Things to be Thankful for...

Last week was a crazy week, good and bad. My boss was scheduled to come do a one-year visit with me last Monday but had to cancel because he was sick. Instead I spent the day in my regional capital (Santiago) doing laundry and working on different things in preparation for our Volunteer Advisory Council meeting on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, while I was spending my day in Santiago, some kids broke into my house. I came back that night and noticed that some things weren't where I had left them. Not long after that I realized stuff was missing. Most of the things were unnecessary conveniences, like a pair of Serengeti sunglasses that my parents got me a few years ago and a gameboy that my little brother gave me for the long bus rides I seem to always be on. It really sucks to lose them, but I'll survive.

The most frustrating things that I lost, though, were my camera, my iPod, and my contact lenses. My friend Pete and I are the photographers of our group- we always have our cameras with us. The most annoying thing is that my camera was 3 years old and still worked awesome. It had scratches and dings but the photos it took were great. It's such a waste of money to have to replace it. Especially since I was hoping instead to replace my iPod, which was 5 years old and didn't hold a charge anymore. The thieves will be terribly disappointed with it. And the contact lenses- well that's just obnoxious. Contacts have no value to anyone other than their owner. I don't have the money to replace them because that would mean seeing an eye doctor, which I also can't afford. And the thieves won't even get anything for them. So frustrating.

All of the windows on my house have bars, as well as the kitchen door. The front door doesn't but it wouldn't be easy to get through. The kids came in through a window in the attached room on the side of my house that I don't have access to. They broke down the connecting door once inside. My landlord has fixed the door, reinforcing it, and will be putting bars on the rest of the windows. I had felt so secure in my house. I suppose I still feel secure but this is the first time I've ever had my home here or in the states broken into and now I understand what people mean by feeling violated. They went through every drawer and broke things and they stole my friend Shawn's ring which has serious sentimental value.

But there is a lot to be thankful for. I wasn't home at the time, which could have been bad. Nobody was hurt and everything but the ring is replaceable. All of the pictures that I had taken had just been uploaded onto my computer, so I didn't lose any photos. And, the biggest thing of all, they didn't take my laptop. It was sitting in the open and they didn't take it. I have no idea why.

Right around the same time that I was dealing with my mini-crisis here there was a real-life crisis going on in western Panama. I hear it's been on international news. There has been a serious storm hovering over the country, dumping buckets and buckets of water everywhere. Rivers have flooded many communities in the Bocas del Toro region and so far 12 people have died. Our volunteers stationed in the area have been evacuated (some of them airlifted) and have spent the past few days working on relief efforts with local government agencies.

The rest of us have been on alert status, but a little over a third of the volunteers in Panama were still able to make it the mountains of El Valle de Antón for Thanksgiving. We rented out a hotel/resort, which was pretty amazing. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures (I miss my camera so much!). Our thoughts are obviously with all of the volunteers and their communities up in Bocas and Chiriqui provinces, and those in Colón, who have been evacuated to Panama City until the flood waters recede.

On another note, here are some pictures from Halloween and a recent parade in my community:Halloween in Panama City- Captain was a crazed soccer fan, I was a sad clown, and Dennis was a pirate.José Duarte is my community counterpart. He is one of my favorite Panamanians. He loves his country and helps me with anything and everything I could need in Atalaya. Normally he wears Addidas track pants and a t-shirt but for a recent EcoClub fair he dressed in traditional Panamanian clothes.November is the month of parades in Panama. Their independence from Spain, Columbia, flag day, and other holidays are all celebrated this month. The kids in the marching bands have been practicing nonstop for the last three months in preparation.
Atalaya is the home of Jesús de Nazareno whose robe is purple. The church is painted lilac and these girls represent the town. They had a dance that they did in sync with the marching band.Matt and Lisa are my two closest volunteers. They came to watch the parade and go to the fair with me. At the fair there were a lot of traditional dances performed. These little kids were absolutely adorable- I got a million photos of the little boy in front. The elaborate, colorful dresses and hair decorations are my favorite type of traditional Panamanian clothes. The skirts (which you can't see) are beautiful and called polleras. The tops with the little poofs are called tembleques (I'm not sure on the spelling).

So that's it for photos and everything. Thanks, as always for reading. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. There is certainly a lot to be thankful for, especially Franco. Happy Holidays!

