Flooding in Panama

Please pray for the people in the Bocas del Toro, Chiriqui, and Comarca provinces of Panama. There is some serious flooding with rivers spilling over their banks and many people are losing their homes. Peace Corps Panama is also working on evacuating the volunteers in the heavily affected and high risk areas. Please keep us in your prayers. I´m blessed that my area is not affected.

Panamanian culture and I

So as November is the month of Patria (Panama celebrates its independence from Spain and Columbia) lets take a blog post to appreciate some cultural traditions of Panama. As I´ve already mentioned, Panama has a million holidays this month including many many desfiles (parades). Panamanians still think its odd that we don´t have desfiles this month except one. Macy´s Thanksgiving Day parade counts even though I never actually go but enjoy it from the TV screen while my mom and I are in the kitchen preparing for our Thanksgiving meal.

Anyway, the women dress in traditional Panamanian attire called Polleras (po-ye-ras). See pics below. They also wear decorative hair pieces called tembleques. These were taken at various parades that I´ve been to this month.

(above shot plus the 3 following shots) These were taken at my training site for a different kind of parade a little over a month ago.

Wait for it.... Wait for it....

(above) SURPRISE!! I got to dress up for a night of Patria we had at my host mom´s church the other night! I loved it and the whole church gave me an applause for choosing to dress in traditional Panamanian attire :)

And yes, a couple hours later I had the biggest headache with all that stuff on my head. I couldn´t wait to get it off. I don´t know how these girls walk and dance for hours in parades with all this stuff on!

(above) Here I am with my host sister and her daughter.

(above) I´m holding my friend´s niece. Baby pollera!

At every parade I went to I always told the people I was with that before these 2 years are up, I was going to dress up in a pollera. Didn´t know that it was going to be this soon! Next time I´m going for a more colorful one and less hair pieces ;)

Zzzz... Earthquake!!!!

On November 19th a little after 1am I felt my first earthquake of my life. Pretty cool that my first earthquake ever was in Panama. So this is why I can never live in California (sorry Liz, I can never be your roomy if you make it out there).

So for those of you who know me well, you know that I can basically fall asleep anywhere and at that, fall into a pretty deep sleep. I won´t advertise the different places that I have managed to fall asleep but believe it or not, fans, it wasn´t the earthquake that woke me up. What woke me up was my host brother running into the room screaming to get up. I think he had been yelling at least a couple times before I sat up in bed still thinking I was in a dream where there was a train or a plane (couldn´t decide which) on top of the house making a deafening noise and making everything shake all over the place.

When I realized what was actually going on, it stopped and then I laid back down and fell soundly asleep. No big deal... I thought. Apparently the epicenter was really close to my town with a magnitude of 6.2. Pretty big deal to sleep through, huh? Thanks for waking me up Dennis! Thanks to him I can´t officially add earthquakes to my list of circumstances I can sleep through, good thing :) because having an earthquake on that list WOULD be a reason for embarassment unlike the rest of them. For more info on my Panamanian earthquake...

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/11/19/panama.quake/index.html

Thats all the updates for now my friends. Until next time, I promise I´ll make the next one a good one. Stay tuned...

Much love from Panama.

1st of Many Successes

This picture is as recent as it gets around here. I took this picture 2 days ago as I walked through the city of David visiting agencies and finding the post office which of course didn´t have the package I´ve been waiting on for over 2 weeks. Anyway, no incredibly huge news going on. The 11th of this month marked the 3 months that I have been out of the U.S. Speaking of other time frames, I have been in my site for about 3 weeks and have definitely come across some issues. To not go into too much detail, I am dealing with issues of reorganization, motivation, communication, broken promises, bad influences, religion, and a sense of community. I AM glad to report that yesterday I had the best day that I´ve had here in Panama because for the first time I felt that I was needed at my site and I felt confirmation and affirmation in my purpose of even being here - to make a difference.

To not expand into too many details, lets just say that after a meeting I had yesterday, a group of adults walked away energized, motivated, and willing to tackle the internal problems that existed within the group but had never been acknowledged or discussed until I facilitated the interaction between the members. At the end of the day, my host mom who also happens to be a member of this group gave me a hug and told me that I had no idea what I did today and that for years, they have tried to do something like this but have never succeeded and it took me to open everyone´s eyes to push forward. She also said that after every meeting she would be so enraged and come home to cry out her frustrations but after the meeting yesterday, she left with such a feeling of peace.

I call yesterday the first of my many successes. As my internet time is running out, here are some pics that I thought you fans would enjoy. Much love from Panama.

(above) This is a desfile (pronounced des-fee-le for all my non spanish speaking fans out there) that took place in David last week celebrating Panamas independence from Colombia. This month is jammed pack with Panamanian holidays...seriously. The guys in the pic are wearing uniforms with the colors and theme of the flag of Chiriqui, my province. That day it was raining so bad and these kids walked for hours in the downpour. Nothing like Chiriqui pride! Mecho!

(above) Angela, Andrea and I (among at least 30 other Peace Corps volunteers) are hanging out in David to see the elections. Obama had all our support all the way from Panama! We went to a restaurant in a casino where they actually let us listen to the TVs in english and then in the middle of Obama´s acceptance speech the casino turned the sound off and cheesy dancers perfomed their choreographed routing on stage to entertain the rest of the patrons since I´m sure they were bored with the english speaking TVs and all the crazy gringos dancing all over the place celebrating Obama´s win.

(above) This is a bracelet that the family of one of my cooperative kids made for me. Isn´t it great?!

(above) Why did the chicken cross the road? (Because I made my friend Dylan chase it so I could take a picture of a chicken crossing the road...)

(above) This picture was a special request from my Grandpa who wanted to see a Panamanian pig. Love you Grandpa!

(above) A shot I took within the 1st month of being here in Panama. I call it Two Worlds. The crazy development of Panama city in the background while the art of the indigenous people in the foreground.