My friends are a pretty cool group. By sophomore year of college, there was a high probability that a good friend of mine was studying or working in a different country. At any given time since then, I can probably say that I know at least one person living abroad, working on some cool project; and these friends are the Americans, not the wonderful people who are from "abroad," and doing wonderful things at home, although they certainly are fabulous as well. Reasons for going abroad vary, some studying, some working, some travelling, and usually there's more than one of those going on. Now, I'm in the Peace Corps, where I join a selection of acquaintances who have been or are serving in various projects around the world, and my "cool friend" quota is definitely increasing.
There are more than 200 PCVs serving here in Panama as I write, in 4 or 5 projects, all over the country. (I'm going to use the PCV Panama community as my focus for this post, but the relevance certainly isn't limited to this group.) When a group of PCVs get together here, there's the usual griping about trouble at work, venting about issues with co-workers, and gossiping about Panamanians and other volunteers. And we talk about project challenges and successes that we've had, and projects that other volunteers are doing.
Here's where the problem I see is. We talk about our projects and the projects that other volunteers are running, and the other volunteer's always sounds so amazing. That PCV has community engagement, organization, energy, and according to the grapevine, great results. We wonder why we can't pull off a project like that; why our community is so hard to work with, and why can't we be a better volunteer, like that one. First of all, an accurate comparison is basically impossible here, given the differences in everything from projects, to communities, to resources, to the PCV's interests and talents. It's like comparing apples to oranges, and does no credit to any party involved.
The second, more severe problem, is that there are these admiration conversations on how productive Superstar PCV A is being (Superstar PCV A not being present in said conversation), and then later, on a separate occasion, Superstar PCV A is talking about how his/her project isn't talking off, s/he don't think the project is working, but if only s/he could be more like Superstar PCV B! People are just too...individual to be usefully compared.
It's wonderful to have goals and standards. It's great to have to internal drive to constantly be pushing oneself to improvement, ever striving for improvement. And competition can be a wonderful motivator, as has been demonstrated in the Space Race, many solar car races, in school, sporting events (fancy that!) But is it possible, or do I ask too much, for us to somehow learn to see what we are doing and acknowledge the progress, or at least hard work, that we are doing? For me, I've learned that no matter how hard I've worked at something, or whatever results I get, I find a million ways I could have worked harder to achieve a better result. And yes, that pushes me to do better next time, which certainly improves "next time." But constantly finding fault and highlighting the failings of what's been done, past practices, means that it's very rare, and very difficult to find satisfaction in a job well done. Perhaps I just haven't worked hard enough yet, and if I keep trying, I'll get there...but somehow, I don't think that that is the way it works.
Reflecting of the conversations with other PCVs and friends outside of Peace Corps, I can't fault us for being dissatisfied with aspects of our performance that we know we can improve. Maybe, though, we could practice seeing ourselves through other people's eyes. Not to the point of narcissism or self-adulation (little danger of that, given where we're coming from), but just distanced from ourselves enough to see ourselves and our efforts from another perspective.
30 September 2012
18 September 2012
PRODUCTIVITY!...vs. Panama
Thanks to my brother for ordering and Cecily for bringing my replacement computer battery, I am writing this blog post by candle light. Now, I don't really need light to type on the computer, but before writing this post, I was handwriting notes from the computer, and then I did need the candlelight. I'll type up the notes eventually, but I suppose I'm still old-fashioned enough that if I need or want to really think about something, it has to travel down my arm, though my hand and pen, and onto paper. Maybe getting split down both arms to be computer typed divides the information into nonsense. I don't know. Either way, I'm in the funny, quasi-modern situation of working from my computer by candlelight. My candle is developing a really cool sideways stalagtite-y wax formation, by the way.
I'm using the candle, by the way, because the light went out for the second day in a row. Today and yesterday we had light for most of the day, until about 4:30. Last night it reappeared at about 10PM, and I hope it'll do that again, and recharge this miraculous thing known as my battery. Water's also out- boo!
In case you've missed the news, I finally caved and/or build myself up to getting a magic internet stick, which has made my life both more and less productive. It works best immediately in front of my house, generally decently just inside of my front door, and doesn't exist more than a foot inside of the house. But, it's enough for e-mails and uploading pictures, and if the clouds are angled just right, I can watch youtube videos with just a couple pauses to load! It's fun to be in the 21st century again, here in rural Panama.
