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These are more pictures of the waterfall near Santa Clara.

Woo hoo! I finally know which community I will be living in for the next two years. It is a large community in the Comarca Ngobe-Bugle, which is located in the mountains, and the town is called Chichica. It will be cooler up there, but it will be really rainy and windy at times. Also I´m guessing some hiking will be involved, which I don´t really mind much :)

I will be working with a lot of teachers, and it sounds like they are excited to help me with my spanish as well as me helping them with english. They also have a tourism group but it sounds really undeveloped and they need help learning basic things like leadership skills, bookkeeping, stuff like that. It sounds like there are lots of opportunities in this community and also a lot of enthusiasm, and apparently my first host family is really cool. I will be visiting the site in a few weeks, and I can´t wait to see what it is like firsthand. And apparently there is cell phone service in certain areas of town, so that will be very convenient. Since it is larger there is a small chance that there will be running water or electricity available, but I am still not sure about that.

Also, I will not be going to Spanish classes anymore, just Ngobere classes from here on out. I am kind of bummed about that because I really want to work on my Spanish more as well, but it will be cool to learn some Ngobere. I guess I´ll just have to do a lot with Spanish on my own time, what little there is. My oral exam yesterday wasn´t as good as I hoped it would be, but I guess at least it was better than that first tragedy of an interview in Ciudad del Saber.

I have been talking a lot with my host mother, Ruperta. The more I get to know her the more I love her. She reminds me a lot of my Grandma Talbot. She has been through a lot during her life, but she has come through it all with a smile on her face. She has such a positive attitude, and such an open mind about life, especially for an elderly Panamanian woman. She went to school up until 6th grade and would have like to continue after that, but instead she had to work as a housekeeper. She did that until she got married, and then she had to wake up at 3:00 every morning to cook breakfast for her husband, who worked at the Canal in Colon and had to travel a long distance every day. She has had to care for many sick and dying relatives, including her husband for 8 years. I´m not exactly sure what was wrong with him, but it sounds like he was pretty immobile and she had to practically carry him to the latrine for all those years. After he died she finally was able to install an indoor bathroom, which is really nice. She also cared for her husband´s grandfather, who lived to be 115 years old and had never been to a hospital in his life....his first time was the day he died. Furthermore, she also cared for her grandmother, who lived to 113. Anyway, she is a really wonderful, caring person and she is my favorite part of Panama so far.

Yesterday morning one trainee broke her foot while running by our house. She was carried to our house where we iced her foot until someone from Peace Corps arrived to take her to the clinic. She was in a lot of pain but she was doing well. Ruperta was really cute too, running around getting water and cushions and cleaning the grass off her legs. That afternoon we walked over to see how she was doing because Ruperta was worried. She is ok, but the doctors say that her foot isn´t broken but the rest of us think it is.

Anyway, today was pretty exciting, everyone has been waiting for this day for weeks now and I was so excited that my fingers were tingling. I haven´t had much of the rollercoaster of emotions everyone talks about, but I guess that is kind of normal for me, especially in situations like this. So far everything has been mostly positive with a few moments of discouragement here and there, but nothing that has lasted for more than an hour. Well, until next time!