Holy Week/Easter 1.4.12-8.4.12

Being in a Catholic country, Holy Week is a pretty big deal.  Palm Sunday was fun, but then of course I would say that-it's mass.  On Tuesday, peopel from church came into the school to talk about the meaning of Holy Week.  Wednesday was a half-day and Thursday and Friday were off.  On Thursday, I was going to do a pilgrimage-ish walk to El Angel with some of the teachers, but it was pouring rain and it scared me off. So I went to mass instead. It was alright, but it made me miss Holy Week at home.  Friday, I went to Potrerillos Arriba with Yova (my host mom) to see a passion re-enactment.  We had Eucharist and then sat around a little while waiting for it to start.  Finally, it did, and let me tell you: it was the most detailed rendering of the passion I think I have ever seen!  We stayed for 2.5 hours and Jesus had just been convicted; there was easily an hour left.  We walked most of the way back (an hour or so).  It was a good chance for me to get to know my host mom better.  Easter Vigil was good, but there were no Sacraments of Initiation, which was kind of disappointing.  Easter Sunday mass was in Rovira 5-10 minutes up the road (side note-there's another volunteer from the environmental project living there!), and that was really fun!  They had a guitar and it was really full and joyful; just like Easter should be :)  The end.

Week 1 in Site 19.3.12-25.3.12

So I pretty much hit the ground running during my first week.  I went to school and barely had my feet under me-there are 250 students to meet, learn names/personalities/etc.  And I have a relatively small school!  My counterpart is super on the ball, though, and we were planning on Monday already, which awesome :)  But it kind of makes me wonder why I'm here on some level.  Oh well, I'm sure it will all become clear in time.

At my new home, I unpacked and washed every article of clothing in my posession.  I did some pasear-ing (walking around and meeting people).  Thursday was the regional teachers' meeting, which was actually qutie enlightening.  I began to see the root of a lot fo the classroom management problems I have been observing.  Saturday, Yoli (my host sister) and I went to David (the nearby provincial capital).  We walked a lot and did some exploring.  I found my new favorite store: Arrocha.  It's essentially Walgreen's on steroids :)  And we went to El Rey (supermarket) to get stuff for curry and fruit salad.  I decided I will cook for them on Saturdays.  I'm excited about it.  It turned out pretty well and they enjoyed it. The kids were already asking what I would be making the next week.  Finally, 1 week after arriving to site, I got to go to mass.  It made my day.  It was good to be at mass and fun to see a bunch of students.

Site Visit 2/27-3/1

My site visit was really good.  It seemed to go by pretty quickly!  On Monday, I finally actually got to my site.  I met my actual counterpart, Zuleika, who seems really nice but a little shy.  I went to class and did some observation and talked with some students.  I left school a little early with Yasy to go meet my host family.  I will have an 18 year old brother: Jorge-Luis, a 13 year old sister: Yolibeth, a 7 year old brother: Jhon, a mom: Yovana, and a dad: Jorge.  They were super nice, but it was just super overwhelming to think about all the change that is coming!  I have my own room, which will be nice.  However, I feel kind of bad, because the room I am in is normally Yoli's and now she is sharing with her brothers.  Oh well.  Also, on Monday, I found out that I have another possible host family, so I could split my 3 months between them, which I will probably do for a couple reasons: 1) so I don't displace people for as long of a time, and 2) to get to know more people/different sides of town..
Tuesday and Wednesday were more like what have now become normal days.  I got up at 6, went to school at 7, started class at 7:30, came home after school at 12:30, ate lunch, took a nap, took a walk around town, came home for dinner, played uno/watched novelas, and went to bed around 9.  I can't wait until I get to know the town better.  Even now that I have been living here almost two weeks, I still feel like I don't know anything and barely any people, but that will come with time.
Anyway, I took a bus back on Thursday with another PCV whose site is also near David.  We miraculously had no problems and also ran into a current PCV from Bocas who was on her way to the PC Office in the city for a meeting.  Poor girl has a 2 day trip anytime she wants to go to the city.  It makes my 8 hour bus ride not sound so bad...haha.  It was really nice when we arrived back in Santa Rita to see everyone.  I think site visit made everyone realize how much we are going to miss each other when we're not together everyday.  But that's what we signed up for and came to do, right?  It will just take some getting used to.
That's all I have for now.  More to come soon: Swearing In, Vacation, and Arrival at Site.  Hopefully these aren't too boring.  If they are (and even if they aren't), please let me know what you want to know so I can hopefully answer some of your burning questions.  Also, I will  hopefully have more pictures when I post again :)  Miss you all!!!

Pictures, etc.