The aforementioned notes I was writing are for my first COMMUNITY ENGLISH CLASS! I'm doing a set of 5 classes, starting tomorrow and happening until 5 Tuesdays from now. (I'm writing this on Monday night.) I simultaneously hope that I have a good number of students, because then I could smoothly and easily bring them to perfect fluency ;-), and that no one shows up, so I don't have to actually teach on my own. I think that I'll have a good handful, at least, though. My host mom, at least- it's kind of her job as my adoptive family member here, right? And she is actually interested in learning English, even asking me how to say various things when I'm at her house.
Next Thursday I'm making myself available for official homework help for 5-10th graders- this one I hope to transition into peer-tutoring, yay sustainability! And on Friday, I'm going to start more solo-teaching (ack! What am I doing?!?). There's a second Primaria in town, just 70 students, but they don't have an English teacher, hence my not being assigned to work there as well, but as the students go to the Secondary from there expected to have learned some English, some parents have requested that I teach their kids too. So, they get their own real, live, Native English Speaker once a week too! We'll see how long this goes. I think I was smelling too much of the neighbor's garbage when I was setting all of this up, else I would have at least spaced it out a bit more. Oh well- in for a real (nickel, pronounced rey-ahl), in for a dain (dime, pronounced dine). Wish me luck!
Ooh, and unless I do already have enough going, there are a couple other things I'm working on with other volunteers, this fantastic thing known as a Magic Circle that I want to start at the Primaria, and my new neighbor volunteer (neighbor being in the next town up the road) swing dances, and we're talking about getting the kids in his community and/or mine dancing!
Ok, I was going to finish with the English planning fun-ness, but I've got to talk about Magic Circles. A Magic Circle (which I like to capitalize) is a form of permiculture, or a strategy of permiculture, or something like that. Basically, you dig a hole about 3 or 4 feet diameter by a foot or 18 inches deep, and through 'trash', whatever organic material you feel like, into said hole. In the ring of dug-up-dirt which you left around said hole, plant plantains, yuca, whatever you want. As time goes, add whatever more organic material you have to the pile in the center. The guy who introduced this technique at our trimestral Peace Corps meeting is a former PCV who has since started his own farm here in Panama, outside of Penonome, called “Finca de los Perezosos”- “Farm of the Lazies.” So, according to John Douglas, the former PCV, this yields significantly more produce than the usual Panamanian methods, while cutting down on the amount of trash left to burn. Win-win! I'm talking to my Primaria teacher about starting on at the school, which will help them, and then I/we/someone can use it as a model to teach other members of the community about this alternative strategy! (I want to do one in my backyard, too :-).)
One more note: I think I accidentally had a big bowl of vanilla pudding for breakfast this morning. Panamanians use cornstarch for a lot, including a common breakfast known as ‘crema.’ I had a box of cornstarch for when I need to make chocolate pudding, and since I didn’t have anything else breakfast-y, decided to try it. Halfway through the process, I realized that it was almost identical to the chocolate pudding, except without the melting-chocolate step. And more vanilla added. And raspadura, which is minimally processed cane sugar (but sugar goes in either way.) It’s a curious sensation, to expect to eat breakfast, and eventually realize that it was actually pudding. ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Continuing on Tuesday, since I didn’t post this before now:
So, the much anticipated class came and went! Exactly none of the community members who seemed excited about it showed up today. Which was ok, in a way, because the guy who was supposed to give me the key to the building and pull out the whiteboard and help me get everything set up forgot that today was the day, and was in Penonome (the city about an hour’s drive away). But, we got the key to the space from another guy in the community (though not the key with access to the supplies), and on a ‘hunch’ I’d brought a stash of poster paper and markers. Just in case. Despite none of the adults coming up (even my host mom didn’t come to the class), I did have 8 youth-students, ranging from 2nd grade to 9th. They acted like Panamanian students, that is to say, irresponsive to about everything, but when asked after the fact, said they enjoyed it. I think I could be a good teacher...not that I’m changing my intention to never make that my career...but who knows, maybe I’ll keep saying never through a career of it (eek!).
We’ll see what happens next week; it’s slightly possible that the culprit for the thin attendance today was a band meeting that lasted much longer than anyone had anticipated...vamos a ver. In any case, I came back home to relax, put together a random outfit which I then inflicted on the community between my house and the store, and came home. They say Peace Corps is a learning experience- this particular event taught me that I have 4 main coping mechanisms for disappointment/disenchantment/discouragement/etc- (1)nature meditation (2)fashion whimsy (3)dancing (4) creative output in crafts or food. Makes those nasty things rather more pleasant, when I know the fun that follows ;-)
Tomorrow I have a happyfunplanningsession with my Primaria teacher, Thursday meeting some other volunteers to work on a possible collective book grant, Friday starting teaching at the non-English-teachered-Primaria, then a nice full weekend. Oh life, you’re so funny.
