And then...The New Home Owners.

We have officially moved out of our host family's mud hut and into our very own mud hut. The construction is mas o menos finished...one of our windows is nailed shut because the hinges aren't on yet, our little concrete sink's drain isn't finished so we use a 5 gallon bucket to catch the water and when it reaches it's capacity of dirty agua we throw it out the window...

Our first night in the house, after a delicious American dinner of garlic pasta and chorizo, Alex spotted our first scorpion in the house. He cut the tail off with his machete and the pinchers chased him around before he was able to completely kill it. And then...we saw it. A HUGE white tarantula, the size of a dinner plate, on the eave of our roof. Lauren screams and says we have to kill it. But we can't reach it with our machetes. Sooo Lauren goes to the neighbors to get a Panamanian that has experience in killing this giant dangerous spiders. They tell us to be careful because they jump. We stand there looking up at it as it creepily moves around debating what's the best way to kill it...when it disappears..
:bad words bad words: then Raul shows up and asks what's all the commotion about? We tell him there's a arana blanca and we lost it. He says there's probably a hole in the wall and it crawled inside. He leaves and comes back with a ladder. He climbs up to the hole and starts poking sticks in it to get the spider to come out. When it finally comes out its mad and Raul screams and almost falls off the ladder before slicing it with a machete. But it falls back into the hole. He quickly mixes up some more mud in the dark and fills the hole. Right now as I'm writing this there's still a dead tarantula in the wall of our house. Yay. Needless to say we're thankful for our mosquito net and we tucked it in extra tight that night.

As new home owners in Panama, the night times are full of challenges, but there are day time challenges too.

Day numero dos en la casa.

Theres all the daily things that seem simple, like doing laundry, showering, cleaning the house, watering the plants, cooking meals, and taking out the trash. But in Panama nothing is easy. For example, when you live in a mud hut, there's endless amounts of uh...mud. After multiple times of getting on our hands and knees with a brush and scrubbing the entire floor, we've barley made a dent, and when the water goes out it makes showering, cooking, doing laundry, and watering the plants pretty hard. Since there's no public waste system in the rural communities of Panama, taking out the trash has a different meaning. There's two options 1) burn it. (who likes the smell of burning trash near your house?) 2) dig a big ass whole and bury it. As you can see both are great environmental friendly ways to dispose of garbage. As it gets dark at 7'o clock and the water returns we can start cooking dinner. This is always fun with no electricity but it's great that there's two of us, one of us to cook, and one of us to patrol the house with a machete and can of Raid. As it turns out neither on of us has a solid understanding of how to prepare chicken in the campo, because we've always prepared chicken out of a nice little package cut into perfect pieces ready to go. So when we have a pound of campo chicken from la tienda. (a bloody rib cage with the breast and wing still attached) we are at a loss. Lauren could be heard saying " I need my daddy to show me how to clean this chicken." As we started to figure out the chicken and got it cooking, the smell attracted a mama dog looking for food. She just walked right in the house. Lauren and Alex having a soft spot in their hearts for animals, feed her later. During all of this Alex emptied a can of Raid on the invasion of over ten thousand ants. The rain forced them out of the ground and onto our walls. At first it was just little lines of them, but soon it turned into what looked like a six lane highway of ants.

Like usual were keeping our spirits high and laughing it all off. In truth were excited about our first house together in the jungle of Panama. We've finished our community analysis and at the end of October well have been in Panama for 6 months. It's time to start in on those projects and for people to come visit us! :)

Hola de nuestra familia anfintriona

We asked our host brother Baukti (Juan Bautista Hernandez, a precocious 5 year-old who talks nonstop from dawn til dusk and sometimes in his sleep too, says his mama) to tell us what to write to the United States. Here is what he told us:

