Happy Birthday to ME!

July 23, 2013 

I am finally moved into my new house and let me tell YOU it is awesome. Today I did not eat a single fried thing nor was my food covered in salt or mayo, nor did it resemble a hot dog or a slice of fried spam. I could not be happier. Because of my lovely tick infestation in my room I was given permission to move into my new house early, well that and because my host mother kindly and a bit awkwardly asked me if I could move out early.... I am still not entirely sure why she said something about it getting cramped especially when other family members come to visit, and it would give me my own privacy and blah blah blah... I won't take offense as I have been counting down the days until move out since I got here, but all the same it was a bit of an awkward interaction. Also getting to have my own house as a birthday present is a pretty rad gift, so I can't complain.

 This weekend was awesome a bunch of my friends from other provinces came down to the Azuero to celebrate with me and rage the way only Peace Corps Volunteers can do. Las Tablas was having a huge celebration of miracles where people from all over the province walk all day to the church in Las Tablas in order to pay tribute to God, and in turn he will perform a miracle for them or something like that. I however, did not really want to walk to a city in another province that is an hour and twenty minutes via bus soooooo I took the bus, I guess I won't get any miracles. However, a bunch of us did end up going to celebration afterwards for the discotecas, I was taken aback, even at 10:30 when we left there were people walking to the city. When we got there the place was packed with people on every street trying to get into the church while others were trying to leave, it was insanity, we had to push through the sea of Christians to get to the club, but it was worth it! The club was awesome we danced until the early morning, it was just nice to get out and move around and see everyone in one place. 

This weekend was also the Despedida of our Regional Leader, aka her going away party. It is weird to be on totally opposite ends of the spectrum, myself just beginning my service while our RL is getting ready to go back to the U.S. after working in Panama for three years! It's wild... it does put things into perspective as to how fast things go by. She said she finally feels ready to leave after being here for so long but right now I can't even imagine leaving my friends and the student's that I am forming such close bonds with... so strange. 

The Most Unwelcome Guests

July 15, 2013

Most of you who have seen my facebook already know about this little story but for those who have not I might as well explain what happened. This weekend I stayed in site because I wanted to spend some time with the host family and a bunch of my host aunts and uncles and cousins were coming to visit. In addition to all of these family members, I also had the pleasure of hosting some fabulously unwelcome guests in my room. The first night I walked into my room and saw some weird splatter looking marks on my wall, upon a closer glance I noticed it wasn't the paint peeling like I had thought but in fact thousands upon thousands of chiggers (small red ticks that can hardly be seen). Then I started examining my bed and naturally of course it was full of these nasty blood sucking little monsters. I quickly took some gorilla tape and tried to trap as many of them as I could. It was beyond foul but strangely a little rewarding to look on the backside of the tape and gleam with pride at the number of buggers I had trapped and then to make three-point shots of tape basketballs into my trashcan. I thought I had gotten them all but right before going to bed I looked to my  bed with disgust and noticed that once again my bed was full of chiggers.... I didn't even let my pup sleep in the bed with me since the last time but even though he had been sleeping on the floor, my bed was pressed against the wall so as the chiggers fell off my pup they climbed their way up the walls and then promptly made themselves comfortable in my bed.... I guess I will be doing another thorough cleaning as well as leaving my dog outside for the rest of his natural life- no matter how much it breaks my heart to see him with those precious puppy dog eyes. In addition to waking up the next morning with chiggers all over my body I also received a prompt scolding from my family for letting my dog sleep in my bed with me.... but. but. he's so cuteeeee..... never again. Pulling bugs off of literally every part of my body is not how I enjoy spending my mornings. 

The following night my room was host to a much more unwelcome guest. Right before dinner I decided to change into my PJ's and spray on another layer of bug repellent when my host sister walked in to tell me something and promptly pulled  me out of the room and pointed behind me next to my bed and there just hanging out was an adorable little snake, minus the little and the adorable part. I ran out of my room and told my host mom about my little friend and she ran into the room and then pushed me back and told me to run to my neighbor's house to grab his machete to come and kill it. It was confirmed by my host mother, whose opinion I trust in matters of campo life that the snake was in fact poisonous and it was "bravo" meaning it was bold but really what it meant to me was holy crap this thing is trying to bite me... luckily for me though my neighbor came over and quickly hacked the thing in a million pieces, then proceeded to hang it from a tree near the street. Apparently they do that here to warn everyone else in the area that there are poisonous snakes around. I still don't know how the thing got into my room though... my door was shut the whole day but since I just have cement blocks for windows without any screens or anything I suppose it could have weaseled its way in that way. I am fine though and so is everyone else... thank GOD my host sister saw it before I went to sleep or it could have slithered its way into my ear or something, or killed the pup.... just another pleasant reminder that I am in fact living in the jungle and not enjoying the safety and security of life back in the states. Also I am going to be a lot more vigilant about making sure there are no monsters under my bed before going to sleep.... 

Happy Birthday USA!!