Also, I’m on day 5 of a 2 day charge on my magic internet stick, not sure what’s up with that, but hey- internet’s cheaper by the day!
11 September 2012
Cecily comes to Panamá!
On Saturday, September 1st, 2012, an amazing thing happened. Cecily, one of my amazingly fabulous friends from college walked through the immigration gate at Tocumen International Airport- first from her flight.
It was a long day for both of us, as she started her travels from Omaha at 5:something in the morning, and I started at 7:00 AM waiting for a bus to start my journey to the airport as well. However, it all went smoothly- I arrived 2 hours before I'd expected, and Cecily's flight was just a few minutes late. We caught a bus (the first of 3 to get us back to my site), and thus commenced a week of fun!
After hours and hours of travel, we reached my house, and Cecily reminded me that it's unusual in the US for a house to have a concrete floor and the ceiling to simply be the underside of the corrugated metal roof. But we had water almost all the time we were home, and the electricity cooperated as well!
I know I wax verbose, so here's a quick breakdown of the week:
Saturday: Travel day
Sunday: El Valle
Monday: Santa Rita (hammock time and dinner with host family)
Tuesday: On travel to Chiriquí (where we saw bugs!)
Wednesday: David (cool to me, I believe Cecily might have been less than fascinated.)
Thursday: On travel to Herrera
Friday: Back to Santa Rita
Saturday: La Ciudad- Panama City
Sunday: Travel and mourning...and dragging myself back to normal life.
El Valle
On Sunday, we went to El Valle, which is my province's main tourist attraction, with a market full of 'artesanias' - craft goods mostly from Panama's indigenous groups, with sections for produce, living plants, and craft fair style jewelry- lots of macrame/knotted jewelry stuff. Oh, and to get there, we took off in the morning for the half-hour bus ride to the end of the road, and then a 2 hour walk up one side of the extinct volcano, and down a bit into the center of it, because that part is El Valle (aka, The Valley) and down into the center. The part that was where the air (usually rainclouds) is apparently blew off in the mists of time...the rocky, smokey, dusty, acidic, volcanic mists.
We had lunch at a little restaurant there, and Cecily got her first taste of Panamanian cuisine- pollo guisado, or stewed chicken, with rice, potato salad, and a little piece of platano en tentación, or 'temptation plantain'. So far, so good! We visited the market, and set off to find the "Square Trees," which the friendly fellow at the information kiosk told us was about half an hour walk away. We set off, and naturally, it starts pouring down rain. However, we pressed on, and after a brief respite at a conveniently located hotel, made it to the hotel where the 'square trees' were supposed to be- we followed the signs...but the gate was locked. Disheartened, but not put off, we set across the lawn to inquire at the hotel, when we met a group coming the other direction, so we joined them. (At this point, the rain was down to a light sprinkle.) We went through the gate and started along the path when we looked back to see that the guide/employee had locked the gate behind us and returned to the hotel. We followed the other group down the trail, over a comically wobbly bridge to a bit of a clearing where there were several 'square trees'. (Walking down this path, Cecily was struck by how realistic the jungle area of the Omaha Zoo really was, in terms of trees and large vines looped at prime height for sitting on.) The square-est trees were the adolescent trees- old enough to have the shape, but once they got older yet they became particularly root-y trees. Still cool, though!
After having our fill of the trees, we set about finding our way out. There were signs all over that said 'sendero', which actually means 'path', but I didn't know that at the time, so we ignored one line of logic, and retraced our steps, where we confirmed that the gate was in fact locked, so we followed that Panamanian family from before out over the gate. Woohoo! We escaped the square trees, and started back to the center of town where it started to rain in earnest, that is to say, we were completely soaked to the point of forming cartoonish puddles around our feet whenever we stopped. We agreed though, that once it was acknowledged that there was no avoiding the rain, it was pretty fun to get completely soppingly drenched. After some difficultly getting a bus down to the highway, we eventually got back home, to...something for dinner, hot chocolate, and pixbae (pronounced pifa) with my preferred honey-and-massaman curry dipping sauce. Cooking is fun here in the campo!