Beaches, Bichos (Bugs), and Birthdays

Last Sunday was my birthday. I am like a small child when it comes to my birthday. I always have been and I imagine I always will be. Thankfully, my friends and family humor me and my narcissism during this important holiday that usually goes beyond just one day of Emily-centric living and becomes a month long event. Sadly, last year my birthday fell on the first day that I was in my new community, and was kind of lonely. But this year I spent my birthday at the beach with a few close friends, swimming in the warm waves, playing poker, and swatting mosquitoes. Afterwards we went to David, saw Tropic Thunder (oh my Ted, hilarious), and lost money at the casino. It was pretty perfect.
When I got back to my community my host family threw me a mini-party. My host mom and host sister came over with a slew of kids in tow. They brought me a cake and sang Happy Birthday to me in English (which is pronounced Appy Bairf day) and in Spanish. We didn't have candles so they put matches on the cake that 5 year old Yosuet kept blowing out.
Thankfully I have a lot of crayons to keep the kids entertained when they come over. They hung out on the floor of my living room drawing pictures for my walls. Clockwise from the girl in pink pants: Yurielis, Yalineth, Gisel, and Yosuet.
My good friend Liz, who lives in my community, also came by with some home made Sangria. She made it from Clos (a boxed wine here that I am not ashamed to admit I rather enjoy), pineapples, apples, and grapes. It was delicious!

A couple of weeks before my birthday I went up into the Comarca Ngäbe Bugle to visit my friend Dennis in his community. About a month earlier the two rivers that converge in his backyard, the Soloy and the Fonseca, flooded, killing 6 and leaving many homeless. Dennis took me on a tour of the community and showed me some of the damage. This bridge crosses the Fonseca River, which was almost as high as the bridge during the flood, and is the only way to get to the many small communities that head up towards the mountains. In some spots it was hard to imagine the before. I would be looking out at a big open space and he would tell me about all of the houses that were there only a few weeks earlier. Two Peace Corps volunteers, a married couple, lived about a forty minute walk down the river and their house, as well as those of almost their entire community, were washed downstream. This used to be a branch of the Soloy River but, as you can see, it is nothing but debris now. Dennis was fortunate. His house is up on stilts and wasn't damaged by the floods. This is the inside of his house. It is tiny, but somehow perfect. It is just one small room that has a bed on the floor, a counter with a camping stove on it (his water source is about half a block away) and a table with two chairs. He uses a composting latrine that he built with a few other volunteers recently, which is just past the water spigot a short walk away- although not a fun walk in the rain/mud, or if you have those ever present stomach problems that come from living in an area without clean water.

It was really fun to get a chance to see Dennis' version of life in the Peace Corps. I admit to being a little jealous of his site. I love my community, Atalaya, but it is a lot more developed than I was expecting for my two years of service. Sometimes it doesn't feel like I should really be able to call myself a Peace Corps volunteer. So I take every opportunity that I can to go see other communities and get a feel for life on the other side.

One of the greatest things about the Peace Corps is the ability to really get to know the country. While I spend the majority of my time in my site, I really enjoy visiting my friends and helping with projects in their communities. But my focus in the coming months is definitely going to be on Atalaya. I'm about to start teaching more in the schools and I might start up a newspaper project with my Ecoclub. The kids will be responsible for doing interviews and writing articles and then we will sell each paper for around 15 cents each and use the profits to travel to other communities and spread the word about environmental health.

I'm also going to start helping my community look for ways to raise money so they can finish their long ago abandoned Casa Comunal (Community Center), which they hope to use for social gatherings, pageants, dance lessons, etc. And there are a group of men and women who do a variety of crafts including woodworking and card making that are hoping to form an official group of some sort, though they aren't sold on the idea of a cooperative. So, I will definitely be keeping busy in the coming months, and hoping to help in some way.

And, as always, my door is open. I now have two (2!) guest beds so come on down. So far I have had 7 visitors but I don't have anybody who has signed on to come down from here on out. I can't have visitors in my last 3 months so you have until July 15 to get down here! :) And hopefully by the time you get here I will have fixed my damn termite problem. The stupid little beasts are eating all my doors!

My house itself is made of concrete but the door frames and doors are wood. The annoying thing is not just that they are there but that since they can't tunnel through concrete walls they make their little trails in plain site, so I can't pretend they don't exist. It's obnoxious to see hundreds and hundreds of termites marching up and down your walls and be powerless to stop them. Oh, don't get me wrong, I try. I have gone through many a can of raid but they don't care. The second they plummet to their deaths a hundred more poke their heads out of the ceiling and pick up the path again. I hear you have to kill the queen. How in Frank's name do you find the queen? My neighbor tells me she lives in the ground out by this old tree in my yard. I have this vision of this giant 5 foot termite snuggled up in the roots of the tree, surrounded by her thousands of little drones. I creep myself out.

Either way, I've told my landlord and I'm praying she fixes it before the termites find my bed or start eating my closet. I'm okay with the thousands of ants, the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of daddy long legs spiders, and the plethora (good word, right?) of cockroaches. But I do not like termites in my clothes.

