Still Smiling :) About Everything

March 15, 2013

Had my first Spanish break through today and it felt soooo good! Past tense, you’ve got no chance! Preterite and Imperfect, I can now differentiate you consistently! Besides the Spanish breakthrough, I just had an all around good day. Nothing amazing happened in particular, I was just in a really good mood all day. I think I may finally be becoming my normal self again. :) I’m even excited to spend my Saturday in the office! (Here’s a photo of the place at which I have my Spanish class) You should be jealous!


Lately I have been thinking a lot about how lucky I got with my peace corps assignment. Lets start out with the fact that I was invited to serve in Panama. That is like the Peace Corps jackpot! We live in a wonderful little town here. The people are all very sweet here. Group 72, which is the group of 48 people with which I started in February, is all around wonderful. No drama as of yet. Haha. Honestly though, we have a group of very talented individuals with such diverse backgrounds that bring so much to the table! It is actually quite amazing. From what I have experienced thus far, people are very supportive and genuine. I feel that I have already made some good friends that I do hope become life long friends. Yesterday I was able to hang out with a few of these people, just relax and chat a bit in the evening. Just to clarify, this happens just about as often as the Cubs win a World Series! For the non-Chicagoans out there, that means....never. However, we found the time because it was simply necessary. Yesterday was the first day on which I truly saw how drained and grumpy everyone was, including me. And look at me today! Good as new! :) Hopefully tomorrow night and Sunday, our first real free day since February 19th, will re-energize us all!

I just cannot wait to find out where my site will be. It could be anywhere in Panama! All the possibilities! I am all the more excited after our site visit last week and some of our wonderful training classes this week. Now everything is slowly coming together and I can actually imagine all the things that I can potentially do.

My site visit last week was wonderful. I am not sure what the matches were based on, but the volunteer that I visited was fantastic! Our personalities worked wonderfully together and I feel like we clicked almost instantly. I was very comfortable asking her all one million questions that I had about her experience, her site, and everything in between. I was also able to see some of the things that she had accomplished as well as the challenges that she has faced. All of this really got me thinking about how I want to go about things when I arrive to my site and it really provided me with so many ideas on how to be crafty when decorating my little new home with the few resources that I will have, to how to motivate the youth to get engaged in waste management.

Here is a picture of her cute abode. We would start off every morning by making a wonderful breakfast and sitting outside and enjoying it!

I also met some of the wonderful members of the youth group and we went on quite the adventure one day to the “molienda”. The molienda is where they "molear" or grind the sugar cane to make sugar cane juice and all sorts of other things like sugar cane molasses. The sugar cane stalks are put through the center part which spins and crushes the stalks and squeezes the juice out of them. Its hard work because the sugar cane stalks are pretty tough. I felt a little bad for the poor horse which had to do all the hard work in the heat. At least he had the cloth over his eyes so that he wouldn't get too dizzy.

After some time some boys tried to replace the horse. It was amusing to say the least.

On the way there we enjoyed the fantastic views.

We also discovered some tadpoles!

I was able to go to a beautiful beach with her. It was cloudy all day, so actually not excessively hot. Definitely got some Vitamin D!

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March 17, 2013

This Sunday, was the first full free day that I have had since I have left the US. I must say it was spent wonderfully with my whole family. My host mom and her parents and sister as well as my host siblings and Brittany. Although the morning started out with some drizzle and we were almost certain that our beach day would not take place, in the afternoon the sky cleared a bit and we all squeezed in a car together and began our adventure. I did not realize how much I just needed this day to just relax and spend some time with the family.

My family said that when I was relaxed at the beach my Spanish was better than ever. I could understand everything and express myself without a problem. It was a nice little confidence boost. But how can a person not be relaxed with adorable girls like this one running around and giggling about how funny the sand feels between her toes!

Here is Brittany, my "host aunt" technically since she is the host daughter of my host grandparents. But in reality she is one of my closest friends here. We even match unintentionally :p

Also, although this is random, apparently the sand here is made of iron or sort of mineral attracted to magnets. I thought this was the coolest thing! Perfect physics demonstration for little kids right at the beach!

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March 20, 2013

As I came home today I noticed that there was a horse in front of my house accompanied by about 10 teenage boys. Of course I got excited, horses are magnificent creatures, but I didn't think much more of it. However, as I was sitting on Brittany’s front steps with her host sister next to me, and my 1 yr old host sister on my lap being very comfortable around me for the first time and not crying as I held her (to clarify, she is shy and cries with everyone, not just me) she started to point at the horse and she got very excited. This of course got the horse subject going and before I knew it, Brittany’s host sister had asked the boys if I can get on the horse, and there I was, riding away into the sunset. Well, not exaclty. Apparently the horse can get a bit crazy so they wouldn't let go of it. Made me a little sad, but it was probably for the best. I hope people have horses in my actual site! I've always wanted to get more comfortable with them, Peace Corps just seems like the right time.

