2nd Family

Good news, I’m not bored at all here.. and when I do find myself doing absolutely nothing, I’m definitely ok with it. The family let me ride their horse up the hill to meet some other families, then we hiked the rest of the way up to the top. Another day I worked on the church’s farm, pretty much gardening with a machete.. but the grass/plants tends to be a few feet tall and they like to defend themselves, usually with spikes or poison giving you a nice rash, then theres the swarms of red ants that all bite at the same time. No way I’m gonna be the token gringo and the only one wearing gloves though haha. Anyway, I went home scratched up with bites and blisters.

I’ve been going to church almost every week b/c its good community time to talk to people and hear announcements. I finally got asked if I was catholic, so I told them what was up with the Judaism and they pretty much said “that’s cool”

Stephanie, the regional leader came for a visit. Was a good reason to pasear all up and down LB, to the granja, had a meeting at the school to figure out what I’ll be up to for the rest of the school year (looks like I’ll keep up the weekly environmental classes and will do English on the weekend for now). Went out to the waterfall (wasn’t too sure how to get there so we winged it).. got a little lost, little bit/scraped up but we made it eventually, took a fast straight shot up “path” out.. rock climbing with tree roots lol.

I finally talked to the family I’ll be renting from about money and what needs to be taken care of the house. That was an awesomely awkward conversation but I said what I needed to. Looks like I’ll need to take care of a few things before I move in and whatever I pay will be taken out of the first few months rent. Fine by me.

On Saturday there was a despidida for Brianna, a goodbye party which is where these pictures are from. The students sang some songs or danced. They sang This Land is Your Land in english, even though they had no idea what it means haha. I should have expected it but at some point they put me on the spot and I had to stand up and say a little something. Then the tamborito group came out with the drums and some lady asked me to dance, not cool.. I hadnt even seen how youre supposed to dance tamborito so I just copied what she was doing. Turns out its way easy but the guy does something different than the girl, oops.

Im starting to feel pretty comfortable here with the community, and since my house is a hot spot for everyone during the day its easy to talk to everyone passing by. My host dads a woodworker (hes gonna make my furniture, score).. so he has a generator to power the shop. At night hell turn on the news or some movies, or the yankees game. Usually its Cantiflas, old black n white mexican comedies.
Pictures: Host dad and sisters playing guitar and singing, the little one is called a Mejorana.. national instrument of panama.

Random pictures from the despidida. The guy in the white talking is the representante, the local government official. Ill try to get some videos up too. The janky looking wood en thing is our attempt at a worm box for the school, gonna finish that up later this week. Right now Im in Santiago with a few ppl from my group. I havent seen many others since training so its been cool to see whats goin on.