Thursday, November 29, 2007

Pictures!


The tienda that my host family owns.


My extended host family (clockwise from top left): My host sister Dalquiris, Elizabeth, my host mom Jovanys, Laysa, Abdiel, Orlando, Jolanys, Katia and Francis.




This little girl is dressed up in the traditional Panamanian national dress, called a Pollera, to celebrate what I guess would have been Founders´Day in Tortí.





This kid´s name might be Alberto, or it might be Adelberto. I can´t ever remember, or really understand when they tell me. Such are the tribulations of life in Panamá.


It´s just a toy gun, mom, don't worry.


The Queen and Princess of Tortí something or another for 2007. I forgot, but you have to understand that it's not for lack of trying. It's because, during the month of November, there are literally probably eight different holidays celebrating an Independence from someone, or the flag, or Panamá in general, or whatever, and they elect a different Queen for every single one.


This is a picture of fourteen people crammed into on Landcruiser that also was carrying various boxes of what appeared to be contraband from the US Military. The guy driving the truck, Señor Lin, is the first Panamaño I can safely say I can't stand. Our encounter started off with his showing me a pistol he kept under the front seat of his car, then making me read the English manual outloud for Nightvision goggles that were originally issued, or meant to be issued, to someone in the military. Then, as the fourteen of us drove back to Quebrada Cali, he made me sit in the front seat, as opposed to letting one or two or THREE of the eight unrestrained children in the back sit up there, so he could regail me with stories about his charity work in Panamá while staring intently at my legs. Did you know Señor Lin has spent over 30,000 dollars on the pobrecitos in Panamá? Can you imagine how much he loves children, especially poor children (but not enough to let them ride in the front seat with a seat belt, while putting the gringa in the back)? If not, I'm sure I can track him down and he'll talk to you for two hours about it, while calling you joven despite your being a licenciado/a, and then he'll scoff at your attempts to talk about sustainability. I am not a fan of Señor Lin's.

Here are two pictures of this giant bug, the name for which I do not know in English, but which is called a Grilla or Griya or something like that in Spanish.
I held it in my hands for a good half an hour, and my immense fear of it shifted to something someone might feel for a pet. It doesn't bite and it looks like a leaf, and it's only scary when it's circling your head, at which point it's terrifying.



Finally, Evey, whom I am currently trying to deworm. This might be the greatest dog ever, and I am not just saying that because she is someone I can speak English to, and someone who will not judge me when I have nervous breakdowns. She truly is a hardass.

And speaking of breakdowns, this week I certainly had one. Between getting back from cold, seasonally-appropriately-climated Thanksgiving where I wore a sweatshirt every day and could speak in English, watching as five of my friends nearly got sent home and dealing with the rollercoaster of emotions that accompanied preparing to say goodbye and then suddenly welcoming them back, and not being able to express myself in Spanish still, plus the fact that my nearest English speaking neighbor is 45 minutes and a police checkpoint away, I almost went crazy. The holidays are going to be a rough time, as far as I can tell right now, and I probably bitched to my mother over the phone for a comprised three hours over the course of three days. We were told we were going to have ups and downs, and I know I just have to make it to January and I'll be okay, but December is going to be a trying, trying month. For those of you who pray, pray that my latrine proposal goes through so I have a project to work on, and for those of you who don't, try and send some good vibes or something. And call me on Christmas.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Okay. I have been sitting at the internet café, staring at this blank window in which to write for a good five or so minutes contemplating an opening sentence that would make my high school English teachers proud, and it has just only struck me that, due to Panamá, my verbal skills have severely withered away. So I have to apologize for that write off the bat.

Life in site is great and nothing is new to report, but my mother feels like maybe I should update the reading masses (which probably include not many more people than who work at Foote Hospital) on the oddities of Panamanian life that have kept me laughing in disbelief every day, and which are keeping my morale abnormally high. I swear, I am going to return to the United States and you will all be introduced to a Melissa you never thought possible. This is mainly due to the fact that my mastery of Spanish is such that I cannot express sarcasm as of yet.

So let's talk about pigs, and how, as a girl from the suburbs of Michigan, and later on Chicago, I was under the impression that pigs were kept in pens which were basically mud pits and they didn't ever get bigger than a medium sized dog. Apparenly I've been mistaken for 22 years, as there are two giant pigs at my site who roam like they own the place, who would probably be taller than me if standing on their hind legs, who collapse in whatever mud they find whenever they want (and there is mud evvvvvvvvverywhere), and who often are ridden by children and chased by dogs. This threw me off guard to begin with, especially when the pigs eat the copious amounts of trash lying around, and every time I see one, I laugh hysterically, which is leading my community to believe that I am insane.

There's also the subject of rice, and how I am physically unable to eat a pound or two of it a day, unlike my Panamanian family. Literally, imagine a box of that Instant Rice stuff and how much a cup makes in a saucepan of boiling water, and then imagine that all dumped onto one plate, add some fried meat of some sort, because other cooking methods are just too time consuming, and now imagine eating all that food. None of you could do it, and I can't either, and now the greater portion of my community thinks the Gringa has an eating disorder, which is only exacerbated by the fact that I run, or do any type of exercise, as opposed to the Panamanian women´s totally. Sendentary. Lifestyle.