<<Tu haces mucho trabajos en la casita como naranjas tu y Lorena tiene miedo de los bichos en el rió y que Alej come todo lo que la mama cocina para los niños, un niño que se llama Juan Bautista Hernandez, y que Lorena come papas y aquí en la casa de Baukti hay papas y que Alejandro come yucas, un cuarto amarillo que le dieron a Alejandro y Alejandro toma foto y Lorena también toma foto. Los patos que tenemos en la casa (Mama lo interrumpio y mando que el persiguiera las gallinas, el las persigo del patio)... y la casa de la Mama de Baukti, también tienes que hacer el mapa TU, y Lorena y Alejendro comen tajadas y macarrones con pollo y chicha de pina y que Alejandro me enseno muchas canciones. Ahhhha yo se, ellos fueron a la Granja. Una paisana que tenemos en la casa de Juan Bautista Hernandez (salto de la mesa y casi se cayo, pero acabo de bañarse así este seria una cosa muy mala), Lorena casi se comió un pollo de Milton y que iba a comerla frito y que Lorena se duerme temprano porque Lorena tiene mucho miedo de los bichos. Mas nada. Que Maudy hace tembleques para ella que le hagan una pollera. Ya mas nada. Y que a Lorena no le gusta el ligado y que le encantan los macarrones. Quiero conocer a las amigas de Lorena. Y que también quiero conocer a sus padres. Y que mas? Que mas? Mas nada. Que mas? Que mas? Que mas? Y que Lorena come pipas y huevos y torta de huevo y le encanta toda la comida pero no come mucho, solo come un parte y Alejandro come el restado.>>

...which I will translate to English for you all, without correcting any grammar because this is how he actually talks, nonstop...

“You do lots of work at the little house like your oranges and Lorena is scared of the bugs in the river and that Alej eats all that the mother cooks for the kids, a kid named Juan Bautista Hernandez, and that Lorena eats potatoes and here in Baukti's house there are potatoes and that Alejandro eats yuca, a yellow room that they gave to Alejandro and Alejandro takes photo and Lorena also takes photo. The ducks that we have at the house (Mama interrupts him, which she often does because he talks nonstop, and tells him to chase the chickens, he chases them off the porch, returns, and resumes talking as if nothing happened)... and Baukti's mom's house, also you have to make the map YOU, and Lorena and Alejandro eat tajadas and spaghetti with chicken and pineapple juice and that Alejandro taught me lots of songs. Ahhhhha I know, they went to the Granja. A pheasant that we have at the house of Juan Bautista Hernandez (he jumps from the table and almost falls, but he just took a bath so this would be a very bad thing because there is a dirt floor), Lorena almost ate herself Milton's chicken and that she was going to eat it fried and that Lorena falls asleep early because Lorena is really scared of the bugs. That's it. (At this point we begin writing Maudy's part, see below, but Baukti cannot contain himself and sporadically asks to add more and more to his part, which I faithfully do). That Maudy makes tembleques for herself so that they make her a pollera. Okay, that's it. And that Lorena doesn't like liver and that she loves spaghetti. I want to meet Lorena's friends. And that I also want to meet your parents. And what else? What else? That's it. What else? What else? What else? And that Lorena eats fresh coconuts and eggs and omlettes and she loves all the food but doesn't eat much, she only eats a part and Alejandro eats the rest.”

Maudy our host sister (an elegant, bright-eyed 12 year-old who loves to swim and do crafts) saw that Baukti was writing to the United States and she decided she wanted to as well. Maudy says,

<<Alejandro le gusta jugar fútbol y es el arbitro (se rió). También juega béisbol con Baukti. Lorena le corta la barba de Alej. Y Alejandro le corta el cabello de Lorena. Que mas, que mas, que mas? Lorena es muy bonita. (Baukti dice, “Y Alejandro tiene mucho pelo”). Baukti y Alejandro tienen una banda. A Baukti le gustan mucho las canciones de Justin Bieber (Baukti dice, “También diga que no me gustan nada las canciones de Justin Bieber porque Maudy las llevo para la casa de Diana”). Esperamos a conocer a la familia de Alejandro y Lorena. Y que yo quiero conocer a la hermana de Lorena y la de Alejandro. Desde ya les queremos decir Feliz Navidad y que traigan dulces de Halloween. Ya chao!>>

...which translates to...

