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!