Below are a list of some of our experiences/lessons in the last 12 days.  I want to stress that these details are to give you a sense of our daily life and some of them may sound negative, but we are not complaining. This is not me griping about our challenges, but instead telling you what those challenges are so that you have a true idea of what we are doing every day. Some things by there very nature are going to be more negative, but that is all part of the adventure! At the end of the day we are having an amazing time in Boquerón, it is a special place with special people.

1. Corn can be a food group. In Boquerón there are days when I am convinced it is the full food pyramid. Sean has gone out cosechar-ing corn with our host father and other family members/friends. They spend all day chopping and gathering corn, brining back ful baskets to the house. Then the host fathers mother and I peel the kernels from the corn. Sean and I did this together and, being true Americans, turned it into a competition to see who could peel the corn fastest. The family got a huge kick out of this and now just assumes that any chore we are doing involves competition in some way.  After the kernels are seperated from the ear of corn they are in a large bucket. Corn is thrown from the bucket to feed the chickens, or milled in the kitchen to be turned into some new food for the family. It is actually pretty cool to watch the grandma work- at 75 years old she is strong and sharp as ever. Sometimes she mills the corn and then mixes it with water and flour to make what they call a toritlla but to us is more like cornbread. Other times she mixes it with boiled water and sugar to make chichemy, a kind of oatmealish type thing. Sometimes she just turns it into juice, or adds it to soup or to milk. One time I ate corn in four different ways in less than 1 hour...I thought I hit a wall until that night when the host dad told Sean they would be heading back out to the monte to cosechar corn again in the morning...

the kitchen, where all the work is done. behind the grandmother is the fogón, where the cooking is done over an open fire.

2. Our family is awesome and they take great care of us. It is essentially a man, his mother, his brother and his significant other (marriage in the campo is not exactly like marriage in the states...)  They make sure to include us in everythign they do, and they are very active members of the community. They are involved in a lot of the local committees (and Boqerón loves committees) and are always to help out with the physical labor for projects going on around town.  I mentioned once liking Mangoes and the next day the dad brought me three mangoes that he cut down.  I asked Sean to get me mimones one day and they were up on a far out branch on a high tree that Sean could not get to...so he climbed the tree and got the mimones for us.  He notced that I was writing in my journal on my lap, and the next day actually made a table! He is very impressive with the machete and can use it for building furniture, cutting fruit, making a path and everything in between. He made most of his house and the things in it. Since there is no electricity we spend a lot of time after dinner chatting- it is amazing quality time that was hard to come by when we were in Rio Congo and we were fighting with the TV. They feed us, and even thought it might involve a lot of corn I can definitely guarantee that we are never, ever hungry.

3. So, of all the animals I was nervous about (snakes, scorpions, bats) I never stopped to think about the boring regular animals of the United States. Now, I am learning that all along I should have been thinking of RATS.  I mean, I have really never thought that much about rats, why would I? But now that they are in my room, scurrying up and down our walls, right above our bed, leaving (what else) corn as a morning surprise in our clothes, and keeping us awake all night long, it is hard to imagine a time where the thought of them didn´t strike fear in my heart. We are not talking about one or two rats running around at night (our hsot dad being as awesome as he is started setting rat traps when I mentioned that just maybe they came around at night. He catches one or two every night) but there is literally a swarm of these creatures. The hardest part is when I am trying to fall asleep but can hear their scurrying feet right above my bed and I can just imagine them falling onto the mosquito net. I mean, I knwo the mosquito net is there to protect me, but I really do not want to have this experience....and I am very thankful for a set of earplugs I got for my birthday- they make all the difference in the world

the metal box there is our room, the rats scurry along the top edge of the metal that is not attached to the ceiling

 4. As I have mentioned before Boquerón is actually Boquerón Abajo and Boqerón Arriba...it is two seperate communities and there is no community just called Boquerón. Each community has a school and I will be working in both schools. The walk from the house we are in right now to Boquerón Arriba school is about 3 miles, which the community members think is a really long way to walk, but they are the most gorgeous 3 miles I cannot even think of taking a bus. Every new turn on the road provides absolutely stunning scenery. I get to take the walk about every other day, more if I want to or my schedule calls me to be in Arriba, and it is such a treat. It also helps me keep off the weight the corn is trying to add.

The very beginning of my morning commute

5. Rio Boquerón is also beautiful, and surrounded by green mountainsides and innumerable plant species that make every trip to the river an escape into nature. The rainy season has just started, and when it gets really intense the river will gorw considerably. Right now we can wade through the river and cross it never having the water come up past our waists. It will all change sometime between September and November with the rainy season in full effect. We are lucky it is not too bad right now because the rio is where we do most of our bathing...when it rains though the water either moves too fast or gets dirty which makes it a bad place for a bath. The result? We are not the cleanest we have ever been. This also comes into play with washing our clothes- it takes a lot of time to wash them and by the time they are on the line a storm rolls in! I am convinced my doing laundry is the most effective rain dance out there. It can be a while for the clothes to get dry... I am really looking forward to when the Rio is big and burly and we get to travel down it in a canoe!

view on the walk down to Rio Boqueron

clothes on the line

6. Sean is becoming a real man of the campo. From cosecharing corn in the monte to using his machete to chop down platanos and forging a path for me in the woods, he is fitting in in no time with the hombres in Boqerón. If we want to drink  pipa he can get it down from the spiky Palm tree and have it cut open in no time. He helped dig a trench for an aquaduct and planted tomatoes in the school garden.  He is quickly earning the respect of the community members because, not only does he get out there and work side by side with them, but he is quickly learning to do it just as efficiently as they do, and they have been in the monte their whole lives.

7. I have been observing classes in both schools and attending all types of meetings (both related to the schools and not related at all to the schools). The students have a midterm vacation starting next week and I will begin my English classes the first week in August when they return. YIKES! The teachers are very helpful and very receptive, but most of my support comes from the parents who are extremely excited to have their children learning English. When the kids go from the basica schools in Boquerón to a secondary school (7th grade on up) they are often the only kids in the school that haven´t been exposed to English. If we can get a program going in Boqerón it will make a huge difference for how they perfrom in the classroom, and hopefully impact their decision to stay in school through 12th grade, which many students do not end up doing.

Oh I had a million other things to say, but we need to catch the last bus up and that means we need to get going.  We are working hard and enjoying the simplicity that comes with camp life. I think we miss some creature comforts more than we thought that we would, but it is probably one of those things that after a few more weeks we won't even notice anymore.  We miss our family and freinds a lot, and wish we could share more of this with you. Hope these little updates help give you a good glimpse of our lives!

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

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