“Alejandro likes to play soccer and he is the referee (she laughs). Also, he plays baseball with Baukti. Lorena cuts Alejandro's beard. And Alejandro cuts Lorena's hair. What else, what else, what else? Lauren is very pretty. (Baukti says, “And Alejandro has a lot of hair”). Baukti and Alejandro have a band. Baukti really likes Justin Bieber songs (Baukti says, “Also say that I don't like Justin Bieber songs because Maudy took them back to Diana's house!”) We want to meet Alejandro and Lorena's family. And that I want to meet Lorena's sister and Alejandro's too. From here we want to tell them Merry Christmas and that they bring Halloween candy. That's all bye!”

Upon hearing how much fun all this is Irenes (our 31 year-old host mom, a wise and powerful young woman with a fierce kindness in her heart) flees to the kitchen and Maudy adds a message from her. Irenes says, through Maudy,

<<Alejandro y Lorena se portan muy bien y que han aprendido muy rápida en Panamá. Ella esta muy encantada que ustedes estén en la casa de ella.>>

...which means...

“Alejandro and Lorena behave very well and have learned very quickly in Panama. She is very pleased that you are in her house.”

Having fun bringing us messages, Maudy runs to her dad Jeronimo (our 32 year-old host dad, who has been playing accordion all afternoon in the living room) and delivers the following message from him, again through Maudy,

<<Dice que se siente contento de tenerlos aquí en la casa y entre ustedes y mi papa han compartido muchos momentos especiales y que entre Alejandro y Jeronimo (mi papa) han compartido canciones Panameñas y de los Estados Unidos y se siente muy contento de tener un amigo mas en Panamá.>>

...which means...

“He says that he feels happy to have them here in the house and you guys have shared many special moments and between Alejandro and Jeronimo (my dad) you have shared Panamanian songs and songs from the United States and he feels very happy to have another friend in Panama.”

Milton (our 14 year-old host brother, who is probably the most reserved young professional man we have ever met) politely declined to comment.

And that folks, is our lovely host family. Sorry if this post has been confusing, but there is SO MUCH in here that sums up our lives right now. You have no idea.

Git outta here with your dirty beard!

Hi Everybody!

We hope you all are doing well in whatever it is you are up to in good ole 'Merica Norte. We are down here in 'Merica Central still and thought we write about what kind of trouble we are getting' up to. Right now we are huddled under our mosquito net on our wooden plank bed listening to Bright Eyes and the rain falling. Apparently it is going to start raining a lot here as invierno approaches, which has some up-sides and down-sides. On the up-side, the nights are cool and fresh and when it rains all day we get to rest a bit from the physical labor side of this job. On the down-side, our clothes will likely not dry from now until January. The work will be replaced with playing guitar, reading, and drinking coffee, which isn't all that bad. Speaking of which, Alex got his hands on a halfway decent guitar for free so that is pretty good. Our regional leader Aaron's house has a guitar that sort of just lives there, but since he is a banjo player it was sitting in the corner with a broken string. Alex went out and bought a new string, tuned it up, and Aaron just gave it to him for two years! An extremely nice gesture from an extremely nice person.

Lauren's Spanish is rockin' along nicely. Lauren of four months ago wouldn't believe the Lauren of today can communicate so well here. Lauren says she has learned more Spanish in four months here than in four years of high school. Alex is feeling good too and has moments where Spanish feels super natural. We are going to come out of this whole thing speaking a pretty backwoods, campo version of Spanish. It's kind of like Alabaman English, no offense to any Alabaman reading this. In some respects it is easier because the emphasis is more on getting your point across than being flowery or grammatically correct. On the other hand, some of the stuff that gets said around here is nonsensical in any language. Abuela Chola told the dog to, “git outta here with your dirty beard.”

Continuing on the topic of our cultural integration, we seem to be pretty hungry quite a lot of the time. We kinda feel bad about this because we are getting three meals a day and everyone is always careful to give us the biggest, best portion of whatever is being served. We chalk it up to our gringo metabolisms. The amount of hiking and pick-axing and sweating we do makes our bodies crave vegetables, whole grains, and substance; we just aren't used to living this type of lifestyle on rice, boiled bananas, and yuca. As a result Lauren is feeling like the saggy, baggy elephant cuz none of her pants fit and Alex's cheetah metabolism can't be kept up with. In a short month we will be on our own and can do our best to get the food that makes our bodies work the best so we can come through for our community.