Santa Rita
On Monday, we visited my schools where I showed off our vegetable gardens and animals, and then took a brief tour of Anton, with a stop to get a pineapple at the market. In the afternoon, we went to my host family's house for some quality hammock time in the afternoon rain, and then my host mom invited us for dinner, and Cecily got another taste of the delicious (Panamanian) comida (food) panameña. :-D In non-Panamanian food, we put together a muffin mix from my aunt and successfully baked them via advanced stovetopoven technology- they were delicious, and just slightly burned on the bottom.
--> Remedios, Chiriquí
Tuesday saw us with more hours on the bus as we traveled to visit another volunteer named Ken, in the south-western-border province of Chiriquí. We had a bit of a wander adventure in Santiago where we changed busses and wandered halfway across the town to find the airport- first adventure of my dragging Cecily around as I learned useful things about getting around. We got to Ken's in the evening, where he took us on a tour of his site (way bigger and nicer than mine- he has multiple paved streets AND the streets had names!) We met his very sweet dog, and took a walk in the evening in attempt to see stars and fireflies, and found fireflies and a weird glowing centipede thing. Oh, and listened to the laser-tag frogs.
David
I wanted to visit David, since I'd heard about it a fair bit from other volunteers, so we spent a couple more hours on the bus, a few hours wandering in the city (we brought strawberries, which grow in another city called Boquete, which is now on my to-visit list), before heading back to Ken's. By the way, while at Ken's, we didn't eat Panamanian, but we did put together pretty delicious meals, a few of which involved copious amounts of peanut butter (on chicken stir fry, in oatmeal, on pancakes...good stuff.) We also made a Shepherd's pie inspired meal which turned out well- yay for cooking by 'making it up as we go along'.
EDIT/ADDITION: On Wednesday morning, we were having oatmeal mixed with all sorts of delicious things for breakfast. At one point, just as I was starting to realize that something wasn't quite right, Cecily comments on "not wanting to alarm anyone" but she felt off, like her inner ear was awry. We soon realized, once we got over the initial confusion of why we seemed to be moving while sitting at the table and why the wall appeared to be shifting a bit, that there was an earthquake- later found to be a 7.6 in Costa Rica. One more life experience to cross off the list for Cecily and me!
Herrera
On Thursday we took leave of Ken and wandered off to visit another volunteer, Miranda, in her more south-central province of Herrera, in the region known as the Azuero. She showed us around her town with its lovely Spanish Colonial architecture, and told us about their festival atmosphere for Carnival, their saint days, etc. We chatted, watched some Doctor Who, and admired her house and community (one of the biggest, I believe.)
Santa Rita
Friday morning brought us to Penonome, my stomping ground, where I showed Cecily around the 2 main streets, the park, mercado (market), where Cecily bought her cutarras- Panamanian sandals. We had lunch with Nate and Julie, the two other volunteers from my group in my corner of Panama, before heading back to Santa Rita, where we "dimos la vuelta", or walked around the loop of my road. We finished at my host family's house for another dinner, before coming back to my house for a final night there. This evening held on of the excitement of dubious value, where we discovered that I have giant (up to a centimeter) ants living in my spare-room door. We spent...I don't know how much time, but quite a bit carrying on an ant-massacre (movement), which culminated in my getting locked in the room, because the knob and lock were loose and bent and generally non-operational. We rescued me by removing the knob completely. Girl power! One of these days I'll replace the door-knob, since I don't know how much of the damage we caused, and how much predated me, but in the meantime, I'm trying to eliminate the giant-disgusting-ant presence in my house. Now I don't have Cecily to help, but I did get a can of bug death to help. They're disgusting, and now I will only live in places with solid wood doors, because it's the only non-solid door in my house. Actually, my bathroom door isn't either- will have to douse it in bugdeath too before the ants try to move in. ICK!
Panama City
Saturday saw us return to the City, where we stayed at Hostel Urraca, which is a little bit of beach house downtown- a very fun, chill place where volunteers tend to stay in the city. We set out to eat at a German restaurant I'd heard about, and got rather lost, but eventually found it...open only for drinks. But our sorrow was mitigated by the presence of a delicious Indian restaurant exactly across the street. After our 3:30 lunch, we (intentionally, this time) took the long way back through 'Calle Uruguay', home of a lot of clubs/bars/restaurants, and along a European-ish park and walking path along the Pacific.
