Holy Week

I don't have too much to report, but I'm fighting the urge to be lazy about this blog. I can't believe I've been in site for nearly five weeks already. I'm getting into a good routine, working at the school and spending my free time getting to know people in the community. I'm getting more and more comfortable with Spanish and I'm having fewer and fewer "bad days" with the language. I'm still far from understanding everything everyone says, but I think I'm just more optimistic about it. I'm downright chatty with the people I'm the most comfortable with, which is weird since I spent so long being quiet and only answering questions directed at me. I'm becoming good friends with Isabela, one of the English teachers that I work with. (Even though she teaches English, she doesn't speak it very well, so our conversations are in Spanish.) She's one of the few teachers that actually live in my community (the majority commute from Chorrera, the city that's 45 minutes away) and she's also my age - she's 25. We have a lot in common, get along really well, and in her I've found the only person that I can really tell anything. It's nice to have a friend here. She also helps when I don't understand somebody, she'll say it in Spanish but in a way that I'll understand.

Last weekend I went to visit my friend Emma, another Peace Corps volunteer from my group. She lives near Las Tablas, a really cute city/town on the Azuero Peninsula, about four hours from Panama City. It was great to see her and to see a part of Panama I hadn't seen before. The beach there is absurdly warm and the town is as quaint as a postcard. It was Easter weekend, which is done a little differently here. (I figured all that talk about "Holy Week" couldn't have meant Passover.) They celebrate with processions in the streets. Large floats are covered in flowers, angels, and Jesus on the cross. Crowds of people follow the floats down the streets in total silence. Emma and I watched and joined the procession for a little bit. We prefer to look at things like that as cultural experiences rather than religious ones, seeing as she's a minister's-daughter-turned-adamant-atheist and I'm Jewish. I love experiencing new cultures, even if it does entail following Jesus down the street.

The weekend was great until I tried to get home on Easter Sunday. It was just one of those days. Everyone travels to visit relatives that weekend, and my 3 hour bus ride turned into an 8 hour bus ride due to all the traffic. When I finally got home, I was going to hang out with my family like I usually do, but they were watching Passion of the Christ. Enough said there. So I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water and dropped the enormous glass jug on the floor, breaking it into a million pieces and flooding the kitchen. Those kinds of days the only options are to laugh or to cry. So I laughed, cleaned up the mess, and went to bed early before I could wreak and more havoc.

Pictures of My Community

the center of town:

the lake that is an hour walk away (or ten minute bus ride, when I'm lazy):

the view when I run:

pineapple farm:

me with 4-year-old Yisleidis (my best friend) at the wedding:

the sloth that hangs out in my neighbor's backyard:

Discoveries

I've made a few discoveries in the past few weeks. For instance, one day I discovered that I could understand the lyrics to songs in Spanish. Anywhere you go in my community, there's a radio playing 24/7, and for weeks it was always just background noise to me. But all of a sudden one day the words were no longer gibberish all mushed together but actualy words that made sense to me. I have discovered that I can actually teach, and teach well. And even help Panamanian teachers improve their teaching too, which is the point of my job. I'm discoving that the more time I spend immersing myself in Spanish, the worse my English gets. Which wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that I have to teach it. I actually had to look up the past participle of "drink" the other day. The former grammar snob inside me wanted to cry. Yesterday I discovered that weddings are pretty much the same no matter where in the world you are. Though the Panamanian wedding I attended yesterday was a little heavy on the Jesus stuff, but that might have just seemed like it to me because it was an Evangelical wedding and I'm used to Jewish weddings. The other day I was looking at my leg, wondering why it looked so weird. I've been running nearly every day for the past three weeks. Then it hit me that it was just becoming muscle. And that was the weirdest discovery of all.

