Hello there fans. This blog entry will not be anything close to what I want to post since my time is severely limited but to give you a quick update. I am doing absolutely fabulous. For the first time in over 5 months, I am genuinely glad to be here and feel like I am getting the Peace Corps experience that I wanted. I live in a community of about 500 people. I have to walk a lot on many hills, I have some great mountain views, the people are really great (meaning nice and open), and for being in site for a little under 3 weeks, I already feel so much better than I did at my old place.
My new host family consists of an elderly couple with their 3 adult children living at home. The surrounding 15 to 20 houses are also family relatives so that makes it really easy to meet a lot of other people. I actually have my own room in the house which is amazing. The house is made of mud up to about 3 feet then wood boards the rest of the way and of course the typical zinc roof. I will have to post pictures later. This is also the first time in my life that I live without a refrigerator which surprisingly isn´t that big of a deal but when I get my own place in March, I hope to have one for myself. The water situation is pretty much the same as my old site. There is one faucet outside of the house and the water comes once a day in the morning so when it actually comes, we fill buckets with water and use that for everything we need during that day.
My mom sent me some bingo cards so I have started to play with the kids who now use rocks to mark their cards after first attempting to use dry corn kernels but getting tired of the chickens sabotaging our games trying to eat the bingo markers! I´m in the process of making some bingo cards to help teach the kids english vocab before they go back to school.
I have to go now but I want to let you know that I am going to start a segment on my blog called
Peace Corps Lifestyle Moments where I will descriptively talk about various experiences that I have gone through as a Peace Corps volunteer. It´ll be great, look forward to it. So long for now my friends. Please note the new cell phone number on the left side of the screen.
(above) So in addition to witnessing the killing of chickens, here is the first time I saw them kill a pig. They tied him up, stabbed him in the neck and drained the blood. In the background you see a pot of boiling water that is poured on the dead pig to make the hair easier to scrape off. Lets just say we all ate pork for a good couple of days after that.
(above) This is one of the ways that my community celebrates Los Carnavales which is a big celebration here in Panama equivalent to Mardi Gras. Usually most people go to the big cities and party in the streets and get drenched by the culecos who spray water everywhere but here in my site, they built this pen out of bamboo to ride the bulls/cows or as they call them, ¨Vaca Brava¨ (Mad cow). This went on for 3 days with dances at night time. Everyone was surprised that I knew how to dance their dance called Típico. Good times.
(above) This hill wasn`t a lot of fun to climb and at this point I still had another 20 minutes to go but I couldn´t complain about the view. This is about 25 minutes in a truck up the mountain from my site.
Peace Corps Lifestyle Moments-
(above) This is my host family´s house. The family consists of an elderly couple with their 2 adult sons, and 2 adult daughters with their combined 5 kids. The only reason I have my own room is because one of the daughters and her 2 kids are in Panama City for the time being. I live in an area of the community where the closest 20 houses are all family of my host family in some form or fashion. This includes about enough kids for me to start a school which I WON´T be doing.
(above) So I asked some of the kids to get me some mandarinas (mandarin oranges) and before I new it, I had them climbing trees. The background shows sugar cane and banana trees but I swear there is a manadarina tree right next to where I was standing to take the pic.
(above) Time for a culture lesson. In the campo (interior part of the country where people live off the land far from any major city) people host whats called a junta (pronounced hoonta) where they will provide chicha (pronounced cheecha, juice of some sort, in this case, with alcohol in it) and invite men in the community to help them with a project needing a lot of manual labor. In this case, the pit for the old latrine was getting pretty full of you know what (yes, trust me I KNOW how gross that it) so they dug a new hole (about 9 ft deep) and moved the latrine. All fresh and deep!
(above) So I would like to make this blog a little more interactive and besides creating my PC Lifestyle Moments, I would like to introduce you to this chicken. She has a very unique hair do which makes me crack up each time it rains because it just looks like she has had a long hard day. I have been calling her Shirley in the mean time but I wanted to get some input from the fans on ideas for her name. I have already received the suggestion of Elvis Poultry (wa.wa.waaa...) but would like some more suggestions. Comment on the blog and get me some good names!
(above) These are some of the kids playing Loteria which is a game played similarly to bingo. It comes from Mexico and is in Spanish so the kids love it. My mom sent it and in the month that I have been in my site, there has probably been 2 days max that the kids haven´t asked me to borrow the game to play.
(above) Me taking advantage of the scenery and the time I had to take pictures while waiting for the next truck to take me to my site which ended up being 2.5 hours. I was up the mountain visiting my closest PC volunteer neighbors.
(above) On an island near my old community - the house in the background was built with the help of a former Peace Corps volunteer´s efforts with USAID to provide shelter to the local volunteers (Panamanians) who assisted with sea turtle conservation on the island.
(above) On the way back to the Port from the island I had to take a pic of the mangroves striking a pose. Doesn´t this look crazy?
(above) You know I had to include a random shot. My clothes drying with the platanos overhead. Colorful bunch.
(above) Here is a shot from the Mother´s Day party this past Saturday. We were playing a game called Taxi. 
(above) You know that water ride at theme parks where you sit in a log and go down a little water way? This is so much BETTER than that. You can´t see it here but they are riding on a banana leaf! This was a couple of days ago in Bugava at a creek in the area.
(2 pics above) Me drinking pipa (coconut juice) with a family (this picture show about 8% of the family that was actually there celebrating mother´s day- it reminded me of mine own family on Easter weekend).
It was great to be with other Americans celebrating our yearly tradition. Much thanks to Fred (far right in the photo above) who basically cooked everything even down to homemade pumpkin pie! Happy Thanksgiving from Peace Corps Panama!
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