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.