I'm alive. I PROMISE, I am alive, and I apologize. I know my original goal was to update this thing every couple of weeks, but let's face it. That was the United States and now I am in the reality of sweltering, rainy, lack-of-constant-electricity-or-internet-in-my-site Panama. So forgive me, all eight of you that are reading this (seven of which I am sure are reading this on the night shift at Foote Hospital, per my mother's recommendation).

I had originally written out this entire blog entry in site on my computer that my mother brought down to me. Unfortunately, as my amazing luck would have it, my computer doesn't work with the wireless in the Peace Corps office, which means that I will have to wait to add pictures to this blog. I PROMISE, though, that it will get done soon. I would add pictures today, except for my digital camera got stolen, along with my memory card. However, at the very least, the idiot thief who ripped me off of that and eighty bucks failed to see the value of my laptop which was sitting RIGHT NEXT TO MY CAMERA, and left it there. Thus, I am lucky enough to still have means through which I can watch the West Wing every night for two hours. I am one hell of a spoiled Peace Corps volunteer.

Right, so updates. My mom and Robert came down! All of you who haven't come to visit me, look to them as an example. They came down in the beginning of March, which was awesome, thought a bit stressful, as I am a horrible, horrible translator who would much rather just speak in Spanish in Panama than have to switch back and forth, and therefore forgot to translate and ended up paraphrasing a LOT. But we saw Colon, we took advantage of the all-inclusiveness of Decameron, my mother experienced Panamanian Traffic and Jorge's driving, and everyone made some comment or another aboutthe quantity of mosquitos in Quebrada Cali. I was also forced to open three huge suitcases full of Christmas, which was embarassing and humbling all at the same time, because Christmas with the Muterspaughs is generally an event wherein I receive way more than anyone should every give, either because my parents are ridiculously generous or because they're trying to buy my love. At any rate, after six months of living in pretty sparse conditions, I couldn't help but feel guiltier than usual. HOWEVER, out of my embarassment came some pretty amazing jeans. So.

What else. I acquired my second pet, a cat, whose name is "cat" or "gatito," depending on the mother tongue of the speaker. I was all about naming it Laertes, which I have been saving to use as a pet name, because Laertes was a hardass who got shit done while Hamlet screwed around with plays within plays and bitching about living in a nutshell and fucking up and killing Polonius and whatever else. Laertes just went at it. However, Panamanians can't really pronounce "Laertes," and most of the Americans to whom I reference the name have no clue what I'm talking about, so then I changed my mind to Iggy, short for Ignatius, after Ignatius Loyola, after whom my college was named. The reasoning for this is that Jesuits are sweet, the sweetest of all Catholics in fact, and I feel obliged to tell this to everyone I know. However, generally my announcing this fact manages to bring up religious debate, which I am always too exhausted for, so I decided against that too. In the end, I'll probably go with Laertes after all, because I own the cat and I can pronounce the name, and my community people don't even name their cats ANYWAY, so it shouldn't matter. We'll see.

Also, like I said, I got eighty bucks and my camera (a new, amazing, black Panasonic Lumix that I bought down here) stolen. So if anyone is feeling really generous, like "hey, that girl out there is trying to save the world and can't photographically document any of her efforts, and she must being going crazy because she actually STUDIED photography and thus understands the importance of things like reciprocity" kind of generous, feel free to donate one to me, or donate the money into my CP Federal Account (I mean, clearly I am not serious, but if one of you have a couple extra hundred bucks lying around, talk to Sally). Don't mail me shit though, because this joke of a mail service down here is withholding my packages or something, and I haven't received anything since December, meaning none of the boxes from Jolly, Kelly and Cory, or anyone else have arrived. I will probably be leading a small revolution in the coming months agains the El Dorado post office and at the very least, I plan on going down there later today to raise some hell.

What else. I've had a pretty awesome share of health problems this past month. First, I was suddenly struck down with either parasites or amoebas or God's wrath, and vomited up potato salad, which I can now never eat again. That same day I developed a cough. The parasite whatever went away along with seven pounds of water weight, but teh cought developed into BRONCHITIS, which I didn't think was possible in a country where the average temperature is 2394 degrees, but then I got a very informative "strains of bacteria" lecture for 10 or 12 people. I am still coughing up phlegm three weeks later, and had a 102 fever for a while, but no big thing. So THEN, I went to this nature camp with three kids from my site and tried to give myself a concussion by bashing my head against some mollusk-encrusted rock on a beach and managed to draw blood from my skull. So good times.

That said, I am not complaining too much. I have, unbelievably, fallen in love with Panama, so much that I was voted Most Likely to Never Leave Panama out of a group of 150 some odd volunteers in the country anyway. But I seriously love it. I love the women who wear their hair rollers out like they're a fashion accessory, and I love stores like Oca Loca and Titan and El Costo where I can refurbish my wardrobe for 25 bucks. I love listen to high school kids work on English homework and slaughter the phonics of my first language. I love guandu con coco, the Diablo Rojos and their proud lack of a muffler, and the differentiation of summer and winter by the amount of rainfall and nothing else. I love Samy y Sandra Sandoval and dancing tipico pega'o like a badass, and I love words like pega'o and quema'o and moja'o, the removal of any "s" sound from a word and other Panamanian pronounciation nuances. I love that everything in a forest is catagorized as a cat, bear, monkey or tiger (a sloth, for example, is called a "lazy bear,") despite whatever it actually is. I love Farmacia Arrocha and I love knowing when I am approaching Quebrada Cali by the increasing number of potholes on the Interamericana. I love Sedal shamppoo and shaking cockroaches out of my pillowcase and not screaming, and the feeling of being told that a governmental agency is funding one of my projects. I love love LOVE the Darien, the most amazing province ever. I love having a boyfriend who willingly sleeps in my unairconditioned, allergy inducing penca bat infested hut, and who calls every night just to tell me he misses me. I mean seriously. I bitch about electricity and cell phones and worms living in my water, but all of that is seriously, seriously outweighed by everything good that I constantly forget.

So there's that. There's my blog update. I apologize to everyone for the distinct lack of pictures, but when I find some functioning wireless, I will throw some up from my iPhoto library. And it'll be amazing. Just like sentence fragments.