Speaking of moving out on our own, we have undertaken a pretty significant annexation of our future house. Panamanians like to go big and we barely know what we are doing so the new part of the house pretty much doubles our livable space. Panamanian campo construction techniques are borderline insane. Anacleto felled a tree that he was in, climbing around and hacking away at it with his machete. Abuelo Cholo climbed around the rafters wrestling 16-foot sheets of razor-sharp zinc barefoot. He'd yell down to Lauren every now and then to bring more nails or make him some coffee. As we were closing up the day he told us we owed him a thousand bucks... we bought him an ice cream today, hope that works instead. Everyone is not only donating their time and expertize to the remodel, but also all kinds of wood. It makes us really revved up to pay them back over these next two years by doing our best for their community and working our Peace Corps volunteer tails off for them.

In the work arena, we have elected to do a thorough job of the community analysis. During Pre-service training we were trained pretty extensively in something called PACA tools. PACA stands for Participatory Analysis for Community Action, and is used as a world wide Peace Corps tool for getting to know the community in a way that sets the stage for project work. We've cooked up a scheme of 4 meetings in which we talk about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the community. They are called “Una tarde divertia con Alejandro y Lorena” and we try to have fun and be really friendly and open and laugh. We have gone through two meetings so far and the reception has been pretty great! Counting men, women, kids, and babies we had 74 people packed into the Casa Comunal for the first meeting. Popcorn is a big hit and people really seem to dig talking about their town and what it means to live it up in the campo. It is A LOT of work for us because we are hand-making invitations and prizes, carrying benches and tables every Sunday meeting morning, but the idea is if we climb a big hill at the beginning, we will get to build up a lot of steam on our way down with projects and stuff. We explain at the meetings that this work is with our mind and our hearts so we can know what we are working for when it comes time for cement, shovels, pick-axes, and machetes.

Life is good! We are enjoying ourselves and feeling good about where we are at both geographically and Peace Corps wise. Take care everybody! Keep being awesome!

Lots of love,

Alejendro and Lorena

Some Days

Some days I realize where I am. Sometimes the realization comes as I help Irenes knead the morning's hojaldras on her wooden batea, the smell of coffee drifting from inside her yellow, mud hut. Sometimes I realize where I am as I stand sweating and dirty with Anacleto, hiding from the Panamanian sun noticing how puny a 500-pound pile of sand and gravel looks in comparison with the mountain of effort it took three people, hacking through the jungle, stepping over snakes and tarantulas to dig it from the river and haul it over slippery, moss-covered rocks in plastic saccos over our shoulders to get it there. Sometimes it hits me when we are out pasearing, “Damn, I am in this random Panamanian house, listening to this guy with only a couple of visible teeth who seems older than the hills and actually understanding what he is telling me about this palm fruit that he harvested this morning.” There are times when nothing on my plate is from a package. There is hand-ground maiz from the monte that Jeronimo carried home yesterday on horseback, packed in the husk and boiled to make bollos, guineo-chinos from the tree in the bottom corner of the property, yucca pulled from the rich Panamanian tierra negra, chicha made from lemons plucked off the tree this morning, or a sweet lemon tea from the limoncina plant that grows near the shower. Oh yeah, and then there is the chicken that I saw earlier that day with feathers still on it. Sometimes as I walk by the blue tienda with its new ceramic-tile bench in the morning and hear the friendly, “Buenas,” from Maria-Eugenia as she looks up from her sombrero-making, the fibers wrapped around her toes as she tightly weaves them into a ribbon to wrap around her wooden mold I think to myself, “No one would believe what I am doing right now.” No one would believe just how loud the rain is on the zinc roof. No one would believe how everyone here knows how to put every single different natural material to use. This type of wood makes better embers in this type of stove. This preparation of mud cured my son's auto-immune disease. This plant is for headaches. That plant makes peppers hotter than habeñeros and they look exactly like those from this plant that makes the sweet peppers we use in every single dish, don't mix them up. Sometimes I realize where I am when Panamanian folks start arguing about the best phase of the moon to cut wood. It seems silly to ask which is the best phase of the moon to visit Home Depot ™, which is how I “cut” wood. The stories we hear about the lives of people in our community are often of incredible hardship, but told with a smile and a selflessness that I won't ever forget. Parents harvesting a coffee plant, drying, grinding, and packaging fifty baggies to sell six hours away on horseback at the market. “Thankfully we sold a lot so we had enough money to buy our son's school supplies for first grade.” We even start losing our grip on science and proof and fact. It seems so logical that Baukti was born with a weak right leg because he was conceived after his dad almost died from an equis snakebite on his right toe. It is pretty weird. I can just be going about my day when I get one of those feelings of realization. I live in Panama now. I speak Spanish now. I drink coffee now. I still don't like rice now. Maybe the feelings of realization mean I am a little bit more conscious of just how different life can be around the world. Maybe they mean something else. Whatever they mean, the feelings are good and I like them.

