Community Entry Conference/Travel to Site Visit 2/29/12-3/3/12

The Community Entry Conference took place at CEDESAM, in Rio Hato.  It is pretty close to the beach and we actually walked to the beach on Wednesday afternoon, but there were tons of tiny jellyfish and we had to go eat dinner, so we didn’t stay too long.  At the conference, we met our counterparts (the teachers we will be working with at our site for the next two years).  Unfortunately, mine couldn’t come, but the (ready for this?) Special Ed. (!) teacher was the person who met me at the conference to take me to my site.  Her name is Yasy and she is pretty excited to have me coming to the school in Potrerillos Abajo, which is exciting, especially since I won’t even necessarily be working directly with her.  At the conference (which was 2 days, but really only 24 hours), we basically talked about what the expectations are from Peace Corps, from the volunteers, and from the counterparts, as well as some common cultural misunderstandings.

On Thursday afternoon, there were rumors that the Ngäbe-Buglé people would be closing the roads in an ongoing protest against a hydro-electric plant and possible mining in the Comarca (essentially equivalent to an Indian Reservation).  Anyway, because of this, those of us going to Chiriquí and Bocas del Toro (the 2 westernmost provinces) rushed out of the conference to catch a bus.  As it turned out, we weren’t quick enough to beat the road closure, so we ended up getting off the bus in Santiago, Veraguas and staying in a pretty awesome hotel: Hotel Gran David.  I think it fits the Peace Corps budget because like half of it is under construction.  So the 6 PC Trainees and our counterparts had basically a whole wing to ourselves.  It was super nice because not only did we have air conditioning and hot water, but cable TV, WiFi and meals at the hotel restaurant!  We ended up spending 2 nights at the hotel and to be perfectly honest, it was a great 36 hour break from reality.  We basically sat around and did nothing.

Saturday morning, we finally caught a bus at 8am and arrived in David (the provincial capital of Chiriquí) at 11am with no problems.  After that, Yasy took me to her house in David where I stayed the rest of the weekend and those in Bocas continued their journey for another day.  On Saturday afternoon, I took like a 2 hour nap because for some reason sitting around in a hotel is exhausting.  On Sunday, she took me with her family and we spent the afternoon in Boquete.  It was really beautiful (see pictures!) and I actually got cold!  Despite the unexpected travel hiccups, the whole 5 day adventure was really quite an enjoyable lead-in to my site visit.