So, I'll bet you're wondering where I've been. It's been a funny story actually, but this past month I had a veritable breakdown, or that is, the big one that all the little ones have led up to.

Let me preface this by saying that the Peace Corps slogan is "the toughest job you'll ever love." That is the world's biggest understatement. Peace Corps is the toughest job you'll ever possibly survive emotionally. It is a hard, hard thing, going from working from 4pm to 2am in a high stress situation, even if it is just serving pizzas and going home to your quiet apartment in Chicago and ordering Thai food in, to sitting in a hammock 14 hours a day, eating dehydrated foods and hardboiled eggs for every meal, stressing out about whether the water is potable and listening to dogs bark raucously every night. It got to the point that I was doing nothing but sitting in my hammock by day, calling my mom at about 10pm, and then crying myself to sleep every night. No one that I know can call that lifestyle healthy, even in the scheme of Peace Corps volunteering.

That said, last Tuesday I was diagnosed with "major depression." I don't know exactly how "major" it is, as anyone can vouch that I am not a normally depressed person, but following that I was hospitalized from Wednesday night to Monday afternoon (today!) so that they could moniter me as I started out on some medicine (Cymbalta, in case anyone is curious). Of course, I don't think I am a depressed person at all, and entirely chalk this whole experience up to situational stresses that have made me go insane. The biggest stress of all is my living situation. Luckily for me, my APCD (assistant program country director, or technically, my boss) is a very understanding man and is working with me to change my living situation to a site that is bigger, with more opportunities to have a job to go to every day, whether it is through the Ministry of Health or another private organization. I'm really excited about this, as some sites named as possibilities have been Chepo, Torti, Canita and Santa Fe, but my original request was denied to go to Meteti, as it is too far into the Darien.

So, friends and family, wish me luck as I possibly embark on a new chapter of my Peace Corps service, to define my second year. I don't want to terminate early as I am already this far in, and so hopefully this will make life MUCH easier for me, and help me be an effective volunteer as well.

My second update will come sometime tomorrow, and will include pictures. I love and miss you all!

Pictures.

Mom and Rob came to visit (Feb 29-March 9)


Here's Jorge, futiley trying to teach my mother how to dance.



A picture of a clown statue thing that Robert took. You'll have to ask him...it was in Colón.


Outside some restaurant on the Caribbean coast in Portabelo.


Clubbing at Guru. We took Sally clubbing.

All Volunteer Conference


Here's when Kelly and I demolished Crepes and Waffles.


Glamour Shots in the Hotel Room



Whitney, Lydia and Jen were under the impression that, because I wore black that day and they wore all white, they were "angels" and I was a "devil."


Here's Rob, wearing my newly purchased Jessica Simpson heels.


Mick directing Pete on how to convincingly act like a CED volunteer.


Group 60 Orange Team! I am on top of Mick´s shoulders.


I cannot salomar (which is a traditional yell that sounds like dogs barking). I ended up competing anyway. Here I am, walking away, embarrased and humbled, because I lost it for Group 60. Pete just kept on going.


Funny story: Upon teaching the verb "to want" in my English class, I asked the students what is it that Melissa wants (expecting the answer to be a car, or radio, since those are the only two nouns they should know). Jovanys's answer?

"Melissa wants...a man."

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.

I AM STILL ALIVE.

My friends in the United States, I apologize profusely for not updating this grand literary work that is my blog since January 17th. I have to explain that I have been the busiest person to live in a 300 person community in a third world country ever. "What in the world have you been doing, Melissa, when it takes you an hour to travel 30 kilometers, the equivalent of which is fifteen miles?" I'll tell you exactly what I've been doing, and in LIST FORMAT, as stolen from my good friend Deborah, whose blog you can view from the link on the right.

The First Health Gira: Santa Fe

For five days sometime in late January (I don't remember what days, but that doesn't matter anymore) I participated in a health gira in Santa Fe, Darien. What is a health gira? It's where a group of Christian missionaries come down to perform various medical routines that the people of Panama and especially of the Darien may or may not have the access to. As one of six or seven handy Peace Corps volunteers that live in the region, I was given the task of translating. So, for eight hours a day for the duration of five days, I stood in an operating room, holding the hands of the patients who were unsedated, save some vicodin and a topic anastethic, telling them to "don't move!", "look toward the light", "how many fingers is the doctor holding up," and translating various prayers. It was a really good experience, as I got to witness the opthomologists actually take out the cataract (or rather, the lens inside the patients' eyes which are fogged by the cataracts) and replace them with some sort of internal contact lens. It was really, really cool, I got some first hand experience in medicine, and I met some really great people, including my boyfriend (cue the collective gasp of readers around the globe), whom I will talk about later.


Checking out the eyeballs.


Get that cataract out!



Muchachas Guias training!

I participated in Muchachas Guias, or girl scout, training. I am now qualified to be a girl scout leader in Panama. There's not much more to comment on than that.

The Wounaan Congreso

The Wounaan are one of four indigenous groups in Panama who live in a Comarca, which is almost like a type of reservation. At the congreso, they did things like elect new leaders, hold traditional dance competitions, talk about ways to integrate their culture into the greater Panamanian community, and sell their traditional crafts. I got painted with a substance called Jagua, for the second time now, wore a paruma, which is like a wrap around skirt that almost every Wounaan woman wears, and sat through hours of meetings that I didn't understand a word of, because they were held in WOUNAAN. Go figure. Pictures.


That's Jagua. It lasts about two weeks. One of those is my foot.


I got canned heat in my heals tonight...


Another Health Gira!

