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 :)

on the road again

Since our last post we have been running around like crazy- in a good way. Yes we had to box up our entire apartment, get rid of a ton of our furniture and pack for two years without having a solid idea of exactly what type of environment we will be in, but most of our being busy was filled with people we love, and that is exactly what we need before we head to Panama.

To start with, our Denver friends threw a good-bye party for us.. Deana and Ron hosted the party at their place- they definitely throw the best parties of anyone we know- and they went all out. There were tons of great food (and drinks), but of course the best part was just having so many friends in one place.

Best party venue in Denver

We felt bad cutting into this piece of art

Kung Fu Girl for me and a 40 of Milwakee's Best for Sean

(his chosen drink for kickball games)

One week after the party, we headed to Breckenridge with Greg, Chris (Sean's brothers), and Jocie. For one night Pat, Jody and some other mutual friends made the trip. The days were mostly filled with snowboarding and copious amounts of food, though Jocie and I did have one awesome sp day filled with manicures,pedicures and much needed relaxation. It was amazing to have five full days with Chris, Greg and Jocie- we are happy to have every ounce of time we can before leaving and not having any idea when we will see them again. It was also nice to know that we would be seeing everyone in a few weeks and that we didn't have to say Goodbye (with a capital B).  They left on Wednesday morning after helping us get some of our heavier things to storage. (PS I am shamelessly stealing many of these pictures from Jocie who is better at getting people to take pictures than I am :) )

Greg and Sean our first night in Breck

Sean and Chris, night 2

Hanging out at the condo

A nice finish to our spa day :)

Brothers!

Just two days after everyone left we hit the road.  We left Denver on March 19th in a total snowstorm.  Our staging for the Peace Corps starts on April 20th, so we pretty much built in one month to see as much family as possible. The drive from Denver to my grandparent's (Nan and Grandaddy) house in Carlsbad, Ca was absolutely gorgeous- through Utah, fifteen minutes in Arizona, Nevada and a very lush and green southern California. Though full of wide open spaces and a little redundant, the scenery was inspiring   We spent some time in that area on our honeymoon and it is even more beautiful in the summertime.  In Carlsbad, we spent three days with Nan, Grandaddy and my mom. It was such a treat to get so much time with all three of them- so often we get together at weddings and big events without many opportunities for quality conversation. Without throngs of people around, we were treated with great stories and lively discussions.

                                   

                                  

                                                                    Pier in Oceanside

                                 

                                   

                                                        Us with Nan and Grandaddy

                                             

                                                                Aww...

From California we headed east. We stopped outside of Phoenix for a night with my Aunt Wendy, Uncle Jack and their two children Erin and Ian.  My Great Uncle Tony joined us for a delicious dinner and backyard Smores (yes, it is warm enough to eat outside in March in Arizona!) and caught up on one another's lives. Keith and I spent some very fun weeks at Aunt Wendy and Uncle Jack's when we were growing up and it was a blast to relive those memories. The next morning, we stopped by the Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert on our way out of Arizona.

                          

                                      

After that there were a thousand or so miles through NM, AZ, MO, IN, IL that blur together as quick images of fast food joints, motel rooms and the inside of our car- that finally got us here, to Cleveland. I will save Cleveland for another post, but know it feels good to be back :)

PANAMA!!!

On Thursday afternoon we received a Fed-Ex package from the Peace Corps with our official invitation! We had received emails Tuesday morning telling us that the invitation was in the mail but that we would have to await its arrival before finding out the big news. Waiting for that package made those two days incredibly difficult but once I opened the package and read the invitation the wait was all worth it.

We will be going to PANAMA, staging is in DC starting on April 20th. That is so soon. It could not have worked out more perfectly that we had already decided to leave our jobs on this past Friday, February 26th. Our lease is up near the end of March and we have a month to see our families before heading out.  I am excited that it is happening more quickly than we had originally thought (we had been nominated to leave in June), now that I know where we are going to be I am totally ready to be there!

Sean is working as a Community Environmental Conservation (CEC) Extension Agent and I will be a Tourism and English Consultant. It sounds like we will both be contributing to sustainability projects and community education. I could not possibly be more excited with my assignment, or the country. I know/knew absolutely nothing about Panama. When we got our invitation we had no internet access to look up information so we walked to the bookstore and bought a guidebook. We've learned a lot and it has us very excited- and maybe a little nervous about the bugs and snakes...

