tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84111394933006740562024-02-21T22:33:06.773-08:00It's Panamaniacal!A Woman, A Plan, A Canal...PanamowaPanamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-50849213557206753582011-09-27T04:23:00.000-07:002011-09-27T04:24:41.281-07:00<style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Times New Roman"; panose-1:0 2 2 6 3 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:0 2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:50331648 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Georgia;} table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-parent:""; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times">September 27, 2011<br /><br />Snippets of Life:<br /><br />The blow-by-blow accounts are just going to bore everyone, myself<br />included. So instead, here’s a couple of short stories about life in<br />the past few months. The biggest event was my family’s visit in July.<br />My mom and dad wrote an excellent letter about it, which I will link<br />to this at a later (but not much later!) date. They do a wonderful<br />and thorough job, so I won’t repeat it, except to say we had a<br />wonderful time and it was really nice for me to have my two worlds<br />meet. I also had an excellent visit from Kim, a dear friend from<br />college, and she was a great sport and hung out with me in candelilla<br />for a few weeks, bird watching, helping with the biodigestor, and<br />playing the guitar.<br /><br />“English Event”/Saga of the bunny-Fairies: This “english event” took<br />place in the Santa Fe gymnasium, with area schools participating. The<br />first several acts, staged on a bedazzled high school musical<br />recreation backdrop, were absurdly inappropriate dances performed by<br />gangs of scantily-clad middle school girls executing dance moves that<br />I definitely didn’t know about in 7th grade. You could barely hear the<br />music over the riotous cheering of the proud parents in the stands.<br /><br />Despite the late hour, a niggling feeling in the back of our minds<br />told us we should stay long enough to watch the adorable 3rd graders<br />who were dressed as blue and pink bunny-fairies. There were three<br />little boys dressed in black cloaks and masks (magicians?) and maybe<br />about 8 bunny fairies. As the music started a magician grabbed one<br />bunny fairy by the hair and dragged her into the middle of the floor.<br />He yelled at her, and made her cry. At this point I said, “oh my<br />god, he’s making the bunny fairy cry!” Little did I know her tragic<br />fate.<br /><br />Next he started pretending to savagely beat the bunny fairy as she<br />late prostrate on the ground. At the point I said, “oh my god, he’s<br />beating up the bunny fairy!” and I composed A haiku. Which I forgot<br />in the tumult of what followed: the magician grabbed the bunny fairy<br />off the floor, pulled her head up by her hair, produced a fake<br />machete, and slit her throat. She crumpled to the ground in a heap of<br />pink glittery wings, disheveled bunny ears, and fake tears. Then the<br />three magicians proceeded to take each bunny fairy, one by one, from<br />their cowering corner and methodically beat them, slit their throats,<br />and leave them in a heap. When they got down to the last bunny fairy,<br />SHE pulled out a fake machete too, and did battle with the evil<br />magicians. But the magicians slit her throat anyway. Then, as all<br />the bunny fairies lay in their mass grave, a bunny-fairy-angel<br />arrived. She ALSO had a fake machete, which she used to raise the<br />bunny fairies from the dead. Then she battled the magicians. After<br />a dramatic sparring and chase scene she stabbed them, slit their<br />throats, and gave their crumpled bodies a final vindictive kick as she<br />flounced away with her posse of zombie bunny fairies.<br /><br />The crowd erupted. I was in hysterics. We had to rush out before I<br />peed on the bleachers (though I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first time<br />those bleachers got peed on, judging from the smell). I have never<br />seen anything so simultaneously hilarious and disturbing in my life.<br /><br />The only unifying theme among the various acts (and the only<br />indication besides the high School Musical set that the event was<br />English-related) was that all the songs were in English. We were<br />supposed to be judges for this, but thankfully we got out of that one<br />and it was judged by an assortment of friendly neighborhood<br />Frontier-Patrol Police Officers.<br /><br />I try to Buy New Glasses:<br />I was recently thwarted in an attempt to purchase new glasses. The<br />incredulous doctors and salesgirls at Optica Lopez, no doubt trying to<br />rescue me from social suicide, staunchly refused to sell my chosen<br />frames. They insisted that the glasses would touch my face, thereby<br />giving me an allergic reaction. They finely, begrudgingly, agreed to<br />sell me just the frames, but insisted on issuing a receipt that<br />states, “SHE WANTS TO BUY JUST THE FRAMES, EVEN THOUGH WE ADVISED HER<br />THAT THEY DO NOT SUIT HER WELL, UNDER HER OWN RESPONSIBILITY.” Emma’s<br />response: “you’re so fashionable that even fashion won’t take your<br />money.” So I bought the frames, and took them next door to the other<br />optometrist, who happily agreed to fill the frames with my<br />prescription without imparting fashion advice of any sort. And now I<br />am the proud owner of slightly-funky, unpanamanian glasses.<br />Mejorana<br /><br />I just got back from a trip to a folkmusic Festival in Guararé in the<br />Azuero peninsula. There were lots of traditional music and dance and<br />fancy outfits. My favorite dance was a bunch of colorful dwarf dolls<br />who had fits on stage. We stayed on the beach and had a fun time<br />playing bananagrams and inventing. There was a frog named Don Baño<br />and a crab named Derecho (because he always scuttled to the right)<br />living in the bathroom. There was a big parade with intricate floats,<br />and lots of people dancing and singing in the street including a bunch<br />who had dolls heads hung all over their elaborate raggedy costumes.<br />There was an accordian competition, some great panamanian style<br />fiddle, and my favorite, a toothless old man who rocked the harmonica<br />hardcore. It was a lot of fun to go to such a cultural event, since<br />people in the Darien don’t really do the traditional festivals.<br /><br />So those are some highlights of my recent life. And now I have to<br />finish up glusing the sequins on Hannah’s new Security Warden Hat.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"> </p>Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-29830286733461019262011-07-02T09:38:00.000-07:002011-07-02T09:39:17.217-07:00<div> </div> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">So now i have a computer thanks to the efforts of my parents and Cassidy, and so it will be easier to keep this baby updated for you lovely and dedicated folks at home.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I have now been in site for a year, and in Panama for nearly a year and a quarter.<span style=""> </span>I can't believe how fast time has flown, and now instead of being newbies us Group 65ers are Old Fogies, with three more recent groups subject to our dubious advice and only group 64 and a few straggling 63ers to look up to.<span style=""> </span>Most of us have now embraced tacky Panamanian fashion involving neon, spandex and feathers as well as Panamanian expressions and redneck accents (people in the city sometimes ask me where the hell I learned spanish...).<span style=""> </span></span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Life in Candelilla continues to be rewarding yet challenging, as i suppose most Peace Corps experiences are.<span style=""> </span>Tasty has several new compatriots, an aspiring rooster named Sancocho (Panama's national soup) as well as a new little bugger named Don Juan.<span style=""> </span>Tasty has gone ferrel, but Sancocho is a very dedicated chicken.<span style=""> </span>He follows me everywhere I go including the latrine, and sometimes I see him observing me through the slats in the walls of my kitchen and bedroom.<span style=""> </span>He broke a leg, but it has healed with the help of a splint i fashioned from a stick and some jungle vines.<span style=""> </span>Two weeks ago, when Don Juan arrived in the Barrio de Molly, Sancocho was increadibly jealous and indignant, guarding me ferociously against the advances of this new and suspicious character.<span style=""> </span>After a few days they established an accord, and now they snuggle together every night in my rancho.<span style=""> </span>Another recent addition to Molly's Marvelous Menagerie is Wilbur, my horse.<span style=""> </span>He is well trained and sturdy and together we embark on many adventures.<span style=""> </span>Another domestic addition has been my garden.<span style=""> </span>After several failed attempts at growing flowers I have had some success getting some cooking herbs, squash, peanuts, pineapples, ginger and lemongrass going.<span style=""> </span>However the things I plant are consistently endangered by rampaging cows, a group of which trampled my lawn into a mud pit, ripped my clothing off the line and destroyed it, knocked over everything, managed to smear mud and excrement all over the maps tacked to the outside wall of my house, and left me a large and partially hardened present smack dab in the middle of my porch.<span style=""> </span>It's given me a new appreciation for the pigs.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Recent work has mostly been focused on a biodigestor I've been building with a community member.<span style=""> </span>It is a pilot project, and we are using pig manure to feed the biodigestor, which creates gas with which you can cook and hopefully run a mantle lantern.<span style=""> </span>There have been so many complications and set backs that now I just find it funny because it's no increadible that things can be so difficult.<span style=""> </span>Still, it moves along and it will work out in the end.<span style=""> </span>I also spent a great deal of time getting the Panamanian equivalent of the EPA to give us some coffee seeds to reforest some pasture land.<span style=""> </span>After 2 long months of deliberations and endless inneffective meetings and letters of request they told me that while they couldn't get me any seeds they would love to take me out to dinner, or maybe one of my gringa friends.<span style=""> </span>Sigh.<span style=""> </span>We have also been planting a lot of rice and root vegetables and corn, though the rats have eaten a good portion of what we've planted.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I have had some excellent collaborations with other volunteers.<span style=""> </span>In April right after PML (mroe to follow) my friends Elsie and Andy came to visit.<span style=""> </span>Andy works with reforestation and Elsie with cacao, so we had a presentation about reforestation and then about planting, harvesting and processing cacao.<span style=""> </span>Elsie brought cacao seeds and we planted the seeds with teh community and distributed them.<span style=""> </span>We also had some hot chocolate.<span style=""> </span>People have been really excited about their cacao trees and give me weekly updates on their progress.<span style=""> </span>Liz also came up to do an english workshop, which the kids in the shcool really enjoyed.<span style=""> </span>I also had a new trainee come visit me, just as I went to visit an established volutneer in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1309624732_1">Chiriqui</span> when I was in training.<span style=""> </span>We had a great time (she helped me with my garden!) and now she is in Canglon, Carmen's old site.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Back to PML - stands for Project Management and Leadership.<span style=""> </span>This is a conference about organization, management and leadership that we attend with a counterpart from our communities.<span style=""> </span>Of course my counterpart backed out the morning we were supposed to leave.<span style=""> </span>After spending the day tromping from one far flung end of Candelilla to the other, I found a replacement in the 19-yr-old son of a neighbor.<span style=""> </span>He nearly didn't come through either (as we were leaving his parents said he couldn't go..) but I frightened them with my near-hysteria and he came after all.<span style=""> </span>I spent the evening in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1309624732_2">Santa Fe</span> watching television shows about obscenely obese British teenagers and shoving my face full of foil-wrapped chocolates in an attempt to feel better about my life.<span style=""> </span>Javier, my newly recruited counterpart, turned out to be a source of vast entertainment for everyone at PML.<span style=""> </span>During introductions we each saaid something about where we were from.<span style=""> </span>Other people's counterparts said things like, "we produce lots of chocolate!" or "there are beautiful flowers in our town!"<span style=""> </span>Javier said, "I am from the Darien.<span style=""> </span>I like cows and women."<span style=""> </span>He spent the sessions talking to his girlfriend on his phone, humming out loud, and periodically retreating to the back of the room to do push-ups.<span style=""> </span>One day at lunch he jumped in the fish pond and tried to catch the coi...ah well.<span style=""> </span>It makes a good story in retrospect.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">I also recently went to El Valle to visit Cassidy and Yorhani who work at an orchid farm there.<span style=""> </span>It was a beautiful area, very toursity but deliciously cool.