"I just wanted to make you happy... by becoming a ninja"

The title of this blog post will be explained a little later on.

Firstly, sorry for taking so long to update! Things have been CRAZY here and I have been pretty exhausted and haven't had much computer time. So I will try to give a quick recap of my past two weeks.

A week and a half ago, Tuesday, June 15th, the volunteers arrived in Panama! It was clearly and exciting day because the volunteers are the whole reason that we are here. 6 of the 9 of us went to Panama City to pick them up at the airport. We left pretty early from our city of Penonomé so that we would get to do a little sight-seeing in Panama City before the flight arrived at 230. We didn't have much time, but we did get to see Panamá Vieja, the old, colonial part of Panama City. Compared to the modern city, Panamá Vieja is pretty different. While many of the old colonial buildings have been restored beautifully, there are many historic buildings that are completely falling apart as well, creating an interesting juxtaposition.

So then the volunteers arrived! Which was very exciting but stressful, as 5 people's luggage was lost and the buses arrived late to take the volunteers to Penonomé. But everything ended up going well and we got underway with briefing, our 4-day training for the volunteers before they head out to the communities. We held briefing at a camp about 20 minutes outside of Penonomé - it is an evangelical campsite so there was lots of fun religious propaganda on the walls. Briefing went extremely well; we had planned for it for 2 days straight so it was definitely rewarding to see everything pay off. It was pretty stressful too because we had to observe and interview the volunteers in order to pair them off into partnerships and place them into communities. This process ended in a 6-hour staff meeting (on my 20th birthday, nonetheless!) in order to decide everything. The meeting brought out a lot of tension and strong personalities within our group, but everything ended pretty smoothly without incident. My birthday was as fun as it could have been considering what I was doing, and they bought a cake for me and all of the volunteers that have June birthdays. Briefing ended on Saturday the 19th with the volunteers being driven through a thunderstorm to their communities. Everyone arrived safe and sound so that was good news!

After briefing I had a break for about a day before I had to deal with some sick volunteers (nothing serious, just time consuming). Monday morning I left on "route" - my weekly trip spending a night in each one of my communities. I travel between my communities on buses (called "chivas" or "pick-up" - literally pickup trucks with benches in the back. For three out of my four communities, there is only one bus and driver, so I have begun to make a lot of new friends! Actually some of my favorite time throughout the week were my busrides (and the inevitable waits for the infrequent buses - i had to wait one time for three hours). But every time I had to wait for a bus I made new friends traveling to the same communities. It is so nice to actually see familiar faces around town while waiting for the bus. Apart from the bus rides, my week was both fun and stressful, for various reasons, but certainly a learning experience. I love all of my volunteers and it is great to spend time with them and see them become comfortable in the communities and get better at Spanish.

Probably the funniest part of my week was Wednesday night, which I passed in the community of Paguá. The community does not have electricity, so television and the like are not common. However, since the next day was both the Día de San Juan (some big saint's day in the schools here in Coclé) and also the 80th anniversary of the elementary school in the community, the town brought in a generator, tv, and dvd player, in order to show a movie. Not many people owned dvds (all pirated, of course), so the selection for viewing was pretty sparse. We started off at first watching the movie Norbit, a horrible Eddie Murphy movie made a few years ago. It was in English with Spanish subtitles but the tv was too small for anyone to read them. After about a half hour, we switched to "Revenge of the Eight Samurai", some horrible karate movie from the 80s that was originally in Chinese, dubbed in English, and lacking in Spanish subtitles. It was probably the most ridiculous and cheesy movie that I had ever seen, but the community was completely enthralled, despite the lack of Spanish. The title of this blog entry was one of the more funny quotes from the movie. The evening ended in a parade through the town after dark with tiki torches, and the young kids playing drums and xylophone. It was a fairly bizarre but enjoyable evening.

I got back from route yesterday evening and have been relaxing and filling out paperwork ever since. Today we watched the US-Ghana soccer game (lots of angry yelling at the end!) and had a barbecue for our neighbors and some people from the MINSA, the ministry of health. People showed up verry late (we invited them for 3 and they came at 6, but such is the "hora panameña"), but we had a great time entertaining people and using the grill that came with the house. Tomorrow we are going to the beach for a little relaxation and then on Monday I leave again for route! It is an exhausting but rewarding process. I am really enjoying being here in Panama; even though it is a lot of work i have learned so much, in Spanish and otherwise. I really feel that I can call myself fluent, which is a fun achievement.

Well I think that it is time for bed considering my big week coming up. I will try to update next weekend!