Busy, Busy, Busy

I feel like I've been going nonstop for over a month now. It feels like there is always something going on or something about to happen that I have to prepare for. Last month went by crazy fast- it's hard to believe I've been here almost 10 months now.

A couple of weeks ago I went out with all the kids (about 300 of them) from the elementary school and we planted trees. It was crazy and frustrating, but it was also a lot of fun.

We divided into groups of about 20 kids per teacher and then took a bus to a predetermined area, where the kids were set loose with a few shovels and boxes full of plants. In all honesty, I think the machete happy boys killed more trees than we actually planted, but it's the thought that counts? 

At one point the kids headed off into the hills and started planting random plants in random places (abandoning our mission to stop soil erosion near the river) but the view up on the hillside was pretty amazing. This photo is what most of the area I 

live in looks like.

The following weekend I had a mini- Project Management and Leadership workshop with my friend CoCo for my youth cooperative. We had around 40 15-18 year old boys attend and it was a lot of fun. We taught them about public speaking, working in teams, planning for the future, and self-esteem.

We played a couple of games, including one about filling buckets. In the Panamanian school system there is not typically very much encouragement or positive reinfo

rcement. CoCo and I passed out slips of paper and tape and asked that the boys right nice things and tape them to each other's backs. At first they were too cool for it but soon everyone had pieces of paper all over them. Even CoCo and I got a good amount of compliments. One of the boys told me he liked my sandals.

We also played an ice-breaker called Hombre, Rifle, Tigre (Man, Rifle, Tiger). It is exactly like rock, paper, scissors, except that each of the two groups takes the position of the character they've chosen on the count of three. Man wields Rifle, Rifle kills Tiger, and Tiger kills man. The funny thing is that, without fail, Panamanians always choose Rifle so it is always a draw when two groups of Panamanians play each other. CoCo then inserted herself into one of the groups and after a lot of persuasion, convinced her group to be Hombre and they ended up winning.

I think overall, the mini-PML went really well. This is me and some of the boys in my co-op. They are a really great group. The two kids on the right are from CoCo's youth co-op, about 2 hours from my site. They came down to help us out and hopefully we'll be able to go up to their co-op and do a mini-PML for them in a couple of months.

Right after the PML ended, I headed to Costa Rica for my flight to Honduras (the Costa Rican airport is hundreds of dollars cheaper than the Panama airport). But in order to get to Costa Rica Dennis and I had to spend 9 hours on a bus, which was about as fun as it sounds.

Our first stop once we got to Honduras were the Mayan ruins in Copán. I'd never been to anything like it before and it was pretty awesome to wander around and imagine what it had been like so many years earlier. I took a ton of pictures but these two give you a pretty good idea of what it was like.










There were tons of these beautiful rainbow colored parrots all over the place. They were really loud, although they weren't saying anything that I could understand.



After Copán we headed to La Ceiba and then onto the Bay Island of Utila. The Bay Islands are home to the second largest coral reef in the world (the Great Barrier Reef in Australia being the largest) and have world famous scuba diving. Because there are so many dive shops on the islands Utila is also one of the cheapest places to dive. I am not a certified diver but I was able to scuba dive for the very first time for only $60! It was beautiful and addicting and everything you can imagine. We swam with squid (just little ones) and there was so much purple on the reef- it was amazing. I didn't have an underwater camera so I don't have any pictures but this is the view from the hallway of our hotel room.

I only had a week in Honduras and then I flew back to Costa Rica. The photo from the airplane is of the huge lake in Nicaragua, I think.

So, now I'm back in Panama, which is kind of a relief, in some ways. The trip was incredible but also stressful because of all the traveling and how much everything cost. I've gotten used to Panama and how inexpensive everything is, so it's nice to be back. I've got less than two weeks before I leave for the U.S, though, which I'm sure will give me even more sticker shock. But I can't wait to visit and see everyone again, although 12 days is already feeling like too little time stateside. Oh well, I'll take what I can get!