<span style=""> </span>We went on a hike in teh cloud forest, visited teh market and the orchid farm, made mango jam, had ping pong tournaments, and generally just had a lovely visit.<span style=""> </span>They will hopefully come visit me here in a few weeks.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Another exciting recent event was a regional meeting slash goat roast.<span style=""> </span>This time the goat was named sprinkles.<span style=""> </span>I once again drew #2 for goat-killing duty, back-up for Omar.<span style=""> </span>As I went for the knife however, I left omar holding him down only half-heartedly.<span style=""> </span>Sprinkles leapt up and took off running, escaping through the barrios of Meteti and into the pasturelands outside town.<span style=""> </span>A herd of gringos took off in hot pursuit, though Damian and I stayed behind believing the cause to be futile.<span style=""> </span>An hour and a half later, however, they returned with a trussed-up sprinkles in the back of the frontier-police's car.<span style=""> </span>Casey, a new volunteer, had leapt out of a taxi as she arrived in town and run sprinkles down in the pasture.<span style=""> </span>Omar was fired from goat killing duty.<span style=""> </span>Sprinkles was turned into a delicious Thai curry, a delicious Indian curry, and some soup which we accompanied with homemade fermented pineapple "chicha fuerte" and fermented ginger "chicha fuerte".<span style=""> </span>Other provinces have their regional meetings at hotels or in the office in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1309624732_3">Panama city</span>, but that is not how we roll in the Dirty D.<span style=""> </span></span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">The asSASins (Group 65 SAS) continue to dwindle: from our original 18 we are left with 11.<span style=""> </span>Most recently we lost Susanne, who went home for family reasons, and my dear friend the beloved Tim van den Boom, who had to leave due to political upheaval involving mining in the indigenous area known as the Comarca Ngobe Bugle.<span style=""> </span>Other volunteers have also been affected by this upheaval, and we are really hoping we don't lose any more.<span style=""> </span>I found a journal entry from when I first arrived in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1309624732_4">washington</span> saying that I suspected that 7 of the original 54 would go home.<span style=""> </span>We have already lost 12 and we still have a year to go...i hope we don't lose any more!<span style=""> </span></span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">Speaking of people going home, just yesterday Damian left Cucunati.<span style=""> </span>We had a "despedida" (goodbye party) for him at which we ate a bunch of chicken soup and observed a horse castration.<span style=""> </span>Nothing says party time like wrestling a horse to the ground and cutting off his testicles with a kitchen knife.<span style=""> </span>The <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1309624732_5">Darien</span> will be a different place without him, and I will miss him and his Julia Child impressions terribly.<span style=""> </span>Now who will I show my jungle treasures to? (see entry of sometime last fall)</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Calibri;">So as you can see I have been busy with all sorts of absurd and hilarious activities.<span style=""> </span>In my free time I have mostly been reading lots of books, plunking away on <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1309624732_6">Diablo</span> Rojo, explaining the phenomenon of Donald Trump, weaving my own sombrero, scratching chiggers, cursing rats, avoiding snakes, accrueing an impressive collection of hideously crocheted sweat-rags, and getting my toes bitten savagely by my neighbor's pet toucan Charlie.<span style=""> </span>Like we say, it's always an adventure in the Darien.</span></span></span></p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"></span> </p> <p style="MARGIN:0in 0in 10pt;" class="yiv1076040758MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="EN"></span><br /></p>Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-68769273197570493102011-05-27T09:08:00.000-07:002011-05-27T09:12:03.686-07:00videos!!Once again, sorry for the long silence. I have something good coming soon, and it will be worth the wait. But to tide you over until then, here are some videos Liz made when she came up to my neck of the woods. one video is of zach´s site and the other is of mine, so enjoy, and thanks Liz for your cinematographic skillz.<br /><br /><h6 class="uiStreamMessage" ft="{"type":"msg"}"><span class="messageBody"><a href="http://lizwilkie.blogspot.com/2011/05/greater-darien-area.html" onmousedown="'UntrustedLink.bootstrap($(this)," rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span>http://lizwilkie.blogspot.com/</span><wbr><span class="word_break"></span><span>2011/05/greater-darien-area.ht</span><wbr><span class="word_break"></span>ml</a></span></h6><br /><br />(And more coming soon, I promise for real this time)Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-49076371298806671012011-03-09T06:16:00.000-08:002011-03-09T08:06:37.340-08:00Apologies for falling off the map there for a minute. I won't even bother making excuses, suffice it to say that the adventures have been numerous, and I will relate them to you presently. I'll begin where I left off and give you the highlights of the last three months.<br /><br />In December I went home for christmas and had a lovely time wearing my precious union suit and lots of plaid while chilling with my family and some good friends. One highlight was a stocking full of cheese, which has been fun trying to describe to my people ("I hung up a sock and an elf in a red suit was supposed to fill it with gifts, but really it was my dad and he filled my sock with cheese..."). We also found a beaver dam, so I have been explaining beavers and ice to everyone. They are very interested in hearing about wildlife, but are puzzled as to why we eat so few of them. Beavers, for example, they think would be both delicious and big enough to feed a fair number of people. Anyway, it was a fun visit, nice to see everyone. I was surprised at how much I missed Panama though, even the loud noisy city full of cloying sticky humid heat.<br /><br />I got back to Panama right before New Years and went to Chiriqui and Bocas del Toro. In Bocas I visited my friend Elsie's site, which was a lot of fun. We hung out playing music, pasearing, building a magic circle, and checking out some cacao farms. I saw some cool frogs. Elsie's people were wonderful. She lives in an indigenous Ngobe site. They enjoyed teaching me useful Ngoberi phrases such as "I'm going to wash my underwear" and "how are your balls?" They found it hilarious and frankly so did I. We had a great time.<br /><br />On the way home I had another ridiculous chiva ride, this one involving a truck packed to the brim with 22 passengers slogging up what should be described as one very long mudpit rather than a road. One lady from Catherine's town (Santa Rosa) started right off the bat with expounding to us the imminance of Jesus's return in a rather abrassive manner, peppering her sentences with exclamations of "hallelujia!" and "jesus viene!" This prompted some of the more irreverent passengers to start cracking dirty religiou-themed jokes, which caused even the proselytizing lady to stop shouting religious exclamations long enough to snicker a little. Then the chiva started sliding all over the place in the mud, causing the woman next to me to burst into hysterical tears. The Santa Rosa lady patted her knee and assured her that whatever happened was the will of God. This only made the girl cry harder. So everyone took off their sombreros and started fanning her. As this point several passengers became concerned that I would also fall into hysteria. My counterpart assured them, "don't worry about her, she's an adventurer." Oh and lest I forget, this entire trip was spent trying to avoid the gaze of the "incourageable winkster," an old man who sat conveniently catty-corner to me and winked at me once every 2 to 5 minutes. He never spoke to me, he just winked like clockwork for the entirety of the 2 hour trip.<br /><br />Other notable events in January included helping out at a children's art camp and making some nun friends, and the sad sad day when I learned that my dear friends Carmen and Jake went home.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />February was another interesting month. It's extremely dry now, no rain at all, and no mud either! Though its very very very hot, the road is dry as a bone as easy to walk on. The summer (jan through april) is the time for "vacunaderas." These are great fun. Farmers herd all their coaws into a corral. Then a few people on horseback go into one side of the corral where all the cows are and lasso cows, then drag them into the other side of the corral where people physically wrestle the cows to the ground. Then they vaccinate them, brand them, and cut off their horns with a saw. The cow is then understandably quite angry, so as soon as they let the cow up they run as fast as they can up the side of the corral to escape the enraged rampage that follows the cow's release. This whole enterprise is of course accompanied by copious amounts of "chicha fuerte" (homemade fermented corn drink) and seco. I have been learning all sorts of useful skills - my cow wrestling is improving every day, and I have successfully lassoed three cows from the back of a horse. My branding skills leave something to be desired though, as I accidently branded several of Esteban's cows upside down. The vacunaderas are rowdy, but lots of fun, and I've got the people saying "what's up cowboy" and "she is cowgirl."<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I still don't have a pet in the normal sense of the word, but I have had some interesting additions to my household. The first was a spider named Betsy (pronounced "beksi" in campo spanish). Betsy is one of those huge spiders that have a picture of a skull on their backs. She guarded my door for a good month before she ran off for other more exciting propects. The whole town misses her - they used to come by just to look at her. Now every time anyone sees one of those spiders they come running to my house saying "molly! come look! I found a beksi!" My other pet was a gift from my neighbor's daughter. It is a chicken which I am supposed to be raising to make a arroz con pollo when my family comes to visit. I named her Tasty, and she is an escape artist. She spent most of her first week on the lam from the law (the law being me and zach). For this reason Zach calls her Tasty the Bandit.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In the end of February I went on a two day trek to the Kuna Yala. It was by far my best experience so far in Panama and one of the best in my life. If you have a minute you should look up the Kuna, they are a very interesting indigenous group who live in an autonomous and inaccessible province of Panama bordering Darien to the north and Columbia to the south east. They fought the Panamanian government for independance in 1925 and have since maintained their autonomy. They have their own system of governmnet of the traditional headman and a council. We planned teh hike to coincide with their annual celebration of the revolution they fought to gain their independance. There were 11 of us - 11 guys and me and Catherine. It was a really fun group. We started from Mateo's old site, Pigandi. From there we hiked through the jungle for about 4 hours to a Kuna village called Nurra (well actually we accidently went to Wala and had to pay a little kid 5 dollars to take us to Nurra, about 45 minutes away). In Nurra we met our guide (who had tattoos of a T Rex and a naked lady on his arm) and had a deliciously cold soda, a soak in the river, and some peanut butter sandwiches before heading off into the jungle again. We hiked the rest of the day, then made camp on a river bank in the middle of the woods with total wilderness stretching off in every direction. We rested our poor aching limbs in the water, washed our clothes, made a fire and strung up our hammocks. We spent the evening chatting by the campfire, making smores, playing cards, and resting our poor aching bodies. We slept in hammocks strung up between the trees, looking up at the stars through the rainforest canopy. <br /><br />In the morning we headed off again on the trail. It was intense. Huge portions of the trail had been washed away in the December rains, and we found ourselves clinging to the sides of steep embankments and pulling ourselves along using our arms. It was increadibly steep going up the cordillera, and even steeper coming down the other side. We hiked for about 10 hours and finally straggled out into a trash-strewn inlet where we collapsed amid heaps of rusting cans and trash, too tired to move. We were a mess. A boat came and picked us up and took us to the island of Ustupu.