I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer!

After 10 long weeks of training, I am finally officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! In a ceremony at the Canal Museum in Casco Viejo, 37 of the original 42 trainees were sworn in. I can't even begin to express how amazing it feels to be done with training. We left our training site on Tuesday (it was really sad to say goodbye to the kids in my host family) and we've been staying in Cuidad del Saber. It's been great for us all to be together because on Monday we move to our communities and we won't all be together again until February. It's hard to think about because many of these people who I have seen everyday for the past 11 weeks will suddenly be many hours away, spread throughout the country. But, in celebration of our accomplishments and our last night together we went out in Panama City and had a great time. It's now 2 in the morning, we just back, and I am dead tired. our bus leaves at 9 tomorrow morning for the beach (2.5 hours away) and I still need to pack. So instead of write much more, I'm just going to post some pictures. Miss you all! (These photos are all out of order...)




Franco, Ashley, Me, Logan, and Jordan before our swearing in ceremony.













Panama City from the bus on the way to swear-in.












I'll be serving in the province of Veraguas with Andrew, Adam, Shawn, and Ashley














The Boys!!












The girls!!












Panama's bird is the harpy eagle, which is huge and beautiful/scary looking. We got to see one close up and watch him fly. It was pretty cool.












In Santa Clara we hosted a Masquerade Ball for our families before we left. My host sister, Irania, is on the right with the feathers.












This was my bedroom in Santa Clara. I love my mosquito net! It's like a little safe fortress.











To get to NY Bagel Cafe you ask the cab driver for the head of Einstein, literally.











New York Bagel Cafe- Best place on earth after a couple of weeks in rural Panama. It's a lot like a Noah's Bagels with great food, Snapple, comfy couches, wireless internet and, best of all, the owner is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer!















This was my host family in Santa Clara, during my ten weeks of training. I am really going to miss the kids and the mom, who was only 2 years older than me.

I can't believe it's been a month since I last wrote. The time is going by so fast. We just celebrated our two month anniversary in Panama! The last time I wrote we were in the middle of Tech Week, I think. That Thursday we went to beautiful Santa Fe in the mountains in Veraguas. There, we came across our first big spider (other than tarantulas). Logan put his hand up behind her web so you can see how big she is, though his hand is still a little ways back, so she's actually even bigger than that. Totally creeps me out...
Anyway, we came across the spider as we were entering a coffee factory that is part of a highly functioning cooperative that was serving as our motivation for our future work in Panama. Senor Jacinto, holding the coffee bag, is an amazing man who works all through out Panama helping cooperatives to become profitable. The time we spent with him and his co-op was really helpful.

After Tech week we headed out to culture week. We were divided up by our provinces so four other trainees and I headed to southern Veraguas to the small town of Mariato which just happened to be right near the beach.

This was what we had been waiting for. The beach was wonderful and so warm! Freddy, Adam, and I even swam from a good sized fresh water river into the ocean- it was amazing! I did get caught up in a riptide but it all worked out alright. :)

We walked along the beach for awhile and collected some coconuts, which we later cracked open for a snack. I had never had fresh coconut milk before and I have to admit, I wasn't impressed. But the meat inside the coconut is one of the best things I have ever tasted. I could totally be addicted. It can be tricky getting all the meat out though, if you're using a machete, which is the weapon/tool/kitchen cutlery of choice in rural Panama. This is Freddy, working on the coconut. It was sooo good!


Beautiful, right? That's Andrew, taking a picture of, actually I don't know what he was taking a picture of. The photo-op was behind him....

Anyway, after cultural week we went back to our training site for awhile. I can't really remember what we did during that week. To be honest, it is all kind of a blur these days. But eventually the big day came: Site Visit. After a two day conference with our community guides we finally got to see our sites. The whole experience was so overwhelming. There I was, with a man I had just met, in the house of a woman with whom I would be living for three months, speaking and struggling to understand a language that, until that point, I thought I had a good grasp of. It turns out that understanding Spanish spoken by other gringos or Spanish teachers is far easier than understanding it when it is spoken by natives who speak a thousand words a minute, with little pronunciation and a tendency to drop their s's (which are pretty prevalent in Spanish). Imagine that.

So most of my 5 day stay in my community was a combination of me nodding and smiling or saying "what?" after every sentence. Thankfully, they were very patient with me and my community guide dutifully repeated all the important things very slowly and concisely. I swear, one of these days I will stop translating everything into English in my head and actually start thinking in Spanish, but it hasn't happened yet.

It was also a difficult visit because it happened to coincide with my birthday. As most people know I am a bit like an eight year old child when it comes to my birthday- I want everyone to celebrate it, and not just on October 12th. In my world it is a month long event, punctuated by various parties, trips to the beach, and presents. Yes, I recognize how narcissistic and selfish this tradition is, but I accept this about myself (and I'd be happy to make an equally big deal out of your birthday (it's an important day!) if you'd like). :)

Unfortunately, I was not with anyone I knew on my birthday. My friends, who were scattered around the country, all texted me a Happy Birthday, which was really nice and I was able to talk to my parents and my best friend back in the states, but it certainly wasn't the same. I suppose this is part of growing up. Though you better believe that my 29th birthday back in the states in 2010 is going to be one hell of a festival!

My community, by the way, is amazing. (These pictures are of the church near my house). It's pretty wealthy so I'm actually not roughing it like most of the volunteers. While they were having difficulties with intestinal parasites (although I am just getting over Giardia) I was enjoying fresh water and delicious food. Today we all shared our experiences and I think I have the most "ye-ye" site (a Panamanian term for rich). A handful of the volunteers don't have electricity and most use latrines, but my house has a refrigerator and two indoor bathrooms. It's kind of crazy. I talked to the country director today and he said that he had originally been concerned about sending a volunteer to my site because it was so developed and he thought that the volunteer might be disappointed since most expect to live in abject poverty, among the poorest of the country. But I assured him that I am just fine with my situation. While the experience would be drastically different if I had been given a more "typical" Peace Corps experience, the idea that I will be living the next two years comfortably, in a beautiful and friendly community, while becoming fluent in Spanish and working alongside my community members, seems wonderful to me. I wanted to work in a foreign country for two years and that is exactly what I will be doing, while using a flush toilet. It's perfect.

I have so many more pictures to share but none of them are loading. Hopefully I can get them up soon. Next week we'll be staying in Cuidad del Saber again, which has wireless internet, so I'll try again then. Oh, FYI, I become a real Peace Corps Volunteer on next Thursday, October 25th! I am so excited! We also get our first paycheck, which I'm looking forward to. We don't get paid much so I can't really afford to buy anything, but still, paychecks are nice. :) Then my friends and I are heading to Santa Clara, a beach town on the Pacific side of Panama. There are white sand beaches and little cabins that we can stay in. I can hardly wait. These past two months have been crazy and we deserve a little vacation before we report to our sites on Sunday!