A Beautiful Day

Wake up. A beautiful day is. Is it a beautiful day? What is a beautiful day? Today was a beautiful. Here it is. All of the day and what lies therein which made it a beautiful one. There was that sense of dirty accomplishment as you dove into the cool, cleansing Rio Mula to wash the mud off. The mud came from the house and the fresh smell of wet mud was not far at all. Because do you know how the muddy walls of a freshly muddied house smells? Smells like dirt. Dirty like all our friends working with us, our friends and our teachers because here in San Juanito they are often the same people. Our teachers are actually teachers but also kids and their smiles, laughs, and games. Our teachers have boots that squish tarantulas. All this they do for us because they have that deep kindness, that kindness that wakes up with our campesino friends in the morning and goes to bed with them at night. But you had better wake up early because it takes a long time to mud a house, even just the inside, which was all we did. The kindness is also given as a drink. Cane coffee cut with machete and served with a smile. All the time watching Nena with her perico and how happy that little green bird made her and how it laid on her lap as she laid on the lap of her smiling father as he laid in the hammock held together by a thin, thin, thin cord that won't ever break... ever. But you've gotta be SO careful. Oh so careful. Should you dare someone to collect the oranges you need to be prepared and well-prepared to help them down after they have collected you more than you can carry. When oranges are eaten here, they are peeled in one swift chop, sometimes victims of machetes, and then the juice is sucked out from a pool, deftly formed atop the orange. It's good. Trust us. We won't ever go back. Just like we can never go back from what we are experiencing second to day to second that we would never trade for anything in the money world. I can never understand Baukti's accent. Love it all the same. It hit me as I was walking down the road and carrying the oranges down the hill in my sombrero and I was having a conversation with them in Spanish and they were laughing and the sun was shining and it was just one of those weird moments. Yeah it itches! Hell yeah it itches! Sometimes so much that I can't stand my skin and no matter how much alcohol I spritz upon the bites they just don't subside. And then there is the wisdom of our current Panamanian mom and her slow careful assessment of just about everything. What pain she takes to put our lives right with chica. It got ironic at that point because we listened to the “Everybody in the Club Getting Tipsy” song in the deep campo jungle. But that will fade. What remains is the beauty of the day. A beautiful day. Go sleep.

What is Pasear

Once upon a time there was a particularly great man with a particularly great fondness of tweed jackets and loafers. He greeted each new day with song. He would sing, “It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, it's a beautiful day for a neighbor, would you be miiiinnneee?” Unbeknownst to Mr. Rodgers his song would ring true for two particular voluntarios del Cuerpo de Paz in the interior of Panama as they too awoke to greet each new day. In order to be particularly great voluntarios and shoulder the grand pursuit of “giving voice to the voiceless” and/or “becoming an agent advocating positive change in the eyes and faces of a community” and/or “facilitating change by empowering the people themselves” said voluntarios must first know the voices, eyes, faces, and people. We must first, in the face of many bugs, much mud, and countless awkward silences, fly Mr. Rodgers' shimmering banner of friendliness and pasear.

