The Gringa Conspiracy!

A beautiful hazy morning in the Jujuca



Tourism training at Deisy´s house

Estél


Anthony

Marietta

Taking the final exam of Elige Tu Vida



Well it´s official, I have a new sitemate in Chichica and I have finally met her! Her name is Jessica and she seems cool. I think she´ll be a good person to work with and will be beneficial to the town. And she´s already breaking hearts, Hector has already declared his love for her to me! He told me, "You´re pretty, but she is . . . do you think I have a chance to marry her?" To which I laughed, but he said, "No, seriously!" Oh, Panamanian men! And when I told Mile that there was another Chichica gringa, he said, "Oh God, a gringa conspiracy!" We are taking over Panama, one comarca town at a time! But I think we will get along fine and it will be great, and the people will love her too. She also already speaks Spanish fluently, which is a great advantage that I didn´t have. I have just recently become comfortable with using Spanish on a professional level, and it has taken a year and a half!

Oye, why are people so rude and have to play three different kinds of music at once in a small public space and have the volume jammed up at maximum!? How am I supposed to think when there is típico, bachata, salsa, and reggaetón playing all at once? One at a time is bad enough, but really!

Anyhoo, distractions aside. I met Jessica on Sunday morning and later she stopped by my house to talk before it got dark. There is definitely a lot to talk about when discussing living in Chichica! Then on Monday I had invited her to go to the waterfall with the tourism group but things being Panama the trip got postponed so instead we began to dig out the lot for the tourism office that they plan on building. I like the people from the tourism group, they are fun. Also, they found a caterpillar that was disguised as a little snake, it was really interesting because it looked exactly like a snake head. Nobody had seen anything like it before except for Reynaldo, who is going to be the main tourguide and knows a lot about the area. He said there are three different kinds of gusanos like that around here. It was refreshing to do some actual work for a change, although I walked around dirty for the rest of the day which is not exactly acceptably professional here but whatever.

Then I took Jessica around to meet the people at the municipio, centro de salud, and the schools because the other community members hadn´t done that. We also went and talked to her future host family to introduce them to each other. Then we went back to my house so Jessica could talk to Ana about filling out the site locater form (which describes where we live and how to contact us in an emergency) and I taught them how to play chess. We also visited my garden, since I had been neglecting it and since it wasn´t raining I decided to see if it was still alive. It was, and there was gigantic okra. I think too gigantic, either that or I don´t know how to cook it, but it was really too tough to even eat. Oh well. Maybe I should have left it to dry out and toast it for a coffee-like beverage like the panamanians do. They thought I was crazy to think that okra is a vegetable.

Next day I took it easy during the morning, and then had English class in the afternoon. English class has been the only time I ever see Mile in Chichica, and even then he doesn´t even come half the time! What a loser. Tell me again why I am dating a Panamanian? We didn´t even have class again on Wednesday because nobody showed up. However, I have asked for permission to paint murals on the walls at the schools, a map of Panama at the elementary school and a world map at the high school. I think it will be a fun project, and maybe I´ll even see more of my boyfriend! I hope I can get a small grant to buy the paint, otherwise I will be buying it myself.

Yesterday I had nothing to do so I went to see if I could find Mile but he was not around, apparently sleeping. So I sat around at the colegio sketching because it has been ages since I have drawn anything, and talking to whoever felt like talking to me. But it was raining so I went home and cooked myself some tuna empanadas, which weren´t bad except for the fact that they lacked flavor of any kind! I also invented some kind of coconut oatmeal cookie thing which also served for breakfast this morning. Today I also was lacking something to do (I guess I could have done laundry and visited people in Chichica, but I didn´t feel like it) so I came to Tolé to talk to you fine folks! I also wanted to charge my iPod and stuff. And tomorrow, I get to do more digging, but this time for the new center that they are going to build to sell agricultural products, I guess kind of like a farmers market. It would be a great thing, I hope they can get it finished before I leave!

Well, I will wrap up now by saying that I will not miss the music in Panama when I leave! Please shut it off!!!! Gag! Bye then!