Here is a section of the PC welcome book about the environment in Panama:

Panamá’s landscape varies from province to province, and each province has its own beauty. The tropical environment supports a large variety of flora and fauna, including orchids, bromeliads, fabulous quetzals, over 100 varieties of hummingbird, conejos pintados (large nocturnal rodents), and armadillos. Forests cover 40 percent of the land. The dominant topographical feature is the central spine of highlands called the Cordillera Central that forms the continental divide. The highest elevation is the Baru volcano, located near the border with Costa Rica, which rises to almost 11,550 feet (3,500 meters). The coastal areas are largely plains with gently sloping hills. Panamá has nearly 500 rivers, most of them not navigable. The Chagres is one of the longest and most vital of the approximately 150 rivers that flow into the Caribbean. In the sparsely populated eastern half of Panamá lies the Darien eco-region, a dense tropical forest that is a cradle of biological diversity

Pretty much wherever we are will be filled with natraul beauty! And it is a brand new kind of wilderness for us, so different than the mountains of Colorado...the temperature ranges form 70-90 degrees pretty much year round! The images I've seen of Panama are exactly what I always imagined when I dreamed about the Peace Corps. 65% of Panamanians live in poverty, and though many think of cosmopolitan Panama City when they think of the country, most of the country is struggling to develop as communities wrestle with stifiling poverty. We know that the work we will be doing is needed and will truly be helping the members of the community we live in. We don't know yet what community that will be, but it will be rural and between 2-16 hours from Panama City.  We were told not to count on electricity or potable water...(all part of the experience!)

So for the next two weeks we are continuing to work on our spanish, filling out a ton of paperwork for the PC, packing up our apartment and getting ready for the big adventure!

Family

OK I know I have been really slacking in the blog front and I apologize, but I have been BUSY! For those of you who don’t know, Sean and I are joining the Peace Corps and are just months away from our assignment. I say ‘months’ in a broad, general sense, because I really have no idea when we will be leaving, but it feels safe to say it will be sometime in 2010.


Our lease is up on March 21st, so our last day of work is going to be this Friday. This gives us a month to get things in order and come up with a plan, hopefully with information on our PC departure to help make those plans concrete. We have had very solid, exciting plans leading up to now but it is becoming apparent that we shouldn’t assume anything is set in stone until we get out official Peace Corps invitation. And no matter what, that invitation will be our focus- any other plans are very easy to put on hold for a departure! We are expecting it any day now (hopefully) and we will update you then on what our next steps will be.

It is a shame that I haven’t been good about posting because we had a very exciting December and January. Now the events feel so long ago that I feel silly posting too much about them, but they were all too memorable to ignore. All of the following pictures are taken from other people’s Kodak Gallery albums because I was a bad photographer during this time!


A few days before Christmas we headed back to Pennsylvania to spend the holiday with the Strongs. As is always (always!!) the case in the Strong household, those days were absolutely filled with laughter. And delicious food (another given). Sean and Chris spent a good amount of time playing in the snow- still cannot believe that we moved all the way out to CO and PA has way more snow than we do right now! We were able to spend both Christmas Eve and Christmas day together, it was so refreshing to have a traditional family-centered Christmas after having spent last year’s at Beaver Creek learning to snowboard. Mostly, though, we enjoyed just being able to be together-the first time the whole family has been able to get together since we moved to Denver.

Sean, me, Chris, Greg and Jocie on our last day (note the Eagles spirit. They won!)

Christmas tree! We haven't had one in a few years and it definitely put us in the Christmas spirit

Some of Sean's oldest friends came by to catch up during our visit

Sean on the snowskate

Chris snowskating

For New Years we headed to St. Louis where we celebrated my Grandma’s 90th birthday! 90!!!! It was so fun to be able to celebrate her amazing life with most of our family. Because Grey was just two weeks old, the Crick and Kate Helfrich family stayed in DC. They were greatly missed! Besides ‘just’ celebrating the big birthday, we also had quite a bit of fun exploring St. Louis with all our nieces and nephews. Trips to the Magic House and the unforgettable City Museum were tons of fun and the City Museum in particular was geared for not just the young, but the young at heart.

