Somos Voluntarios

Well, it is official! After a beautiful ceremony at the Ambassador's home on Friday morning, we are officially volunteers. The affair was made that much more special because the Vice President of Panama made awesome speeches, and the First Lady was also a guest for the ceremony...the VP and First Lady are not usually at the swearing in ceremonies, so it was a pretty big deal.  It all felt very official when we recited our oath to uphold the constitution.  Many of us went out celebrating in the Casco Viejo part of Panama City...we were all at dinner in an otherwise empty restaurant when the ceremony was on the news! It was so exciting to see ourselves on TV, we all cheered and the staff turned the volume up for us. Mainly it was to show the VP speaking, but we all felt pretty special.

After Swear-In (US, Panama and PC flags)

TEA Post Swear-In

CEC Post Swear-In

The excitement of swearing-in came just days after getting back from our site visit. Not every trainee made the decision to continue after visiting their sites, but our trip to Boqueron made me more confident than ever that we are doing the right thing. Boqueron is beautiful- lush, green and mountainous.  Essentially there is a road going up the mountainside with houses on either side. The more you go up the mountain the less developed the communities are. We are working in both Boqueron Abajo and Boqueron Arriba- I stayed in Abajo during the week and Sean stayed in Arriba, but we hung out with one another all week.

Boqueron Arriba

Rio Boqueron

The one thing we experienced the most of that week was pasear-ing (there is some Spanglish for you)..Pasearing is essentially showing up invited at people's houses and chatting with them.  This is what the social life in the Panamanian campo revolves around. All day long people walk to one another's houses to chat, or, often, to sit in what Americans would consider to be an awkward silence.  It was hard to get used to at first- especially because EVERY time we went to someone's house they would offer us food. This meant multiple days with 3 lunches, tons of cups of coffee and more rice than I've ever wanted to eat. You cannot say 'no', of course, and the food (for the most part) is truly delicious, so it wasn't too hard to say yes, but I definitely noticed my shirts fitting a little tighter by the end of the week.

I think we got really good at Pasearing by the time we left, though. We met a lot of families in both communities, arranged our housing for the first two months, and got to know at least some members of every community in town. We also met the teachers and students in both schools (which involved eating a huge bowl of Crema at Boqueron Arriba) , the Padres de Familias (think PTA) in Abajo and wittnessed a very heated meeting about the aqueduct that provides water to the community. I didn't comprehend much, but it was still great to see the formailty and structure of a Boqueron meeting.  Everyone was truly SO NICE to us. We had great conversations (and they complimented our Spanish!) and without having to compete with TV we have found it is really easy to get to know folks.

When we get to site on Saturday we start our first month by living about a ten minute walk through thick forest. Fruit trees line the very muddy path  to a one-room structure that currently houses an older couple and the husband's mom. The couple is extremely active in the community and on their farm and I know they will have us working alongside them in no time. This is exactly the best way to get to know the community. The path to their latrine is a little treacherous, and they are a nice hike from the rest of town, but they have coffee growing right outside their house and mimons a stone's throw away... the good definitely outweighs the bad on this one.

Sean and his host dad after chopping down some Pifa

Sean and the son of his host family, who says he is coming to live with us when we get our own place

More Boqueron Arriba

That's all I can think of for now... once we get to site it may be awhile before we have internet access again, but I will be back and updating as soon as I can. Thanks for all of your support!

This and That

For Spanish classes this week we cooked traditional Panamanian food and had a mini fiesta with limbo and dancing and lots of eating. We did this in each of our groups so TEA and CEC had different parties. For CEC´s group, they made Sancocho, which is a traditional chicken based soup. Sean actually killed the chicken for the soup! He and one other CEC member each killed a chicken...Sean said he did it because he has always felt disconnected from his food and this helped bring him as close as possible to what he was eating. He killed it by wrinign its neck, the other group member sliced the throat of the chicken he killed. In the first picture you see Sean and his chicken, in the other he is hanging the next chicken up for the other group member.

Our food prep was a little tamer. We made Arroz con pollo, essentially chicken and rice with lots of delicious vegetable and flavorings. Four of us dressed in traditional wear. Kate (in the black dress) and I are wearing Enaguas, the traditional dresses of the Ngobe Bugle people.  Sara T. is wearing the taditional skirt, called a paloma, of the Embera people, who she will be living with for her two years. Finally Glenis is in the Pollera, the traditional dress of Panama. When wearing the Pollera, the way the hair is worn and the jewelery is as important as the dress itself. They are very big in Los Santos, but all over Panama are considered the traditonal formal dress, they are very expensive and wealthier families are more likely to have them. Most women have two in their lifetme - one before the age of 16 and one after.

The picture below is the group that will be in the same province as us (Colon) Some of them will also be in Chagres National Park, but living with the Embera. This picture was taken the day of site announcements, as they called us up by region announcing one at a time who would be in that particular province.