Let us first place some caveats on Mr. Rodgers' famous sing-song to transition into some of the challenges our two particular voluntarios face on the road of pasear. Take “a beautiful day in the neighborhood,” for instance. If we carefully tweak this first stanza to read, “a muddy, wet day in a neighborhood that values clean dress and orderly appearance,” then we better capture pasear. To emerge onto someone's doorstep in a presentable state is a large portion of the overall battle. Proper footwear choice is paramount as are slow measured steps. During pasear one must avoid, at all costs, the sickening slide of sandals, which can change a lovely pair of khakis into a significantly less lovely pair of khakis. Jeans, while durable and fingernail-cleanable, can choke sweat from the very pores of one's body resulting in a similar disaster.

Considering “a beautiful day for a neighbor” we must empathize with the gracious hosts of our pasear visits and ask: for them, is it really a beautiful day for these particular neighbors to come calling? Is now a great time to stop whatever work you have and receive guests who speak an odd form of your language that you barely recognize? Do they like to sit or stand? Are they going to want a drink? Why are their khakis always so dirty? Sometimes these particular voluntarios jokingly hum the theme song to the critically-acclaimed, shark horror film Jaws as they walk up the path to an unsuspecting house. However, the cultural reality seems to be that these supposed fears are our own projections onto our hosts because we see through the lens of our locked door and window society where each unknown person to pasear is coming to sell us vacuum cleaners and/or convert us to their religion. After all, here in the campo, it really is a beautiful day for a neighbor and the result is a pretty great feeling for everyone involved in pasear. Visiting someone's home is very special here and whatever there is to share—be it bread, coffee, a great view, seeds, words of wisdom, gardening lessons, stories, or silence—will be shared with a smile and a genuine “gracias por su visita” as you part ways.

This graciousness introduces the tiny asterisk these particular volunteers wish to add to Mr. Rodgers' words “would you be miiiinnneee?” Making a new friend involves a name, a face, an experience, and a place. These “new friend qualifiers” seemingly so simple and innocuous, morph into significant challenges in the campo for these particular voluntarios. For the following, fictional names have been substituted, but the situations are all to real. Parents often press their children to say their own names. To our untrained ears, the first time around sounds like, “Hard in mania de (mumble) have landed,” which we repeat diligently, yet punctuated with that pathetic question mark of validation, “Hard in mania de de de have landed?” After a couple rounds of pardon-me and otra-vez the response elucidates to “Yariminia de Santos Hernández” or a similar name that moves the tongues of these particular voluntarios in new, gymnastic-like ways. From there the name is either immediately lost from memory, written down hurriedly somewhere to be lost later, or tried later only to learn that everyone actually calls her “Lila.” Faces are usually our best bet, but when someone gets a haircut or is wearing a different sombrero or sunglasses this becomes a pitfall. This pit is further deepened by the triplets named “Juan Edwin” (who goes by Jorge), “Jorge Edwin,” and “Edwin Jorge.” Experiences are perhaps the most valuable tool; they bring friends together on a daily basis. A wide spectrum of experiences will populate the typical afternoon of pasear from an unlucky kid with a broken leg to wild monkeys in the yard to a special gift of some delicious food to a tarantula on your boot. These are great for the memory because stories are the glue that hold people together. Pasear is also about places. Our neighborhood stretches over hills across rivers and through the jungle so these particular voluntarios never lack a beautiful view or a new type of tree or a path less traveled. The path twists and turns often so much so that hours are spent aggregating a reference community map. Discussions are heated and belabored as we argue switchbacks, river crossings, and which junctions go to which houses; this environment is far from suburbia with its cute shoebox Clinton Courts and 6^th Avenues. Names, faces, experiences, and places help these particular voluntarios get out on the beat and ask, “Would you be miiiinnneee?”

There it is. Plain as muddy waters. Pasear. Take that Mr. Rodgers.

The first few weeks in site

Wow! Time is flying by in our new home of San Juanito. Alex and I have been doing lots of different things in order to get to know our community better, and we have already started some mini projects. I'll list some highlights to give you some idea of what we are up to!

1. We had our first English lesson with the teachers at the school.  Alex and I decided that we are going to team teach the class, but switching off who creates/teaches the lesson every other week. Alex took the first class and used music as his first teaching tool. He brought his banjo to the school and played an Avett Brother song in English and Spanish. The teachers LOVED it, and it was so cool to hear them singing along in English! It's fun to be the teachers of students that actually want to learn. The teachers are so enthusiastic and are looking forward to the classes to come.  In exchange for English the teachers want to help us with Spanish so on Tuesday afternoons we have Spanish class and on Thursday afternoons we teach English.