La Despedida
After a very cold night (where they have A/C in Panama, it's binary), we got up and caught a bus for the airport, where we arrived in good time, though a little close, for Cecily to check in and get through security. I went back to the mall where I bought a Spanish translation of Pride and Prejudice, and made my way back to Santa Rita, to re-enter my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Panama, where this week, I have preparation for next week and Peace Corps meetings, and next week, we have the final trimester, and I'm starting my community English classes. Woohoo!
I'll get more pictures up in facebook and google albums, but it took long enough for these few pictures, so I'll work on those another night. I'm sure there are things I've forgotten, but here's a lot of it. Ciao!
It was a long day for both of us, as she started her travels from Omaha at 5:something in the morning, and I started at 7:00 AM waiting for a bus to start my journey to the airport as well. However, it all went smoothly- I arrived 2 hours before I'd expected, and Cecily's flight was just a few minutes late. We caught a bus (the first of 3 to get us back to my site), and thus commenced a week of fun!
After hours and hours of travel, we reached my house, and Cecily reminded me that it's unusual in the US for a house to have a concrete floor and the ceiling to simply be the underside of the corrugated metal roof. But we had water almost all the time we were home, and the electricity cooperated as well!
I know I wax verbose, so here's a quick breakdown of the week:
Saturday: Travel day
Sunday: El Valle
Monday: Santa Rita (hammock time and dinner with host family)
Tuesday: On travel to Chiriquí (where we saw bugs!)
Wednesday: David (cool to me, I believe Cecily might have been less than fascinated.)
Thursday: On travel to Herrera
Friday: Back to Santa Rita
Saturday: La Ciudad- Panama City
Sunday: Travel and mourning...and dragging myself back to normal life.
El Valle
On Sunday, we went to El Valle, which is my province's main tourist attraction, with a market full of 'artesanias' - craft goods mostly from Panama's indigenous groups, with sections for produce, living plants, and craft fair style jewelry- lots of macrame/knotted jewelry stuff. Oh, and to get there, we took off in the morning for the half-hour bus ride to the end of the road, and then a 2 hour walk up one side of the extinct volcano, and down a bit into the center of it, because that part is El Valle (aka, The Valley) and down into the center. The part that was where the air (usually rainclouds) is apparently blew off in the mists of time...the rocky, smokey, dusty, acidic, volcanic mists.
We had lunch at a little restaurant there, and Cecily got her first taste of Panamanian cuisine- pollo guisado, or stewed chicken, with rice, potato salad, and a little piece of platano en tentación, or 'temptation plantain'. So far, so good! We visited the market, and set off to find the "Square Trees," which the friendly fellow at the information kiosk told us was about half an hour walk away. We set off, and naturally, it starts pouring down rain. However, we pressed on, and after a brief respite at a conveniently located hotel, made it to the hotel where the 'square trees' were supposed to be- we followed the signs...but the gate was locked. Disheartened, but not put off, we set across the lawn to inquire at the hotel, when we met a group coming the other direction, so we joined them. (At this point, the rain was down to a light sprinkle.) We went through the gate and started along the path when we looked back to see that the guide/employee had locked the gate behind us and returned to the hotel. We followed the other group down the trail, over a comically wobbly bridge to a bit of a clearing where there were several 'square trees'. (Walking down this path, Cecily was struck by how realistic the jungle area of the Omaha Zoo really was, in terms of trees and large vines looped at prime height for sitting on.) The square-est trees were the adolescent trees- old enough to have the shape, but once they got older yet they became particularly root-y trees. Still cool, though!
 |
| Square Tree: they actually grow with natural corners! |
.jpg) |
| I also bought a hammock chair for my livingroom, which Cecily helped me hang :-) |
On Monday, we visited my schools where I showed off our vegetable gardens and animals, and then took a brief tour of Anton, with a stop to get a pineapple at the market. In the afternoon, we went to my host family's house for some quality hammock time in the afternoon rain, and then my host mom invited us for dinner, and Cecily got another taste of the delicious (Panamanian) comida (food) panameña. :-D In non-Panamanian food, we put together a muffin mix from my aunt and successfully baked them via advanced stovetopoven technology- they were delicious, and just slightly burned on the bottom.
