Panamanian Spanish and Cultural Quirks

I can't believe how quickly time is passing! I've been in site for two and a half months now. We've finished the first trimester of school. I'm proud of the things that I have accomplished in that short amount of time. The primary job in every Peace Corps Volunteer's first three months in site is to integrate into the community. I feel like I am doing very well on that front. I'm lucky to be working in the school, such a central institution in the community, so that everyone has known me from day one. I'm still trying to learn all my students' names - I have almost 500! - but every time I step out my door I hear a dozen shouts of "Abigail!" or "Teacher!" My community is a lot bigger than it seemed at first. (It's about 2,700 people.) There is one particular family that I spend a lot of time with. I hang out at their house almost every day. They're really great people, very patient with my Spanish, and very social and talkative which rubs off on me and gets me talking a lot. Plus they love to feed me.

I've had good days and bad days with my Spanish. One day I'll be chatting really quickly, throwing out verbs in the past subjunctive without even realizing it, and the next day I won't be able to say really simple sentences in the simple past tense. It was frustrating for awhile but lately I've been having more and more good days and fewer bad ones. I get laughed at sometimes, like when I mix up the word for avocado (aguacate) and downpour (aguacero). "I love downpours! Downpours are my favorite!" Wait... that's not what I meant...

For some reason I also consistently mix up the words for broom (escoba) and scarf (bufanda), which aren't even alike. I get a lot of questions about what the U.S. is like and I've repeatedly told people, "It gets so cold in the winter, we wear heavy jackets and hats and brooms!" I just tell myself, if you're not willing to make a fool of yourself, you don't deserve to learn another language.

Panamanian Spanish is certainly different than what we learn at home, though. For instance, the concept of "now." The word "now" actually means "later" here. And "more now" means "even later." And "very now" means "soon." It's actually equivalent to the South African concept of "now," which is oddly comforting. (Yes, I still miss South Africa.)

But some things about this language really bother me. Like how there are five different words for machete and four different words for glasses, all of which are completely interchangeable, yet there is only one word for both crayon and colored pencil, one word for both butterfly and moth, one word for both waiting and hoping, and, worst of all, only one word for both cookie and cracker. COOKIES AND CRACKERS ARE NOT THE SAME THING.

Panamanian culture is a funny thing. I'm still trying to figure it out. For instance, directions. Never ask a Panamanian where anything is. You'll get a one word answer, "There," with a head bob in a very general direction. Occasionally you'll get "Up" as an answer instead, also with the head bob, which seems slightly more descriptive but could mean anything from "up the hill" (which hill, you'll never know), or "up the street," or it could refer to a neighboring town that's at a slightly higher elevation. Good luck.

Other than exact locations of things, Panamanians have no problem stating the truth, especially when describing people physically. They are just as likely to say "the fat woman" as they are to say "the blonde woman." Physical characteristics are simply facts. It took me awhile to get used to, but now I like it. It's the truth.

Along with this blunt honesty comes a love for stating the obvious. When you walk down the street and run into somebody, the typical greeting is a one-word question: "Walking?" If you're walking up a hill, it's "Going up?" Walking down a hill - "Going down?" If you show up at somebody's house, it's "Visiting?" When I run, I get a lot of "Running?" and "Exercising?" Um, duh.

I was really surprised to learn people's names here. Keeping in mind the pronunciation of hte letter "y," which is something of a cross between a "j" and a "d" and a "z," here are some examples of names of my students: Yorjany, Yuliecer, Yili, Yolanis, Nayelis, Ileyki, Yeiska, Maryeixis, Yanelis, Yarelis, Yanarelis, Eleuteria, Deyanira, Yaremis, Nayari, Yisleidys, Yohanis, and Yamileth. Taking attendance is hilarious, though I'm getting better. No wonder I'm having trouble learning 500 students' names.

If you know me, you probably know that I have a bit of a clumsy streak. Well, here in Panama, I have an excuse. Every time I break a dish or run into the doorway or trip over nothing or find an unexplained bruise on my body, it's not my fault. It's the witches (brujas). The brujas get the blame for everything, which is fine by me. Though I have replaced all of the things that I've broken in my host family's house (mostly dishes and bowls), while they just laugh and say "Abby, Abby, Abby..." while shaking their heads. They really are exceptional people to put up with me for three months.

New Address!

Hey everyone, the office has moved, so I have a new address if you want to send me letters or packages! Send things to:

Cuerpo de Paz
Abigail Fried
Edificio 204, 3er Piso
Calle Victor Iglesias
Ciudad del Saber, Clayton
Corregimiento de Ancon
Panama, Republica de Panama

Make sure Cuerpo de Paz is the first line and my name is the second. Also, there is an accent on the o in Ancon, the last a in Panama, and the u in Republica.

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