<br /><br />On Ustupu we stayed with a lovely family who gave us the whole upstairs of their house to stay in. That evening it was all we could do to eat and collapse into our hammocks and a few grimy mattresses on the floor. In the morning, feeling slightly refreshed but still limping noticeably, we explored. The independance celebration involved daily reenactments of the fight for independance, including intense portrayals of the capture and torture of kuna fighters. We spent the day exploring the island. It is densely populated with houses of thin bamboo and palm thatch roofs with narrow alleys between them. During independance women are required to wear traditional clothing for a whole month, which was very picturesque. Considering everything I had heard from Latinos and gringos alike, I was surprised to find how welcoming and friendly everyone was. They were excited to talk about traveling, politics, history, literature, and teach us phrases in Kuna. For meals members of teh community all gathered in the main community building and then divvied up to eat at different houses all over town. They invited us along, and at breakfast and lunch time we were taken in small groups of a few gringos and a few kuna to eat in people's homes. In the afternoon we joined a volleyball tournament in which many tall gringo men were thoroughly defeated by some tiny, fierce, kuna ladies in full traditional outfits. <br /><br />The next day was the main celebration and we were awakened at 4:37 AM by a parade through the streets. We again spent the day wandering, meeting people, and exploring. In teh afternoon there was a big parade. Everyone wore red and marched, including us. It culminated in the square and then there were reenactments of the defeat of the Panamanian army. At the end, as the kuna fighters flew their flag as the panamanians retreated, i saw men and women crying and embracing and shouting "we're free! we're free!" It was a very highly charged atmosphere. Afterwards we played with a whole gang of children until nightfall, and then sat around chatting with some neighbors who were playing pan pipes and dancing until all hours of the morning. <br /><br />Getting out of the Kuna Yala was a bit of a challenge. We went by boat between islands all morning, which was beautiful. The area is a tropical paradise. When we arrived, after 7 hours, at the only road out they told us they were only letting kuna leave. We wound up hiking for nearly three hours before we could get a ride. We finally got to Meteti at 11 PM exhausted, filthy, smelly, and sore but very very happy. It was an increadible experience. <br /><br />This week was another exciting one. I went to celebrate Carnaval in Las Tablas. It was a crazy week of mobs being hosed down in the streets, elaborate floats, and all night dancing. I thought I would be totally overwhelmed because it's not really my normal scene, but even though it was a little crazy I really enjoyed it.<br /><br />So those are my major highlights of my recent life. I will try to not let so much time lapse before my next post. Much love to all of you!Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-51641073138387927722010-12-28T16:09:00.001-08:002010-12-28T16:47:17.550-08:00MORE PHOTOS!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD_4_KmLz_pyR_0D9NPttz2BV3kLb3b3Lyigj2xbaKayW9eHM3gOf6OXkRDVcYNPLbc4g-uG79WM0ag0XiHyBFzrLVzStr4fHvstZ4KHoj_KvPMmfGhahx3h47Kl8EKWwaq1rcBr2q0kyz/s1600/DSCN2543.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD_4_KmLz_pyR_0D9NPttz2BV3kLb3b3Lyigj2xbaKayW9eHM3gOf6OXkRDVcYNPLbc4g-uG79WM0ag0XiHyBFzrLVzStr4fHvstZ4KHoj_KvPMmfGhahx3h47Kl8EKWwaq1rcBr2q0kyz/s320/DSCN2543.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555898890366946338" border="0" /></a>Here's an attempt at loading up some new photos. I have more pictures of people and activities on facebook, so check that out too when you get a chance. I am home in Vermont for Christmas, and it is cold and snowy and I can't get over the fancyness of the bathroom sink. It's really incredible. Anyway, I have nothing else witty to say right now. Happy New Year!<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDrY-gfLBaeqma399Ybp6cLTKbIsnuSvv0eVReIQ-4kUMpRfdyv8fHAJt90A3JuLN_zddtls74QUs5D5JbtW7-Ocuyv9BvIcZAq5NAV0wt6U3e22txbHw-SICXBVJMEQxhANLt9e2REHP/s1600/DSCN2537.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMDrY-gfLBaeqma399Ybp6cLTKbIsnuSvv0eVReIQ-4kUMpRfdyv8fHAJt90A3JuLN_zddtls74QUs5D5JbtW7-Ocuyv9BvIcZAq5NAV0wt6U3e22txbHw-SICXBVJMEQxhANLt9e2REHP/s320/DSCN2537.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5555898880564053538" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" 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border="0" /></a>Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-88269576356557899892010-12-12T19:06:00.000-08:002010-12-26T15:02:35.791-08:00<style>@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">December 12, 2010</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Sorry for the long silence folks, it always seems to work out that I have oodles of time for this sort of thing when I’m in site, but whenever I am within range of internet access I have eight million things to take care of and no time to do it in.<span style=""> </span>So I will give you some highlights of the last six weeks.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">One major one was the Darien Halloween Goat Roast.<span style=""> </span>This is how we roll in the Darien.<span style=""> </span>Mateo, our fearless regional leader, and Carmen found us a goat (or rather a “chivo”, which is more like a cross between a sheep and a goat).<span style=""> </span>We named it Muffin.<span style=""> </span>Me, Zach, Guy, Mateo and Alan were in charge of slaughtering Muffin (Zach was on actual machete duty).<span style=""> </span>Once this business was finished, Damien , who has lots of goat-butchering experience, set about expertly turning him into edible bits (and some not-so-edible bits as well).<span style=""> </span>Then we spent the rest of the day cooking: Carmen the ex-vegetarian on the side dishes, Catherine on the soup, Guy on a delicious BBQ, and Damien on one of the most phenomenal curries I’ve ever had the pleasure of consuming.<span style=""> </span>But now I shall tell you the tale of Muffins Revenge.<span style=""> </span>In transporting the soup from the make shift oven (created with a campfire,<span style=""> </span>an old oil drum and the rusting body of an old wheelbarrow), Zach spilled the soup on his foot and got third degree burns that had him posted up in his hammock for the next two weeks and left scars that are still there.<span style=""> </span>And thus Muffin sought his revenge.<span style=""> </span>But despite his vindictive nature, Muffin sure was delicious.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Panamanians don’t celebrate Halloween, but they sure do celebrate November 3, which is Panama’s Independence Day from Colombia.<span style=""> </span>A shady case of political tomfoolery on the part of the US, but it makes for a good holiday.<span style=""> </span>I won’t go into to detail about the celebrations now because I’m writing an article about it for the Peace Corps Panama newspaper, and I’ll post it up here when it’s done.<span style=""> </span>For now, suffice it to say that there was duck-lassoing involved.<span style=""> </span>I promise I will describe duck-lassoing and the other exciting activities in which we participated.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Thanksgiving was a whole lot of fun, even though I was far from home and family and there were no musical chairs to be had, as is the tradition in Vermont.<span style=""> </span>Most of the volunteers (about 150) go to Cerro Punta in Chiriqui each year, which is a beautiful and amazingly chilly place where the people are quiet and gentle and hoe their neat hillside rows demurely.<span style=""> </span>Not at all like the Wild East of Darien where everyone gets rowdy, hootin’ and hollerin’ through the mountains, swinging their machetes, lassoing things from the backs of galloping horses, guzzling chicha fuerte from old pesticide containers, and shouting about who’s wife ran off with the neighbor after marching into the cantina and punching her husband in the face because she found out about his mistress.<span style=""> </span>All sorts of shenanigans in which the calm and tranquil people of the Chiriqui Highlands seem not to indulge.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">I had a heck of an adventure getting TO Thanksgiving, of course.<span style=""> </span>This one consisted of me accidentally going to Colon instead of David which you will notice, if you pull out your handy dandy map of Panama, are in two very different directions.<span style=""> </span>This came to be through a series of events that were partially but not entirely my fault – I failed to check the destination written on the front of the bus and also to realize that the number of the gate in no way corresponds to the number of the bus, which is not at all marked or displayed in any way, but also the conductor assured me on three occasions that we were in fact headed for David which it turned out was not the case.<span style=""> </span>But such is life and it was fun in the end because I made it to Santiago (thanks to Damian who waited for me in Panama) and in the morning rode the bus to David in the company of Gobbles, who was destined for the T-Day table.<span style=""> </span>Kenny brought Gobbles all the way from the Azuero peninsula in a box.<span style=""> </span>He was quite a trooper and also very tender.<span style=""> </span>In fact, all the food at Thanksgiving was extremely delicious.<span style=""> </span>And not just because I survived on nothing but oranges, plantains and beans for a week before hand.<span style=""> </span>I even ran out of Peanut Butter which was a tragedy.<span style=""> </span>We all had a grand old time hanging out, cooking, playing ping pong, cards and settlers of catan, and having guitar sing alongs.<span style=""> </span>All sorts of tasteful debauchery.<span style=""> </span>There may have been a point in time when the tastefulness of the debauchery was called into question, but such is life.<span style=""> </span>All in all it was an excellent holiday.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">After Thanksgiving a few of us went to some hot springs and played with a monkey and then went to beach at Las Lajas for a few days to await our week of In Service Training.<span style=""> </span>This was a group reconnect with all of Group 65 in Divisa, where there was noticeably less Spam than last time for which I was thankful.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">Zach and I had quite a time getting back from IST, but we managed somehow to get ourselves to Cucunati just in time for the town fiesta.<span style=""> </span>This involved hiding 70 lbs. of seeds I’d brought from Tole in the forest on the other side of the river, which turned out to be a poor decision because I had to ford the raging river with the seeds on my back the next morning.<span style=""> </span>The fiesta was quite a cultural experience.<span style=""> </span>We met Damian and Mateo there.<span style=""> </span>A Cucunati Baile (dance party) is a debaucherous event which can in no way be described as tasteful.<span style=""> </span>Except maybe the fried dough hojaldras which actually were pretty tasty.<span style=""> </span>The rest of it mostly consisted of the good people of Cucunati imbibing entirely too much seco and then betting on cock fights until that got out of hand and it degenerated into heated bouts of dice throwing in the bloody cockfighting pit and trying to dance with the gringa until who knows what ungodly hour.<span style=""> </span>I don’t, because I went to bed at 2:30, but they were still there the next morning at 9 am…anyhow, I enjoyed the raucous welcome-back-to-Darien after the civilized calm of Chiriqui.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">This time of year is chock-full of fiestas.<span style=""> </span>The most recent was Mother’s Day, which in Panama is December 8, and a very important holiday.<span style=""> </span>The typical way to celebrate is for the men to go out and drink themselves silly so that their wives and mothers not only have to cook and clean and care for the children, but also worry about their whereabouts and possibly go pull them out of a ditch or a machete fight.<span style=""> </span>In Candelilla, though, the people are a bit more wholesome.<span style=""> </span>The teenagers had saved up their money from their work as peons and bought gifts for all the mothers in town.<span style=""> </span>They also put on a big feast for everyone in town, which the mothers cooked of course, but the kids served.<span style=""> </span>There were even two cakes which a couple of boys brought all the way from Santa Fe.<span style=""> </span>After the rough chiva ride and the muddy horse-back ascent to Candelilla, the cakes arrived fairly disheveled, but were still delicious.<span style=""> </span>And the mooshiness was very conducive to an icing fight. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">On another note, in addition to Selma who seems to posess at least 9 lives, now I also have a bat named Mordecai.<span style=""> </span>Mordecai is increadibly loud and destructive for a bat and also likes to swoop as close to me as possible when I least expect it.<span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="">And lest you think that the lull in holidays between mother’s day and Christmas is in anyway a lull, let me tell about the recent series of events.<span style=""> </span>You may have heard it on the news (or maybe not since not a lot of the international community cares too much about Panama’s shenanigans), Panama is FLOODED.<span style=""> </span>It has been the first time since 1914 when the Canal opened that it has been closed down.<span style=""> </span>Roads and bridges are collapsing, and Lago Bayano has flooded, putting several volunteers in Panama Este and Darien’s houses under water.<span style=""> </span>The road between Darien and Panama City is impassable, probably for the next week, and everyone is beginning to worry about shortages of food and fuel.<span style=""> </span>Zach and I came down from Cucunati yesterday to get groceries, and we are now stuck out here, as the road to Cucunati is impassable because of increadibly deep mudcaused by all the rain.<span style=""> </span>There is talk of evacuation if the food runs out (we are thinking the riots will start just about the time they run out of sugar and seco) and fuel is already short.<span style=""> </span>The teachers of Meteti got out by private plane this morning, and a few volunteers in the Lago Bayano area were evacuated by boat yesterday.