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

starting to feel like home

Animals
There are way more animals in my life here in Panamá than I had in the US. Everyone(!!) here has chickens and our yard is full of them. Mainly the laying chickens have to stay in their cage during the day, but the roosters and other chickens just walk around the yard a lot. Sometimes they hang out in the cage, but from what I can tell they are never actually locked in, they just have free reign to do as they want. Sometimes they come up to the house and come inside, stealing the cat`s food (which is cannabilism often because the cat eats a lot of chicken!) Roosters are usually the first sound I hear in the morning and the last sound I hear at night, they crow all day long. Of course there are also the kitties...so adorable. They are now running around outside of our room, occasianally sleeping in the box where they spent the first few weeks of their lives, but mostly we find them in boots and shoes or, against the rules, inside the house.
The family also has two dogs, but like many families here that doesn´t mean the same thing as it does in the states. Whereas we back home might keep the dog inside our house and feed it regularly, dogs here are the way many outdoor cats are in the US, they roam the streets during the day and maybe sleep outside the house at night. The family puts out food that is for all of the animals and whatever animal comes by when the food is placed out gets to eat it. It`s not dry cat or dog food but the leftover scraps from dinner.  There are a lot of stray dogs and cats around- not many animals are spayed or nutered here- and that is hard for me to see, but there is not a large amount of expendable income to be used on animals.
Bugs and lizards are another part of our everyday life. Lizards run around the walls, or hang out in the shower pretty much every day. Cockroaches, beatles, mosquitos, spiders, flies, moths and unidentifiable flying creatures are the norm- I´d probably be concerned if I didn´t see them. I find myself not even bothering to shoo them away while I eat-  when we first got here we would actually try to get some of the bugs out of our room before bed, but that is really a waste of time. I am not weirded out by bugs, even the really big ones, but I could do without the bites. Every meal I have, everytime I watch TV with the host family and every time I sleep I get bites. Itchy, itchy bites.  I am very excited to say that we got our mosquito net yesterday!!!! It was a great night`s sleep! We do have to shake out our shoes, clothes and sheets before using them every day, just in case there is a particularly unsavory creature waiting for us...
There are also some animals that have made appearances, but that I coudn`t say are every day experiences.  I saw a group of monkeys in our yard swinging through the trees. They were white and black and had long tails. Pretty awesome.  Sean has seen a few snakes (both living and dead) and after the training on the snakes of Panamá we received Tuesday...I am glad it`s him and not me who has seen them.

Below are some pictures of the place we are calling home for the next few months

Our Room

View from our room

Volunteer Visits

We each spent 4 days staying with a active volunteer in the Los Santos region of Panama. We were not together for the visits and had two vastly different experiences.  Both were great and packed full of  lessons learned. The best part was taking a nice breather away from our training community and group (though we love them both, it is always nice to take a break).

Sean
This weekend I visited the small community of Cucula, which is located about 1.5 hours west of Guarare in the Azuero peninsula.  I had a blast haningin out with the current volunteer, and getting to know the community.  The volunteer told me when I got to the site that we were going to partake in a Junta de Embara (sp?). This entails building a house from mud and grass, and I knew that it was a really big deal when they butchered a cow. And yes, we watched the whole thing.

The next day the Junta began by watering down two large mounds of soil.  All the men mashed up the mud by marching through it in rows of 10 or so. Once the mud was soft, grass was added to the mix, which was then sectioned off into lumps using our feet.  The mud was then thrown onto the skeleton of a building to form mud walls.  After about five hours of stomping through the mud and packing it into walls, a new house was formed, and in the process I got to know some of the local people, who were all super friendly.    Later that day we played some softball, and just hung out with the locals.  It was a great first experience in a volunteer community, and I really enjoyed getting a first hand encounter with the culture.  Pictures to come soon.

Sarah
All of us in the TEA group travelled in pairs to our site. I went with another female trainee in the same language level as me (intermediate) to visit a 2nd year TEA volunteer who is just weeks away from the end of her service. Her site is in Pedasi, but she lives in a smaller town called Limon, about a 45 minute walk from her site. Pedais is a larger town with a sizeable permanent gringo population and many gringo visitors during high tourism seasons (Jan, Feb, Mar, July, August)...it was definitely different from Sean´s 80 to 100 person community only a few hours away!
My volunteer primairly works in her local high school (of about 900 students), but our visit was over the weekend so we didn´t get a first hand look at her work. We did get to help her with her World Map Project, hers is a 7 x 14 foot map on the outside of one of the school buildings. Most is completed but we helped paint. I stuck with Antartica because there was less of a chance for making mistakes!

As much as Sean´s visit was about hard work, mine was abuot relaxing and enjoying the beauty of Panama. We headed out to Isla Iguana, the hot tourism spot near Pedasi, for a day of snorkeling, walking along a small island and enjoying the sun. Isla Iguana is BEAUTIFUL, white sand beaches  and beautiful turqouis water you can see through. We were literally the only people to the island all day since it is not during the hout tourism months and we had absolutely perfect weather.  My guidebook claimed the island had a lot of trash on it, but nothing could be further from the truth. Honestly, the write up in the book almost talked me out of going and I would have been devestated to have missed something so awesome.

Our volunteer also taught us how to make brownies from pure cacao, I am excited to make a batch for our host family. It was also a treat to control my own food intake for the four days and we had a blast making delicious, unfried, food all weekend long. Being a touristy spot also had perks of smoothie stands and lots of fresh fruit.

Isla Iguana

With the other trainee Christy

Fruit!

Doesn´t Antartica look awesome?

Per usual I am running out of time in the Internet cafe with lots to say. I will try to update again soon. We love you all!

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!

HOLA

Hey Hey!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we are here and safe in Panama! We landed Wednesday afternoon and are staying at an old army base until Sunday when we will move in with our host families. There are 54(!!!) people in the training group, but when we move on Sunday they will split us up into smaller groups based on sector (3 sectors of between 17 and 21 people each). Sean and I are the only married couple in the group and thoguh we are in different sectors we will be living with one another. This means one of us will have to commute to training every day, but it is worth it.  The training group is great- I can truly say I have enjoyed every conversation I have had since Tuesday. Everyone is very energetic and laid back- excited about the next two years and keeping themselves free of any expectations.

We are definitely living the high life right now and are being spoiled with great food, running water and air conditioning. This is going to make for a much tougher adjustment come Sunday (we were told to buy our own toilet paper for the latrines we will be using), but we are enjoying the amenities while we have them.  I am especially loving the mangos and rice/beans that have already become a staple in our diet.

So far we have been getting a lot of basic information, meetings with out project directors and language assesesments. The 'real' training doesn't take off until Monday morning- then we will be in classes and in learning/study mode for a few months. A few current PCV's have come down from their sites to help answer questions and give us an idea of what their experiences are like. No experiences are the same, but it is helpful to have some insight into things we might need to prepare for (scorpions, mold and ant nests, for example) and really exciting to hear  about the awesome projects people have (cofffee, chocolate, sea turtles...) we just cannot wait to get our placement!

Have to go now, not sure how often I will be able to update, but know that we are safe and very VERY happy :)