Speaking of running, funny story. The kids in my community think I run bien suavecito, but maybe a little too slow, and so they took it upon themselves to coach my effort and encourage my sprinting down the Panamerican Highway to race them, after two miles of what can be best described as jogging. At first I resisted because, let's be honest, I am no World Class Athlete, but then I thought, whatever, maybe it'd be good to work on speed. So I agreed, and literally three seconds after we took off as fast as we could run, my legs gave out for no apparently reason and I bit it, face first, in the middle of the road, in front of about five ten-year-old kids, the respect of whom I'm trying to earn because I'm futiley trying to teach them English. Now I have a hugeass gash on my right leg and a completely injured ego.

Other little things, including part of my Kuna community trying as they might to convert me to Evangelicalism, the fact that making "shhhh" sounds at chickens as you wave a broom at them from thirty meters will scare them into leaving whatever surface they were currently on, and that I will always inevitably have some form of intestinal parasite because my host mother makes possibly the best juice I have ever tasted, using water that comes out of the tap a milky white, are making my life in Panamá extremely interesting, but I can't complain. I'm here, I'm relatively healthy, I am not pregnant and I speak decent Spanish, so you can all quit worrying.

Oh, also, I got a dog. Her name is Evey, and she's pretty badass, except she bites everyone and it's impossible to deflea her. My next update will include pictures, as well as what might be a detailed description of how I ruined an aqueduct or something, with my lack of math and engineering skills. International Studies students do not an Environmental Health worker make.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Pictures!

What you've all been waiting for, so get off my balls:


My favorite picture that I've taken in Panamá so far: Here is my six year old host sister, blatantly disregarding whatever disease might be festering in this dead dog and kneeling behind it with a plate of food, while Samuel drags it down the street by its leash.


Saluting the flag


Jolanys, getting her makeup did before the Tipico demonstration on Independence Day.


Tipico


Javier


Group 60 at our Despedida.


Here I am, putting art school to use as I shave the Batman Logo into the thickets of Franco's chest hair.

Monday, November 5, 2007

So, I've been in Quebrada Cali for exactly one week today, and it's going a lot quicker than I had expected. We've already set up English classes, which are going to be interesting as I have to teach them three times a week to groups of varying ages, th Panamanian educational system has ill-prepared them for such frivolous things as verb conjugations, and oh yeah, I am not a trained ESL teacher. Also, we've already got a directiva, which I guess is the equivalent of a board of directors, to start the Latrine project. My life has gone from twelve hours worth of sleep a night to being divided into little squares of time throughout the week: Tuesdays and Fridays, teach English from 9-1 in the school; Saturdays is adult English from 4-6; Run before nine every morning; Gather around the TV at the tienda with the rest of the community to watch Madre Luna and Dame Chocolate every night from 7-9. Time's going pretty fast and before I know it, I'll be departing on a twelve hour bus trip to Thanksgiving.

Despite the haste at which time is moving, I do get homesick every now and then. For example, take the other day. I was staring (literally, wide eyes, mouth agap) at the stars in the sky that I haven't seen in the last four years, when I caught sight of a northbound plane. I don't know if that plane was going to Mexico or Cuba or Nicaragua or London, but I do know that I got a little teary-eyed about the fact that the only thing keeping me apart from my family and friends back home was the fact that I was not on that plane, or any plane, headed toward the United States. It took a second, but then I realized that more than just that airplane would head back to the US in my lifetime, and that I had approximately 200 English classes to teach over the next two years.

Also, I would never leave my community due to their sheer niceness. My host mother, Jovanys, whom I have only lived with for a week, told me the other day that she would miss me when I change houses at the end of November. I am going to miss her family too, as the other two families are considerably more reserved, but then I remembered, again, that she owns the Tienda where Dame Chocolate is shown every night, and I cannot miss what will unravel with our heroes Rosita/Violeta and Bruce, and whether Angél will keep the secret that he knows. (For those of you who receive Telemundo or TV Azteca, I suggest you search for this show, as it is ridiculously addictive.)

Other than TV, English and Latrine meetings, my time has been spent attending and subsequently dancing at the Independence Day festival, which was both fun and awkward as I avoided the borrachos who made it known that they wanted to dance with La Gringa, despite her inability to move her hips in a proper Panamanian fashion, and also going to the hospital in Cañita, where the head cashier guy made notice of my calves and suggested that someone pop them because they look a little inflated, until my counterpart and I informed him that no, those were normal calves. So yeah, that's what's been going on. If you've read this far, congratulations. Now for what everyone has been demanding, in ways somewhat insensitive to the fact that I do not have the internet at my every day disposal: pictures. Okay, I lied, pictures are being a little bitch, but give me a while and they'll be up. I PROMISE.