Tech Week, Carnaval, and Site Visit

Lots of things to catch up on! First off, all 42 of us went to Meteti, a town in the Darien, the province closest to Colombia, for a week. It was called ¨tech week¨and we all got some experience working with Panamanian teachers who are required to teach English despite the fact that they don't know English themselves! (Imagine someone giving you a German textbook and telling you to teach it...) My first day teaching was probably not the WORST first day a teacher has ever had... but it was probably pretty close. I had first and second graders. I had one kid crying in the corner the entire time (it was his first day of school EVER), one girl leaving her seat to tap me on the shoulder and give me a grape every five minutes, and an incident with a cockroach that made all the girls scream and stand on their seats until I killed it. Great first day, right? I'm using the excuse that it was the first day of the school year and kids are always crazy on the first day of the year... right? The rest of the week went pretty well. Those kids might even remember the word ¨yellow.¨

The bad part about tech week was that I spent the whole week speaking English with the other volunteers, so when we got back to our training community I realized that my Spanish had deteriorated pretty rapidly. So that sucked. I have to avoid English as much as possible.

When we got back we had a four-day weekend for Carnaval. Carnaval is like Mardi Gras times 100 in some parts of the country but since we are still trainees, not sworn in as volunteers yet, we have stricter rules and we weren't allowed to go to the big crazy ones. We had a pretty good one in our training community though. It basically consisted of a cordoned off street full of music, food, and dancing while a big water truck sprayed water on everyone. Also, the scantily- but beautifully-clad queen was paraded through the streets with much fanfare. Good times.

Then we went to Farallon, a town on the coast for a conference. Each of the 42 of us had a counterpart from our schools meet us there and we spent two days talking about Peace Corps and what our roles are going to be in our schools and our communities. Except it didn't last two days because after the earthquake in Japan we had a tsunami warning and had to evacuate the coast a day early! So I got to go on my site visit a day early!

I just spent the last 5 days visiting my site where I will be living for the next two years! It is an awesome town of about 2,600 people about 2 hours by bus from Panama City. I'll be working in a school of about 500 kids from 1st through 9th grade. The 1st through 6th graders go to school from 730 am to 1230 and the 7th through 9th graders go to school from 1230 to 530pm. There are two English teachers in the morning and one in the afternoon. My job is to help the teachers improve their teaching methods and promote a sustainable English program. There is so much interest to learn English in my community, all the adults are already asking me when I'm going to start night classes for them and the kids are all already asking about extra English classes on Saturdays! I'm going to be very busy but I'm really excited that there is so much interest!

One of the rules of Peace Corps is that we have to live with a host family for the first three months in our sites before we can move into a house of our own. Most volunteers split the time between two or three families, but my family wants me for the entire three months. And there's another family who wants me too! Everyone is really really sweet. The family that I just stayed with for five days and that I'll probably end up staying with for the whole three months is a younger couple, Maria and Rogelio, with an 8 year old boy, Fernando, and a 2 year old boy, Dimos. My conditions are pretty much the same as in my training community except that I have a DOOR on my room! And there's an outdoor shower! No buckets involved! Very exciting!

I spent most of the site visit pasearing, going from house to house and introducing myself in my terrible Spanish. The most important part of my job for the first few months is to be visible and to get to know everyone in my community. I can't even count the number of houses I visited in the past five days. It's really frustrating doing everything in Spanish and being the only gringa after spending the past two months with 41 other gringos. Some people I meet tell me how glad they are that I speak so much Spanish while other people I meet tell me my Spanish sucks and that I need to learn more. It's really hard but I'm learning more and more every day. Overall I'm really happy with my decision to join the Peace Corps, even in the difficult moments, because even though it's going to be the hardest thing I've ever done, it's also going to be the best thing I've ever done.

I have been really bad about taking pictures, but I'll try to post a few soon!