I forgot to add these fotos.
My first morpho buterfly
The waterfall in our town where we go to swim and unwind. amazing!
Some fellow äspirantes¨cera to my house

End Week One

Hola a todos!
So much has happened during the last week. Things are going well. I have been going to bed every night pretty early because I am so tired during the day ( I blame it on the humidity and heat. It has been sunny, no rain yet although they are supposed to start any day now. The temp averages about 85-90 every day with humidity of 95%. I never thought I would surive it but we are getting used to it.

In the mornings we have 4 hours of tech training. This week has been a large overview and we have had experienced volunterees come in every day and tell us about what they have been doing and the challanges they have faced. We´ve covered rice tanks, fish tanks, composting, home and school gardens, cacao and coffee and lots of other cool stuff. I am pretty sore from swinging the old machete around. no blisters yet.

In the afternoons we attend a language class (all classes take place in homes within the community. We usually sit outside on the terraza or in a ranchero (a open structure similiar to a car port but the roof is made of palm leafs.) Next week I will begin helping in the school which I am excited about because I dont have any kids at my host families home.

I really like my host family. My ¨mom¨calls me her daughter which is actually kind of funny since she isn´t that much older than me. She is a nurse at the local clinic and has a great sense of humor. I think she is dissapointed I dont want to gossip more about the guys in my group. I keep telling her we haven´t had much time for gossip or ¨bochinche¨to develope.

We are all getting pretty sick of the food already. They fry everything. Fried hotdogs are a breakfast staple. I haven´t had too much trouble with the gluten although I made some stupid decisions yesterday...

It is really beautiful here, it´s very green and there are fruits everywhere mangos, oranges, platanos, and lots of different stuff none of us are familiar with.

I think of you all very frequently and hope everything is going awesome. Libby, Alea, hang in there with the waiting process! So far I have to report that it is worth it!

Visit to Volunteer Site

Hey Everyone!
What an amazing day! We got up early and piled into 3 Peace Corps Land Cruisers to drive 2 hours to a PCV who is working with a group of farmers who implement alot of sustainable Ag. projects. The drive was pretty much everything I have ever expected, from close calls with large buses with people hanging on the outside to bumpy curvy dirt paths. It is amazing to imagine that at one point all of the pasture lands, that resemble the foothills in SLC, were once covered in forest. The "Slash and Burn" technique has really devistated the landscape. It is a practice that many conservationists are trying to stop.

We spent most of the time walking around the farm looking at honey bees, worm composting, veggie gardens and chicken coop. We stopped frequently to taste fresh goat milk (right from the teat... ok, from a glass, but it was FRESH) and some strange fruit. I have never experienced textures like that before. Some were cottony and turned smooth in our mouths, and others came from inside a small hard shell and we like a fruit snack with a seed in the center. I tried it all, and suprisingly, my stomach feels fine!

One of the volunteer's projects is a rice patty. We took off our shoes, rolled up our pants and talked through the mudd and water, pushing last crop's stalks deep with our toes so that they don't grow and compete with the new seeds. We also helped her plant a couple rows , which she could have done faster without us... not the point.

Her host family made all 26 of us lunch. Cooked on a mud stove in an enormous pot, were four chickens, broth, potaoes and something purple. The stew was served with rice and Orange/pineapple juice. It was amazing.

When we got home we went to the pool to cool off. An interesting interaction with the lifeguard insued. He came over and told us that the girls who were wearing shorts and the boys who were wearing shorts with belt loops needed to remove themselves from the pool. A married couple were preparing to get in the pool, the woman wearing a suit and some femnine shorts and her husband wearing some quickdry REI zip off pants. He istructed the girl to remove her shorts and give them to her husband or they would not be allowed to enter the pool. The entire group lost it. It was hard not to with the mental image of Brandon wearing his wife's short turqoise running shorts.

We leave for our training site tomorrow morning. It should be interesting to see how we pass most of the day with our new host families. This may be the last time I can use the comp for a while!

Oh yeah. They took us all to my machetes today. Mine is 22 inches. I will leave you with the idea of me, wielding a 22 inch knife.

Pre-Training Retreat

So here we are in Panama. 47 of us are currently staying within a compound outside of Panama City. On sunday we will go to live with our training host families. All of the Ag. and Conservation volunteers will be living in the same town while we complete our training.

There was a mix up regarding my project assignment. I arrived thinking I was with conservation, but turns out I was sent the wrong information and I should have been in the sustainable agriculture group. The director told me it was my decision to choose between the two different, albeit similar programs. It was a dificult decision to make. I spent about 24 hrs mulling it over and decided on the Agriculture postition because it is where I have the most experience and because the Ag sites are generally more rural, possibly indigenous.

We spend most of our days in an airconditioned building discusing safety and health, but that will all change on Monday when we offically begin to train.

I really like the training staff and other volunteers. Everyone seems possitive even though we are putting in pretty long days on a consistant basis. Yesterday we went to the pool for safety training. Our country director actually jumped in the pool with his clothes on to do a demonstration on how to make your pants into a flotation device. Most volunteers in other countries only meet their country director when they complete their service as a volunteer. It is pretty unusal to have a director who is so envolved.

The food is good. Rice and beans and meat and awesome fruit:water melon, papaya,pinapple, and some soggy veggies. I haven't felt so gluten free in months.

We have a great group of volunteers, including 5 married couples. Most of the volunteers are girls/women, probably about 60%. But everyone brings with them lots of different experiences. Lucky for me, there are many people who want to do animal husbandry, so hopefully the biggest thing that I have to kill is a chicken.

I fluctuate between being really excited and confident about the upcoming challanges and feeling a bit overwhelmed. I am going to have to take one day at a time I am sure.

This morning a group of us met outside our villa and did some Yoga, also known as feeding yourself to the mosquitos,. We figured it was time to get used to it. For those of you who know me a bugs will regognize this as a big step.

We started language today. It was all conversational, which makes sense since we will mostly be talking... but I have such a hard time saying the word correctly if I cant see it writen. We should have a better idea of the classes next week.

It's lunch time. Must go.

Finally....

So here goes. Damn. I've been meaning to practice congugating verbs (yes, I am THAT much of a nerd) but everytime I get on the computer I find something else to do. Like the Facebook group that all the other PCVs have joined. While not usually drawn in to the gossip and photos of drunken rondevus (sound it out) so graciously posted by people I long ago should have forgotten, I have been spending quite a bit of time checking the page. Enough said. Obviously no verbs are happening while I try to remember how to spell french words in the English language.

Anyway, I have spent the last week scrambling around doing lots of things without doing anything. Like in my swimming dreams when I'm trying to get behind the block but keep getting distracted by the muffin vendor or fall asleep behind my block before my heat. I wish I didn't have those still. I got my hair chopped off. 8 inches. oops. no more pony tails. I handed out my pottery to those who had made orders before portland. I spent way to much time seeing if I can more effectively cram my underwear into my hiking boots in the name of space conservation. And I've gotten to spend some quality time with my fam. and friends (utah friends only...bummer, colo.) I've so enjoyed seeing those of you I could.

I will miss you all so much! Please keep me posted on all that you're doing. I will try to write frequently, but who knows if I will have access to a PC or internet, or if I will have time. One returned PCV described training as a "bitter piece of hell" and I've heard they keep you busy... After the last couple of months it should be a real nice change. So... If you don't hear from me don't worry! But I'll try!