Now, I have my official Peace Corps assignment of working with the English Teachers in my schools, my long-awaited and sparsely-attended community classes, a weekly English Practice/swing dance class, and 1 day/week teaching at a second, English-teacher-less Primary school in town. Then there's the drawing, the macrame, the cooking, the crafting (wire things, weavings...)- something for every mood! Perhaps by the end of 2 years, I'll have learned something, like how to draw something that I can stand to look at once it reaches completion.
In the meantime, I thought I'd share my shelf projects. Here is a picture of the first set of shelves I attempted:
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| String and cereal boxes. Structural integrity was lacking, but I still might add some support, or just redo the entire thing. |
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| Wood from my friend Julie, and used real hardware to put it together, and it lasted through the first night! |
You see, despite the double challenge of living in the 21st century of electronic everything, and living in Panama where nobody reads, I still accumulate books. These books have outgrown my livingroom-to-kitchen window that I'd been using as a bookshelf, and so in order to be able to use and part of my table as more than a pile'o'stuff, more storage was essential. Woohoo! Successful project, but I shan't let you see details. Suffice it to say that it broke the screwdriver in my multi-tool thingy :-(, so I had to get a little creative.
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| Doesn't that look nice? If you look carefully, you can see my hammock modifications too! |
Also, yesterday I received this darling invitation from my neighbors, to their Dia de Campesino celebration! One of the few signs of local handicraftness I've seen.
My main Primary school had their Dia del Campesino festivities last Friday (pictures coming soon...when they load!). I got to impress a lot of Panamanians and teach my host family how to make traditional Panamanian decorations- woven 'pencas'- coconut palm fronds! The pencas lined almost all of the doorways, archways, and pillars at school, adorned with oranges, rice stalks, leaves, and other local products.
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| The picture that results from trying to coach a 7 year old girl who was watching me through taking a picture- and she said she couldn't do it! |
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| Most of the woven side of this was my handiwork. Another woman started it, but then went to help with cooking or something...at any rate, it seemed like it was safe to pick up where she left off :-) |