These are just a few pictures in more or less chronological order.  I will be trying to go back through some posts and put some more pictures in the 'right' places, but I'm hoping these will tide you over for now?  I know I have been terrible about pictures.  I will try to be better.  Hope everyone is doing well.  Also, I unfortunately failed at my task of finding out my new address last weekend :( For those of you that I haven't told already, please be patient with it...Finding out the address requires figuring out where the nearest/most convenient post office is and going there and talking with them.  Also, I just got an e-mail from the Peace Corps that my first letters are just now arriving at the office there...?  However, I hadpackages sent later arrive sooner...?  Who knows.  I will keep you updated.
Love,
Ally

 

My host sister, Alison, from Santa Rita and the neighbor boy, Alvin

 Alison in her pollera (the traditional dresses here; only worn on special occasions)

 Alicia, Yuri, and Alison

 The school in Santa Rita where we had most of our PST (Pre-Service Training)

 The rio in Santa Rita

 The chino (tienda owned by chinese people...very common) where we bought snacks

every day of training, and pretty much every other day too.

 The volunteer´s house where I went in Veraguas.  The one I think I will be
renting is actually the same color...

 Yasy (the special ed. teacher), her husband and her son when they took me to Boquete.

 Yasy's daughter and me :) Also in Boquete.

 A great view of the mountains in the background...one of them is Volcán Baru,
I'm just not sure which one yet...

 My new host family's dog: WiFi (pronounced wee-fee in Spanish).
They named her that because she runs around so fast...haha

 My 7 y/o host brother in Potrerillos: Jhon.  I don't know why he chose that moment not to smile...

 My (newly) 13 y/o host sister Yolibeth.

Somehow both parents and the 18 y/o avoided being photographed
for the time being...we will have to change that.

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.

Tech Week 2/23/12-2/28/12

This post is going to be short and sweet.  Tech week was theoretically our mini ‘student-teaching’ experience in La Chorrera.  I know all of you who actually did student teaching will laugh at the fact that mine lasted only really 5 days, only 2 of which was class actually in session.

The first couple days (really only the first day for me because my teacher wasn’t there on Friday) we spent getting to know our cooperating teacher and helping him/her set up the classroom and plan lessons for the first couple days.  Most of them were finishing up or had just finished their yearlong plan.  My teacher said he had it all pretty much together, so we just talked about MEDUCA (the Ministry of Education), teaching, and ourselves for a slightly awkward 2 hours where neither of us really knew what exactly we were actually supposed to be doing…

Monday (the first day of school) was the ActoCivico which is where they have announcements and sing the national anthem.  I can only hope that one day I will know the words.  If you care to look it up, it’s rather lengthy, especially compared to ours.  Then the day was spent in homeroom, so I just chatted with some of the students and then went to our ‘debriefing’ meeting at the library (after stopping at the ice cream shop on the way and teaching them how to make a milkshake…) and then went home.  Tuesday, I showed up ready to introduce myself in English and help with pronunciation because that is what my teacher suggested.  However, 10 minutes into the class he turns to me and asks if I want to teach the rest of the class, so I did.  Good thing I have a fair amount of experience making things up as I go.  Then we had our debriefing and then tech week was over.  That is all.

Carnaval 2/18/12-2/21/12

Carnaval, known in the States as Mardi Gras, lasts 4 days here.  We began celebrating on Saturday and festivities continue through this evening.  It is really interesting to see some of the different customs.  One is that each town has a ‘Reina’ (queen) of Carnaval and they compete as the weekend goes on to eventually be the Reina of the nearest city (here, for example, La Chorrera).  It is essentially a beauty pageant, from what I can tell.  Another is that the kids run around with buckets of water and try to dump it on as many people as possible.  There are also culecos (big trucks full of water that spray people) and bailes (dances).  These last two are often simultaneous or at least related, which is nice because then you don’t get too hot while you’re dancing.

As PCT’s, our celebration of Carnaval was limited to the nearest surrounding towns due to our lack of actual identification (they are getting our more permanent visas and foreign ministry ID’s, which requires our passports…).  I just hung out on Saturday and did a lot of reading.  Sunday, I went to Los Mortales (where the CEC trainees are) with some other people from Santa Rita for the culecos and some music.  It was pretty fun, but I got pretty sunburned (although not my worst ever).  Yesterday, a group of us went up to the lake in Arenosa (not too far, but it takes about an hour in a chiva).  It was absolutely beautiful, and really nice to swim.  I didn’t get too much more sunburned (I was much more diligent about the sunscreen).  We also ate at a restaurant up there that served only fish...  Needless to say, I just ordered French Fries and Patacones, which were also much cheaper than fish.  I was so tired when we got back that I went to bed at a little after 8!  Today has been another lazy day.  I have done some reading, played in the kiddie pool with Alison and Yuri, and typed a couple blogs and e-mails.  It will be nice to get back to a more normal schedule tomorrow.

An update on Alicia’s mom: she is still in the hospital but is doing pretty well.  She needs a pacemaker and they are waiting for the shipment to arrive from the US.  It is supposed to be here on Thursday.  They said she got out of bed today, which is a good sign.  Continued prayers would be appreciated.

I guess that’s all for now.  The next couple weeks are going to be super busy: we have tech week in local schools (in La Chorrera), then the Community Entry Conference where we meet our counterpart, and then our 6-day site visit.  After that, we have less than 2 weeks left of training!  I can’t believe how fast it has actually gone!

Until next time!
Ally

P.S. Happy Birthday, Daddy J