2 months later....

Hello again!  It’s been two months since I’ve last updated my blog, but that’s because I have been very busy!  In September, I had my IST training for two weeks.  It was the first time that everyone from my group had gotten together since we left for our sites, and it was great to hang out again.  For the first week, we were in Farrallon, Cocle where we had 8 hour days of intensive seminar trainings.  I learned a lot of useful things that I’m planning on bringing back and utilizing in my site.  During the night, we would walk to a beach that was about a half hour away and hang out there.  This first half of training was really fun because both TE and CEC volunteers were at the same training so our whole G 74 group was together. 

            For the second half of IST, we split up into our own sectors and had specific seminar training and applicable practice.  We were paired into small groups and had to facilitate 6 hours of an after school English club at the local elementary school and also give a professional teachers seminar in English to a group of professors.  For our English club, my friends and I focused on how to learn English through media, movies, songs, and pop culture.  It was really fun to work with kids for the first time outside of the classroom!   

The kids were awesome, and we were surprised to find out that they were also incredible break dancers!

           For our teacher seminar, we gave a lecture on how to create a student-centered classroom, which is a classroom that is not “traditional” rote learning style.  It went really well and it was a great learning experience for us!  Here's a picture of me and some matching PCV's pumping ourselves up before our presentation.  We were trying to look intimidating, but my friend Lexi in the middle didn't get the memo...

Here I am facilitating my first teacher seminar!  It was nerve wracking but exciting!  I learned a lot and the teachers were great!

After two weeks of intense training and practice, we all needed to go out and take a celebratory shot!  My friend Sam is the selfie master!

            IST was a great experience, but I was excited to return back to my site.  That same week we started facilitating at the local university a PCV developed program called Leadership Development for Global Education (LDGE).  It is a 10 week course for University English students that teaches participants how to become leaders and gives them the tools to make a positive change that they have selected in either their community or school.  It's interesting, but the pilot program is proving difficult to get off the ground at this smaller University.  I like it though because it’s a great way for us to talk with Panamanians our own age and get to have an open dialogue about some of the real problems they have here. 

          That Saturday, September 26^th, we celebrated my friend Cesar’s 26^th birthday at my house.  I made a cake and decorated the house, and 10 of our friends came!  It was a lot of fun!  We sang, my friends tried to teach me how to dance tipico, and we played cards.  I think Cesar had a great night!  I am really lucky to have friends my own age in town, especially ones that are so funny!

     The birthday boy and my friend Routillio

My friends playing the drums and singing for Cesar

            I’ve recently started helping some local girls learn how to play the flute.  Before IST a group of moms found out that I play and they approached me to ask if I could teach their daughters.  Panamanians have a lot of pride in their school bands, and the students practice every day for two hours!  So in September I started working with them for one hour once a week before their practice and it’s been going great!  This past weekend I got to see them perform in their independence parade, it was really cool!

            The first week of October my town was lucky enough to have an organization called Spay Panama come and host a sterilization clinic for the dogs and cats in Parita.  It was incredible, we had about 10 vets performing operations from 8 am to 5 pm and they were able to sterilize 300 + animals!  I was busy all day looking after the 3 dogs I had brought and then volunteering, mostly by transporting the animals between the stations.  I was also able to trap and bring over four stray cats to the clinic that had been bothering my host mom for a while!  All in all it was a very successful day, and now I don’t have to worry about taking care of any more puppies!

            The second week of October was a crazy one for me!  I jam packed three trainings into one week!  From Sunday to Wednesday I was at my friend David’s site on Isla Cañas helping him facilitate an Eco-Tourism seminar he had organized for his community members.  It was a two-day seminar, but because his island is hard to reach so I ended up having to get there a day earlier and leave a day later.  The first night we were there, we got to visit with the Ambassador to the US!  He and his wife were also on the island for the night to see the turtles lay their eggs, and they asked to meet the PCV's on the island.  It was great to talk to him again, he and his wife are such interesting people.  We even got to go out to the beach one night and see a turtle lay eggs for ourselves!  It was an incredible experience to see such a massive turtle lay her eggs and appreciate all of the work that goes into it.  On the second day of the seminar, I facilitated the English portion of the seminar, where I taught key phrases and vocab words to the participants to help them with customer service.  After the seminar was over, we got to take a tour of the mangroves of the island on a motor boat.  It was so cool because we were able to get out and climb all through them!  It was a very successful trip and I learned a lot that I can hopefully bring back to my community. 