<span style=""> </span>Zach and I are both trying to get home for Christmas, for which we need to get back to site to get our passports, but right now we’ve been ordered to stay in Meteti and wait for further instructions.<span style=""> </span>Not to worry, it is not flooding here, and we are all safe.<span style=""> </span>Oh Panama, the adventures never stop!</span></p>Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-53853021549668830262010-11-10T07:46:00.000-08:002010-11-10T08:36:53.161-08:00¡Ai la vida!Well life just keeps getting busier and busier and this is an update from October that I´m only just now getting to put up. I will do a November update sometime soon, I promise!<br /><br />One of the exciting events of this month was the All Volunteer Conference in Chitre, in teh Azuero Peninsula. It was a lot of fun. I got to reunite with the beloved asSASsins and meet a whole bunch of super cool volunteers. I was, however, a bit put out the first day because the schedule promised me snacks and the snacks were not forthcoming. I found this irksome, as we all know how much I love snacks. My favorite event of the AVC was the ¨Campo Olympics,¨a series of competitions including a soccer match, a ¨pop a squat¨competition, water bucket relay, orange peeling race, sardine eating and banana eating competitions, and human cock fighting. I personally represented my team, Group 65, in a gritaring contest (I think I´ve mentioned gritaring, or salomaring, before, it´s sort of a cross between a yodel and a yell they do in the fields). My teammate Chris and I placed 3rd, but our group won the overall competition and were presented with a Golden Machete and the title of ¨Most Dominant Group¨. This will soon be witnessable through first hand videos at Liz´s video blog, <a href="http://www.lizwilkie.blogspot.com/">www.lizwilkie.blogspot.com</a>, which you should check out anyway because Liz is a fellow Darienita and has lots of neato videos about life here (albeit in Meteti which is positively metropolitan in comparison to Candelilla, though not in comparison to anywhere else in Panama). I make a slightly awkward appearance in several of them. Anyway, even though AVC was a lot of fun it was also really intense. I was happy to get back home to the Darien, where at the border a billboard of a friendly ex FARC gives you an enthusiastic thumbs up and reminds you that there is¨another way¨ and the border polics assure you that your security is ¨one of¨their priorities. Perhaps not their TOP priority, but it´s up there with the others.<br /><br />This month I have been spending a lot of time working on my house, which is still a little ghetto. Much larger but not nearly so charming as Zach´s cute little `palm thatch hut up the mountain. I have an obtuse pile of old cement in my yard along with old piles of burned trash and a few brush heaps, a dilapidated rancho, no windows, haphazardly nailed boards as siding, lots of termites and fire ants, cows and pigs who routinely destroy EVERYTHING, a latrine that at best can be described as unpleasant, a ¨shower¨(really just a spot to haul in a bucket of water) that is knocked together with old sticks and a collection of mismatched, hideously patterned sheets of plastic, and a mouse named Selma. Selma is incredibly destructive and also very noisy, often waking me up at 3 am and driving me to grab my broom or machete and rampage around the house flailing my arms and cursing her, her ancestors, her progeny, and life in general before grumpily collapsing back into my mosquito net, only to be awakened once again 10 minutes later with her incessant scurrying.<br /><br />Yesterday I faced the problem of my table. It was outside, you see, and I wanted it inside. This may seem straightforward, but as it turned out was actually quite complicated, as it wouldn´t actually fit through the door. I started to solve this problem by sawing an inch and a half off the four legs. This seemed promising, and I started to get cocky as I wrangled the table through the front door. I was chagrinned to discover that, due to the fact that the doors don´t come in standard sizes here in Candelilla (and consist primarily of wood scraps hammered together willy nilly with odd pieces of metal which are deffinitely not nails), fitting through the front door was no guarantee whatsoever that it would fit through the adjacent door into the hammock room-library for which is was bound. So I twisted and turned and jammed the thing at every conceivable angle, to no avail. I then decided to be Panamanian about the whole affair, made a cup of coffee, and sat in my hammock contemplating the table, which was so near and yet so very far away. And, as hammocks and coffee are extrememly conducive to ponderous endeavors, it dawned on me that I could remove the door from its hinges, thereby increasing the width of the door frame by a good 2 inches. Having arrived at this conclusion I energetically (and a bit proudly, I´ll admit) set about removing the door from its hinges. No easy feat, considering the whole business was held together with variously sized, bent nails and random bits of wire all rusted into a sort of metallic birds nest one might find in the home decoration section of a country living magazine. Just replace the quaint wooden New England style song birds with giant cockroaches. Anyway, after removing the door from its erstwhile hinges, I was crestfallen to find that no matter how I cajoled, cursed and pleaded, the table simply wouldn´t fit. After another stint in the hammock, I realized, abashedly, that I could have just lifted the thing through my giant tienda window at teh start and have done with the whole rigamarole. So I wrested the table back out the front door and lifted it through the window in a matter of minutes, and there it sits in the corner, calm as can be, as if it hadn´t been the cause of me getting my knickers in an increasingly aggravating twist for a good hour or so. Side note about my tienda window - when I go out it is held shut with a piece of bent rebar and an old branding iron belonging to APVUC, whoever that may be. And that, my friends, is my table saga.<br /><br />So as you can see, my life is very exciting what with all the tables and all. Not to mention the children who like to come over and stare, sometimes for hours at a time (Melvin is especailly adept at silent staring), the jovenes who like to drop by and tell dirty jokes which i pretend to understand (and sometimes pretend I don´t understand) and the adults who like to drop by and show off their freshly slingshotted parrots headed for the frying pan. People are also always sneding me food. This week I had oranges, bananas, yuca, plantains, chicheme, rice and three full meals sent to my house. The gente are not wholy convinced that I am capable of feeding myself. Their doubt arises from teh fact that I don´t buy rice much, so they are confused as to what I could possibly be eating, and are thus concerned that I may starve.<br /><br />Anyway, you can look forward to an account of our goat roast and Panamanian independance day in my next update.<br /><br />Love to you all, and don´t forget to keep it hip to the jive up there.Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-69625870394249288502010-10-18T04:16:00.000-07:002010-10-18T04:34:11.493-07:00MORE JUNGLE ADVENTURES<div><br /></div> <div> </div> <div> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Blog entry 10/11/2010</span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>First order of business:<span style=""> </span>I have a new address!<span style=""> </span>And hopefully it will work better than the panama city one, which hasn’t been getting me my letters.<span style=""> </span><span style="" lang="ES-PA">The address is:</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="ES-PA"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>Molly McCumber</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="ES-PA"></span><span style="" lang="ES-PA"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>Cuerpo de Paz</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="ES-PA"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>Correo Santa Fe 0504</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="" lang="ES-PA"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>Provincia de Darien</span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">Republica de Panama</span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">It should work!<span style=""> </span>Also, for Zach’s family, it’s the same address you should use to write him.<span style=""> </span>I’m not 100 percent sure about sending packages there, but I’ll keep you posted when I find out.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span>Anyway, it’s been an INSANELY busy month, and I can’t believe I’ve been here for nearly six months!<span style=""> </span>As always, life has been full of adventures.<span style=""> </span>We have been cutting endless rice this month, and I have been working hard.<span style=""> </span>The first few months here I got pretty frustrated with getting the farmers to take me to work with them, since women here (in my area anyway) simply don’t work on the fincas.<span style=""> </span>But by now I have a good camaraderie going with them, and they take me along, if only for entertainment value.<span style=""> </span>We crack a lot of jokes (mostly revolving around my ineptitudes) and spend a lot of time salomaring at the top of our lungs.<span style=""> </span>A salomar is a half-yodel-half-shout they do here.<span style=""> </span>A lot of the jokes revolve around my machetes, and El Tigre usually accompanies me to the fields.<span style=""> </span>This has inspired the farmers to name their own machetes, and we have a whole zoo up here, including La Pantera Negra, El Cheetah, El Leon, El Puma, La Anaconda…you get the picture.<span style=""> </span>The other day we hiked waaaaaaaaaaaay up into the mountains above Candelilla to cut rice. <span style=""> </span>The hike was brutal, so we camped up there in the middle of the jungle in a hut they made.<span style=""> </span>It was absolutely gorgeous – thick jungle, giant cuipo trees, a waterfall, and views out over the mountains to the ocean and <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1287399033_2">La Palma</span>.<span style=""> </span>One day after working in the field all morning I headed back to the village for a meeting, and that afternoon they happened upon a bushmaster.<span style=""> </span>I guess they’re not that uncommon up here, but fortunately people find them during the day when they are sleeping, and therefor much less aggressive. We also ate lots of freshly caught shrimp sand canejo pintado, which along with iguana is perhaps the most delicious of the obscure animals I have eaten.<span style=""> </span>Parrot is by far the worst and I would recommend bypassing it if you ever see it on a menu.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span style=""> </span>Speaking of freshly caught shrimp, I participated in my first SUCCESSFUL shrimp hunt.<span style=""> </span>I speared<span style=""> </span>2 shrimp with a fork tied to the end of a stick.<span style=""> </span>Who knew that a fork would yield higher success than a machete?<span style=""> </span>I guess you learn something new every day.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span style=""> </span>There have, as always, been plenty of adventures getting in and out of my site.<span style=""> </span>Once, in a rare turn of events, the chiva left Santa Fe promptly at <span style="border-bottom: 2px dotted rgb(54, 99, 136); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1287399033_3">3 PM</span>, and Zach and I proceeded to count our chickens well before they hatched first the chiva got stuck in an uphill mudpit, and the efforts to extract the unfortunate vehicle dislodged the bags, boxes, giant bottles of pesticides of which the farmers are so fond, and sacks of seeds, tossing everything willy-nilly about the back of the truck.<span style=""> </span>For some reason I can’t quite fathom, someone had a sack of pig parts, and it came open, spewing recognizable pork appendages among the more benign cargo.<span style=""> </span>In trying to rearrange the chaos, Zach unwittingly grabbed ahold of a detached pig tail, which was a bit of a nasty surprise.<span style=""> </span>Half an hour later we emerged, much the worse for the wear, from the mud pit, and again began to let our expectations rise above reason.<span style=""> </span>You would have though by now we would have learned, but one clings to the merest slivers of hope when there is so little to be had in the world of Darienita public transportation.<span style=""> </span>A mere 5 minutes after wards, the tire leapt to attention and made a hasty advance down the hill, leaving the chiva far behind.<span style=""> </span>There was no reattaching the tire, and wanting to get back to our respective villages within the region of nightfall, we decided to start walking.<span style=""> </span>Which we did for the next two hours until we arrived in Cucunati at dusk.<span style=""> </span>I’ll spare you the frightful details, but suffice it to say I saw a 4 foot fer de lance.<span style=""> </span>Another time, I had to forge the quebrada up to my chest (but don’t worry mom and dad I had someone spotting me on the other bank).<span style=""> </span>Whatever else it is, campo life is never dull.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span style=""> </span>Having been in site for 3 months, I moved out of my final host family and into my own house.<span style=""> </span>It’s much larger than I need – 3 large rooms and a porch with a cement floor and zinc roof (fancy!) and an adjacent wooden and palm thatch structure with an open sided kitchen and a large porch.<span style=""> </span>I had a work junta to build a latrine, a bathing area, some furniture, and generally clean and arrange it.