July 6, 2013

 There is nothing like spending your country's Independence Day abroad to remind you that in fact you are not in your home country. Since we received a friendly reminder from the PC office that we really, truly should not be leaving site for the first three months none of us made any plans to take off work for the Fourth of July to meet up with our other volunteer friends at beach for some fun in the sun; instead we waited until Friday to leave and headed off to the lovely Coclé province to our fave spot of Santa Clara to enjoy some American past times and celebrate our nation's birthday. Even though I couldn't be with my fellow gringo's on this day I did get to appreciate a lovely (though short) firework display in the provincial capitol, thanks to some enthusiastic Ex-Pat's. It is coming up on six months in site and the time has literally flown by, I can't believe I have been here for nearly half a year....strange.

 The home sickness comes and goes, but for the most part I am too distracted to miss home; although I have been having dreams about certain restaurants from home... probably because my body is craving anything that isn't beans and rice or deep fried and over salted. MAN JUST GIVE ME SOME RAW VEGGIES PLEASEEEE. Of course I miss my friend's and family too but I can talk to them nearly any time I want but what I can't do is tell my host family to stop feeding me so that I just make a salad or something, I mean I don't want to be rude or anything. I will just continue to count down the days until I get to move in to my own house and can live off of carrots and cucumbers for the next two years. I just have a few more weeks to go before I get to move in but honestly it can't come soon enough, I ran out of hot sauce so I have been trying to gag down the spam with as much lemon juice as I can without using up all the lemons on the lemon tree, it actually isn't so bad that way but I'd still rather eat anything else in the world than eat another piece of fried spam. 

LIkeeee the Peace Corps Equivalent of Bubble Wrap....

*****If you are at all queasy or have a sensitive stomach ya might not want to read this post. 

July 2, 2013

Ugh. Once again I wake up to bugs in my bed.... I think this is officially a sign that my puppy should not be sleeping with me no matter how cute it is when he cuddles up on top of my face. So the story is; I woke up in the middle of the night because I felt a bunch of small pinches all over my body and I thought it was just a bit strange since I sleep with a mosquito net.... so the idea of one bug biting me was pretty normal but all over was something entirely different. Early yesterday I had given Boludo a bath with some anti-tick and flea soap- well, it worked. However, it did not work in the way that I had hoped it would, I thought that the soap would kill all the little blood suckers, instead they all just fell off in my bed, very much alive. It was about 3:30 when I woke up to thousands of ticks in my bed ,and I normally get up at around 4:30 to walk with the pup before the sun comes up.... so what did I do? I decided to spend the next hour killing every last one of those little nuisances. They were too small to kill by pinching them so I just smushed each with one, with a satisfying *POP*. I mean, I know it is super gross and it caused a bloody mess of a massacre in my bed but it was ever so gratifying to kill every last one of those little shits. Granted when I came back from my walk there were thousands more so I don't know how effective my killing spree was but at least I killed a bunch of them right? ... whoops? So looks like I will be doing some serious cleaning tomorrow but no matter, it was an extraordinarily satisfying way to spend my early morning hours, and a very "Peace Corps" way to find some slight amusement in the foul circumstances in which I live. 

Vintage PC

June 30, 2013 

Dad, if you're reading this, you would be so very proud of your networking protege of a daughter. This weekend we celebrated Peace Corps' 50th Anniversary in Panamá, so to celebrate a bunch of RPCV's (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) came back down to Panaland to take all of us broke Azuero volunteers out to lunch and drinks to give us a chance to chat and make connections to people who have returned from their lives in the Peace Corps to have successful careers. When we showed up, we didn't know exactly what to expect because we didn't know how many RPCV's would actually show up, if any but either way we were guaranteed a free meal, so we were buzzing with excitement. We got there only to find out there had been a miscommunication and the vintage volunteers were told to come at 1pm instead of 11 soooo we just hung about for a couple hours enjoying each other's company and catching up on some much needed volunteer gossip. One by one the RPCV's began to show up it seemed as if nearly all of them were from the same group from GROUP 15-17.... from the 1960's!!!! This was mind blowing to me. They were all cracking jokes with each other and goofing around as if no time had passed at all, it was a pretty magical thing to see, and it also confirmed that Peace Corps will provide you with some of the most lasting friendships you will ever make in your life. It was Awesome. For the first 45 minutes or so we mixed and mingled asking the vintage volunteers about their stories, what there service was like, what they've done since and how PC has changed their lives. Every single one of them is doing something impressive or did something impressive with their lives after Peace Corps. it was more than inspiring. Once that portion was done lunch was served and like a pack of ravenous animals the room went nearly silent as we shoved massive quantities of food into our mouths. For some reason even though we all eat exorbitant amounts of food and complain about the fact that most of us are gaining weight, any time there is free food available we eat like we've been starving for the last five months. 

After lunch we did a bunch of ice breaker activities to get to know one another better and then split into smaller groups to discuss what our ideal life plan would be after Peace Corps to see if there were any potential connections that could provide us with post pc assistance. For my first small group I chose the International Relations group and I am SO glad I did. The vintage PCV in our group had not only worked in the Foreign Service but had worked as a Professor at several universities and worked all over the world only to retire to do work in Senegal with USAID.... so basically exactly the kind of work I want to do. The man was more than impressive, speaking several languages and was so well connected I was a little intimidated by him. I mean for God's sake the man had arrived from Senegal that morning just to hang out with a bunch of crazy PCV's- who even does that‽‽ Most of them didn't have business cards but our Regional Leader promised to send out an e-mail with everyone's contact information. We did the networking thing for another hour or so and then we all meandered over to one of the local bar's for more networking and some adult beverages. This kind of just turned into an absurd event of PCV on RPCV drinking games and absolute lunacy. It was rad. 

