First, hey family!

We lost ANOTHER person. Stephanie left for good to be with her grandma in Chicago, which leaves six EH girls to balance shit out. It sucks that all the good people are ETing.

This weekend was pretty busy, as it was the first time we as individuals ventured out into Panamá outside of the protective wing of the Peace Corps administration. Whitney and I embarked on our 11 hour journey to the Comarca Ngöbe-Bugle, which entailed a four and a half hour boat trip in this ridiculous canoe that was about forty feet long by four feet wide, equipped with ten bench seats, none of which were built to accommodate 5'7" me and 5'11" Whitney. We visited two volunteers, Andrea and Julie, and watched as they put on a simultaneous volleyball tournament/health ed charla on HIV/AIDS and the use of condoms. It was pretty crazy, the amount of information these women didn't know, but I guess that's why we're here. We also baked brownies on a stove, ate raw sugar cane, and took a bath in a river, until the current stole the soap from Whitney.

We ventured off to Las Lajas the next day, where you'll all be proud (especially you, grandma) to know I learned how to play both "asshole" and Flip Cup, for the first time ever, college included. We drank this sickass drink, seco, which is derived from sugar cane and taste like rubbing alcohol, and I came back with bites up and down my legs from whatever insects live in the sand.

Not much else has been going on, especially in the training community. Next Wednesday we find out where in Panamá we're going, and I'm 99.9% sure I'm heading to the Darién, much to my mother's chagrin, but there's also a decent chance I will have either water or electricity, or both. It's nervewracking, but it will be nice to know whether or not I'm going to be dying of sweltering humidity over the next two and a half years.

This upcoming Sunday is Family Night. I doubt Í'll be doing more than meeting with the latrine committee, as my host mother has some crazy, swollen back foot with an enlarged toenail that is oozing something, and for some reason this prevents her from ever moving. Thus, Sunday will probably involve watching the Spanish dubbed version of My Boss's Daughter, starring cinematic masters Tara Reid and Ashton Kutcher.

If you're planning on sending me books, as previously requested, and I hope you are, you should know not to send me A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway) or Man Without a Country (Vonnegut), as I've finished them both. Also, you should all know that before I left, I saw the preview for the movie adaptation of Kite Runner and it made me kind of cry, so you should all see it and report back to me about whether or not it sucked.