I went out onto the beach for the sunrise hoping to see some hatchlings, but it was too early in the season.  

            The next day I left the island to go to the mountains for a fellow PCV’s library day event.  I am starting to build a reading corner in my primary school’s library, and I went to learn more about it and to network.  It was really cool what she had pulled together!  We were reading and doing arts and crafts with all of the kids in the library for a while, then a Panamanian non profit came to talk about the importance of libraries and told them an interactive story.  We ended the day with a talk about HIV/AIDS (given by a local youth!) and watched WALL-E.  I was glad I got to participate in this event, I now have a lot of new ideas and contacts for my project!

A Biblioteca Nacional representative kept the kids captivated with his story!

They also led a workshop painting rocks with traditional indigenous design patterns

Kids make the best funny faces, and love the opportunity to be silly in school!

A group picture of all the facilitators.   We're a colorful bunch!

            From Friday to Sunday I was at an Ultimate Frisbee coaches training seminar.  It was two days of training but mostly playing Ultimate!  We had a blast!  I really want to start an Ultimate club in my site because it’s a sport that boys and girls can play together and it’s great exercise.  The site where the training was held is very different from my site, so for one of the days we got to play in the pouring rain!  It was so much fun!  That night our great hosts made us a huge barbecue and we spent the night eating and playing games.  It was a crazy week, but I was lucky enough to hang out with some amazing people and learn a lot. 

           

            At the end of October, two English teachers and I finally got the English club off of the ground!  After lots of planning and red tape, we had our first meeting.  We decided for the pilot program to invite selected students for the last few weeks of the school year and then open it up to all students at the beginning of next year.  We have about 12 kids and meet each Thursday for two hours.  The kids are great, and it’s fun to do activities with them outside of the classroom.

            For Halloween, I had some friends come stay at my house and we went to part in a nearby town at another PCV’s house.  It was so much fun!  I found a full dinosaur costume at a goodwill for $3 and it was probably the best investment I have made here.  It was so much fun to hang out with everyone and celebrate an American holiday.

            During the month of November, there are a lot more parties than usual because they have Independence celebrations throughout the whole month!  On November 3, we had a huge parade here in Parita where school bands from all over came to march.  The parade started at 12pm and didn’t stop until 10pm that night!  It was a lot of fun to see all of the different bands and acts that passed by while hanging out with my friends.  Panamanians take their school bands very seriously, so there were a lot of different and elaborate costumes with bands from almost every province represented.  It was also really cool to see some of the girls who I give flute lessons to marching!

Here's a picture of one of my students dressed in the traditional pollera, she is having so much fun!

My friends Cesar and Guille embarrassing a baton twirler marching in the parade

The best bands were the independent adult bands that marched after all of the school bands.  They're incredible!

            Besides all of the crazy parties, parades, and trainings, life here in Parita has been going great!  I have been working a lot more with my teachers and am now really getting to know a lot more of the people around town.  The dogs are also doing great.  I have changed my puppy “Scout’s” name to “Neci” (pronounced ‘Nessy’) because I wanted her to have a Panamanian name.  I call her Neci after the Panamanian word “necia” which is a funny way to say “naughty.”  I decided to name her that because I was already calling her my “little necia” and when I made the conscious decision to keep her, I wanted to give her a permanent name instead of the original name that I gave to all of the puppies who now have different ones with their forever families.  She is getting so big!  I’m still training her, but I don’t think I will ever get her to not chase after the broom when I’m sweeping!  She is a good girl with lots of energy which keeps me active! 

Because standing up to eat like a big girl is just too hard....

            I am looking forward to the Thanksgiving party that Peace Corps puts on every year for the volunteers.  All 200+ of us go to a big hotel and spend two days eating and hanging out!  They hire someone to make a big Thanksgiving meal and everything!  I’m so excited!  Then just a few short weeks after that, my parents and sister are coming down to visit me for Christmas!  I have so much to look forward to, so naturally more updates to come!

A Vacation at Home

NOTE: I meant to post this before September but didn't download the pics in time!  Some info here is outdated but i'll update it in the next post!
Hello again!  I know it has been a long time since I’ve last updated my blog, I’ve just been so busy.  In one week I moved into my new house with the puppies and a friend, attended a conference for the weekend, went to school every day, packed to go home, and left for the US!  I was really lucky that my friend Shaylee stayed at the house to take care of the puppies while I was back in the US, so I was able to have a relaxing vacation at home without worrying about the puppies. 

