So the longer I'm here the more normal my life seems to become. And by that i mean the less strange things feel. When people ask me what's new, I have no more good stories to tell. Maybe its just not weird anymore to wake up and find an egg under my hammock. I mean, a chickens gotta lay the thing somewhere after all. Or how about the other day when I fell asleep against a convenient store wall laying on my bag and an old man came over and poked me and told me I wasn't allowed to sleep there, it wasn't out of the ordinary. And what's strange about a 5 year old kid climbing to the top of a 6 story tall tree and jumping into the river below,which is only about 10 feet deep. I was a little surprised the other day though when I got some spaghetti and they didn't serve it on top of a huge plate of rice! I was just getting used to that too...oh well.

Life is very good here. My community is just completing it's first project which is a water en-catchment system as well as a kitchen for the school. After being approved for a grant(thanks again Michael!!!) my people were given much more motivation to donate their labor in order to get this project completed by mothers day, which here in Panama is on December 8th. As usual, the gift we are giving the moms is one that helps them work for us even easier. I will be making a post upon the completion of the project, including a video hopefully, so stay tuned!

Also included here is a photo that was taken by some guys who showed up randomly one day in a helicopter! They took a lot of pictures then sent them to Anne, one of our tour guides, who then sent them to me.

street meat. it's so freakin' delicious.

Now for more on Panamanian fun. The newest hippest style shirt to wear these days in Panama is the extreme graphic tee. The formula for a good graphic tee is Human Skull + Angel Wings + Obscure Words in English. My latest fave? It included the required skull and angel wings, but the words were what really moved me. It went like this, sorta like a grocery list:

Trinity

Animals

Earth

Blood

Pretty solid if you ask me.

Bad news, my external hard drive and my camera memory card have a virus. No new pictures for a while, even though I have some good ones if I can salvage the infected files.

Good news? My mom comes today! Also, pumpkin pie and turkey in 2 weeks!

And for all those who are big time Diablo Rojo fans like myself, here's what it said on the rearview mirror of my bus this morning:

"You sleep with him, but you dream about me."

More bloggin' to come at a later date.

water

More people

People

Nice little joy ride in the canoe

Well, my old camera kicked the bucket, so I got a new one yesterday. I'm real excited, and that's all I'm gonna say. Also, the other night I was roaming around near my house and I heard the sound of a dear little frog. I'm not entirely sure what class of frog it is, but it's green and layed eggs in a little pool next to my pad. Then I proceeded to take them in as my own personal pets and have been monitering their safety for over a week now. One way I've possible ensured their survival(or made them weaker, who knows), is I've been adding water to their pool. It hasn't rained in over a week(I mean, I live in the middle of the rain forest in the damn rainy season, where is all this rain I was promised??), so their pool keeps becoming this sad little mud spot on the ground. So I grab my 5 gallon bucket and add around 12 gallons of water to their little ecosystem. Good fun really, don't tell mother nature.


Hi Carmen!

The style of hammock I so desire to obtain(but are not made here).

Maw.

The kids. (By the way that is a cacao fruit in the water there. You know, where chocolate comes from.)
Adolescents.

So the first photo is just a pretty picture of the sun coming up during the boat ride. The second photo contains excactly what every person between the ages of 3-11, as well as perhaps most rural Peace Corps Volunteers dream about: a suspended toilet. That's right, it's almost like doing your #1 business on a swing. Also, I dare any of you guys to guess which bucket holds my linens and which contains my #2 business.

La Reinando

Around 2 weeks ago we had the 'Crowning' of the queen of all of Rio San Juan Piquini. There were 5 contestants and a girl from my village won! The way they win is they fundraise for the school, and whoever makes the most money gets the title. Then, we have a big party and the queen and all the runner ups have to dance with a fine young gentleman of their choice(pre-picked, of course). Anywho, here are 3 of the 10 videos I took that day. One is of the queen dancing with her fella(who is actually in fact her older brother), another is the kiddies having a very nice time with all of the toys the adults provided and the last is the Embera girls from my village dancing and singing. You can't really hear them singing over the crowd, and we ran out of light...but hopefully you all enjoy.

Behold!

May I please present to my vast internet audience the Elementary School of Emberá Puru del Río San Juan Piquiní, along with it's 28 or so students(2 are lefties)grades 1-6 all in one classroom and the lovely Profesora Anayanci!