First Week In Site

It's official, I'm a Peace Corps VOLUNTEER now, rather than just a trainee! It feels pretty good. We had a swear-in ceremony at the ambassador's house that we all got dressed up for. It was kind of funny looking around at everyone... we all looked so clean! The main rules for volunteers, from what I can tell, whittling it down from an 80-page handbook, are three: 1) don't get pregnant, 2) don't do drugs, and 3) tell Peace Corps where you go when you travel. It's nice to feel like a grown-up again. After swear-in we had a free weekend. Seven of us decided to stay at a hotel in Panama City. I really wanted to get to know the city because my site is only about two hours away. I LOVED the city and I'm glad I ended up so close! One day we took a day trip to a beautiful island nearby (Isla Taboga) and spent the day on the beach which was awesome. I've survived my first week in site. It's a lot of ups and downs but I think I can really do a lot here. I work in the school from 7:30 - 3. I work with three English teachers (two in the morning and one in the afternoon) and the point of my job is to improve their teaching methodologies. Hopefully that will actually happen. I have a lot of work to do. My community is really great and all the people in it have made me feel very welcome. Everywhere I go people invite me in and stuff me with food and are very patient with my limited Spanish. Aside from one of my chickens, who aggressively blocks my path from the shower to the house every day, everyone is really glad I'm here. The kids want extra English classes on Saturdays and the adults want night classes, so I'll be starting those in May. There's a lake about 4 or 5 miles from my site (that's a guesstimate, I actually have no idea), so most afternoons I like to run in that direction and then run/walk/crawl back. No one runs here but it's just one more weird thing the gringa does. The kids think I'm hilarious and when I do workouts in the backyard I make them count for me in English. Speaking of my backyard, it's full of fruit trees - papaya, plaintains, avocado, coconut, bananas... I forget what else. My entire community is surrounded by pineapple farms too, so I get to eat pineapple every day. Yum. Some new Spanish vocab that I've learned since I've gotten to site: scorpion, matches, dizzy, branch, noise, godmother, rocking chair, toy marble, burdened, and five different words for machete... I think that gives a pretty good picture of my site.

A Few Pictures

Sarah and I at the top of our hike in her site

the spider incident while visiting Sarah and Sean

a bunch of us just hanging out in Meteti

we learned bullerengue, a traditional dance of the Darien province, while we were in Meteti

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!

Language Improvement, Crazy Dreams, and Emotional Rollercoasters

We had another language interview yesterday and received our results today... I moved up two levels! I was at the 4th level and now I´m at the 6th! I´m really happy. But I am finding that as my Spanish improves, my English is getting worse and worse. Sometimes I find myself searching for words and I am totally at a loss, unable to express myself in either language. It can be very frustrating.

In other news... only a week until we find out where our site placements are! I´m trying not to think about it too much, because it´s way too exciting and I can´t sleep.

Speaking of sleeping, I am loving our malaria meds. They give me amazing dreams. One night I dreamt that I was a giant who picked up one of my fellow trainees with one hand, threw him across the room, and in midair he turned into spaghetti noodles. Another night I dreamt that I was late for the GRE (GRE? What? I have no plans to take the GRE...) and when I arrived I felt like I had no pants on. So I looked down and my legs were mosquito legs. In another dream, I was taking my language interview while sitting on a horse, only to look down and see that the horse had turned into a stationary bike. That´s the only one that I can actually see some meaning. The others... who knows what they mean.

I´m certainly experiencing the ¨Peace Corps Rollercoaster¨with all of its highs and lows. One day I will be feeling like I totally understand everything that people are saying to me and the next day I won´t understand a single word. Sometimes I´ll experience all of the highs and lows within one day. In the morning I won´t understand anything, but then I´ll come home for lunch and understand every single word of my Panamom´s story about how she killed a snake that was in our latrine... kinda wish I hadn´t understood that story.

I´m also slightly worried about the level of my emotional attachment to a new telenovela that just started called Aurora. My family makes fun of me because I´m so into it. But whatever. It´s awesome. Aurora died 20 years ago, got cryogenically frozen, and is now alive and all her old drama is still there plus all this new drama too. For example, she´s pretending that she is still dead and she´s the daughter of herself, though her real daughter was raised as her sister and now thinks that she´s her aunt. And the guy Aurora was in love with is still in love with her even though he´s married to her best friend, but his son is in love with Aurora too. Awesome, right? I think so.

We have finally gotten some free time every Sunday and it has been amazing. I didn´t know what to do with myself at first, it had been so long since I had a single unstructured minute. I´ve finally started reading a book in English which probably makes my Spanish worse but I don´t care, I need the break sometimes. I´ve also been running every day which I NEVER did at home but it´s pretty much the only time I can be alone here so it´s not hard to motivate myself to go.

Thanks to everyone from home who has been calling! It´s really great to hear from you, especially when I´m riding on the ¨down¨part of the emotional rollercoaster, calls from home really cheer me up!