2. On Thursday mornings we also spend our time at the school working in the school garden.  The garden is really cool and includes a variety of plants and projects, including bell peppers, green beans, yuca, bananas, rice tanks, fish tanks, pineapple, cucumbers, (I'm sure I'm forgetting some here) they even have chickens for eggs and for meat. Needless to say there is lots of work to do at the school.  La escuela also has an organization called Madres y Padres de La Familias. This includes all the moms and dads that have children in the school. They are all required to do some type of work at the school and if they don't, they get fined. The moms come during the week and make lunch for the kids and the dads come to the school on Saturdays to do work in the gardens, we've started working with the dads on Saturdays too.

3. We've continued with the stove project of the previous volunteer, making more stoves for families in the community. Alex may have touched on this in the previous  blog, but I'll add my thoughts too. The stoves are really neat because they are more efficient than the traditional stoves (which includes a fire with 3 rocks around it for a pot to sit on top.) The traditional stoves smoke A LOT, use a TON of firewood and take a LONG time to cook anything. The new stoves are made of all natural materials, use less fire wood, they smoke less and they boil water muy rapido!

4. We planted banana trees and platino trees with a community member on his property, unfortunately a lot of his banana and orange trees are dying from some bugs/bacteria.  I was able to share some of my agricultural knowledge I learned in training about some organic pesticides. He is very interested in working with me in the future with agricultural techniques so I am looking forward to that.

5. We started collecting some plants for our garden we are going to make at our permanent house. So far we have basil, celery, and some lemon grass. The lemon grass is sooo delicious. Our host mom makes tea out of it every morning for us. We also started talking about the improvements we want to make on our house. The community has been so awesome and they are willing to add an addition for a kitchen to our little mud hut. I'm looking forward to the construction, because then I'll know how to build a house out of mud.

6. We really have no idea what kinds of projects we will end up doing because there are SO many opportunities. Some ideas so far have been: a girl's group led by Lauren and a boy's group led by Alex, an environmental youth group called Panama Verde, trash clean-ups and disposal systems, composting at the school, bettering the soil for local farmers, some people still are not connected to the water system so they drink from creeks, very few folks wash their hands after going to the bathroom/before eating, raising bigger fish in fish tanks, enhance the community farm because prices are rising in the markets, getting the older kids to train for a running race in Panama, improving the school's computers, showing movies at the school for a fundraiser and to talk about movie ratings, and on and on and on.  "Gracias a Dios" we don't really have to decide, it will be the community that tells us what to focus on!
I think that's about it for work related stuff...I'll share some things/quotes from normal everyday Peace Corps life tambien!

1. On average I see at least one toucan every day.
2. "I think I am slowing starving to death on rice." - says Alex
3. "Who invented indoor plumbing? They should be a Saint." -says Lauren
4. Our host sister got stung by a scorpion and our mom had to call an ambulancia because the venom was traveling up her arm. Pobrecita!
5. "That drink tasted like a tootsie roll ran through a car motor" - says Alex
6. "I wish I had a bomb collar for the roosters, and it would go off every time they crowed, and they'd get blown into a million little pieces."- says Lauren
7. We've been playing with the same three pieces of paper with Baukti (our 5 year old brother) for four days, they always say the same thing... treasure maps.
8. Lauren-"Remember when you picked the ants out of your jello?
Alex- "Yep."
Lauren- " I just ate the ones in mine."
9. After a hard days work we venture to the river for a relaxing swim...it's like the Jungle Book. If Alex and I get a cat to keep the bugs away we are going to name it Bageera or Sherkhan. haha!
10. It's been way too long since I've had chocolate.

Well that sums it up for now!  We have been working on a detailed community map so that we can include everybody in future work and it is a great challenge to hang onto the names we learn.  The trail system is pretty complicated and we aren't allowed to go on some routes because there are perros bravos!

Check Facebook for some updated pictures! :)