Here's the not so bad view from the steps of the school at around 6:45am, which is what time I arrive to teach class. Coffee in hand, I await the struggled arrival of the students along with the inevitable 'crema' the PTO moms are cooking up (which I dream about nightly, salivating slightly all over my pillow).

Well I've been up river for a few weeks now and I decided it was time to come back into town to check off some errands and buy food. I'm moving into my third and last host family house before I get to live alone in my own pad(finally). Things are going really well in site so far, and work is starting to come along. I started my first classes teaching English to the kids in the school around 3 weeks ago, and last week I began my adult basic English class twice a week. I also offer a class for the more advanced students once a week in order to have exposure the more complex themes of the English language that they normally would not get. I'm learning a lot as I go, but teaching can actually be pretty fun.

Besides that I've spoken with much of my community about various projects and the importance of each. They seem pretty excited about building a water-catch system for the school. Currently the closest running water is around 200 yards downhill, which means in order for the moms who cook the food for the kids to retrieve water to cook with or wash the kids dishes, they have to either haul 5 gallon buckets uphill or take everything down to the spicket and then back up to the school. Also the kids currently do not have any drinking water nor a place to wash their hands. This seems like a good project for lots of reasons. Hopefully while this project is going on we will build a rancho area to make into the kitchen next to the school for the moms to cook at, as well as a place for all of the plates, cups, silverware and food to be stored.

There is a long list of other projects as well that we will be trying to get going, but I need to make sure I don't try and look ahead farther than I can work with right now.
My new paint job! Still missing a few spots...but I'll work up the courage pretty soon.
The back.

My view in the morning from my last host house.

Pretty awesome. The government makes cookies for the kiddies to eat in the school! Yum!

A few weeks back after our Agency Tour in Colon we went and stayed the night in Portobelo. Love that place.

Gettin´that gold!

During off season my community pans for gold.
Me! Panning for gold!

Little guy

Passion flower growing off my dugout canoe garden

My host mom for the month of July chats about...primarily me. Her name is Zuleica and she´s a little hard to hear, plus she´s only speaking in spanish, but enjoy!

The ladies in my village practicing a dance around dusk...a little dark

Whew! What a month!

These days I spend a fair amount of time thinking about all of the awesome things going on in site that I would love to tell other people about. I'm not so great at paragraph writing, so I think I'll make a list, as I am so fond of doing in all areas of my life.

1) I was sitting with a young woman in her hut the other day while she was rocking her one year old in the hammock, when the baby suddenly started to pee. The pee of course went straight through the cloth of the hammock and due to the heavy swinging motion she proceeded to draw a straight line around 1 2/2 meters long on the ground...with her urine of course.

2) The little boy who lives across from my house seems to pride himself in finding places that I will least expect him and then trying to get my attention. He is 3, and typically all that he wears is a string tied around his waist where there is sometimes attached a loin cloth. Once he gets my attention, he becomes so overwhelmed that he has trouble breathing a little bit and sort of makes these half laugh, half gasping noises as he climbs the ladder back up into his house, turning his head to look at me again about every 2 steps just to make sure I'm still watching.

3) I was asked the other day if I knew what an airplane was.

4) I was lucky enough to get to watch Lionheart staring Jean-Claude Van Damme 3 days in a row. Possibly the best of the 3 times was on the third day when we merely fastforwarded through the entire thing, but in the slowest setting possible, which condensed it down to around 15 minutes.

Last night...we watched Torneo de la Muerte, which I believe was filmed in 1964.

I think that's about all I'll say for now.

Part of my village on a cloudy morning.

Standing in the tourist house looking out at the river during heavy rain.

This is one of the lessons in the book the children in my school are given to learn english...awesome.

Frog in the water

Boat ride out of my site early in the A.M.

Swear in!

Yesterday was our official swearing ceremony in the house of the U.S. ambassador. The vice-president of Panama was present, as well as the first lady of Panama and the ambassador to the United States. Afterwards many of us went out to Casco Viejo to celebrate the day many of us have been waiting for for almost 2 years.

Boat access only

I made it out! The jungle is nice, refreshing and dense. I have a feeling that Colyn and my mom are the only two people that will see these videos or read this, so this one's for you guys. A couple things to note from the trip:

1)The average spider is the size of my entire hand

2)Sloths!

3)I bath in a river, and a beautiful one at that.

4)My floor is made of treebark

5)I'm painted and look like i have tatoos now

6)rice, rice, rice and fried plantains. my belly is taking a toll....