<span style=""> </span>The major entertainment consisted of ridding the house of its former occupants, namely a rat which was pursued from room to room to room and back again by a pack of shrieking children and a bunch of men wildly flailing machetes, hammers, and old lengths of garden hose.<span style=""> </span>I remained don’t eh fringes of the melee chuckling and taking photographs.<span style=""> </span>We also found a giant, hairy and oddly orange tarantula.<span style=""> </span>The work momentum began to flag the the junta degenerated when everyone started demanding to know why Diablo Rojo was being lazy and hadn’t come to the junta.<span style=""> </span>I was sent to remedy this oversite and of course this resulted in a repetitious Jolene sing along, with some of the words changed to fit a man in town by the name of Tolin (which rhymes with Jolene).<span style=""> </span>Then someone discovered a charred teddy bear which was declared the mascot and had to have its photograph taken with nearly everyone.<span style=""> </span>The day wrapped up with some fart jokes, which are apparently funny in every culture.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span style=""> </span>I have been pretty psyched to have my own space – I’ve strung up a few hammocks and been bombarded with visitors, who bring me food because they are concerned that I don’t know how to properly deep fry.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>I’ve also been inundated with fire ants, or “candelillas” (for which the town is named).<span style=""> </span>They have taken over the kitchen, eaten everything not sealed in jars, bitten me all over, and generally succeeded in incurring my wrath.<span style=""> </span>In fact, they were crawling up my legs and into my shorts in droves as I wrote that sentence out (I compose these by hand at home and then type them up when I come down to town).<span style=""> </span>Fortunately they don’t leave marks, since between the wide variety of bug bites, foot funguses, barbed wire snags and unidentifiable skin infections I perpetually have all over my legs and feet, there’s not much room for a herd of vengeful fire ants to leave their signature.<span style=""> </span>I also had a pig stuck in my house yesterday, and I spent a good five minutes chasing it around, smacking it with a broom and cussing at it while it squeeled at the top of its muddy little lungs and ran from room to room knocking over all my neatly stacked piles of belongings.</span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;"><span><span style=""> </span>Last time I came down to Cucunati I showed up on Damian’s door step soaking wet and covered in mud, with my raincoattied like a cape around my neck and my hair escaping every which way in the humidity, with a collection of interesting seeds and rocks I’d found along the trail clenched in my grubby fist.<span style=""> </span>The first words I uttered upon my arrival were “Hey Damian, you want to see my nifty jungle treasures?”<span style=""> </span>Upon reflection I imagine I must have seemed like I had escaped from some sort of remote insane asylum and spent a week wandering through the woods to civilization.<span style=""> </span>Damian, being an amiable fellow, seems to be largely unphased by my eccentricities, but he must wonder sometimes.<span style=""> </span>Still, he always gives me a seat and some beef jerky and lets me wash off the quebrada stench and leave my boots and machete in the corner so that I go to town looking fractionally more like a presentable member of soc iety and less like something that should be kept in a wildlife rehabilitation center.<span style=""> </span>Thank goodness for Zach and Damian, without them I would be liable to go all Dances-With-Wolves on you guys.<span style=""> </span>Or maybe dances-with-fer-de-lance.<span style=""> </span>Side note:<span style=""> </span>I thought botflies were rare where I live, since leshmaniasis seems to be so popular, but Damian got a botfly last week.<span style=""> </span>On his left buttocks.<span style=""> </span>The worm was 1 inch long.<span style=""> </span>Not to gross you out or anything.<span style=""> </span></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">That’s it for now, but I will post again soon about my trip to the All Volunteer Conference, and hopefully I’ll get up some more photos really soon.</span></p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:100%;">And thank you to my mom for typing this all out into the blog since I wrote it all out and then couldn’t copy and paste it.<span style=""> </span>You’re the best, Mom!</span></p> </div>Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-49529378185404064802010-09-10T12:15:00.000-07:002010-09-10T12:20:53.969-07:00PigknappingI just almost had photos to show you, but for some reason I can't explain the internet refuses to cooperate. So I appologize, and Mom I promise they are coming some day. Anyway, about the pigknapping. The other day this sow gave birth to piglets out in the monte, which is the overgrown hillside. The sow belongs to a farmer named Pedro, who wants to bring the piglets back to the house to raise them. So he hands me a motete, which is like a basket that you wear as a backpack, sort of like an adirondack pack basket. And we grab some machetes, and track the mother pig up the mountain through the brush to where she's stashed her little porquitos. Pedro lassoos the sow and wrestles her to the ground, shouting, "quick molly! grab the piglets!" So while he and the sow are in an all out hand-to-hoof combat, I run around the monte trying to grab up the seven fat and sneaky little porquitos and pop them in my basket. When I get the last one, Pedro yells, "now run!" And I book it down the jungly mountainside, with a load of squealing, writhing piglets on my back, and the furious mother hot on my trail snarling and hurtling down after me in hot pursuit. Needless to say, I ran pretty fast, fairly convinced that my adventures were about to be ended by several hundred pounds of enraged pork. Luckily I made it to the house without falling into a mud pit or getting stuck in a fence, and here I am to tell you all the tale of my pigknapping adventure.Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-43895882749908350602010-09-10T12:03:00.000-07:002010-09-10T13:12:49.501-07:00Pigknapping<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPHlV1dpzNqP29J2wdWNrM4vpeYqTJsNTbNa__HbQhlSIKXpYAHoSylIMNY8u3fkWMCbmpWvFDOD7IJsuTGgcNgayUZnmyzeIIkr8n7qxPUtMFZzWl0BkoAGxeH-AIo-5SngW5X0brsD_a/s1600/Picture+624.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515375286397390914" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPHlV1dpzNqP29J2wdWNrM4vpeYqTJsNTbNa__HbQhlSIKXpYAHoSylIMNY8u3fkWMCbmpWvFDOD7IJsuTGgcNgayUZnmyzeIIkr8n7qxPUtMFZzWl0BkoAGxeH-AIo-5SngW5X0brsD_a/s320/Picture+624.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Interior decoration in Candelilla<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKhcbB62iM-wD3tjStqMwRIEfo7kWhDW0or-2ojpH2FVRBPIVFeD1qo1npzVaPs1DDSif5CIsA0EytLO64_6u4Kh6-l3Hr7oOGtmDjtbOp82PCthr4vKbeapEBO6QdjVkX2ECthSV8JAYz/s1600/Picture+618.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515375277549598738" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKhcbB62iM-wD3tjStqMwRIEfo7kWhDW0or-2ojpH2FVRBPIVFeD1qo1npzVaPs1DDSif5CIsA0EytLO64_6u4Kh6-l3Hr7oOGtmDjtbOp82PCthr4vKbeapEBO6QdjVkX2ECthSV8JAYz/s320/Picture+618.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />smoked iguana for dinner mmm......<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtJUkaWbsv0BNTv_S_YhYmvU0nw_hRBYMSJkdzhKyiY9YtTf7TTUWNUdrJOtjdi5Dkp1L-K-Qass2Yjd_3Xy0OXiGdDq-D_gSJe7OtUwL8af9eNIGaBAFaVdVBe0SFeIIwbQhUmJukgxn/s1600/Picture+612.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374939081554050" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvtJUkaWbsv0BNTv_S_YhYmvU0nw_hRBYMSJkdzhKyiY9YtTf7TTUWNUdrJOtjdi5Dkp1L-K-Qass2Yjd_3Xy0OXiGdDq-D_gSJe7OtUwL8af9eNIGaBAFaVdVBe0SFeIIwbQhUmJukgxn/s320/Picture+612.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Outside the school at my first community meeting!<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5eWPAClBN-qUjcLlfJTOH6i6aGIeGRRNz49jUTNlxjCdExKSv-Ahh26V1tFU8pc1dKc2Tdp2x8WeDpYqiDSobczclnbsX3P8SsaQMFI9wOOvsiQm-waQKV78GZGfWiXVodvHB9gAW5mnT/s1600/Picture+594.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374937550774754" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5eWPAClBN-qUjcLlfJTOH6i6aGIeGRRNz49jUTNlxjCdExKSv-Ahh26V1tFU8pc1dKc2Tdp2x8WeDpYqiDSobczclnbsX3P8SsaQMFI9wOOvsiQm-waQKV78GZGfWiXVodvHB9gAW5mnT/s320/Picture+594.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The successful huntress of shrimps<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtckVnEPSaDSX7WVLFzMHsGpJ0VKOjs0NLJIDZA82bt0-lgvRYHtjDIs0tGXBAAIlxNCoSS3ndUI77_VkpV8po1Ui_sXD0Zs66tz0tJxHxzCE5d2nKrPc2reOF_C7sIsOtNtzftbU3c_GR/s1600/Picture+585.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374930944272466" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtckVnEPSaDSX7WVLFzMHsGpJ0VKOjs0NLJIDZA82bt0-lgvRYHtjDIs0tGXBAAIlxNCoSS3ndUI77_VkpV8po1Ui_sXD0Zs66tz0tJxHxzCE5d2nKrPc2reOF_C7sIsOtNtzftbU3c_GR/s320/Picture+585.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Hanging out at the tienda<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhChoOWdeUgRmHLEhH4uMruqYIw9u1i_pzcQOAvYgqejOljZK1h2gco0pYW0k3pac3yRpewtM1ojkWlce43dswgJjEzZs5gIKEt5bIMptgSiggIP2LNIYIsyFLyUF227DBlYrf5zSUABOGo/s1600/Picture+577.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374923074203906" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhChoOWdeUgRmHLEhH4uMruqYIw9u1i_pzcQOAvYgqejOljZK1h2gco0pYW0k3pac3yRpewtM1ojkWlce43dswgJjEzZs5gIKEt5bIMptgSiggIP2LNIYIsyFLyUF227DBlYrf5zSUABOGo/s320/Picture+577.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />80 100lb sacks of "name" we hauled to cucunati on horseback<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2KP5pd7EXcUi40faAVv6-r3QRQ7LGUTNLe-k5izVum7TTQHI3Q3jpTTB1JQ5j9Z564OQ4zm0Zqa9FPzxOi5TAEueS6aehJsIi1_qQi-ed0eGBue5i_fgfAqQCAsnoajgH49q3cMc7TEv/s1600/Picture+565.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374914817041314" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2KP5pd7EXcUi40faAVv6-r3QRQ7LGUTNLe-k5izVum7TTQHI3Q3jpTTB1JQ5j9Z564OQ4zm0Zqa9FPzxOi5TAEueS6aehJsIi1_qQi-ed0eGBue5i_fgfAqQCAsnoajgH49q3cMc7TEv/s320/Picture+565.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The view from where we were throwing our machetes one day<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6J8IG3NXirwNNkutSVDXszKwVJ8U53EQl0IrFVwbVWfDvckXmJHXU3kCrWPAAXST-F0R7Ta3WVC7wmp2uchOaAyGJe7Tk48_qk3Y_F9TikLJZPwxSQjSlqklmcT0n_a5JF0tPGX9jfTX2/s1600/Picture+557.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374228864178898" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6J8IG3NXirwNNkutSVDXszKwVJ8U53EQl0IrFVwbVWfDvckXmJHXU3kCrWPAAXST-F0R7Ta3WVC7wmp2uchOaAyGJe7Tk48_qk3Y_F9TikLJZPwxSQjSlqklmcT0n_a5JF0tPGX9jfTX2/s320/Picture+557.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />The 6 foot equis (okay it might have been 5...I didnt have a ruler)<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS08t_2hEs_vAkvvT8xqJ-p0_BbXhNv9IfBTB1MDM0qCYQyH_9u4N0cRjTvdDIwb6NjanqA8gEmqfdW5WncRxPhFcFHk3eqDX7CZVvMmhnzQEKBgmNaIrrlXQO5y_S-57OL3IhGo6_xeB2/s1600/Picture+517.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374223242947506" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS08t_2hEs_vAkvvT8xqJ-p0_BbXhNv9IfBTB1MDM0qCYQyH_9u4N0cRjTvdDIwb6NjanqA8gEmqfdW5WncRxPhFcFHk3eqDX7CZVvMmhnzQEKBgmNaIrrlXQO5y_S-57OL3IhGo6_xeB2/s320/Picture+517.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Making bollo (corn logs, basically)<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6nQNClICw8co_f-yvT6k1e-iqLjzeVu79BTE-0MHxRcNMk_W7c0sy4aIPbsPfCm27KjO4r3PPau56Qrsr9zspHCInOA9HD4rV8xVOL4JwGz1kCQHsMKd_0myYVIXhVT2_Rgj7iNWhQ3Q-/s1600/Picture+509.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374197070898866" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6nQNClICw8co_f-yvT6k1e-iqLjzeVu79BTE-0MHxRcNMk_W7c0sy4aIPbsPfCm27KjO4r3PPau56Qrsr9zspHCInOA9HD4rV8xVOL4JwGz1kCQHsMKd_0myYVIXhVT2_Rgj7iNWhQ3Q-/s320/Picture+509.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Cowboys, hammocks, you know. Good times.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8JSEjtrH3OHewCezgsSt7IOsN2JZK9UPhFjcR9QAD31wud-rD1H4ASYyJpQZ2inADzq2BrkH7UyORMHwIsuKroXBMKVjjWRsW9ec-1S3ay_uw1I4Zw8SjnPKuLTEJVCXk-eEBEtqFK7t/s1600/Picture+475.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374195043942722" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE8JSEjtrH3OHewCezgsSt7IOsN2JZK9UPhFjcR9QAD31wud-rD1H4ASYyJpQZ2inADzq2BrkH7UyORMHwIsuKroXBMKVjjWRsW9ec-1S3ay_uw1I4Zw8SjnPKuLTEJVCXk-eEBEtqFK7t/s320/Picture+475.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Me and Elsie with our coco locos on Isla Grande<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0kit7s4nwUk_alADOhyBLFD0RtgUMOPrnsgAA-5YVuo4Y1Y32kzv41SspDqTGJ9f2E9vaBPE0-EbNQUl7CP5adCepPCbrXMjnjaPOz6zjX6uig53BR_VjWCm1d7pkLN9OlADhMdkFGXvU/s1600/Picture+467.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515374183272957554" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0kit7s4nwUk_alADOhyBLFD0RtgUMOPrnsgAA-5YVuo4Y1Y32kzv41SspDqTGJ9f2E9vaBPE0-EbNQUl7CP5adCepPCbrXMjnjaPOz6zjX6uig53BR_VjWCm1d7pkLN9OlADhMdkFGXvU/s320/Picture+467.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Zach dangles Sammy and Jess my their hair. This si my community's favorite photo of all time.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXyEOlup2xM_t3jdmEg3akEZM6spsbVtHphiCuLwrCfQ-zhzIttN6Edkrp4x4JqTYMeES2DzX9L37fhTyULpkqiv_Z2uaHGNRyMFN7akBh1baLGnuUqjVs3ZcUpKET3u_Jf-cg0aHsBxz/s1600/Picture+445.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373673944837906" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikXyEOlup2xM_t3jdmEg3akEZM6spsbVtHphiCuLwrCfQ-zhzIttN6Edkrp4x4JqTYMeES2DzX9L37fhTyULpkqiv_Z2uaHGNRyMFN7akBh1baLGnuUqjVs3ZcUpKET3u_Jf-cg0aHsBxz/s320/Picture+445.