Catching up on the last 3 months...

Hello everyone!  So about updating my blog every two weeks….hahah whoops!  These last few months have honestly been back-to-back craziness; I’ve been on the go since January!  And next week I’m leaving for the US to celebrate my sister graduating from UVM!  It’s because of this I’m finally catching up on my blog.  So, starting from where I left off….

On January 20^th, I celebrated my first birthday here in Panama!  As is tradition, my friends came to my house at 12am to sing happy birthday to me.  I had forgotten about this custom, so when they knocked on my door and woke me up I was scared out of my mind!  It was so sweet of them, and it really felt nice to know that I have such great friends here! 

That morning I had to leave for PML, another Peace Corps training event where we had to bring a member from our community who we are working with on a project.  Since my birthday was the first day of PML, my friends all sang happy birthday to me and made me a nice card.  I was so lucky to get to celebrate with all of my friends!  PML was a week-long seminar where we worked with our counterpart organizing our plan of action while learning about time management, organizational skills, and how to be a leader.  I brought my best friend from site, Caesar.  We are working on a recycling competition that the US Embassy is supporting.  We are trying to create a sustainable recycling program, first in our school and then hopefully expanding out to the community. 
At the end of PML, we had a talent show where participants were encouraged to share parts of their culture.  Our group did a dance that was a mix between American hip-hop and then a traditional dance from Colon.  It was a great night.

Here I am explaining the flag that our group made:

A PC training wouldn't be complete without an interpretation of Beyonce’s classic “Flawless” 

And of course, we wobbled:

Right after PML, I left with my two friends Michael and David to translate at a medical clinic in Yaviza, which is a town at the very end of the Interamericana!  The Interamericana is a road that starts in Alaska and travels down through Canada, the US, and Central America ending in Yaviza.  Our bus popped a tire on the way there, but that didn’t stop us for long!

Here we are at the end of the Interamericana with some indigenous Embera masks that we bought, they're beautiful!

The group of doctors and volunteers came from the US were part of a Christian mission group.  The brought their own supplies/medicine and paid for their own passage.  These people are truly incredible; all week they offered free medical care and cataract surgery to the underprivileged people of Panama.  Panamanians came from all around to take advantage of the clinic, and the doctors and nurses worked tirelessly to attend to as many people as possible.  Some of the people who got the cataract surgery had never seen their grand children before, and after the surgery they were able to properly meet for the first time!  It was a heartwarming experience to work closely with such motivated people.  It was a really fulfilling experience that I hope to be a part of next year when they return. 

Here are the doctors performing two cataract surgeries.  I had to leave the room because I was going to get sick watching it but they did great work!

One of the doctors wanted to see if my eye measurements were a match for another patient whose cataracts were so severe they couldn't use normal methods.  Here I am trying hard not to lose my cool while she put a laser pen on my eyeball...

A police officer dressed up as a clown to cheer up the kids in the clinic.  He really just went around making the doctors uncomfortable by trying to kiss them!

The lovely group of volunteers I got to work with in the pharmacy, such wonderful people!

We were only able to stay for one day because we had GAD camp a little further up the road.  I was chosen to be a facilitator at the GAD camp in the Darien, which was an incredible opportunity because I had never been east of Panama City before.  All week, we worked with a group of about 50 boys and girls, giving interactive seminars on themes like goal setting, identifying values, planning for the future, and sexual education.  It was a fantastic experience and it was great to see how the kids developed over the course of a week! 

When we arrived at camp, we searched the kids dormitories and found syringes and machetes on the beds!  We later were told that it's used as an animal husbandry school, but it was alarming to find all the same!

Here are all of the teams together making funny faces!

During the week, we gave each of the kids an egg that they had to take care of like it was their child.  We collected all of the eggs we found that were being neglected and made a nice breakfast!

My friend Dani and were the leaders of the green team, and we decided to have some fun with the kids.  We started the rumor that in the past years, campers saw a human like creature creeping around the facility.  Then, we put on our green man suits and snuck around the camp, letting kids see us briefly.  Then we just came out and started messing with them, it was hysterical!  

We did lots of team building activities as a large group.  Here we are with a yarn quilt that we made by throwing a ball of yarn from person to person and sharing info to the group.

We did a lot of one-on-one activities with the kids and held discussions during the content heavy sections of camp

Here are all of the facilitators together, each with a typical Pana-pose

Like I said, it wouldn't be a PC event without the wobble: 

On the last day, we had a talent show and a big dance where the kids were able to finally come out of their shells.  It was a lot of fun!

After GAD camp, I continued my trip with Michael and David to Torti, our friend Dani’s site.  He took us to a nearby Embera community, an indigenous tribe of Panama.  It was such a fantastic experience!  As is their custom, we got our bodies painted with something called Jagua, which is extracted from the seeds of a Jagua tree and makes a paint that stains the skin in a dark blue color for about 2 weeks.  Typically, women get their faces painted, but I didn’t want that so she just painted my chest and shoulders.  It looked pretty cool! 

