Hey y´all, hope everything is going good back in the States. Things are pretty good here, I can´t really complain much. Except for the mysterious bite on my foot that is huge, that could be better but it doesn´t bother me until my shoe rubs it and makes it itch. I woke up yesterday around 4Ñ00 (Ñ means colon because these keyboards are all messed up) and my foot was all itchy with a huge bump, but neither I or Ruperta could figure out what it could have been, because I didn´t actually feel the bite, and we didn´t find anything in my mosquito net.
Anyway, I guess I could tell about the rest of my volunteer site visit last weekend. When I wrote my last post I was very tired but I´m better now. We took an hour and a half boat ride with Jessica and her former host dad to Isla Popa, which was actually really relaxing and pleasant. I nearly fell asleep about 20 times. The water was calm and the sun was beginning to set, and it was nice and cool (which means it was pleasantly warm in Panamanian terms) and my head was nodding the whole ride. The rest of that day we just chilled in Jessica´s house, which is really cool. It is like a tree fort without the tree, on stilts with palm thatch roof called panca. The best part is the rain catchment she has so she doesn´t have to get water from the filthy little stream where everyone poops and does their dishes and laundry and bathes all at the same time. The community is an indiginous group of Ngobes, and they seemed pretty nice but kind of treated me and Katie like we were a couple of tourists. I did like how they speak so slowly, it´s a lot easier to understand them than the Latinos. Pretty much all we did during the trip was hang out, but we did help Jessica with one of her English classes where she teaches 6 adults. I am still not comfortable speaking Spanish yet, but then again I am often uncomfortable speaking English so I hope that will improve too. We played volleyball, in which I bruised my wrists from the hard ball (and I´m sure that I probably play wrong anyway, but I did better than I thought I would). We also played bingo which is really big here. I actually won once but I didn´t realize it because they had rules where if you have all four corners or a small square that is also bingo, and the guy sitting next to me had to point out that I won. But it didn´t matter because I lost everything I won anyway and then some.
It was interesting to see what Jessica does at her site, and the problems she encounters in her community. They don´t seem to be extremely motivated with their tourism project, but I can see why because it was basically handed to them by the government who came in and built a guest house and a restaurant and a trail through the forest. It is a great tourism opportunity, but I think that the people need to have the idea in order to be motivated to develop and continue working on it.
It is probably significant that Pablo (the tourism project director) sent me to a Ngobe site, because I sense that I will be sent to another Ngobe site myself. Actually, during my interview with him yesterday about site placement he gave lots of hints about the site he had in mind that he said he was saving especially for me. He mentioned that it is in the mountains, which would be nice and cool, hooray! Located there is the only secondary (high) school in the comarca (indian reservation) where there are about 800 students. I would be working with the English teachers there, helping them improve their English so they in turn can pass it on to their students. I guess they also want to develop some kind of tourism plan. Anyway, from this information I am guessing that I will be in the Comarca Ngnobe Bugle. Pablo even showed me a picture of the site on his cell phone, and it looked really nice from what I saw. I can´t really judge from one picture, but it looked pretty good. I am really excited, and it sounds like the community is really excited to have a volunteer as well, at least I hope they are because I don´t want to work with people like those at Jessica´s site where they don´t want to do much. I will find out for sure on Wednesday next week, at which time I will be sure to post. And no, I didn´t bring my camera cord again. I¨M SORRY!!!!! I don´t really have a whole lot of pictures anyway, but I will promise now that next week I will have it. I am serious! Now let´s just hope I can figure it out. . .
Ok then, hasta miercoles.