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />According to my host family, we look just like twins. <br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwgTxGzIx88guM1B13ZKh9gKbG6vXHdsA9gQhEafEd8QeTHSgIQHCy8gsTUcKdQlGbJulEY2ptmcpX6SZ9fMwfH_zKckYszP9FyXmnQAAIyt5i_7FN_y1LhmMLUanzY11Xn2Kdj1EFb9l0/s1600/Picture+440.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373663969324146" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwgTxGzIx88guM1B13ZKh9gKbG6vXHdsA9gQhEafEd8QeTHSgIQHCy8gsTUcKdQlGbJulEY2ptmcpX6SZ9fMwfH_zKckYszP9FyXmnQAAIyt5i_7FN_y1LhmMLUanzY11Xn2Kdj1EFb9l0/s320/Picture+440.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div><br />The asSASsins!<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZQMpMBFeoT8rG1r63eTuPUBkCue6YLEzGBwRk-WN-s0Nj72GqTFqO9zNQHpgtYmDzEj0C1HjdX_bQO_vC4Px9KK9OjMB2DpLTfGnOe4JBafFlV43mss4zK6YDI3FL73aH01oJY9PJVhr0/s1600/Picture+415.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373659765850290" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZQMpMBFeoT8rG1r63eTuPUBkCue6YLEzGBwRk-WN-s0Nj72GqTFqO9zNQHpgtYmDzEj0C1HjdX_bQO_vC4Px9KK9OjMB2DpLTfGnOe4JBafFlV43mss4zK6YDI3FL73aH01oJY9PJVhr0/s320/Picture+415.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>Pilaring corn, dang its a work out.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJvWxZZqw8d_r_o2Hy9UeyN1Y4CLA6XA_rD3cnwpZZ1Eos7SrVywCXupAVK_ycHzSbVUOFpHAT_qVYQ-OLTRfMJTCrGspoGC1gs1Y9e36ygn0hUtfYpJqzd6Hc-_iqrMIwDTrid2_A-lD/s1600/Picture+338.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373649766248178" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaJvWxZZqw8d_r_o2Hy9UeyN1Y4CLA6XA_rD3cnwpZZ1Eos7SrVywCXupAVK_ycHzSbVUOFpHAT_qVYQ-OLTRfMJTCrGspoGC1gs1Y9e36ygn0hUtfYpJqzd6Hc-_iqrMIwDTrid2_A-lD/s320/Picture+338.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Swimming for hours and hours and hours in the quebrada and then posing for photos is always a productive way to spend the day.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhh-0MTj1AYSFyrKaoB5JR4FC6M9AYwiotF3U8UybOoTTjNqmOxe1o6Ix3jTK4oVpKhNaRT7nIsD702PvEn7ILMqYf0jVQEuqFISG-j2YS55ELM7kiEGnXIQiIuttFh4L6Egf29lo8WwLp/s1600/Picture+314.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373637609217074" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhh-0MTj1AYSFyrKaoB5JR4FC6M9AYwiotF3U8UybOoTTjNqmOxe1o6Ix3jTK4oVpKhNaRT7nIsD702PvEn7ILMqYf0jVQEuqFISG-j2YS55ELM7kiEGnXIQiIuttFh4L6Egf29lo8WwLp/s320/Picture+314.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />My village!<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2bi1aHgfC-_ebYrEyLcz8ex-gH_ovt6BxeKNP6LewZAQalK9S_86-QqOT9vKkD3C2sS0NfxkAqDmOlgiwvJsWX49S20yxsloAWuGi738_Fa-J5ILojGSqJ4Vmo4QmxblnjOndfU2pDNn/s1600/Picture+285.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373195250988674" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC2bi1aHgfC-_ebYrEyLcz8ex-gH_ovt6BxeKNP6LewZAQalK9S_86-QqOT9vKkD3C2sS0NfxkAqDmOlgiwvJsWX49S20yxsloAWuGi738_Fa-J5ILojGSqJ4Vmo4QmxblnjOndfU2pDNn/s320/Picture+285.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Suzanne and Zach cook up teh chickens we raised into delicious tacos!<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBESN-Ko8QfscnMOEJUeD7y7ahl7cLd_maMDFmqWBy8gbHnQoZ955z-GXU5-BR3Boh4HxzgIPfDdVlGMSZ6buS5f1Uh4G5fPqtzXSJ4q-wYt9JIpBHyj82gIFHeE6Pq1C1WBtmoHTomiVL/s1600/Picture+278.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373194336826706" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBESN-Ko8QfscnMOEJUeD7y7ahl7cLd_maMDFmqWBy8gbHnQoZ955z-GXU5-BR3Boh4HxzgIPfDdVlGMSZ6buS5f1Uh4G5fPqtzXSJ4q-wYt9JIpBHyj82gIFHeE6Pq1C1WBtmoHTomiVL/s320/Picture+278.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />What can you do when teh quebrada floods except for hang out taking gangster photos?<br /><br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO3mh8WY4nU1MG-no80pMRYDHK6lDBTrUXblnibEBeb3g3P6J4G0Bl5IfRmzxbkU6DFmaXzE3ghq3cKObWaJWXBtzPALNRxBisMO7roQ2k17YsOKwyPGJ53VkYDYwO_-4OVk5kH0X8VH7V/s1600/Picture+257.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373182664440226" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO3mh8WY4nU1MG-no80pMRYDHK6lDBTrUXblnibEBeb3g3P6J4G0Bl5IfRmzxbkU6DFmaXzE3ghq3cKObWaJWXBtzPALNRxBisMO7roQ2k17YsOKwyPGJ53VkYDYwO_-4OVk5kH0X8VH7V/s320/Picture+257.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Paulina daring me a cuento<br /><br /><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5M0IGpd9muHgqt56gJcGSCVRZ8oPHdewzF70Lp7phBH1oogybS-Tcf9wU3UJeYZ68foK_i93iyTqpmXw14sFjZlcc0_3cnBERu0s_WeW0yjFRaeN8mt8TmqaDrDOYMLf4BCF0WuJ6nbD4/s1600/Picture+172.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515373165679610770" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5M0IGpd9muHgqt56gJcGSCVRZ8oPHdewzF70Lp7phBH1oogybS-Tcf9wU3UJeYZ68foK_i93iyTqpmXw14sFjZlcc0_3cnBERu0s_WeW0yjFRaeN8mt8TmqaDrDOYMLf4BCF0WuJ6nbD4/s320/Picture+172.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Marc and Jes cook Guacho for our Panamanian Fiesta<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP4DO711On5g_7TW_3oQ1OwnfwsDlpFlVXA4-JzGYpSl7BZ1of7iLMAmBMInZEZ_tGP0JCWXg3KE1BhLxETDQ80KO7JinD7CqhDcXiqndjOw7JsSsWr-L-n-st5xPPBn-W_PguKF-3FNbU/s1600/Picture+158.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515372537444695122" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP4DO711On5g_7TW_3oQ1OwnfwsDlpFlVXA4-JzGYpSl7BZ1of7iLMAmBMInZEZ_tGP0JCWXg3KE1BhLxETDQ80KO7JinD7CqhDcXiqndjOw7JsSsWr-L-n-st5xPPBn-W_PguKF-3FNbU/s320/Picture+158.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />I pose as the ninja while Ruby draws, for our bear/ninja/hunter asSASsin team t-shirts<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXQ_fPub6G8zLjoCq7C0rU1ahuDK6QXQAdc4Svpv7oT6W3ZLWfQ7l_0ltlpONymldASxgH2MY7JflcQJ63Xp5ScfPr2RC8R0L01XKeJl8B8zjnuDz8fvrs0yjGmf-ZdKfaDHmXv_uXpGkZ/s1600/Picture+146.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515372516492238946" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXQ_fPub6G8zLjoCq7C0rU1ahuDK6QXQAdc4Svpv7oT6W3ZLWfQ7l_0ltlpONymldASxgH2MY7JflcQJ63Xp5ScfPr2RC8R0L01XKeJl8B8zjnuDz8fvrs0yjGmf-ZdKfaDHmXv_uXpGkZ/s320/Picture+146.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Zach and joe prepare to head off on a beach trek- a plan that was foiled by the maliante gangsters from Colon.<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjWbDZF7yIagF5hBWiR3nOOkelDhUVFNX4sesIbi4C5gnXSAYj07IvgPE6JN2tbSFDfoIE1wYIft8WOHFlMiE8Vj8u-BSp1iOZXurxErvjpzHYM_c8kw0ixuyijGMVBEpFZbk2tPFdmg8J/s1600/Picture+141.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515372510174458706" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjWbDZF7yIagF5hBWiR3nOOkelDhUVFNX4sesIbi4C5gnXSAYj07IvgPE6JN2tbSFDfoIE1wYIft8WOHFlMiE8Vj8u-BSp1iOZXurxErvjpzHYM_c8kw0ixuyijGMVBEpFZbk2tPFdmg8J/s320/Picture+141.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Pina coladas, ceviche, friends, beach....I hate to complain, but Peace Corps life is so hard sometimes.<br /><br /><div><div><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515370854237669282" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQFUQEtdZ_quSSZY8sZCJkPGSwyYrSwLe24OSsbg904HhkaZRCFPmpTB3UbGL5pJ1dkP8-uYYS5AUPsneIiYAp5FtKokAywWx7SwyS0nVG397E8oMrPIfhKGksY44RCslQuxExeRmdL7uG/s320/Picture+102.jpg" border="0" /></div><div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Magic Cirlces! One of our favorite sassy techniques. We'll teach you how to make your very own. All you need is some plantain plants...<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1rIUWgtG0Rqt0YSP5zQZ5RGja2gPTcmi03AwUKa9RnOdrwSj1oPuNC6IBnQs55LCfHtdVLPGhuhYxr2_dtIJue859FFNdPZy_Uaeb_gzTQ8_vkz4K1v36HHruYh-pkOrlPVpOnr6H1YNS/s1600/Picture+095.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515370842946161202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1rIUWgtG0Rqt0YSP5zQZ5RGja2gPTcmi03AwUKa9RnOdrwSj1oPuNC6IBnQs55LCfHtdVLPGhuhYxr2_dtIJue859FFNdPZy_Uaeb_gzTQ8_vkz4K1v36HHruYh-pkOrlPVpOnr6H1YNS/s320/Picture+095.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>This is the house I lived in in Santa Clara during training<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsL9a7O_NfSWqNPd3Z6FtJr91V2ZMtSZ6gRWNLB97op6gc0WG_F4lPKO1PfjUTygCdBOnvM7ofvX0LOX5ubsGZa_CZ5w4VCpPPQD-KoBoEByWQlZrwGxCrvgfCqbhdtdwK0TgDynVKxHY/s1600/Picture+077.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515370833524048818" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsL9a7O_NfSWqNPd3Z6FtJr91V2ZMtSZ6gRWNLB97op6gc0WG_F4lPKO1PfjUTygCdBOnvM7ofvX0LOX5ubsGZa_CZ5w4VCpPPQD-KoBoEByWQlZrwGxCrvgfCqbhdtdwK0TgDynVKxHY/s320/Picture+077.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /></div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>I'm not sure why Pablo's eyes are so wonky, but hey, its art.<br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6rSrFApsX3WKmLU73EyMIr6Y5h7DZWJNaVX9BMHJfadCTQjsAdkr-RiU0wlHvdoPb88tYV9f4qbhZ-A9I3jyYPTc6-YjrOOD-DQscdTt4ewBnxSqdDFzo7y9eRnfk40pm0GcPuTjQ2xmk/s1600/Picture+041.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515370826082462306" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6rSrFApsX3WKmLU73EyMIr6Y5h7DZWJNaVX9BMHJfadCTQjsAdkr-RiU0wlHvdoPb88tYV9f4qbhZ-A9I3jyYPTc6-YjrOOD-DQscdTt4ewBnxSqdDFzo7y9eRnfk40pm0GcPuTjQ2xmk/s320/Picture+041.jpg" border="0" /></a> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div> </div><div>Pressing sugar cane juice<br /><br /><br /><br />I did it! Dont expect any more for awhile though....<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div><div> </div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-35156313001868069342010-08-29T14:38:00.000-07:002010-08-29T15:42:33.724-07:00La Vida PanameñaWell folks, despite my recent extended silence, it has actually been an action packed couple of months full of slightly absurd adventures. For teh most part I spend my time traipsing about in the jungle getting covered in mud and downpoured-upon. Then I sit around in a hammock strumming away on my guitar, Diablo Rojo and eating more rice than you can shake a stick at. Well you probably COULD shake a stick at it, but then you would just be a crazy gringo shaking a stick at a bowl of, and that's just ridiculous. Anyway, teh first few months are mostly just devoted to integrating into the community. In terms of work, mostly I just tromp around flailling my machete and pretending to be badass. For this purpose I have bought a new machete - a 26 incher named El Tigre. My trusty Viuda Negra, at 16", just wasn't cutting it (that was for you Dad and Emma). She was being ruthlessly ridiculed by everyone in town for her diminutive stature. Good for opening coconuts, they tell me dissmissively. And maybe hunting shrimp, though even that is doubtful given my success rate in that department, which is also a source of mirth for my townsfolk. Anyway, with El Tigre at my side I have become quite adept at the "slashing" aspect of traditional Panamanian farming. I have yet to master the "burning" part, but all in good time Im sure. Just kidding. I haven't done any burning to date. I did eat some mysterious and endangered jungle cat though, deep fried of course. Sorry planet. And I enthusiastically slashed a hillside full of plants that put up delightfully little resistance against my blistered hands, only later realizing that I had taken out a mountainside full of cala lillies. The symbol of Peace. How's that for a twisted metaphor.<br /><br />I have also started teaching english in the school, an endeavor which has not been terribly successful, but makes everyone in town think I have a purpose. I prefer teaching english to my host siblings, who I instruct in teh pronunciation of useful english phrases such as "my sisters are professional reggaetone singers" and "catch you on the flipside, homeslice." They also like to learn how to sing along with me on Diablo Rojo, phonetically of course. Their favorite songs are Jolene (which they pronounce "Chooleee") and Dirty Old Town (which is more widely known as Viejo Pueblo Sucio). I also sometimes read from a book of morally dubious fairytales that are "translated" into what cannot even be kindly described as dubious english. The tale of "The Beautiful Sleeper" describes its evil fairy as "cholic." Fortunately the kids can't understand what I'm saying, and at least I get a kick out of it. They also have an adult english instruction book which is full of useful phrases such as "my gums are bleeding," "there is a gang causing trouble next door," and "I'd like to post bail, please."