Attack of the Alacrán

June 25, 2013 

So this wasn't actually as scary as it may seem. It also isn't much of a story... but for the sake of being in Peace Corps I must document every sort of bug encounter I come across. I woke up this morning to my dog barking like a maniac in my bed so I sit up ready to throw him across the room and turn on my flash light to see why he was freaking out and guess what I found in my bed..... SCORPIONS!!!! Woohooooo- did you notice that was plural? Yup there was a Mama scorpion with a bunch of little baby buggers on her back, so what did I do? I screamed, jumped out of my bed, ripped my mosquito net from my bed and searched around for something hard to whack the crap out of them. I settled on my heavy peace corps binder. I removed my sleeping bag slowly from my bed, placed my puppy outside and took my sheets carefully off my bed and dragged it to the front patio area, then took the binder and threw it down as hard as I could on top of the happy little family.... and then I jumped on the binder several times for good measure. When I lifted up the binder the majority of them were dead but some were still squirming a bit so I fumbled around in the semi-darkness for one of my abuela's machete's that she leaves sitting about and I took it and chopped up every single one of those suckers. It was something of a massacre really... and I felt a little queasy afterwards so rather than going back to the scene of the crime I took my dog on a walk around the neighborhood. When I came back I checked my phone to see what time it was and naturally it was only 3:20 in the morning so rather than going back to my bed I took a bath in my mosquito repellent and fell asleep in the hammock outside. I woke up the next morning to my abuela picking up her machete curiously and looking at the mess I had created to which she just gave me a warm toothless smile and said "buen hecho" (good job). Needless to say, I have never been more proud than I was at that moment. 

Welcome to the Jungle

June 23, 2013 

The weekend in David was absolute MADNESS. In the best way, of course. It was so good to see all of the people from the west side of the country whom I hadn't seen in over two months, or at least since swearing in. It was also Lindsay's birthday a volunteer from Group 70. The first night was just us ladies myself and my little group of lady friends, which was nice because it was a chance for us to catch up after a while without having to limit our discussion topics. One thing I am realizing in Peace Corps is that having friends with whom you can speak openly with is absolutely invaluable. I have probably spent more money on saldo (phone minutes) than anything else since being here. Even though I have a pretty good grasp on the Spanish language being limited to just speaking, and listening and breathing Spanish all the time can drive someone insane and exhaust the brain. So weekend trips like these are more therapeutic than anything else really. I won't go into the details of the craziness of the weekend but in sum it involved: street meat, getting kicked off the stage of the discoteca, and late nate pool swimming with all of the group 72 volunteers. 

Worst luck with dogs....

June 20, 2013

A bad day for a dog lover. My pup that was sick has now moved on to doggy heaven... I am sad, but for the last few weeks she was so sick that I am happy now that she is no longer suffering. Also, though this may seem like a more insensitive perspective, I also realized having two dogs on a Peace Corps Volunteer stipend is nearly impossible... so having just one other life to take care of other than my own seems like the better idea to me I'd have to say. Also unfortunately the mother of my pup also got sick and died within the day as well. I have no idea what this mosquillo actually is but it is a pretty vicious epidemic to the doggy world. So now I am left with my little Boludo who is getting bigger every single day I swear this dog is going to be huge and he's only two months old. 

Smells like mold....

June 17, 2013 

Literally. All of my clothes and shoes are moldy... it's repulsive. I don't really know what to do about it, I only have one pair of shoes left that aren't repulsive and naturally they aren't school appropriate so that's awesome. I think it would be a good idea to wash all of my clothes but then they are wet again, and then when I put them in the drawers they get moldy again soooo it's a dilemma... Anyone have any suggestions for how to avoid moldy clothing and shoes?? I can't so much avoid the rainy season and I don't have any way of closing the open squares that are my windows to avoid the rain and moisture coming into my room, so that is your challenge friends and family. On the other hand I can just embrace the fact that I am going to be disgusting looking and smelling for the rest of my two years here, but I'd rather not have to come to that. 

More Bad Luck with Dogs

May 30, 2013

So I come back from my lovely vacation to find out that not only is my pup more sick than she was but she was also bitten by a snake while I was gone. The vet gave her an antibiotic but they still don't know if she is going to make it, so I sad.  What is it with me and these puppies??? doesn't seem right. Oh and my pup's brother got the same illness she had and died within a day. Lucky for me my other little pup is still healthy and growing stronger every day. I think he suffered being stuck in a dark closet for the first few weeks of his life when he was living in my neighbor's house but he seems to be doing much better now. I need to make sure I get to the vet to get him all of his vaccines and injections to possibly avoid all this craziness that seems to be going on in the community. It's hard being a puppy parent.

signed, 

badluckwithdogs.