--> Remedios, Chiriquí
Tuesday saw us with more hours on the bus as we traveled to visit another volunteer named Ken, in the south-western-border province of Chiriquí. We had a bit of a wander adventure in Santiago where we changed busses and wandered halfway across the town to find the airport- first adventure of my dragging Cecily around as I learned useful things about getting around. We got to Ken's in the evening, where he took us on a tour of his site (way bigger and nicer than mine- he has multiple paved streets AND the streets had names!) We met his very sweet dog, and took a walk in the evening in attempt to see stars and fireflies, and found fireflies and a weird glowing centipede thing. Oh, and listened to the laser-tag frogs.
David
I wanted to visit David, since I'd heard about it a fair bit from other volunteers, so we spent a couple more hours on the bus, a few hours wandering in the city (we brought strawberries, which grow in another city called Boquete, which is now on my to-visit list), before heading back to Ken's. By the way, while at Ken's, we didn't eat Panamanian, but we did put together pretty delicious meals, a few of which involved copious amounts of peanut butter (on chicken stir fry, in oatmeal, on pancakes...good stuff.) We also made a Shepherd's pie inspired meal which turned out well- yay for cooking by 'making it up as we go along'.
EDIT/ADDITION: On Wednesday morning, we were having oatmeal mixed with all sorts of delicious things for breakfast. At one point, just as I was starting to realize that something wasn't quite right, Cecily comments on "not wanting to alarm anyone" but she felt off, like her inner ear was awry. We soon realized, once we got over the initial confusion of why we seemed to be moving while sitting at the table and why the wall appeared to be shifting a bit, that there was an earthquake- later found to be a 7.6 in Costa Rica. One more life experience to cross off the list for Cecily and me!
Herrera
On Thursday we took leave of Ken and wandered off to visit another volunteer, Miranda, in her more south-central province of Herrera, in the region known as the Azuero. She showed us around her town with its lovely Spanish Colonial architecture, and told us about their festival atmosphere for Carnival, their saint days, etc. We chatted, watched some Doctor Who, and admired her house and community (one of the biggest, I believe.)
.jpg) |
| Her town is famous for, well, everything festival related, including devil masks and floats like this dude. |
Santa Rita
Friday morning brought us to Penonome, my stomping ground, where I showed Cecily around the 2 main streets, the park, mercado (market), where Cecily bought her cutarras- Panamanian sandals. We had lunch with Nate and Julie, the two other volunteers from my group in my corner of Panama, before heading back to Santa Rita, where we "dimos la vuelta", or walked around the loop of my road. We finished at my host family's house for another dinner, before coming back to my house for a final night there. This evening held on of the excitement of dubious value, where we discovered that I have giant (up to a centimeter) ants living in my spare-room door. We spent...I don't know how much time, but quite a bit carrying on an ant-massacre (movement), which culminated in my getting locked in the room, because the knob and lock were loose and bent and generally non-operational. We rescued me by removing the knob completely. Girl power! One of these days I'll replace the door-knob, since I don't know how much of the damage we caused, and how much predated me, but in the meantime, I'm trying to eliminate the giant-disgusting-ant presence in my house. Now I don't have Cecily to help, but I did get a can of bug death to help. They're disgusting, and now I will only live in places with solid wood doors, because it's the only non-solid door in my house. Actually, my bathroom door isn't either- will have to douse it in bugdeath too before the ants try to move in. ICK!
.jpg) |
| At my host family's house, Ana (host mom) and Maryori (host sister) dressed Cecily up in some of Maryori's folclorica pieces (from the traditional Panamanian cultural dances) |
Saturday saw us return to the City, where we stayed at Hostel Urraca, which is a little bit of beach house downtown- a very fun, chill place where volunteers tend to stay in the city. We set out to eat at a German restaurant I'd heard about, and got rather lost, but eventually found it...open only for drinks. But our sorrow was mitigated by the presence of a delicious Indian restaurant exactly across the street. After our 3:30 lunch, we (intentionally, this time) took the long way back through 'Calle Uruguay', home of a lot of clubs/bars/restaurants, and along a European-ish park and walking path along the Pacific.
La Despedida
After a very cold night (where they have A/C in Panama, it's binary), we got up and caught a bus for the airport, where we arrived in good time, though a little close, for Cecily to check in and get through security. I went back to the mall where I bought a Spanish translation of Pride and Prejudice, and made my way back to Santa Rita, to re-enter my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer in rural Panama, where this week, I have preparation for next week and Peace Corps meetings, and next week, we have the final trimester, and I'm starting my community English classes. Woohoo!
I'll get more pictures up in facebook and google albums, but it took long enough for these few pictures, so I'll work on those another night. I'm sure there are things I've forgotten, but here's a lot of it. Ciao!
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