<br /><br />Here are a few fun wiuldlife stories for y'all: The other day we were out macheteing the mountainside and we encountered a six foot long fer de lance, which my host brother shot in the head with an old rifle, naturally. However, it neglected to die, so he beat it over the head with a stick until it complied. Then we emptied the contents of its stomach, and discovered that it had eaten ANOTHER snake that was about 3 feet long and half as fat to boot. Oh the excitement of living with large and dangerous vipers. Another time, in teh middle of a church service, a fer de lance came slithering up the aisle in the middle of the prayers. Church is about the only place people don't take their machetes, so they had to kill it with a broom. It certainly shook things up, but not enough to keep my brain engaged enough for the next six hours of the vigil. This resulted in me accidentally agreeing to attend another midnight vigil the next week...helpful hint: never say 'yo tambien' unless you know what you're 'tambien'-ing about. <br /><br />I managed to avoid the second vigil by visiting Carmen in Canglon. We have a new tradition of pineapple pancakes. Its always nice to mull over life with some other gringos, but every time I go in our out its an adventure. This time is was a waist high river I had to ford on teh way out, and coming back was a whole other debacle. First the 3:00 chiva was canceled and we couldn't leave until ''5:00'' (and I use the term 5 loosely). Then the chiva had 19 people in the back, and it was raining so the vinyl siding was rolled down. Suffocation is apparently preferable to getting damp. Only 2 of the 19 were children, one an adorable Embera girl who relentlessly stomped on my blister-covered toe. ''Oh well,'' I thought to myslef, ''it's only an hour and a half.'' Oh Molly, don't be ridiculous. I can't imagine how, but somehow I'd forgotten that I was in Panama. We arrived at the first river and of course it was flooded. So we waited for two miserable hours wedge into the back of the chiva before we could cross. Finally we managed, and the rest of that unfortunate road can be described as frightening at best. Outside of Cucunati we had to wait half an hour for a boat to cross teh river into town. I finally straggled into town around 9 PM, and decided that hiking up to Candelilla alone on foot at that hour would probably be classified as a poor decission. Unfortunately I knew no one in Cucunati, and the volunteer who lives there was out of town. So I asked the people in the boat if they knew of anywhere I could spend the night, and someone took me to his sister's house, where the family fed me, gave me a bed, let me watch badly dubbed westerns with the children, and refused to accept payment. They told me that they were my family in Cucunati and their door was open any time. I thought it was pretty amazing that a dedraggled and smelly stranger could limp into town in teh middle of the night and be taken in and cared for like that. <br /><br />So, there's a quick recap of what ive been up to as of late. Life is pretty good. Always full of surprises and adventures and absurdities and lots of hilarious jokes at my own expense to the delight of everyone (but hey, if nothing else, Im good entertainment for two years!) and crazy animals and amoebas, which are mostly ignorable but occasionally get rowdyand have a little fiesta in my stomach. <br /><br />Hope everyone is well, and much love to you all!<br /><br />Molly (or Moli, as my 14 year old host brother who wants to be my novio writes over and over again in his school notebook....)Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-19371094412149323882010-07-17T15:18:00.000-07:002010-07-19T11:11:19.617-07:00Hey there muchachos and muchachas!As always things have been adventurous and busy around here. The last few weeks have gone by in the blink of an eye. We had a final goodbye party for our host families in Santa Clara, for which we got up at 7 am and killed 20 chickens that we had raised for the party and turned them into delicious tacos. Our Swear in Ceremony to become real volunteers was eventful. The Panamanian Vice President and First Lady came, and you may have seen us on CNN. The day of the ceremony was the day Obama announced increased funding for Peace Corps, so CNN had a little snippet of us. After the ceremony I decided not to try and meet the famous people, but true to form I parked myself by the refreshment table for a solid hour and a half, making it my business to sample everything at least twice. I succeeded, of course. We also got the rest of the day off, so we explored Panama Viejo, which is really the only part of the city I like. It reminds me of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. After leaving Santa Clara we had a final week back in Ciudad del Saber, clinging to the last shreds of cushy existence before campo life, and sitting around acting like hippie peace corps volunteers with our guitars and mandolins and frisbees. I bought a guitar, and its red, so naturally I named in Diablo Rojo. Before heading off to site we had a few days off, so a bunch of us went to Isla Grande, a beautiful island off the caribbean coast. We spent the time lying around on the beach drinking coconuts, snorkling, and entertaining ourselves for hours, literally, with mary´s underwater camera. Zach and Marion attempted, in vain, to go spear fishing with sharpened sticks.<br /><br />I have now been in my site for 2 weeks, and I still am really excited about it, though it's definitely intense. Though Im actually in the city right now due to inexplicable jungle diseases. To get here, I had to go on horseback through a flooded stream, hike through mud and rain for an hour and a half, cross a river in a boat, take a chiva to the highway, and then i got stuck with the diablo rojo bus for 5 hours. I arrived, COVERED in mud and sweat and feeling rather out of place, as always when Im in the city, as rubber boots do not blend well. In my village I have spent most of my time pasearing. Pasear is a verb for walking around visiting other people, and I really like that Panamanian tradition. We've had a coupleof work juntas, complete with chicha fuerte (which is not actually very fuerte, it turns out), to build a house for the rice husker, or piladora, that the farmers cooperative bought. It has yet to function, of course, but its here, and it will make a big difference to the farmers in this neck of the jungle because up til now they have had to take all their rice to cucunati on horseback to pilar it.<br /><br />Mostly though I spend a lot of time sitting around at various peoples houses. Fortunately there are lots of hammocks, which make the awkward silences which are so popular in Panama much more comfortable. Making fun of my silly gringo antics is another favorite pasttime. Fortunately I'm full of absurd self deprecating stories. They are very popular conversation pieces and can be told over and over again without loosing any hilarity it seems. So really, this is the perfect place for me, since the Panamanians actaully LIKE my repetitious story telling tendencies. And the stories pasear around town faster than I can, so I often arrive at a house for the first time and they immediately ask me to tell them about how I told my host mother I was hiking to Cucunati in boats (instead of boots), or how the chicken jumped in the cake, or how I named my machete, which is probably their favorite story of all.<br /><br />Safety standards here are a bit different from at home. Example. In my host family there is a toddler who is almost two. The other day, he started off with a large mug of coffee sweet enough to make your teeth hurt. Then he played with some matches. Then he found a plastic bag and put it on his head and ran around a bit. Then he proceeded to squat down a drop a deuce on the floor, while simultaneously eating cheetohs off of it, for which he was belted (hes supposed to go in the yard). A few hours later he found the lighter for the stove, and played with that for awhile while turning the knobs of the stove on and off. The hissing noise the gas makes as it comes streaming out into his face apparently delights him. Later on he chugged pepsi out of a 2 liter bottle. Despite this, the children are alive and well and quite delightful. I have a little gang that follows me everywhere i go, including to the bathroom. I also have several dog friends, because I usualyl leave more fat on the bones than the panamanians. Some of my favorite dogs are Strongman Kaiser, Michael Jackson, and Esparky Esnoppy.<br /><br />Generally, life is good. I visited Zachs site, and boy I tell you. I am going to be a cardiovascular super champ at the end of these two years. Trekking through mud is a lot more work than normal hiking, and these hills are steep. Zachs got a lot more hills in his site though, lucky him. Though the parasites and chiggers have done a number on me, I have successfully avoided the vipers so far, of which there are many. I think I will become quite adept at getting them in one machete swipe. The food in my site is pretty good, though lacking in the vegetable department. People grow pretty much everything they eat. We get GIANT delicious shrimp from the quebradas. I asked how they hunted them and they said ¨with the viuda negra!¨ which I thought was a joke, but it wasn´t. They actually do hunt shrimp with a machete. Or they use the machete to sharpen a stick to spear the shrimp with. I am looking forward to learning this particular skill. I have also eaten more corn products than I ever before imagined existed. The new corn is coming in right now, and you would not believe the number or things you can make out of corn. Elsie is keeping a list.<br /><br />Shockingly, I never thought I would say this, but some days I look back fondly on the deep fried hot dogs. Here, where there is no refrigeration, the people favor SPAM because of its longevity. Deep fried spam, stewed spam, spam and spaghetti, spam and rice...its a disturbingly persistent menu item.<br /><br />Anyway, Im off to quitar these e.coli. Love to you all!Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-91424177204432489242010-06-26T11:19:00.000-07:002010-06-26T11:56:57.038-07:00Remember how I promised you all I wouldnt go to the Darien? So about that...I realize its been forever but life is pretty crazy up in here. But my big news is I am going to the Darien for two years! It is the most badass province in Panama, and I am going to be so hard core when I get out. No one should worry though. The place where I live is entirely FARC free, and I live several hours this side of the security line. Also where I live has been deforested to some degree, so though its jungly, its not the impenatrable, triple canopy jungle that the Darien is famous for.<br /><br />My site is named La Candelilla, which is the word for fire ant and is also, as fate would have it, a nickname for a red head. I spent last week there, and I have to say. At first I was intimidated because it is really way the heck out there in the middle of nowhere, and as very few fruit trees. My main project is planting rice in a traditional manner using green manures. But the people are AMAZING. They are really warm and welcoming and i absolutely love them. I spent the week pasearing, eating bowl after bowl of rice, and washing out pig intestines in the creek. The same one I swim in, incidentally. My people find my gringo ways hilarious, and Im happy to provide entertainment. They taught me how to salomar, which is a sort of a yodel cry, that you do while youre riding your horse around the mountains. I dont have the ending quite right, but Im working on it. I would be happy to demonstrate over the phone if you call me. One day we got stuck in an agua cerro, and after fording several freshly sprung rivers on our horses, we were stranded at teh big flooding creek and had to wait 3 hours for teh water to receed enough to stop. We sat on teh bank, completely soaking wet, and salomared the whole time.<br /><br />Getting to my site is pretty hard core. From Santa Fe, teh nearest place with stuff like electricity, you have to take a chiva to Cucunati, the BIG TOWN. Of 600 people. No electricity or anything. The chiva drives this crazy muddy rocky road that drives thorugh 4 creeks and one large river, so its impassable when it rains, which is most of the time. Then from Cucunati, you start walking for about an hour and a half or so into teh mountains, fording several other creeks and mud like you might not believe. And then you get to down town Candelilla, which is composed of about 7 houses and 2 churches and a school. Its absolutely beautiful. All teh others going to teh Darien are supoer cool people, and a good friend of mine has a site only about an hour hike away, so that will be fun. Hes got a good waterfall at his site, wehich I am looking forward to. And im hoping that since hes upstream the quebrada funk will pervade my clothing and hair less. Though I am resigned to smelling like a dead foot for teh next two years. All week I bathed and washed my clothes in the creek and came out smelling horrendous. So horrendous in fact that when I boarded the bus at the end of the week, the bus driver spritzed air freshener after me when I got on. Anyway, its going to be intnse and I definitely got a hard core site, but i am super excited and i think the community is amazing. And if any of you want to vacation in teh most badass jungle in teh western hemisphere, hit me up.<br /><br />Yesterday was our swear in ceremony, so now i am oficially a volunteer. We have lost three asSASsins from our ranks, sadly. But 15 of us are pressing on. The panamanian vice president and first lady were there, and we made the news. I am sending you a newspaper clipping, grandma. I spent most of the time by the food table. After the ceremony we explored Casco Viejo, which is a really beautiful area of Panama city that is nothing like the panama i have seen so far. Its like a tropical run down european city. Its feels like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. We walked by the sea, had some ginger ice cream, good food, enjoyed the beautiful, and then had dinner and went dancing, which i usually dont enjoy but in this case was fun. I busted out my slick hip hop moves. It was nice to have a break from the endless tipico dancing... <br /><br />One high light of a few weeks ago. We had a day off and we went to the beach and it was a gorgeous beach with hammer head sharks washed up on it, which was pretty fascinating. And I was sitting there with two great friends, under a palm thatch hut, looking out at this sparkling blue water, sipping an ice cold, sweet, fresh pina colada and eating spicey limey fresh caught ceviche, and it was one of the most enjoyable moments of my life. If you come visit I will take you there.<br /><br />Anyway, things are wrapping up here. We have a big party for our host families in Santa Clara tomorrow, and we leave for good on monday. <br /><br />Love to you all! It will probably be awhile until you hear from me again, but think of me soaked in rain and tromping through mud learning to gallop on my horse through the mountains and jungles of the Darien with La Viuda Negra at my side....