popping out of nowhere.

Set back by about a total of three hours, we continued on our journey and made it to the port to catch our boat to the beach. (I subsequently entertained everyone by screaming and nearly throwing myself around the boat every time we went over a big wave. Boats are scary!) Once at the beach, we met a school teacher in the town who cooked all of our meals and fed us on her porch for an extremely cheap price, arranged to have plenty of water for us to wash clothes and bathe, gave us free use of the empty rooms located across the street from our house (free place to sleep!), and kept our bellies full of free coconut water from the pipa trees that were around.

I'm trying to tell you guys, Panamanians set the bar really high. When I get back to the States, all of you guys are going to look like jerks by comparison.

All in all, it was a pretty great weekend. I got to relax and read on the beach and jam a little bit with my Peace Corps buddies (yes, I brought my flute on this adventure, because you can't take the band dork out of the girl). I'm not trying to pretend that my life is like this all the time, but I will say that Peace Corps has been good to me so far. What other time in my life have been on cool adventures like this one?

When was the last time I talked about work, guys? Maybe next post I'll talk about that. It's Year 2 and I'm less than ten months from finishing my service, I got work to do!

Much love to the old US of A! Special shout-out to Shelby! Good luck with your travels around the East Coast and during your move to Japan, soon!

--Aja


More books I've read recently:

Anthem - Ayn Rand
The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There - David Brooks

And been listening to Sam Smith, so we can tack that on the list of people I'm listening to! :)

Everybody else is doing it.

I'm going to hop on the bandwagon. A lot of Peace Corps bloggers do this post, so far be it from me to break the mold. Here we go. . .

Books I’ve read (that I remember) since I’ve been in Panama (in no particular order):

Dreams of My Father—Barack Obama

The Mismeasure of Man—Stephen Jay Gould

The Fountainhead—Ayn Rand

Game of Thrones—George R.R. Martin

Clash of Kings—George R.R. Martin

Hunger Games—Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire—Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay—Suzanne Collins

Angeles del Olvido--?? (I forgot)

David and Goliath—Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point—Malcolm Gladwell

Outliers—Malcolm Gladwell

Lean In—Sheryl Samberg

Life of Pi—Yann Martel

Crime and Punishment—Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Orange is the New Black—Piper Kerman

My Horizontal Life—Chelsea Handler

The Fault in Our Stars—John Green

Lies That Chelsea Handler Told Me—Chelsea Handler & Friends

The Poisonwood Bible—Barbara Kingsolver

The Alchemist—Paulo Coelho

Ishmael—Daniel Quinn

Infidel—Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Defining Decade—Meg Jay
The Glass Castle—Jeannette Walls
The Time Traveler’s Wife—Audrey Niffenegger
The Great Train Robbery—Michael Crichton

Uhh. . .that’s all I can remember for now. If you want to know more about any of these books or about my opinions on them, hit me up!

Artists I’ve listened to a lot of during Peace Corps (in no particular order):

Bruno Mars

Mariah Carey

Whitney Houston

Ariana Grande

One Direction

Taylor Swift

Rihanna

Beyonce

Maxwell

Justin Timberlake

J. Cole

Miguel

Chris Brown

John Mayer

Kesha

Amy Winehouse

Allen Stone

Eric Hutchinson

Christina Aguilera

Adele

Prince Royce (willingly or unwillingly)

Joss Stone

Paramore

Pharrell

Bad Rabbits

Jesse McCartney

Michael Jackson

Carrie Underwood

Maxwell

Jay-Z

Usher

Eric Benét

Alicia Keys

Destiny’s Child

. . .that’s all I can think of right now. If you want my opinions on any of these artists, just ask me, cuz my personal opinions are pretty well-formed about the body of work of almost all these artists.

Ok, kiddos. Amor y paz!

#presidentkennedy

Hello Readers!

I feel like I haven’t given a good update in awhile. That’s because life’s been picking up here a bit, recently. I’ve been—dare I say it?—busy with. . .work. If you’re in the States that sounds like a negative thing, but if you’re a Peace Corps Volunteer FROM the States and you have a Type A bone somewhere in your body, then that sounds like good news to you. (Read: I’m happy to be busy!)

After a year, I feel that my role in the school is a little better defined, and I feel like I know enough about my school/town/province in order to be able to effectively plan activities and know what is and is not going to work in term of getting projects done.

I’ve also picked up another leadership role as the president for this year’s GAD (Gender and Development) Board for Peace Corps Panama. I’m super excited about this, because it means that part of my JOB is organizing a group of people who are passionate about issues like women’s health and youth development, and who are excited about doing projects related to those themes and realizing those projects ALL OVER PANAMA! Woo-whoo (Ask not what your GAD Board can do for you. . . .#presidentkennedy)

Right now the board is gearing up for our Retreat in Boquete in August, where we’ll be revising all of the manuals that we use to give seminars and facilitate camps. We’re also planning to support a Gay Pride parade later this month in Panama City AND we’re starting to put together choreography for a FlashMob dance for World AIDS Day in December. I’m not a dancer, but we all know I love to dance, so I’ll be participating this year!

GAD is part of the reason that I’ve been busier recently, and I feel good about it. I’ve enjoyed my Peace Corps service so far, and it has definitely taught me a lot about myself, one of the lessons being: I need structure.

