October/November blues...

October and November are the rainiest months of the year in our area of Panama. Hands down. Sometimes it is raining as we wake up, and doesn't stop until we go to sleep; three days later. While falling asleep to the pitter-patter of raindrops on our rusty-brown, corrugated tin roof can be comforting, trying to get anything accomplished during the day can be frustrating. As you can imagine, we don't have the resources (ie, movable shelters) to pour concrete slabs in either a dripping or driving rain, and this has slowed the project up considerably. However, while pouring slabs has been put on hold until the bone-dry summer season meets us in mid-December-ish, we have been able to buy all of our needed tin roofing for the latrine project and were even able to nail a few down for qualified (ready) beneficiaries. The bulk of our work will be commencing once the maddening rain lets up. If it ever does. Pray for us.

One may wonder what we do in site when the weather has us trapped like soaked animals in a wood-paneled cage. Why, we read and go on trips, of course! Since the beginning of October, Amanda and I have been from Panama City, down to "the Azuero," and are on our way back up to Cerro Punta for another round of Thanksgiving, just like we did last year.

Our time in Panama City was great. We spent about a week and around 150% of our month's salary. It was totally worth it. We went to the city because at each one-year mark, volunteers must go to the Peace Corps headquarters for a series of medical checkups to make sure that amoebas and worms are not eating us up from the inside. We were clean but some others were not (and are now on medications that will hopefully heal them). Anyway, the week of parties and good restaraunts, taxis and bagels, was a much-needed recharge. We returned to site on October the 28th, and spirited away "otra vez" (once again) for a weekend in the Azuero, to watch the annual "desfiles" (parades) that wind their way through the country every year on November 9th and 10th, in celebration of Panama's (actually Colombia at the time) "first cry of independence" from Spain. The Azuero is the penninsula located below Santiago and encompasses Las Tablas, etc. The bright red dot just to the right of David is the approximate location of our site.

This was our first time to the Azuero, and though the parades seemed endless (24 hours of parading!!!), it was awesome to explore a bit of what is universally considered the heart of Panamanian culture. This is where the Panamanian culture is alive and proud, and festivals such as the annual Carneval (basically Mardi Gras), and "La Grita" (which we attended this past weekend) keep it alive and pumping. Like most of Panama outside of the Panama City metro area, the Azuero is an interesting mix of huge cattle ranches, smaller farms, history-soaked villages, and not a little bit of poverty. This is where you can find the 300 year-old churches surrounded by courtyards and the small, brightly-colored houses that seem to typify Central America our minds. We had a great time.

However, the fun is not even close to being finished, as after the next week of latrine building (weather permitting) and cruising with the Ngobe folks, we're off to the cool, verdant uplands of Cerro Punta to celebrate Thanksgiving with the over one hundred other Peace Corps-Panama volunteers. The tradition lives on. Cerro Punta is quite a magical place. Right by the lodge where we'll all be staying is a national park of untouched, primary high-altitude cloud forest, which is a way of saying cool-temperatured, high-elevation, thick jungle. We are definitely looking forward to a few days of hiking, partying, and reconnecting with everybody before buckling down for the few weeks before heading to California for the holidays. I won't even go into that now because I can foresee that any indulging into imagining our amazing California trip will only lead to depression.

Thus October and November have been both challenging and fun and we look forward to a lot more of the same over the next few months. Mike, my brother, has bought his ticket to come see us in February and we're estatic; already counting the days. We're still waiting on Amanda's friend Noel, who we hope will be joining us as well (ahhh, poetry). And after three weeks of biting my nails I finally received my LSAT score and have all of my applications on their ways to law schools around the country. Now the waiting and speculating and dreaming is great as we guess which one's are suckers enough to let me in!

Until the next update, God Bless!!