The Whole Clan (minus a few) Grandma and her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren

Trying to get the great grandkids to sit for this shot was not easy

Grandma plus most of the Helfrich family

Some of the group at the City Museum

Kaitlyn and Mattie on the train

Sean and Beth give the hamster wheel a try

Carrie enjoying the Magic House (I'm seeing 'unlimited minutes' in her future)

Enjoying some quality time with Tommy

Beautiful Zoӫ with a gorgeous hat made by her mama

In the middle of January we went to Charlotte for my mom’s surprise 60th birthday celebration. This time the entire family was able to make it. The weekend celebration involved a surprise luncheon, a delicious dinner with a beautiful slideshow and an absolutely fabulous Cast Iron Filter reunion concert! There was also a lot of family time down at Glassy to make the whole weekend complete.

Sorry mom, but this is the best way to show how surprised you were!

Once the shock was over she was very very happy

Mom and Dad enjoying the slideshow (a surprise for both of them)

Enjoying the CIF reunion show

Some of the family even joined in on stage

Meeting baby Grey for the first time

Looking at all of these pictures makes me realize how pictures only take you so far. The pictures don’t show you how it felt like to celebrate Christmas as a whole family or what it sounded like when Grandad’s voice came on Grandma’s slideshow. You can see my mom’s reaction to the surprise but you can’t feel what it was like to be a part of that moment. You can see all of those adorable Helfrich babies/kids, but it doesn’t express what it was really like holding my newest nephew for the first time or suddenly realizing my first niece is almost seven!



I think about all of these things as we get ready to go to the Peace Corps. For 2 years I will be living through pictures- pictures that I will be so thankful to see! But there is a big part of me that knows pictures only show you so much, that behind every picture is a laugh, a tear or special moment that I will have to wait to have in person- or some that I will just miss entirely. We treasure pictures because of the real-life moments that they represent, and though I will be able to get the gist of the moment I know I will be missing the memory making behind them. It is all a trade off, of course, as I know that wherever we are and whatever we are doing we will be making memories of our own. They might not have family at the center, but they are possible because of the families we have been blessed with. We grew up knowing the importance of helping others and of living life to the fullest- both which require sacrifices. Thousands of miles away, as we are every day, we have and will have our families guiding us and giving us strength. And there are always the memories to make when we get back.

Avalanche Course and The Season of Giving

We finally got to put those avalanche transceivers to use! Last weeek we took a 24-hour Level 1 Avalanche  course through Bryant Mountain Nordic Ski Patrol and Colorado Mountain Club Boulder (Boulder Mountain School). The class had about 30 students and 20 instrcutors. We did 8 hours of classroom instruction and 16 hours of field instruction between St. Mary's Glacier and Berthoud Pass (both in the Front Range).

Sean at St. Mary's Glacier

Our field days were exhausting, but also a ton of fun. And we learned A LOT. More important than learing the search and rescue techniques was learning how to read snow and weather patterns for clues of potential avalanche danger. We know how to take the right steps to hopefully avoid the situation all together. This is particularly helpful since a) Colorado has the highest number of avalanche fatalities in the country, and b) avalanche fatalities are more likely to happen to 20-30 year olds...

Sean and an instructor working on the snow pit

tap test

Saturday and Sunday (the field days) consisted of practicing beacon use, emergency rescue scenarios and digging/analyzing a snow pit. I found the rescue scenarios to be the most helpful and the most fun. The instructors had buried wet suits filled with snow, some with beacons and some without, and we had to find them and dig them out in a timely manner.

We are now certified by the National Ski Patrol and will probably take the Level 2 course in the not-too-distant future.

30+mph winds and snow during Saturday's field day

On Monday night a group of my friends and I prepared dinner for a local homeles shelter called The Delores Project (http://www.thedeloresproject.org/). The Delores project serves homeless women in Denver. It opens every day at 4pm and closes again at 8am. Women are served snacks in the afternoon and morning and dinner. All dinner is donated and all servers are volunteers. A few of us had served dinner for about 50 women in November and we will go back to serve the food we prepared last night. It is always more fun to volunteer in big groups and both cooking together and serving others helps get everyone in the holiday spirit!

baked ziti for about 65 (menu also includes green bean casserloe, brownies, applesauce, clementines and a big salad)

the prep crew relaxing

Deana and I shopped and organized the group- and we're definitely doing it again.

all of us