<br /><br />MollyPanamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-1976361573943497252010-05-22T10:03:00.000-07:002010-05-22T10:32:52.293-07:00Bocadillos, Burundangas y BatidosThose are the names of three of my favorite things. Bocadillos are savory snacks, like these delicious faux cheetos called Conchitas. And burundanga is a panamanian word for sweet snacks, like cookies and icecream. Who doesnt love cookies and icecream? And duros of course, which are the best burundangas. And batidos are these super delicious fruit shakes, except a lot of panamanians like cornflakes in their milk shakes, and I cant say Im a fan of that. <br /><br />Last weekend I made my host family pancakes on saturday morning, and I brought them home made maple syrup from vermont to eat with the pancakes. And you know what they put on top? American cheese. Right on top of the syrup. I may have died a little bit inside. They were surprised that I didnt want any on mine. <br /><br />Mangos are still going strong, I average about 4 per day. I found the best tree in town and now I am a mango snob. I only eat the mangos off that tree, oh man they are so good i dont even have the words to describe it. Frisbee is still going strong, tons of neighborhood kids come and its a total riot. Also, I learned that their is a much better word for frisbee in spanish: ASTRODISCO. Put apparently you cant call it astrodisco ultimato or they laugh at you.<br /><br />This week we had really interesting tech classes. We learned about plumbing and making irrigation systems with bamboo and pvc pipes and a super cool pump called a bomba that you make out of readily available materials and it can pump water 100 meters uphill. We are also making a bunch of different kinds of compost, like regular, worm compost, bokashi, and a fermented molasses kind. We also went over to this hill that had been slashed and burned and built dead barriers and terraces, and learned how to make level As. We used those to stake out contour lines to plant along, and we planted the whole hillside with plantains and bananas, yuca, root veggies called ñame and ñampi, beans, and corn. I hope they grow. recently weve been spending a lot of time working in the field. Its hard work and you get completely filthy and muddy and sweat drenched, but I love it. And besides, one is ALWAYS sweat drench here, and usually muddy to boot. We used the ashes from the slashed and burned trees to make fake tattoos and face paint. Carmen gave me a tattoo of an equis (fer de lance) on my bicep. Pictures will be forthcoming.<br /><br />we also had a fun spanish party yesterday to celebrate our advancement to the next level. We played some music, some astrodisco, volleyball without a net, some party games, Panamonopoly (its a real boardgame) and ate a TON of bocadillos and burundangas. <br /><br />This coming week we are splitting up to do tech weeks. 7 of us asSASsins are going to Divisa in Veraguass to go to this permaculture school for a week. It sounds really interesting. The other groups are ging to Bocas for caco training and Boquete for coffee training. That means I am not getting a fruit tree site as expected. I think my site is going to be working with rice planting. I guess this community really wants to plant in a traditional way but they want to improve their soil quality. Im not super excited about rice but the potential community sounds really cool. And thats the most important thing. They said it was also really hot. Yikes. I think THIS is really hot. Ill adjust. Hopefully there will be a chorro. <br /><br />Im also really excited about tech week because we have a free day after tech week and we are going to the BEACH. we are just getting a palm thatch rancho right ON the beach and we can just hang out there all day and sleep on the sand next to the waves. There is also a little restaurant where you can get fresh caught fish and maybe a pina colada with fresh coconut and pineapple. Overlooking the pacific ocean. And the palm trees. I love my life nearly all of the time except when I have food poisoning.<br /><br />We started this thing called The Great Botfly Bet. we all put a dollar into the kitty, and the first person to get a botfly (confirmed my photographic evidence of course) wins all the money. Ill probably get one sometime, so I might as well make some cash monies off of it.<br /><br />Anyway, I hope you are all well. WRITE ME SOME LETTERS! I only got one so far, from my mom. Thanks mom, youre the best. I have written a bunch of you letters but you probably havent gotten them yet because its really hard to get to the post office here so they accumulate in my notebook for a while before i get a chance to send them off.<br /><br />Anyway, love to you all, even though panama is awesome i miss you guys!<br /><br />Love, MollyPanamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-85218831229506009732010-05-05T17:00:00.000-07:002010-05-05T17:13:36.454-07:00¿Que Sopa?Hey yall! I never did find that apostrophe key as it turns out. Ah well, such is life. My passport also molded, but again. What can you do. Things are still great in this neck of the isthmus. I have a new machete and I named it La Viuda Negra (which means The Black Widow). She and I do great thigns together like take out swatchs of overgrown campo and hack open coconuts. Here are a few highlights from this week:<br /><br />1) I rode in a diablo rojo with a monkey.<br /><br />2) There is an AMAZING waterfall, or Chorro here in Santa Clara. We went for a few hours on Saturday and sat in teh water and I was COOL FOR 2 HOURS!! So exciting. Another volunteer brought loudspeakers and a watermelon and we spent teh afternoon jumping off the rocks and swimming around and it was a ton of fun. <br /><br />3) we had a conference in a conference center that was decked out in Faux Italian decor. Lots of white with gold trim and lavender accents. I felt like I was supposed to be wearing a quinceanera dress. <br /><br />4) I get a deep fried hot dog for breakfast or lunch at least once per day.<br /><br />5) A few of us have been getting together to play frisbee in teh campo in our village. We have been teaching a couple of teh village boys to play and its a lot of fun. And the sunsets over the field are AMAZING every single day. <br /><br />6) Mango season is beginning...<br /><br />7) You may be relieved to know that I now celebrate Malaria Mondays. that means I take my antimalarials on moday becasue it rhymes. Except I forgot this week and took it on tuesday. Ah well. One cant always rhyme. You can get fired for not taking your antimalarials, so that sucks. Also apparently we are all going to get botflies. Gross, but sort of fascinating. If youre not squeemish, YouTube it. Apparently they are the least of our worries.<br /><br />8) I am spending teh next week visiting a volunteer in her site. I was supposed to go to an inidiginous site a 2 hour hike from teh nearest road in teh Comarca Ngobe Bugle, but that volunteer has been in the hospital with severe diarreah (or however you spell that in english, my english is all messed up because of the spanish) for 8 days. Poor woman. So instead I am going to Chiriqui to a Latino site. Its still a 1 hour hike in, so I still get to practice my super efficient packing skillz. <br /><br />anyway, things are great and I hope you are all having super cool adventures and stuff.<br /><br />Love to you all,<br /><br />MollyPanamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-49128186529220858572010-04-30T15:48:00.000-07:002010-04-30T16:20:07.053-07:00¡Its Gringo Season!Hola muchachos y muchachas!<br /><br />So I am here in Panama and its only been 10 days but it feels like 8 months. So far i LOVE Panama. It is increadibly beautiful, tropical with gorgeous mountains and palm trees and its awesome. And the people are super nice and friendly and have good senses of humor. My favorite Panameño phrase so far is ¿Que sopa mopri? which is like ¿Que paso primo? but they like to mix up their syllables for fun.<br /><br />Right now we are in the training community of Santa Clara. Just SASers, which is my group (SAS = Sustainable Agriculture Systems). I live with a super awesome host family. The father, Horacio, has a rockin do rag with his name on it. Iliana is my madre, and I have four siblings, Jenifer (13), Emir (9), Tamara (17) and Eileen (15). They are great. The food is all deep fried. Most mornings I have a deep fried hot dog and deep fried plantains. For lunch the other day I had cornflakes, strawberry flavored cookies, and coke. So much for fitting into my carhartts. We watch a lot of telenovellas, and also Hannah Montana and Es Tan Raven and Yo Soy Betty la Fea. <br /><br />Training is going really well. I really like PCs approach to developement. Instead of giving people what we think they need, the goal is to empower them to get the things they think they need using resources they have access to. Our bosses are Aimee, who is awesome and really really sweet, and Jean, who is only 25 but knows more than pretty much everyone Ive ever met before. They are great and I am really excited to be working with them. we got our machetes, and we learned how to sharpen them at training the other day. Then we learned how to hack open coconuts to drink the coconut milk. It was badass. We are also growing a garden and raising chickens, both for our big fiesta at the end of training.<br /><br />I never thought I would go into PC and need to buy nicer clothes, but thats how it turns out. Panamanians dress really nicely, and I turned up WAY underdressed. Predictably I suppose, all teh other trainees were fancier than me. Oh well. Ill catch on maybe. You may have noticed that I am not using apostrophes. I cant find them on this keyboard. There is an ñ where the apostraphe is supposed to be.<br /><br />The other trainees are super cool peeps. I get along really well with pretty much everyone. Mayas friend Sylvie is the best. There is also a guy who was a morticians assitant and a girl who packed her things in a five gallon bucket. So yeah, I think well get along. My spanish is coming along pretty well. My family speaks no english and we have class for 3 hours a day, so Im picking it up quickly. I can communicate enough to get my point across and understand the gist of most everything that goes down.<br /><br />If you are my parents you should probably skip to the next paragraph. I LOVE teh diablos rojos here. They are AWESOME. They are like chicken buses, but way more pimped out. Peoplke get really serious with them. They are retired school buses that are painted all over with fantasy-tatoo-graphiti type decorations of all colors, mopstly neon. The insides have tassles, boas, purple pleather cushioning, flashing lights. They have names like Papa Romeo, Malcom X, Pretty, All In, and Baby Face. They think nothing of careening around clif corners and driving backwards at top speed up the sides of mountains. They are the most fun thing so far. Also I had a tarantulla in my house last night.<br /><br />Welcome Back Mom and Dad!<br />So aside from teh diablos rojos, my two other favorite panamanian things are sancocho and duros. Sancocho is this DELICIOUS (thankfully not deep fried) soup made with rice, chicken, yucca, and some other root veggies that donçt have names in english. I found the apostrophe! We had it at this rural village in a hut with fresh starfruit straight off the tree. My other favorite thing is Duros, which are like popsicles. They are fruit juice that they freeze in a bag and you buy it for 10 cents, bight off teh corner, and itçs like a slushie. They are THE BEST when you have sweated through all your clothes and you are hot and eternally damp and tired and your brain is too full of spanish and you have just awkwardly told your spanish teacher that you are sexually excited instead of normal excited. So Duros are the best. And you should ALL COME VISIT ME! Because Panam is definitely one of teh most beautiful countries i have ever seen and also super pretty pretty (which is cool in panamanian spanish).<br /><br />Love you all! Write to me!<br /><br />MollyPanamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8411139493300674056.post-49712139028629203852010-03-22T15:34:00.000-07:002010-03-24T18:22:02.121-07:00Hi there everyone!So, as it happens I am headed to Panama for 2 years of Peace Corps service. I decided that instead of spamming you all with sarcastic anecdotes and long winded monologues of adventures I think are hilarious but most people probably don't, I'll do a blog. That way you can all ignore me as much as you want and I can still feel like I have friends! Win win.<br /><br />My e-mail access for the next few years will be sporadic at best, so I don't know how often I'll update this baby, but I'll do my best so just give the old girl a visit every now and again.<br /><br />Here's what I know:<br />I am leaving April 20 for Washington, DC for one day of staging, and then on to Panama City on April 21. You might be interested to know that Henry Morgan and his band of ruthless corsairs sacked Panama City in 1671. Captain Morgan, as it turns out, had a pretty nice mustache. We will be in training a few hours outside of Panama City for three months, and then into the jungles to become a volunteer in Sustainable Agriculture Systems.<br /><br />Until the swearing-in on July 1, you can write to me at:<br /><br />Molly McCumber<br />Cuerpo de Paz/Panamá<br />Edificio 104, 1er Piso<br />Avenida Vicente Bonilla<br />Ciudad del Saber, Clayton<br />Corregimiento de Ancon<br />Panamá, República de Panamá<br /><br />Panamá is the name of the Province as well as the country, so that's why it's listed twice. Make sure you write República de Panamá and not just Panamá or they might not deliver it. And if you send a post card, put it in an envelope or it might end up on the walls of the post-office. Although I'm sure the postal workers of Panama would find them delightful. But please write, I would love to hear from you, and I will try my best to write back the good old fashioned way as often as I can which will probably be considerably more often than I can e-mail. And hands down more exciting.<br /><br />Peace out, cub scouts. I'll catch you in a few years.<br /><br />Love, Molly<br /><br />P.S. Do you find it amusing that they told me to pack a wide-brimmed hat?Panamaniachttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12514792652398449240noreply@blogger.com2