Let the Fiestas Begin....

Parade spectators in front of la tienda Doña Mercedes










Mile marching with the professors looking extremely bored!


Yamileth dressed in her Comarca finest


"Deep Parade Thoughts" by Jennifer Zirbes, prints for sale, available online



Maestro Santos Acosta, my Ngäbere guru


Francisco Stalin in the parade crowd




Hey y´all, first of all I would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes and/or presents! I had a good birthday and will describe it shortly.

This week marked the beginning of the 2-month long festivities here, beginning with National Mud Day (a holiday that I invented in order to cancel English class that nobody was going to go to anyway so that Mile would brave the mudbog that is my trail to come down to visit me at my house). Then the next couple days were the celebration of the foundation of the district of Münä, of which Chichica is the capital. There were various presentations, a parade, and several bailes all going on at the same time for two nights in a row. I pretty much just went to see the parade, which consisted of all the schools in the district with their drum bands and teachers and litte marchy girls, whatever they are called. They told me the parade would start at 8:00 so I arrived at 8:30, and waited around until the parade started around 11:30. Oh Panama! Then I watched as everyone slowly passed by, waited for them to turn around and come back down to the school, and pass by even slower than before. And to think that I get to attend about 3 more of the exact same thing before November ends! Gotta love it! Anyway, as I have mentioned my camara screen is not working currently so I was taking a ton of blind photos. I think it will be my new artform, just mess with the zoom and settings that you can´t see, point, and click, and a week later when you are at the computer you can see what crazy artistic photos came out of the process! This way I missed some good moments but also captured things that I wasn´t even aware was happening, so it was rather interesting that way.

On Friday I traveled to David to celebrate my birthday, yet another party! I met up with the teachers in my English class where they bought me lunch, pizza and cheesecake! They also gave me a gift of very panamanian t-shirt and shorts. They are bright, tight, and blingy! I want to get their photos that they took and maybe post them later. After that I had dinner with Meredith, Dave, and Aleah from Peace Corps and also Mile. After listing several options, I chose the Lebanese restaurant because I wanted to try something new. However, when we got there I had no idea what any of the stuff on the menu was, and neither did Mile. I asked for recommendations from the others and went with their suggestion. The food was good though, if a bit pricy. The atmosphere was fun too, they kept playing this intense music that sounded like somebody was about to get sacrificed to some pagan god or something.

Then yesterday I ran some errands like buying paint for the murals I am going to paint this month (except I didn´t get the maps, guess I can´t get started yet!) and decorations for my Halloween party that I am going to have this afternoon for the scouts. I also hung out with Mile for a while wandering around the city, ordering hamburgers and waiting forever for them to be brought out, only to find out that they turned out to be chicken sandwiches (hamburger apparently is a loose term -- oh Panama!) I also got to pick up my package from Mom, and I love it because it was full of chocolate and pine nuts and even some fall leaves! Plus I finally have my chaco sandals that I purchased back in May. It only took six months to get them here!

And today, I am carry all the paint and presents and everything back to Chichica. It´s amazing how I always leave light and return heavy as an elephant. Now we are arriving at the first week of November, which is pura fiesta. Until next time. . .