The week before I left, we had a weeklong celebration in Parita.  August 4^th was the day of our patron saint, Santo Domingo, and the town partied hard!  There were lots of parades, masses, and bull fights.  The bull fights aren’t the same as they are in Spain where they kill the bull.  Here, they block off the plaza and people run away from the angry bulls that they let in one by one into the plaza.  Some people even try riding the bulls.  It’s really just an excuse to drink and spend time with friends.  But one of my teachers showed me a video from the previous year when a bull jumped the 5-foot barrier wall and ran through a crowd of people, so I guess there’s always an element of danger at these festivals.

Here's a picture of the bull fights in the Plaza.  Apparently its fun to almost get trampled by a huge animal and its always a big turn out. 

   
The plaza at sunset is always beautiful!  And the party lasts all night!

     Another component of the bull fights is cattle roping.  It's a big honor to be one of the chosen caballeros who competes.

     This is my friend Cesar outside of the cattle cars that they used to bring them in on.  One of the many!

My vacation to the US was really spectacular; it was wonderful to see all of my friends and family again!  I got to surprise my family too which was great!  I told them that my flight was coming in later that day and had my boyfriend Chris come pick me up when it actually arrived, then we showed up at the house to surprise them!  I walked through the garage door and found my dad sweeping, he looked up quickly and said “hi” then continued sweeping for a few more seconds until he realized who I was.  He thought I was my sister!  It was really funny! 

            I probably won’t surprise them again though, my mom and sister were so shocked that they started to cry!  Next time I’ll just stick to the original plan.  It also almost blew up in my face because I gave my mom fake travel information which said that I was going to be staying overnight in Dulles and she tried to get me a hotel room for the night!  I had to convince her that I would sleep in the airport and that I would be fine but it was a close call! 

     I was really excited to see my dog, Lily, and for the first 10 seconds so was she but then she got over it and went looking for her ball hahah.

            That Sunday we had a party at camp so I could see all of my friends.  It was great to have all of my favorite people in one place!  It was such a beautiful day, we had a BBQ and went out on the boat!

   
     I was lucky enough to make it back in time to see my friends from Bulgaria and Macedonia who work in Burlington during the summers!  They're some of the best people I know!

            The rest of the week flew by!  I went to a baseball game, saw a movie at the drive ins, went out to dinner, stayed at camp, witnessed some beautiful moon rises, and got to spend some quality time with my family and friends.  I even got an extra day at home too!  My flight was scheduled to leave on Sunday the 17^th , but when we went to the airport we found that the flight had been canceled due to maintenance problems.  So I spent that day with my friends and had a great family dinner.  While it was great to be home, I missed Parita and was happy to come back to my life here. 

     Here's a picture of my family and I out on our rock at camp.  We were really lucky to have such great weather!

 
 My boyfriend Chris and I hanging out on the porch at camp.  It was nice and cold while I was there so I actually got to wear a hoodie for the first time in 7 months, it was awesome!

            When my flight was canceled on the 17^th, I was really disappointed because I thought I would miss the most important celebration in Parita.  The towns day of foundation is August 18^thand I didn’t arrive back in site until very late that night.  I thought I had missed all of the cultural parades and festivities, but my friend told me that they were celebrating on the 28^th instead!  So I was able to go to the celebrations and participate in the festivities!  I got all dressed up to look like a Pariteño!  My friend Cesar has a cousin who lent me some clothes to wear and did my makeup in the traditional Panamanian way, meaning that my eye makeup was so dark it looked like I got punched in the face!  I was wearing the traditional shirt (una basquina), a necklace (for some reason its called “una bruja” which translates into “a witch”), my Panamanian sandals (cutaras), and a beaded hair clip (tembleque).  I also put on the traditional skirt (pollera) for a few pictures, but I was dying of heat so I took it off after 10 minutes.  Here's a picture of me as a traditional Panamanian:

            The rest of the day I spent time with my friends in the town.  There were many floats with marching bands, and at night there were floats for the queens of all 7 districts of Parita.  And of course, there were lots of fireworks throughout the day.  It was great to take part in this cultural activity!

     The whole town gets together on this day for the festival!  Here I am with some family friends I ran into:

     The people of Parita are very creative!  This mini stroller float made me laugh and they stopped so I could get a good picture of it!