We also went swimming in a river.  For some reason, only the guys were getting bit by little fish and they left Julia and I alone!

A group shot of us all after we got painted!

After over a week in the Darien with my three Musketeers, I finally had to head home because my friends were coming to visit me soon!  I was at home for less than a week before I went to Panama City to meet them at the airport.  It was 7 of us in total, my friends Catie, Lorena, Anna, Jene, Devon, and Guillietta came to visit me!  It was great to have them all here with me, and it was such a clash of worlds I couldn’t believe they were actually here in Panama with me!  They were here from February 5-14, and we had a whirlwind adventure! 

First, we spent the night in Panama City and hung out.  Then the next morning at 5 am someone met us at our hostel to take us to the Kuna Yala, an indigenous reserve about two hours outside of Panama City.  It is composed of a chain of about 150 islands, and it’s drop dead gorgeous!  When we got to the boat landing, we met our guide Aaron who took us on an hour long boat ride to the island where we were staying, Isla Diablo.

 I don’t think I’ve ever seen bluer waters or whiter sand! 

At the island, we had a nice hut all to ourselves and the freedom to do whatever we wanted! 

The food was fantastic, every day we ate fresh caught seafood.  We spent most of the days lounging on the beach, swimming, snorkeling, and playing volleyball with the locals who were really good!  I also had a great conversation with the proprietor of the island and learned a lot about the culture of the Kuna Yala.  They are a very interesting people and very proud of their culture. 

The Kuna women set up some of the crafts they made.  The square paintings in the picture are called Molas, and it's usually very intricate stitching in the geometric form of animals.  They're works of art!

Here we are playing volleyball with the locals, and Anna trying to get out of the way of the pros!

The island is so beautiful, we had to stop to take many photo ops!

During our second day, we asked to go to see a Kuna village, and Aaron brought us to his.  It was interesting to see how they live on their island, and it was very beautiful.  They also brought us to this natural swimming pool in the middle of the ocean, which was a place that was very shallow and had all white sand.  We found a lot of starfish, which was cool to see up close and personal.

We stayed there for 2 days and 2 nights.  While we were sad to go, we were excited for the next leg of our journey.  The driver dropped us off in Panama City where we picked up the 12 seater-van we had rented, Vanna White.  It was ridiculous and I will be forever grateful to Jene for expertly navigating Panamanian traffic with that mini-bus! 

From Panama City we headed to El Valle de Anton in Cocle, where we spent two days exploring and having fun.  The first day we decided to hike “La India Durmienda.”  What we thought was a relaxing hike to a waterfall turned into a hike to Mordor!  I was hiking in sandals and my bathing suit!  The trail wasn’t labeled, and we wandered off the train and ended up at the house of a nice women and her two daughters.  They kindly walked us back to the trail and we continued on our way.  There were parts when we literally had to sit down to descend on our butts it was so steep!  But it was all worth it, because the view from the top was truly incredible!  Along the way we were also able to see ancient hieroglyphs which were really cool!  My friends and I had a great time!

Here is a picture of the hieroglyphs, carved thousands of years ago!

A view from the top of the mountain, overlooking the town of El Valle

It was so steep in some parts, we literally had to go down on our butts!

The trail we hiked and the town below

The next day we went to the butterfly haven, where we learned about the different species of native butterflies.  We were able to feed them and some even landed on us!  They were really beautiful!

They really liked Lorena

Next we went to the zoo.  What started out as an animal reserve sponsored by a vet for abandoned animals quickly grew and is now a very impressive zoo.  They had some incredible specimens there, including the endangered golden frog of Panama!  

My favorites were the monkeys, I could have watched them play for hours! 

 The zoo also had an incredible garden!

Next we went to a natural spring and had a mud bath!  It was really fun to get our faces painted and hang out in the pool.  

 Maybe we're born with it....

Finally, we ended the day with a hike to a beautiful waterfall.  Cocle is so different from the Azuero because it is green and mountainous, it was a nice change!

That night we left for my site.  We spent the next few days shopping and exploring Chitre and Parita.  It was really great to show my friends around my site and introduce them to my friends here.  We decided to spend the last day in Panama City to make sure my friends got to the airport on time the next morning, and it was a good thing we did because the Cinta Costera was closed for Carnival making travel through the city much harder.    

That same night Chris came in to visit for Carnival.  It was great to have him here with me and for him to see how life is like.  We headed back to my site with Jene and met my friends who were already at the house for Carnival.  In total I had about 15 people staying at my place, it was crazy but a lot of fun!  We went out the first day in my site, which was really fun and personal.   We visited the culecos where they just spray people with a big hose and dance.  The next day we went to Las Tablas which was truly a “ponchera.”  It was utter craziness and I ended up getting split up from Jene and Chris at one point.  When I went back out into the throng to look for them, some other gringos saw us and yelled to us.  At first I didn’t pay them much attention, but then I looked closer at one of the guys and realized that we had actually studied abroad together in Granada Spain three years prior!  It was nuts, what a small world!  The parades in Las Tablas were the best, but there were a lot of drunk people there that just weren’t nice, so we left to go to a beach house that some other PCV’s had rented.  The last day, we went with a smaller group to Chitre for Carnival, and that was my favorite day by far!  We were dancing in the culecos and just having a great time.  It was a long crazy week of partying, good music, and great friends, and afterwards I was exhausted! 

