¡Feliz Navidad!

Hello there all my fellow humans,

Well, another Christmas has come and gone. This one was a little different than usual, for obvious reasons. I missed being with my family during the holidays and eating all the yummy pies and cranberry sauce. However, I was able to spend time with my host mother in Santa Clara and ate a ton of stuff, even if it wasn´t exactly very nostalgic to me. Maybe it will be sometime in the future. I will start craving arroz con pollo and pink potato salad at all holidays and family gatherings. Or not.

Anyways, I rested a lot this weekend, did a lot of sleeping and reading as well as talking to the host family. They say that my spanish has improved and I´m starting to sound more Panamanian. I definitely am having a lot easier time understanding them this time around (as long as they don´t deliberately try to confuse me, which sometimes they do), and struggle less in expressing what I want to say. Christmas here is definitely not a "Silent Night". On Christmas Eve everyone stays up late, and at midnight (and the whole day before and after) they shoot off enough fireworks to burn down the entire state of Utah. Even worse, every house was blasting different music at full volume ALL NIGHT LONG, while everyone was up drinking the night away. I brought my earplugs, but they really didn´t do much more than muffle the noise that was shaking the entire house. I was so sleepy though that I slept through it all anyway.

I was fed something about every hour too, I haven´t not been uncomfortably full for days now. I´ve eaten arroz con pollo a couple times, tamales, ham, turkey, potato salad, apples, grapes, fruit cake (yes, apparently they have picked up the fruit cake tradition here), a christmas wreath-shaped bread called rosca, some delicious hot chocolate, egg nog, cookies, oranges, watermelon, more cookies, cake, and double helpings of everything all over again. I had to refuse the additional food that they offered me because I was going to have to puke up something to make more room otherwise. My gluttony has caught up with me, I´ve had a headache and indigestion all day from eating so much, and the heat hasn´t helped much either.

I am going to buy myself a pair of headphones for my christmas present from my family, since mine only half work and I can´t stand listening to half of the song. Eventually I will be able to listen to my music AND take photos without issues! My host family gave me a blouse for Christmas, and although I brought a huge bag of apples and a tin of cookies for everyone, I kind of feel bad that I didn´t get something else so maybe I will look for another little gift for Ruperta while I´m here at the mall.

Oh, I think I forgot to tell about how I appeared on national tv here. Well, about two months ago this film crew showed up in Chichica. I was curious about what they were doing, and a bunch of people I know were sticking around to be part of the production so I joined them without having any idea of what was going on. There was a director and a cameraman and they set up this mock night school class with us spectators as the students, and I was totally confused about the whole thing while they were filming. Afterwards I asked what the deal was with the fake class, and apparently it was filmed for the big annual telethon in Panama that raises money to help kids with medical issues and housing and stuff, and they were filming a girl who just got a new prosthetic leg. She had lost her leg from a snake bite years ago, and I guess the premise of the night school thing was to make it look like she could now attend night school because of her new leg (although she couldn´t even do an extremely simple math problem that they were filming, and the class was supposedly physics). Anyway, a few weeks ago the telethon aired and apparently I and Santos, one of my most dedicated English students and my Ngabere guru, were shown during the telethon. I have been informed of it by several households that have tv. So now I´m famous. . . in certain circles at least.

During December I have been traveling a lot and visiting a lot of different communities, and the traveling isn´t going to ease up either during my classes. I have a wild ride ahead of me with my full schedule. I´m kind of frustrated with Peace Corps because they have scheduled so many things that I have to attend week after week, and I´m going to have a hard time fitting in my work in Chichica. Isn´t that my reason for being here, working in my community? I think I´ll put in a few suggestions to somebody, I´m not sure who.

Well, I´d better go now. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, I will write again soon because I will have a ton of work to do on the computer this next week or so. Until then, I faithfully remain,
ME