Hola De Panama!!!!! (Parte Primero)

Well, we´ve been in Panama for about two weeks now, although at times (ie, all of the time) it feels like two years. We´re living in a small, rural village about an hour outside of Panama City, where it literally rains at least once a day...sometimes all day. And when it rains here, its rains HARD! Full on lightning and thunder and massive new rivers crossing previously dry exit routes. Luckily, nobody has of yet been swept away!

The family that Amanda and I are living with are great. I must say that we lucked out pretty nicely, as some volunteers are in much tougher situations. Our family consists of nuesta madre, nuestra padre, y tres hermanos (brothers) qien tienen nueve años (Christofer-9 years old), doce años (Luis-12 years old), y trece años (Jose-13 years old). Although a bit reticent at first, the boys are warming up to us nicely, although last night´s whooping I gave them at Gin Rummy may have set that back a bit...

Our town, Santa Clara, is not the Santa Clara of the previous post. Ours is in the mountainous jungle, very far from the beach. But we´ve been able to see quite a few crazy jungle animals already, such as massive numbers of leaf-cutter ants (these suckers are BIG), a big sloth in a bush (which upon discovery was soon afterwards pelted with rocks by the local youth), and a bunch of little spider monkeys swooping through the trees (we saw them during machete-training class in the Jungle). Of course, we´ve also seen a bunch of spiders, snakes, and mosquitos, but we dont really get the same exotic feeling from those as we get from the others. As with many poor rural areas, there are also a lot of stray dogs, most of them obviously not healthy, but so far quite friendly, which is good as Amanda likes to feed them whatever happens to be in her hand at the time (they are then inseperable from us for the rest of the DAY!).

Overall, the people in our village seem to be pretty nice, although our limited (but growing) Spanish ability doesn´t really afford us the luxury of actually being able to understand what they tell us. Instead, we´ve been integrating ourselves somewhat to the local populace through barefoot soccer, which usually takes the form of an ¨us vs. them¨game. Trying to endear ourselves to the Panamanians aside, the first game we destroyed them 3-0, but then lost the next 3-1. Of course, I think the oldest kid on the other team is 16 years old, no joke, with several around 12 or so, but we still need to play to our limits to even keep pace!

I did promise to update on the side-effects of our anti-malarial medication. Apparently, one of the more common side-effects is ¨vivid dreams,¨ with the occasional ¨losing touch with reality¨as a rarer, and more severe one. While I don´t think either one of us has lost touch with reality (although, would we really be able to tell?) our dreams have been quite interesting. Lets just say they´re more ¨realistic,¨ not scary or anything, but definitely feeling more like reality when actually dreaming. I guess its hard to describe accurately, but try google-ing ¨chloroquine dreams,¨ and I´m sure that something interesting will come up. Actually, there was one volunteer in our group who repeatedly dreamt that she was being murdered (seriously) which prompted a change in medication that we all appreciated. Ás for us, we really don´t mind, and I imagine that our experiences are more favorable than actually contracting malaria...

Well, as soon as we get our two-year assignment, we´ll let you know. There are several possibilities, including a ¨frontier¨ area towards Colombia that the Panamanian government is trying to develop to inhibit incursions by cross-border rebels. Oh the excitement! Until then, Hasta Luego!