Directly after the Wounaan Congreso, I headed to another Health Gira, this time in Platanilla, which is actually really close to where I live. This time there were no surgeries, and instead of being held in a Centro de Salud, which is ALMOST a hospital, it was held in a Subcentro de Salud, which is more like a gym with a room for pap smears off to one side, and a pharmacy on the other side. I translated a lot about urinary tract infections, high blood pressure (and accidentally scared the hell out of one woman, by telling her that if her blood pressure of 220/100 didn't go down soon, she would die, end of story...such bedside manner), and diabetes. I also got my pick of the pharmacy that the Church of Christ volunteers brought down, so now I am the proud owner of two boxes of Viactiv multivitamins, a bottle of Omega-7, and about ten bottles of Tylenol PM is liquid AND pill form.

And finally, here is my brief explanation as to who this guy is I am dating. His name's Jorge, he's a doctor, he's thirty, he's also studying for his MBA, and he lives in Panama City. The soap opera story of how we met is he's the Director of Medicine and Personnel of the Centro de Salud in Santa Fe, his mother was getting the Cataract Surgery done, I was holding her hand while she was on the operating table when he waltzed in with his lab coat, surgical mask and hat and began translating for me (because he speaks some English!!!). Don't be jealous of that ridiculously amazing story. Yes, I asked if he had children or a wife/girlfriend, and the answer was no to both questions. Here is a picture of him giving MMR shots in Platanilla.




He's also 6'2", which makes him about a foot taller than the average Panamanian man. Clearly, the most important aspect to this relationship.

About a month ago, Panamá almost saw the end of Melissa Muterspaugh, as I had my regular nervous breakdown that accompanies major holidays, stressful news, or the sheer fact that I have to speak in Spanish daily while force feeding myself a pound or two of rice. Yes, I about came home. I didn't get around to packing my bags though, because a group of boys came to my rescue and now I feel like Wendy in Peter Pan.

My best friends are about ten boys, between the ages of 13 and 17 and as such, I'm sure my maturity level will have dropped significantly by the time I return to the United States. We climb giant hills together to retrieve oranges from my host father's finca, we walk a mile and a half to the deep river to play Chicken Fight, and I listen as they ask me how to swear in English (which I never teach them). I can't believe it, but these boys are my saving grace in site.

Accompanied by the fact that Vladimir, Luisito, José, Ñato, Sando, Landín, César and Tony have been keeping me on my toes, New Year's was also quite the spectacle to behold. Below are pictures, and I apologize about this post being short and lame in advance, but I only have a few minutes of internet time left.


Here's the obligatory kids-in-my-community picture.


My host mom Jovanys and sister Dalquiri making Tamales.


Tamale fixin's.


Pork leg.


The dolls we would eventually burn in the street for New Year's.


Here we go. César dragging it out to the street.


What my roof is made of. Fresh-cut Penca.

And finally...


The scorpion I found in the shower. No one believed me that it was a scorpion until I forced them to look for themselves, because apparently gringas can't distinguish scorpions from lizards. Such is Panama.

Wow, so it's been a month since I updated...I am sorry I have neglected you, my patient friends and family. A lot has happened this December. I'll give you the rundown, in list form:

1. Evey, that dog I had for a good month? Well, the past tense is the operative tense in this situation, as a pig sat on that poor dog. I am not kidding. A pig collapsed down on top of my dog and had not moved when I found her ten minutes later, despite Evey's poor, pathetic whimpering. So yeah, a pig killed my dog and we had a funeral. Here are pictures from that:


Her grave had a cross and everything, with her collar on it...it was cute, until the next day when her arm had inexplicably made it outside of her hole. So yeah, dead dog.


2. We started building my house. I'm not sure if the means of our cutting down the trees were exactly legal by Panamanian standards, but I am proud to say that despite that, I helped out and even got to use a chainsaw. More pictures!


That's my host dad, Orlando, kicking that tree's ass.


Vladimir on the left, helping out his dad Candelario. In my entire community, this family is my favorite besides my host family. I mean seriously awesome.





I mean, why wear the safety earmuff things when you can just shove leaves in your ears? This is my ten year old host brother, Orlandin.



Cesar, another son of Candelario and as such, another badass. He's hanging upside down from the truck, or Chiva.


3. We had Christmas! It was wonderful, for being away from home and not in the presence of my family. Everytime we get together like this, I realize how close I've grown to the people here and how, after two years, it's going to be impossible to say goodbye. Eighteen of us spend Christmas in El Valle de Antón, Coclé, which is essentially a beautiful area that sits in this huge crater that was created five million years ago when a volcano erupted with such force that it blew the top off. It was sort of chilly, for Panama at least, and we in Group 60 are lucky to be graced with some pretty culinarily gifted people, so we actually had a dinner that didn't consist entirely of rice.



Homemade Eggnog that could very possibly give all eighteen of us salmonella due to its containing nine raw eggs!


East of the Canal Volunteers! Deborah, who lives in Chagras in Colón, Joanna from the Darién, myself, and Jake 6'8" who lives in Changras too. Three of my favorite people ever.

4. I am trying to get shit done. I am so excited because my community is excited about the prospect of the composting latrines we're gonna start doing. We had two meetings a week for three weeks, and every family was required to attend at least once a week, every week, to be eligible for a latrine. I couldn't believe it when, after three weeks, thirteen families remained eligible. They teach us during training to expect that it will be difficult in site to engage the community members in projects, so I am beyond lucky that my community is so proactive.

Also, I've gotten to do a lot of things like cut rice down for seven hours a day, learn to dance Tipico, introduce my host family to the Wonderful World of French Toast, learn to eat fire (no, I'm not kidding, I can stick a lit match in my mouth), have my crazy neighbors attack my hair with boxes of dye, and try to attempt to start learning Kuna. Good luck with that.
Also, it is worth noting that I am more tan than I have ever been in my life, and it's December. I can't handle that.

Okay, two hours on the internet is a little bit of an overkill. Happy Holidays!

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.