     There were lots of floats with children dressed in the traditional Pana way:

     And more floats with queens than I could count:

    Here's my friend Cesar and I in the Plaza watching the parade dressed in traditional Panamanian clothes:

            The puppies have grown to be so big!  I have had the two girls puppies with me, and I think all of the locals get a kick out of watching me take them for walks around the town on leashes.  Its funny to them because no one really takes care of dogs here like we would think is normal in the United States.  They only give them food and maybe let them stay inside but that’s about it.  So watching me walk them on a leash throughout town is really funny for them.  On one of our walks last week a passed a little girl and she fell in love with Scout.  She asked her mom is she could have her and her mother agreed.  It turned out that my friend who I thought would take Madeline couldn’t make it work, and I had been looking for a home for one of the puppies.  I always said that I would take the one that no one wanted, and it looks like its just going to be me, Madeline, and Reina.  I’m really sad to say goodbye to her, but she will stay in town and get to live with a little girl so I’m confident she will have a good life.  I also found out that the mother is the older sister of one of my friends, so I have inside information that this is a good family that will be able to take care of her very well which is reassuring.  It will still be really sad to say goodbye though.  I would love to keep all of them, but I think sometimes its still crazy to keep two let alone three.

      Here they are helping me clean!  They love chasing after and biting the broom, most times I have to pick them up in order to get anything done!  Necias! (A pana word for 'naughty' I learned it in my primary school hahah)

     They like staying under the sink where its cool:

     And how can I say no to this face?  They're so cute I almost forget how necia they are!

            Next week I begin my In Service Training (IST) with the rest of my group!  It’s a two-week course where we will learn more detailed and specific information about our work, like how to write grants and other resources that are available to us.  It will be really great to see all of my friends again after so long, I can’t believe its been four months since we’ve all been together!  I’ll be able to update the blog when I get back to let you all know how it went!  Hasta luego!

The Puzzle Pieces are Finally Coming Together

     Hello again!  I am happy to say that I am writing this blog in a much better state of mind.  These past three weeks have been a whirlwind, but everything has fallen into place as it always seems to.  The three biggest stressors in my life for the past month have been my school/community analysis presentation, finding a house to rent, and getting good homes for all of the puppies.  I've had a lot of disheartening false hopes, but now it seems like I've got almost everything figured out and dealt with (knock on wood).
     The community and school analysis was the culminating presentation that I gave to all 10 English teachers, four principals, and my Peace Corps boss.  The presentation is supposed to include everything that I had learned during my 3 months observing and what my plans are for the future in Parita.  It also had to be in Spanish for at least 30 minutes!  Needless to say it was nerve wracking.  I almost had a heart attack beforehand because the cord to connect the computer to the projector wouldn't fit, and I had to try five different ways to get it working!  I ended up having to use one of the schools computers, download internet software for it, and download my Prezi from the internet onto the computer in order to have it functional on the projector.  It was a half hour process and I almost lost my cool, but I held it together!  It was very important that I got the projector to work because in Panama, the presentation of something is almost as important as the content of the information.  With this in mind, I chose to learn how to use the Prezi software instead of making a PowerPoint.  The majority of my teachers had never seen a Prezi before so they were very impressed with it.  I ended up talking for about 40 minutes, and afterwards we had a constructive discussion with everyone about additional ideas.  And of course a presentation wouldn't be complete without "brindi" aka refreshments, so I made a chocolate pudding pie and a banana pudding pie.  It seemed like I worked harder on those than my presentation, I had to go to 4 different stores to find what I needed, and I accidentally made butter instead of whipped cream!  It was an annoying thing to have to do but everyone seemed to like it.  All in all it was a very successful meeting, and I'm so glad that it's over!
     Earlier that week, I had been asking people in the school about places to rent.  It has been an uphill battle for the last 3 months.  It was an incredibly frustrating situation because there is an abundance of empty houses here, but no one wants to rent them.  This is because they are owned by wealthy people who live in Panama City who only use them for 3 weeks out of the year during carnavales, Semana Santa, and Corpus Cristi.  So I was looking for and finding all of these perfectly good houses, but I couldn't rent them. The only places I could find were also on the four lane main road that passes through the town on which I currently live.  It is so noisy and awful, I haven't been able to sleep through the night for the whole 3 months that I've been here because 18 wheelers go by at all hours of the night blowing their horns.  It was seriously stressful, and I was determined to find a place far away from that road!
     Last week I had a dose of good luck when I found a woman whose niece has a house to rent!  The house is perfect too!  It is fully furnished with a living room, dining room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and an indoor bathroom!  It is very, as we call it, "ye ye" meaning fancy.  The location is perfect, it's so far away from the main road, 3 minutes away from my school, and right next to a field.  The only problem is that the landlord might be moving back into it after December.  She works as a teacher in another province and is applying to be relocated to this area for the next school year.  I will know in November if this is happening, but hopefully it won't!  At the very least though it will be a great place to stay for a while and get my life started here in Parita.  After I my presentation on Friday I went with my boss to see the house and get it approved, and it all checks out!  I should be getting permission to live there on Wednesday!  I am so excited to have my independence back, it has been too long!
     The puppies are doing fantastic as well!  They're growing so big and have now started eating soft food!  I've had to start feeding them more and more every day.  Here's a picture of them at breakfast!