So yeah, I'll work on getting that fixed and you work on coming down to visit! :)

Photos

It's been awhile since my last post but I don't have a lot of time so this one is going to be mostly photos (a crowd favorite) with brief explanations. Enjoy!

My friend Deb has a Girl Scouts troupe with an indigenous tribe in Chagras National Park, near Panama City, about five hours from where I live. We decided to have an AIDS awareness training as an excuse to bring our two troupes together, which turned into an excellent cross cultural experience. Deb's girls are the ones standing, in traditional Embera skirts and my girls are the ones sitting down, in traditional Panamanian skirts.

A group of us had to go to Panama City for random reasons (including seeing the new Batman movie in English, only offered in the capital) and went out to dinner at an all you can eat Italian place. From back left to front right: Jake (chewing on Jen's ear), Jen, Danny, Me, Dennis (on the left), Deb, Lydia, and the Captain.

And then the long awaited arrival of Aunt Jenny and Cousin Maddie. We had daily morning photos, as well as a word and a phrase of the day. The first few days they got their words down great but towards the end of the week enthusiasm waned...

Jenny rented a car, which was the most wonderful thing ever. I didn't realize how much I loved Panama until I didn't have to ride crowded, smelly, hot buses everywhere I went. You can't come to Panama without going to the canal so we swung by the Miraflores Locks and watched a ship go through. It would probably have been more exciting if we didn't have locks where we come from, too.

We stayed at an awesome hotel that was slightly less awesome because the water park was closed down during the week. There were monkeys in cages and this crazy bird. The monkeys weren't so big on having their photos taken but this guy was all about posing. He followed us everywhere.

While staying in the city we went to my friend Deb's site, my favorite place to take visitors because it's so cool to see an indigenous site. Maddie, Jenny, and I rode in a motorized dug out canoe. I feel terrible but I don't remember this guy's name. He was our guide, and Jenny's Panamanian boyfriend. It's a shame you can't see how short his beaded skirt was- he has great legs. There's a plant in the jungle that has a fruit filled with a clear liquid that becomes dark navy blue after it touches your skin. The dye lasts between one and two weeks so we got a couple of tattoos while we were there. As you can tell from Maddie's face, she felt it made her a badass. After Deb's site we went on a really long but joyous-singing-filled car ride to the Caribbean coast, getting there just in time to see the sun set. Maddie, squeezing the sun.

Maddie's boyfriend, Fran (pronounced Frahn). They left a few weeks ago but he still asks about her. Poor kid is heartbroken. The cutest thing is that neither one ever had any idea what the other one was saying.

We spent a couple of days at my house in Atalaya, enjoying the hammocks on my front porch and a couple of aguaceros (crazy beautiful rain storms).Jenny decided to take advantage of the rain one day and clean our filthy car. The rain just happened to coincide with a terrific thunder and lightening storm and Jenny nearly gave my neighbor a heart attack, she was so scared for Jenny's safety. She later lectured Jenny in Spanish, which I dutifully translated while simultaneously promising my neighbor that Jenny would never do anything like that ever again. One day I dragged Maddie and Jenny with me to La Mesa, the community of my friend, the Captain. A group of volunteers and I were doing an AIDS/HIV awareness day for 120 locals. In the photo are Shawn, Dennis, Me, and Deb. I'm glad Maddie and Jenny got a chance to meet all of my friends and they were really good sports to sit there during our all-Spanish presentations and amuse themselves. The next day we went to the beach but I don't have those pictures- they are on Jenny's camera. After Maddie and Jenny left Panama I had two more visitors. Every year there are 2 new groups of volunteers that arrive in Panama. The first group arrives in April, the second in August. During the second week of their training, each volunteer goes and stays for 4 days with a current volunteer. My aspirantes (trainees) were Piper and Monica. It was a blast having them stay with me. We ate cheesecake, saw a movie, played cards, and did a little work on the side.Last week there was a Volunteer Advisory Committee (VAC) meeting in the city of David. I am the treasure of VAC. There are 4 of us on the VAC board (including the Captain and my best friend CoCo) and we are the voice of the 160 volunteers currently serving in Panama. A lot of volunteers came out for the meeting and we had a really great time with Gringo Dance Parties, great food, a basketball game, and bowling. Above: Whitney, Jen, Joanna, and me. This is my living room wall. It is where I put all of the cards that have been sent to me. (My birthday is October 12, hint, hint). Every time I get a new card or photo I put it on the wall and the people in my community come look and ask me questions. My uncle Jeff sent me a photo of his house covered in snow last year. They love that photo. This guy is awesome. You can't tell but he is actually really big, at least 4 inches long. This might be one of my favorite photos I've taken here.

So that's it for the photos. Hopefully I'll get more up soon and get a chance to talk more about the stuff that's going on down here. I have really been loving this crazy Peace Corps life lately! :)