Just over a week...

Can`t believe we have been here only over one week! Our days are so jam packed that it feels as though we have been here at least a month. We are now in our training communities, spending 8+ hours a day with our sector groups, so it definitely feels like we have known at least these fellow volunteers for a long while. We are living in Rio Congo where my group has our training and language sessions. This means Sean has to commute by chiva to the next town over, Nueveo Emperado, where his sessions are held.

Our family is great- and patient! There are a mom and dad (48 and 47 respectively) and a brother (14) and sister (13). They have a dog, a cat with four 3-week old kittens and lots and lots of chickens/roosters. We haven´t actually seen them kill any yet, but I am pretty sure we have been eating at least one of the chickens for lunch and dinner this week.  The food is delicious, though definitely new. Lots of rice, lentils and chicken. I have been stoked to eat lots of chicken soup, but it confuses my body to be eating hot soup in 90+ degree weather. I get hot dogs and some sort of starchy vegetabe that I cannot figure out the name of for lunch. I like dinner better...and breakfasts consist of two slices of bread with either a slice of cheese or ham...yes, dinner is definitely my favorite meal.  We have water some days, but not others. On days we don´t have water we take bucket baths and have to fill the back of the toilet up with water in order to flush it. This isn´t so bad, though maybe we are a little jealous of the group in Nuevo Emperador that always can rely on water.  Our family really enjoys us and we spend a lot of time talking every night. They laugh at our Spanish skills a lot, but every day they comment on how well we are learning. I can say with a lot of confidence that we have truly improved a great deal in the few days we have been there (we arrived Sunday afternoon) definitely due to a combination of 4 hour spanish classes every day, speaking with our host families every night and morning and wathing lots of noticias. The only downsides I can think of are the heat (I cannot put into words how much I sweat) and at night we are locked out of the house and have to use a bucket in our bedroom as a toilet.


Last Saturday I went to Pueblo Nuevo (if you look it up on the internet you will see a humungous city on the coast of Panama...this is NOT where I went). The community of about 200 people and has a beautiful cave on its land. The people in the community do not recognize this resource, but a PCV has been placed there since December helping them find their place in the tourist market. Right now torus come from Panama City, charging $136 a person, and the community gets $2 per person visiting the cave! It is outrageous. The PCV has helped the community build a latrine and changing room area for an incentive for them to make more money on each visitor. Pueblo Nuevo has 2 schools for 36 students. Grades 1-3 are in one school and grades 4-6 are in the other. Each is one room with one teacher. During our visit we painted each school (purple and pink, the teachers´favorite colors) and took a tour of the cave. It was beautiful! I didn´t take the camera because we were wading through chest deep water, but there were hundreds of bats, vines hanging from the top and lots of beautiful textures all throughout the hike. Sometimes it was pitch black and we literally couldn´t see directly in front of us...

Sean visited a volunteer at Rio Chagres, a National Park in Panama. Since we are different sectors (he is in Community Environmental Conservation and I am in Tourism and English Advising) we take different field trips and site visits.  They did not do a project on his visit, but listened to many lectures on the work being done in the park, specifically waste management.  This week we are both going to a volunteer site from Thursday until Monday. We will both be in Los Santos providence but he is going to Guarare and I am going to Pedasi. Check it out!

We are in a rush now so I can´t say the other bazillion things in my head...but here are some pictures!

Dug out canoes we took to Pueblo Nuevo- mine started to sink!

School we painted

Painting

Comida tradicional

Local waterfall Sean visited

Sean´s Group

My group

LOVE YOU ALL thanks for the comments, wish I could thank you individually...xxoo!