     They are also getting to be that age when they always seem to get into trouble.  The fences around the lot are made of a lot of different things, and because of this there are a lot of holes.  I've done my best to patch up the holes and keep the puppies contained, but they always seem to wiggle through those spaces and get stuck.  The other day I had to go out in the rain and get one that was stuck between the fences, and he was covered in mud!  Today I went outside to give them breakfast and found that two of them had gotten stuck in a small area between a tin structure that I put up to prevent them from going through the fence and had spent the whole night there!  They're naughty puppies but I love them.  And they're biting too!  They have razor sharp teeth, and although I've given them so many toys and things to chew on, they still seem to like my sandals the best.

    They also received their first bath last week.  Puppies have an innate way of getting very dirty, and even though I keep their space clean I always come away from playing with them with my arms and legs covered in dirt.  So I gave them all baths the other day, and they were not happy!  I think they were just afraid of the new experience.  They were clean for all of a day until they were dirty again, but that's ok!  Here's a picture of Scout taking a bath:

She was NOT a happy camper: 

     I'm very sad because most of my puppies are going to be leaving me on Thursday.  I have a meeting in another town from Friday to Sunday, so I'm trying to get all of the puppies to their homes by Thursday.  I'm pretty sure I have homes for all of the males, but the two females I'm still uncertain of.  I think I'll be keeping the brown female, Scout, and I'm waiting on one of my Peace Corps friends to see whether or not she can take the white female.  It's a very unfortunate part of the culture, because every person who I have talked to doesn't want a female dog, only male dogs.  This is even after I've told them that a fantastic group Spay Panama, which offers spay/neuter operations for only $25, is coming to Parita in October and they can get the female dogs fixed then.  They still don't want them.  This is a real shame because it is the female dogs that need to have families to pay for their operations in order to prevent more homeless dogs, but they're often the ones without families and the number of homeless puppies rises.  So I'm keeping the mother dog and the brown female dog and I will pay for them to get their operation in October.  I have also renamed the mother dog Reina.  Reina in Spanish means "queen," but more importantly I decided to name her this because culture is such an important part of life in Parita, and there is a "reina" of almost every cultural activity.  Also I just really like the sound of the name.  So it looks like me, Scout, and Reina will be moving into our new home at the beginning of August, and I can't wait to begin my life here with these two misfits!    

     It's hard to believe but in only 11 short days I'll be making my way home for a visit!  I'll be in Vermont from August 9-17 and I can't wait!  It will be really great to see all of my friends and family and to eat real food again (I've had enough rice and beans to last a lifetime!)  It will also be a really good reward for getting through these last 6 months, which I've heard from other volunteers is the hardest part of the experience and I believe that now!  From adjusting to a new culture, learning a language, making new friends, changing your diet, and having to live in another persons house, it has been a roller coaster over the last 6 months.  But now I know where I will be living, what I will be doing, who I will be working with, and more or less what to expect.  It will be much easier to come back to Panama knowing that I have my own house to go back to and that I am done with my community analysis presentation.  When I come back I can really start my work as a Peace Corps volunteer and the adjustment period is more or less over.  I'll bring my camera home and will have a blog update after my vacation!  See you all soon!