Let’s be honest: I’ve never considered myself an overly-creative person, just a creative problem-solver. Also, I’m not one of those people who likes to fly by the seat of their pants, have twenty different things going on at once, or who likes to wake up not knowing what’s going to happen today. I like to make plans. I like to keep and agenda and make to-do lists. Peace Corps, though, has forced me to let go of some of those things and be a little less Type-A and a little more go-with-the-flow. You can’t plan THAT far in advance. . .Panama doesn’t want you to. And Panama will fight back.

Now that I have a little bit of structure in my life in the form of GAD Board, I’m ready to bring the old Aja back out of the closet! Who’s got a calendar handy? No need, I’m on it! Emails, emails, emails! –It might sound crazy, but I’m excited to WORK!

In other news, I’m still waiting on my Dad to get his passport and come to Panama ::cough, cough:: AND I’ve  decided that I aspire to be a diplomat in the Economic sector of the Foreign Service (rather than the Management track to which I had previously aspired). This will mean nothing to most of you, but it’s exciting for me! I’ll be affecting international economic policy in your friendly neighborhood Embassy one of these days. ;) For now, though, the graduate school essays are in the works, and we will be hoping to be spending the summer in Charlotte gearing up for graduate school next year this time!

Love and hugs and kisses to my family and friends in the States!

Aja

Radio Shows

Here are some links to download and listen to the radio shows I've done in Darien!

These shows are obviously in Spanish, so. . .if you don't speak Spanish this might be a little boring.

AIDS on Your Radio (HIV/AIDS Awareness): Dec. 11, 2013
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18OtlFGxYuMbEQtR2s2RHl1M1E/edit?usp=sharing

African American Music in the US (Motown R&B): May 29, 2014
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18OtlFGxYuMZ0F4UlR0QnNoN0E/edit?usp=sharing

Copy and paste the URL to your browser to get to the .mp3 files of the show from Google Docs. Shout outs to the PCVs, PCRV, Peace Corps Office Staff, and Voz sin Fronteras radio station for helping to make these programs happen!

There will be more in the future! Look out for some more public health/music related radio shows!

Aja

All of the Things (a.k.a.: The busiest two weeks ever)

Things that have happened in the past couple of weeks:

-My teachers went on strike

-Shelby came from the States to visit me!

-Going away parties for my friends that got kicked out of the Comarca

-My one year visit with the Peace Corps Office

-My fellow East Siders and I ran a Frisbee Tournament for about 80 kids

Things that are happening today/tomorrow:

-A goat being killed at my house (this makes the third in the span of a year)

-A radio show about Motown R&B

-Regional Meeting in La Palma

It’s been a crazy busy two weeks, and I’m looking forward to some hammock time in the future once things settle back down!

There have been so many things happening in the past couple of weeks, I barely know how to process it all and report back to you blog-readers.

Mostly I just want to give a shout-out to SHELBY LAKE for making the trip all the way to Darien province to visit me and wish him the best of luck when he moves to Japan, soon!

Now the gauntlet has been thrown, so my Dad better make his way out here to visit. (Has his passport come in the mail yet?!)

Having visitors is so exciting. They give you an excuse to do touristy things. (For example, I saw the Miraflores Locks at the Canal for the first time last week—even though I’ve been in this country for a year and the Peace Corps Office is within walking distance.) Having visitors is also a little mind-blowing because the challenge is to see how much of your life you can fit into their visit. It’s taken me over a year to get to know Darien (and Panama as a whole) as much as I do at this point, and I want my visitors to get as much of that understanding as they can while they’re here. But alas, the laws of the universe force me to operate within the constraints of time, space, language barrier, my work schedule, etc.

Having a few family and friends from home read my blog on occasion is great. It’s awesome! I get to share cool things about a country that I’ve come to consider my second home (or third? How many homes does one person have?). At the same time, there’s something about having your family and friends see things here in Darien in real time that makes them understand a little more about what my life is actually like. It makes them care a little more about learning the geography and the culture of Eastern Panama. (Because otherwise, phrases like ‘My Darien bus took the Corredor AND skipped Santa Fe today!’  or ‘Chenchito’s has BROCCOLI!’ mean nothing to you.)

So for this, hats off to Ebony and Shelby for having cared enough to save their pennies and sit for hours in planes, cars and buses in order to learn a little bit about my life here in Peace Corps!

To all of you in the States, don’t think I have forgotten about you! I know it’s a lot easier to skip the country and sleep on someone else’s floor under a mosquito net when you’re young and have no responsibilities to kids or ‘grown-up’ jobs. You guys definitely do a lot to hold me down by reading my blog and talking to me on the Skypes! I love you all!

Finally, I want to give one last side eye to my father, Mr. Anthony Ray Kennedy, to HURRY UP ON THAT PLANE TICKET! My neighbor keeps asking me when my dad is coming to visit, and we’re getting antsy over here. When is that passport coming?! Panama is excited to welcome the biological organism that provided 50% of my genetic material and is therefore responsible for my existence as the world knows me today.

Alright, that’s the end of my rambling. I don’t have time to be typing this right now; I only have 11 months left in Panama! My clock is ticking!

See you guys later.