All Volunteer Conference

My remaining big gallo, his name is Dion which in Ngäbere means misbehaver (FYI Dadoo, he will be dinner when you come to visit me!)


Little girl making a purchase at the tienda Cuatros Pinos


The tourism group and Hector walking to Cerro Algodón



The school at Cerro Algodón


Chorro Culebra (Snake waterfall)




Photos of the main gathering spot at the conference (there were a lot of more candid and interesting moments to be recorded but my camera was working against me)



My poster I made to show what goes on in Chichica

Köbö kuin dere ja mräka, I have made it back to the computer yet again to share the next chapter of my life. I am kind of wet because it is raining and I had to make a mad dash from the bus to the building but it wasn´t good enough.

Well, this last week was busy as usual. On Monday I had another outing with the tourism group, this time to another waterfall near Cerro Algodón. I think it has good potential for a fun daytrip, especially because it is really accessible and pretty. However, my pictures don´t really do it justice because once again my camera screen has decided to quit on me. I hope it´s not permanent, if so I will be reduced to taking crappy pictures and it makes me not want to take pictures at all! But at least it still takes pictures I guess, even if they suck. This time Héctor came with us, the guy from ATP. He seems to be pretty enthusiastic about helping out our group, and I hope that will help the group have a little more enthusiasm too. The waterfall was lovely although it needs to have a good trail made to it. I climbed up to the upper part of the falls with the help of Francisco, because it was really quite steep and I was wearing a nagwa so it is even harder when you get caught on the branches. But it was fun up there. Héctor decided to strip down to his tighty skivvies and play in the water, which quite frankly was a little awkward but whatever. Lilia, Eyda, and I also got wet but in the lower portion of the falls. I hadn´t planned on getting wet but I got so dirty climbing down the hill again that I decided to clean myself off, entonces me acosté en la cascada! After that I had a bunch of little errands to run, like collecting artesanry to sell for the artisans at the Peace Corps Panama All Volunteer Conference, and passing messages about the new volunteer that is coming to live in my site.

Then on Tuesday I had my class for the high school kids on drugs and alcohol. I quite frankly was not very prepared for the class, but again oh well. I had wanted to have a handout for them but just never had enough time to get it made. Also that day I had invited my english class to my house to practice English and learn how to do yoga. It was pretty funny, especially the commentary by the male participants! I also cooked "gringo food", which consisted of lemon chicken, carrots, and mashed potatoes and gravy, and for desert I made a german chocolate cake which turned out very tasty if not very authentic. Raúl as always kept on dropping not-so-subtile hints about me and Mile, trying to get him to stay at my house and making comments about how I can get married now because I make a dang good cake and whether I would rather have a boy or a girl! Oh man!

Then the next day I traveled to Chitré in the very hot Azuero peninsula. It makes me grateful to live in the mountains where I do where life is bearable. Anyway, this was for the All Volunteer Conference (AVC) where everybody in Peace Corps Panama meets together for the one and only time in my service here. It was good to get to meet a bunch of new people and reconnect with some old ones, and though I don´t think I learned a whole bunch in the actual conference sessions it was nice to converse about our experiences because I think that is much more informative and helpful anyway. We all have different situations but in general face many of the same challenges. Throughout the four days I sold the artesanry from my community to help them have other sources of clients, and I sold a decent amount.

Also for the nighttime activities there was a campo olympics which included such competitions as filling a bucket with a totuma (a gourd used as a water scooper or bowl), peeling the perfect orange (the panamanians peel the zest off their oranges and then suck out the juice, my now-preferred method of eating an orange), campo football (played barefoot in the mud), the best gritaring (aka salomar, which is a crazy noise that panamanians make which I really can´t find words to describe right now), canned sardine eating contest, and pool chicken fights. I myself participated in the Pop-a-squat Campo Latrine competition, which was just sitting against the wall with legs at right angles for as long as you can. Unfortunately I was the second one down. I don´t think I was adequately prepared for such a physical endurance test, I should have eaten more rice! The winners held out for probably ten minutes though, it was pretty impressive.

The next night to close off the conference there was "Peace Corps Prom", which was kind of fun. The girls got all dressed up, some very panamanian, and most of the guys had managed to find some kind of skinny jeans or Ngäbe pants or whatever crazy outfit. There was dancing and an open bar, from which I partook three cokes. Oh my gosh, and as I was dancing sola one of the other newer comarca volunteers Andy which I had just met really this week at the conference kept dancing with me, and then when the DJ turned off the music asked if he could come visit my site, which is a perfectly normal thing to ask but it was all very strange and I don´t even know how to explain it. He seems like a nice guy and I have no issues with him coming to my site, but I felt the need to tell him that I have a boyfriend but didn´t say anything. Meredith noticed last night and said that she got excited for me but then remembered that I was already "ocupada". How in the world did everything become ridiculous suddenly, and why did I have to come to Panama to suddenly attract so many men? Sheesh!

Anyway, here I am again on my way back to site. Speaking of men, Héctor keeps calling me for apparently no very good reason but only talks for like one minute or less. He called me the other night to ask me to tell the tourism group about the training that they will be recieving this week, which they already knew about, and he called me again this afternoon to make sure I told them. Wierd. Anyway, I am also going to meet the new volunteer in my site, Jessica. She is there for her site visit before swearing in as an official volunteer, and I´m going to invite her to come with us to the next waterfall excursion on Monday. I hear that she´s pretty cool, which is good. It would suck to have an uncool sitemate. I hope she has more success in her projects than I have had with working with the community members, but I am also secretly jealous that they will like her better than me! Well, I guess I´d better get going. It´s still raining, good thing I brought large plastic bags for my backpack. Bueno, me voy. ¡Hasta el próximo!