Puppy Updates and Unexpected Parades

     Hello friends!  These past few weeks have been very busy for me.  I have finally finished up with my observations at the school.  It was a very enlightening experience, and I feel like I have a better understanding about how everything works and who's who in the school.  Now I'm working to put together my presentation for the 25th of July.  I have to give a 30 minute presentation in Spanish of my analysis of the community and school as well as what projects I'm planning on doing.  My boss from Peace Corps will be there, along with my 10 English teachers, the principals of the school, and possibly the Mayor and Representative of the community.  It's pretty intimidating, and I am getting a bit nervous!  I'm just focusing now on preparing for it and also looking for a house!  I can move into it at the beginning of August!  One of my counterparts is currently helping me look, so I'm hopeful he will find something.
     Last weekend I volunteered with a traveling spay/neuter organization called Spay Panama.  My friend in town, Luis, is a member of the group and invited me to go.  It was incredible!  10 veterinarians worked pro bono at this clinic from 7am-1pm constantly spaying/neutering dogs and cats.  I volunteered in the "taxi" station, where I would move the anesthetized animals from one station to the next.  I was so impressed at their efficiency, they must have operated on 300 animals that day!  The clinic was set up in a basketball court of a school, and the community attendance was great!  It was really reassuring to see how many people cared about their pets and understood the importance of sterilizing.  I would have loved to take the mom of the puppies, but I didn't think I could take her away from the puppies for so long at that point.  But this same group is coming to Parita in October, I am so excited!  I'm going to work to promote this event and try to get my community members to take advantage of this incredible opportunity.  It only costs $25/dog and $12/cat, and that includes sterilization, parasite injections, ear cleaning, and food/shampoo supplies!  I will definitely be bringing the mother dog to this event in October, I'm just hoping she doesn't get pregnant again in that time!
     Speaking of which the puppies are doing great!  They have seen some big changes these last two weeks!  I have moved them from underneath the bush to the patio, which is covered with a roof and closed in on 2 sites.  It is a much more safe and secure place for them, and they have so much more space to move around!  All of them have already opened their eyes and have started wobbling around!  They have started to form their own personalities too, which is really cool!  I told myself that I wouldn't, but I named them.  Let me officially introduce you to the puppies:

 This is Scout.  She is the brown female, and the most adventurous puppy by far!  Today, she managed to get up in one of the holes of a cinderblock and got stuck!  She is also one of the noisiest, but I think she is just exploring her voice now that she has found it.  She is such an attention hog, but also an amazing cuddler.

  Scout's male twin brother is called Zorrito.  Zorro, in Spanish, means fox, and so Zorrito means "little fox,"

which I think he looks exactly like.  He is such a chill little dude, always happy to be picked up and never making much noise.  He is also one of the biggest puppies of the litter. 

    The only black puppies name is Yin, because he is all black with a little white, the opposite of his brother Yang.   He is a talker!  I think he's like Scout and that he's just finding his voice and likes to use it!  He's a sweet boy though, and is always trying to lick the bug spray off of my legs which is NOT good!  He likes to push the limits sometimes but that's what makes him such a unique and funny dog.
  

  This sleepy guy's name is Yang, the compliment of his brother Yin.  He is all white with a black spot, and also one of the bigger puppies.  He is the lazy one of the group, just content to eat and sleep.  He is such an easy going dog!

    The second of the three white puppies is Bandit, for the mask-like markings around his eyes!  He is such a sweety!  Whenever I pick him up, he always has his mouth open like he's smiling. Some of his favorite things are eskimo kisses and belly rubs!  He is a really laid back puppy too, and hardly ever makes any noise.

   And the smallest one is Madeline :)  She is the other female of the group, and the smallest puppy of the litter.  She was also the last one to open her eyes and start walking around.  But her small size doesn't keep her from wrestling with her bigger brothers!  She is a feisty little puppy!  

   My Peace Corps friends Shaylee, Sam, and Grace came to visit this weekend to see my the puppies and my site.  It was a really fun day, and it was good for the puppies to be around other people.  The mom wasn't very happy, but I had my friends each give her a piece of a hot dog and afterwards she was cool with it.  My friend Grace might be taking one of the puppies, I would be so happy if she did!  I'm trying to promote them amongst my PC friends, and hopefully I can find them nice homes amongst them!  

Me with Zorrito and Bandit:

   Aside from the puppies, the other big news is that the Corpus Christi festivities are over for the year.  This last weekend, we finished with all of the Diablicos Limpios/Sucios and had other more interesting celebration... they had something called "La Danza de las Donas" where drunk men from the town got dressed up in drag and had a dancing contest on stage.  I was told that last year, one of the contestants was dancing so hard onstage that he fell off and had to go to the hospital.  He won this year, I think in part because people felt bad about what happened to him the year before.  It was such a fun night!

     It seems like Paritenos like to celebrate no matter the occasion.  Last week, I was sitting at the kitchen table working on my drawing, and all of a sudden started hearing band music at 10pm.  It sounded like it was going right by my house!  I went outside and was surprised to see a huge grouping of people around the road.  Apparently, they were having a parade to celebrate last years "Reina de Parita" aka the Queen of Carnival.  They had a big float with the marching band following.  It was definitely an unexpected surprise!