While my friends were visiting, I learned that I had won the race for GAD President!  GAD, which stands for Gender and Development, is a committee of volunteers throughout Panama who work together to promote the equality of men and women, spread awareness of HIV/AIDS, and work with youth.  So I am now officially the President of this amazing group, I can’t believe my luck!  After Carnival, I went directly to Panama City to have our first meeting.  It was great to sit in on the last board meeting of the 2014 group and see how things ran.  Our funding has now been cut, so we have our work cut out for us this year.  But we have an incredibly motivated group on our board this year, and I’m excited to see what we can do! 

School officially started at the beginning of March, but the secondary school had to start two weeks late due to an infestation of bats in the ceiling.  They had to replace all of the ceiling tiles that were covered in hazardous bat droppings.  Two weeks after school started, I had a trainee from the incoming TE group come visit me.  Her name is Kara and we spent the week in my school working with the kindergarten group, interviewing the recycling center, getting our Excellence in Teaching English seminar started, and we went to a baseball game!  It was a great week! 

Herrera won!!!

There was a horse/cultural show going on in site as well

My friends brought us up to the tower of the church to watch it, we got the best seats in the house!

I actually left with Kara that Sunday because my group had MST the following week in Panama City.  It was a week filled with doctors and dentist appointments as well as two days of training for our group.  Derek and I also got the opportunity to sell GAD polos and give a presentation to the incoming group.   It was a packed week, but at the end we all went out in Panama City and blew off some steam. 

I was only back in my site for a week after MST before I had to leave again, this time to train the new group.  I was a trainer at their tech week, when they shadow teachers in a school in Penonome.  I coordinated between my 8 trainees and their teachers as well as lead discussion groups and debrief sessions afterwards.  We stayed at Chris’ house in La Pintada and it was a really fun week.  One night we even went out and sang karaoke with the locals.  It was a rewarding week, but at the end I was exhausted and more than ready to return to my site, this time for about a month uninterrupted!

It has been great to be able to stay and start work within my site finally!  

So far I’ve been laying serious ground work for a lot of my projects.  I have coordinated the school funding the remaining resources I need for the library project, and we’re still waiting on donations from a few organizations that have sent the books and should be arriving in mid June.  We have had a hard time starting our English club because Meduca has said that they are implementing something called the After School Program, which essentially would be a state run and funded English club…so we have been waiting to see how/if that impacts our work.  I have started a successful seminar series with my friends Grace and Sam at the university in Chitre.  It is called Excellence In Teaching English (EITE) and it is a 10-week course for English majors designed to give participants training in English teaching techniques as well as professional development for those who aren’t sure if they want to become English teachers after they graduate.  It has gone really well so far, and we weekly have around 10 participants who are incredible!  Hopefully this is something that we can promote throughout Panama! 

Some of my upcoming projects are a week of Elige tu Vida, a technology seminar, starting my Frisbee club, and beginning community English classes.  Elige tu Vida is a Peace Corps created seminar given to students in the secundaria where we discuss themes such as self-esteem, sexual health, planning for the future, and identifying personal goals and values.  I plan to give this seminar to 430 of my students over the course of a week!  Let’s see how that goes!  I also coordinated for another PCV to come give a seminar to my teachers on how to use the SmartBoard in the language lab.  We have this incredible access to technology here, but no one knows how to use it!  Well that’s about to change!

Los Pariteños celebrated Semana Santa or Easter in a big way.  Instead of celebrating only Easter Sunday, they have stuff going on every day of the week.  They decorated the altar in the church, it looked incredible!

We went on a 2 hr procession around town in the reenactment of the crucifixion of Jesus

My friend played Jesus, I got to help him glue on his beard!

I have made a new addition to the family, and surprise; it’s another dog!  I was walking home one night when I found a little puppy sniffing through the garbage looking for food.  She was just skin and bones and smelled horrible.  After asking around and realizing that she belonged to no one, I took her home with me and got her cleaned up and fed.  She is such a sweet heart, and I’m happy to say that I have fattened her up nicely and after many baths she no longer smells like trash!  I am currently looking for a permanent home for her.  This Sunday, I’ll take her to the clinic to get spayed and vaccinated, so she will be good to go!  I’ll be sad to see her go, but I know it’s for the best. 

I am very excited to leave next week for the US!  It will be great to see my friends and family, and I’m very grateful to be able to celebrate my sister graduating from UVM!  I am so proud of her, she has accomplished so much during her four years there.  Not only did she hold down basically a full time job, but she also excelled in her classes and taught as a TA!  I’m so proud of her!  It will be fantastic to watch her graduate, I can’t wait!  More updates to come after I return and start my projects!  Hasta pronto!