New Family and Friends (Little Creatures)

I have now been in Panama for three weeks. It's interesting because although many things are still very new to me, I also I feel like I have been here for months already. Last week I had a moment when I walked into my bedroom here, and I had to take a moment to remind myself that I am actually in Panama because I already had become so used to my life and home here.

My first week here in our training community has definitely treated me well. As I mentioned in the last blog post my family is wonderful. Finally I have the chance to get some more experience with kids, and lucky me, I think I have the cutest little sisters in the whole wide world.

Here is my family and I. They are very accommodating, helpful, and patient when I struggle with Spanish.

Besides family I am always surrounded by a whole variety of little creatures here. Apparently they all felt obliged to welcome me very enthusiastically my first few nights at my new home. The first two nights the mosquitos decided to say hello. I of course persisted on staying tough and not using the mosquito net. To be honest, with some natural lemon eucalyptus mosquito repellent I actually didn't get all that many bites. Then I heard the stories of two fellow volunteers already having encounters with scorpions. Knowing that I am usually very sensitive to all sorts of bites I seriously started to consider to put up my mosquito net, although I haven't seen any scorpions around my house. That night however the flying cockroaches decided to say hello and welcome me to Panama. Apparently they didn't greet me the first two days because they were all waiting until they were all free the same night so that they could all greet me simultaneously! That night my mom killed at lest 15 flying cockroaches. They are at least the size  of your thumb, though some are larger. They are honestly harmless. Well, except for when they seem to aim for your face when they fly :) That night after the cockroach fiasco my mom and I decided to put the mosquito net up. Harmless or not I just wanted to be able to sleep without them falling on my face :) Now I sleep very well in my little safe bubble!

The following evening, as I was home alone, I discovered the next lovely creature. A spider the size of a small tarantula sitting inside of a bag of mine. Luckily I spotted it before I stuck my hand in the bag. Since I have never encountered such a spider before, I did not know anything about it. However, I wasn't going to take any chances. I ran over to my host grandparents that live next door. And my Grandpa (just to clarify he is probably in his late 40’s or early 50’s) ran over and “saved the day”. He killed the not so little fella, and then informed me that the large gray spiders are not dangerous. Only the black ones are dangerous. I however have decided that with the light being as dim as it is here, I don’t plan on ever taking that close of a look. Looks like my “No Killing of Innocent Creatures” Policy is about to change. I probably haven't killed anything beside mosquitoes in years..... but that doesn't seem like the best survival strategy in Panama.
I discovered my next friend when I woke up early one morning. The sun was not up yet, and apparently the bat didn't want to be up either. I think I woke him up when I turned on my lights and before I knew it he was flying in circles basically right around my head. Getting ready that morning was quite the task. I am really good at ducking now! This bat of mine since then has flown around my room a few more times when I have woken up before dawn. The last time I have seen him was when I left for a site visit last Thursday morning. I woke up at 5:30am, and right before I left my room and the house, the little fella did a lap around my room. But just a single lap. Considerate little guy, didn't bother me at all that morning before I left on my first big adventure. Instead, he just said a little goodbye. I think I just found myself a new friend! Any name suggestions?
Besides all these wonderful creatures that are apparently sharing my room with me, I have also encountered a variety of animals just around the neighborhood. Of course there are the huge toads that somehow always seem to get stuck in the kitchen and cant find their way out. Then there was the Iguana that our neighbor brought over (I think). Big guy!


And finally, a sloth. You know, just being a sloth and laying near the sidewalk. We encountered it on the way to the school building. The encounter turned into a small photo shoot. The sloth got annoyed and tried to flee. Now if you have ever seen a sloth move you can imagine how well this worked out for the sloth. After pulling itself forward twice with its arms, it just fell asleep. Poor guy.



About an hour later when we were returning to our part of town a little boy called out to us. We weren't sure what he was yelling about at first, but we soon discovered that there was a big blob on top of the antenna or post on top of a house. This blob was the sloth. How it got up there was beyond me. How it was able to hold on I also do not comprehend, but it sure held on strong. With the help of a ladder the owner of the house was able to get the sloth down. He was very smart however because instead of trying to take the sloth down, he instead took the pole down and walked across the street with the sloth hanging from the pole and let the sloth climb onto a branch on some tree. Happy sloth, happy me.