Feelin Like Christmas On the Isthmus

I hope you can feel our smiles up in The States. Things are so good here, and the next few weeks are looking to be even more exciting.
A lot has happened since I last posted (I apologize, but I rarely feel clear headed enough to sit down and write a thoughtful blog) PC keeps us incredibly busy during training. They also do a good job of breaking the training up so that we are never more than two weeks in our training site before a break- and those two weeks fly by because we are so pumped for our next adventure.

some of TEA enjoying our Saturday

The Rio of Rio Congo

For Tech Training Week Sean and I were split up as he did CEC based training in Veraguas and I did TEA training in Punta Pena (there should be a tilda over that second n but I can't find it on this keyboard). Sean has some awesome pictures and will do his own post, as I can't do justice to his experience, but rest assured that it was fun, productive and included an attempt a lassoing a calf.   Punta Pena is a good 9 hours by bus from Panama City near Bocas Del Torro and it is gorgeous! It is right in the mountains with beautiful green vegetation everywhere. The volunteers in site are a married couple, both in the TEA program, with the wife more focused on education and the husband more focused on tourism.

We stayed with families during our week there, I was with fellow aspirantes Liz and Sara and we stayed with a fisherman and his family. They were incredibly generous people, sharing their small two bedroom house with the three of us when they already had at least 5 people staying there everyday (sometimes more). We didn't realize how generous until they left the door open to their bedroom and we realized they had given us the only two beds they had.  The wife was an incredible cook and she cooked up so of the husbands fresh catch. DELICIOUS!

 Host mom in Punta P making patacones

Liz and I with dinner the 1st night. Tastes better than it looks!

 One morning I went to take a shower, and this is what I found...

Sisters and our mamma

We did a lot of work during Tech Week,  mainly teaching. We all taught at least six classes and observed two half days. The volunteers somehow managed to get 5 schools involved, a Latino school, an indigenous school, a school with both indigenous and Latino students, a private school, a high school and an elementary school. This ensured that everyone would have some variety in their teaching experiences. I taught 2nd, 3rd and 7th grade and observed the same grades. Good experiences...mainly teaching me what NOT to do. I am still super nervous about teaching, less so about informal eduation...

 We are on school property here...pretty nice view from class, eh?

Another great part of the Tech Week was seeing the informal class at the volunteers' house. They had a zoo of kids hanging out, reading books in spanish and english, coloring, doing puzzles and asking questions.  Some of the children that attend their informal classes (which usually aren't so busy but they could only do one that week since we were in town) do not go to regular school. Some of the have never read a book, even in Spanish. For these kids it is not possible to start teaching them English because they need to learn Spanish first. The informal atmosphere helps them reach many different levels at one time. I am seriously thinking about implementing this at our site, so I might be asking for beginner books in Spanish and English and magazines/puzzles, etc. Just a heads up.  I also know I will be teaching elementary school English, but more about that at the end of the post...

At the end of Tech Week we had a free overnight!!! Sean and I met up in Las Lajas (half way, more or less, between our training sites) and had an awesome time relaxing on the beach. These pictures are of our trip. It was just one night, but it was such a treat.

View from our Cabana

Las Lajas

We got back from our trip on Sunday and on Tuesday we got our site announcement! Most of you know by now that it in Parque Nacional Chagres, near Panama City. The name of the community is Boqueron. Sean will be working on pretty big deal landfill project (we are replacing a volunteer who spent much of his service writing grants to secure the fund for this project) and I am going to be working in an elementary school (55 children, 2 teachers, grades 1-6), helping a group that makes honey and working with an existing tourism group that has great dreams and just needs some structural help. It also looks like we might be able to work on some trail building! There is running water but no electricity, which is absolutely perfect.

 This map shows all of group 65 and where we are for our sites

As if all of that wasn't awesome enough, my birthday was Sunday! It was incredible. We started the day by hosting our community development project- a day of awareness about the environment for kids. It included a play (with us as the stars), a song (La Limpieza, done to the tune of La Bamba. A Chris U Original), crafty projects using plastic bottles, a seed planting class also using plastic bottles and a trash pick-up extravaganza. The kids loved it!

Advertising on a budget

Acting!

maracas!

Learning about seeds

Making maracas with plastic bottles, rice and paint

These girls sang me the Panamanian version of Happy Birthday!

The day ended it with a party at Liz's house. Friends came together and made delicious Mexican food for me and we had cake and ice cream. Sean put everything over the top by surprising me with a Pinata. Picture him with a Pinata on a Panamanian bus packed full of people..he had to take multiple forms of public transportation with this thing, along with all of the supplies for tacos that he made for me and our host family...it was the best birthday present! All of the kids at the party loved it, but I think I loved it more...

Birthday girl got to start things off

Yes, we let the kids play too

Sara T. fighting little children for the candy

 Finally got that pony I always wanted

enjoying Mexican food!

Cake!

best hostess ever

So here we are. One week from today we will be in Boqueron for the first time. We will test everything out for a week, come back for a few days and swear in officially as volunteers on the 25th. I can't believe that PST is so close to being over and our volunteer service is about to start. I cannot express how excited I am for July to get here!Next week will be great though, allowing us to meet our host family/ies, see the school, meet the teachers and get a real idea of where we will be living for the next 2 years!

*** could not find proper spanish accent marks on this keyboard. also, many pcitures stolen from Sara T...you can find more of her awesome pics at http://tease.smugmug.com/I-live-in-Panama-now