Last Shots for Today!

A few random shots from around the casa.





Brian and Eidith, dominating Felix and Arron in a little pick-up game of backyard soccer. Note the gravel in the foreground. Here, my distinct advantage in size was quickly pared when forced to tip-toe over this area which the kids could sprint over without any resultant foot-damage. Lesson: control the game, keep it away from the gravel!








The results of the post-game mudfest. That´s Arron on the left (again, our prime suspect in the case of Mimi´s missing eye), Felix in the middle, and Eidith. on the right














Brian, celebrating with all for a game well played!
















Some of the kids bringing flowerts to our window in a much cleaner moment. It seems that whenever Amanda notes how much she likes flowers, any kid within earshot will run around striping the land of them and delivering them until begged to stop. (The aspiring sommeliers among us will note that the bottle of wine is indeed of California origin, Carlo Rossi, I believe)

Local Wildlife

Another parrot. This one is a pet of our neighbors, and speaks Spanish almost non-stop throughout the day, sounding earily like a young Panamanian child talking to itself.























Amanda, being attacked by a ferociously massive butterfly in front of our house. This lasted for at least 10 minutes.












Another shot of the unquenchable beast.



















A friendlier, and to Amanda´s delight, furrier animal of the Panamanian jungle, a baby rabbit-type thing. The animal was delivered to us by our host family after seeing pictures of Amanda´s former pet rat. They figured it would be a good idea to provide us with another, similar experience, but it unfortunately died a few days later, probably from many causes.














An appx. 7-ft. boa constricter found in the jungle only about 100 yards or so from the house. While not big enough to kill a human, it could probably take out any medium-sized animal with no problem.













A blurry action-shot of the same snake. True to form, our host-father crushed its head with a machete soon afterwards, allowing us only a few photos. Point made: snakes not welcome near the house.

World AIDS Day

Some pictures of Amanda and I helping Trisha to organize and run a successful AIDS presentation at the local school.

Proposing the topic wasn´t easy, as to convey the idea that we wished to organize a community presentation to coincide with "World AIDS Day," we only knew how to say in Spanish that we wished for "a day to celebrate AIDS in the world," which is not exactly what we meant and which drew more than a few confused looks. Regardless, the day went off rather well, and I think everyone learned a lot.










Amanda and Trisha at the front of the class, presenting Panama´s AIDS statistics lecture-style.















Trisha and Brian at the back of the classroom, leading an interactive game that illustrated how AIDS can be spread.














The classroom from the back, if you squint you can see Amanda sitting against the wall at the very front.













More or less the same shot, but this time Amanda is standing.

Inside The House

Immerse yourself...in the world of a Panamanian jungle shack!







These gourds, called calabasas in Spanish, can be cut and carved for a myriad of uses. Here, we are drying them out to use as mugs and hanging herb planters. (or motorcycle helmets)














A view of our "kitchen." As you can see, we have a gas stove, a few shelves, and two silver water filters. Amanda took great pains to cover everything in this area with an easy-wipe sticky paper with a kitchen-tile graphic. I think it looks great.








Now, if you were looking at the kitchen in the above photo, and turned appx. 90 degrees to the right, this is what you´d see; our book shelf down below, and the corner of our bed to the right. Those buckets are filled with water just in case the aqueduct goes out unexpectedly (which it will any day now for the next four-month dry season!) .















Ok, rotate yourself another 90 degrees or so to the right (and, uh... take a step forward) and you´ll see our bed and part of the table; both places that we spend a lot of time.














Finally, take a little step backwards, rotate 90 degrees to the right again, and you´ll see our clothes and "stuff" shelves. That´s our table in the foreground, and the green orb on top is a ripe, undried calabasa, ready for carving. If you were to look towards the right from this location, you would be looking at the kitchen area as seen in the second picture above.

Thanksgiving!

These three pictures are from our Thanksgiving celebration in the beautiful mountain town of Cerro Punta, and which was a much-needed distraction from our initial month in-site.






The lodge, "Los Quetzales" (www.losquetzales.com), where we stayed, ate, and hiked through the amazing surrounding cloud forest.













Us and some of our Peace Corps friends. From left to right is Amanda, the Jessica, Brian, & Leah.















Although farmers in Cerro Punta seem to grow a variety of crops, strawberries are everywhere, as are small "fresh cream and strawberries" stands to delight the taste buds.

Cleaning House.

I know that we have been inundating you with pictures lately, but I hope that they´re helping to convey a better image of our lives here than we ever could through text. Either way, by posting more pictures we´re saving a lot of space; with each one being worth 1,000 words, we´d be through our "blogspot.com" space allowance in no time without them!

Here are a few early-morning shots of our hour-and-a-half walk on the road from our house to the "Pan-American Highway," which is the main highway that basically connects everything from Alaska to Chile, and is Panama´s major transportation artery. (for many reasons, political, social, and environmental, the Pan-American stops about 50 miles from Colombia, then restarts south of the border. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interamerican_Highway)







A tree stump that kind of looks like a pig´s head!











Like taking a picture of the Grand Canyon, this shot does reality no justice.















A bridge towards the bottom of our walk. Note the metal floor gapping in several areas. While seemingly not dangerous to walk across, it is a harrowing experience to cross on a "chiva" loaded down with more than 2,000 pounds of people. Most chiva drivers swing to the left to avoid the degraded section, but one likes to speed up and test fate by flying over the wheel-sized gaps´ 20-foot drops. Exciting!










A tough one to see in the madrugada (early-morning hours, but it is a sunrise nonetheless, and a very beautiful one at that!