A (Wholly Incomplete) Summary of the Events of the Past 10 Weeks: Part 2

In Part 1 we left our heroine in the middle of the whirlwind of training, anxiously awaiting site placement and desperately trying to remember the difference between gusano and guineo (one means "worm" and the other means "banana").

Part 2

Week 6 

Tech week!  TE traveled to the province of Cocle to work in schools with Panamanian English Teacher counterparts for the week.  The goal was to observe our counterpart’s teaching style, then co-plan a lesson with them, and finally co-teach that lesson.  I had a great time during tech week.  My counterpart was wonderful and it was really fun to be in the wonderful chaos of a classroom again.  We also gave a mock mini-SECNA about the work we did in the schools during tech week.

The night before site placement TE had a hat-themed dinner at a cool restaurant and I won a piece of delicious tres leches cake for my Mad Hatter hat that I made out of construction paper.  On Friday we gathered in Cocle with the training staff and Country Director to find out where everyone (TE and CEC) in G76 was going to be placed for their two years of service. We also met our RLs (Regional Leaders) who are third year volunteers who live in the provincial capital and offer support to volunteers in the individual provinces.  Two other TE friends of mine and I were placed in Veraguas.  We all have our own sites, but we live pretty close to one another.  I’m really excited to visit people once I have the opportunity.  We had a free overnight after site placement, so we all went to a beach to hang out and swim before…

Week 7 

Site Visit!  On Monday we went to Panama City to meet our community guides and talk about expectations and rules and cultural differences, the list goes on.  It was a really great experience and Maria (my Community Guide) is fantastic.  On Tuesday (or Monday night for those that live far away) everyone started their first journey to site to spend a week there.  I love  my site (despite being sick all week and not really being able to enjoy it much).  Everyone at the school was super welcoming and I’m really excited to start working at the end of training.

Week 8 

Back to classes in the Training Community.  The people who are going to (or near) indigenous communities in the Comarca Ngabe-Buble started learning Ngabere.  I really wanted to learn it too because we could audit the class if we wanted to, but I was unfortunately still sick.  Also, one of my wisdom teeth became infected (basically, I was driving the struggle bus).

Week 9 

Last week in the Training Community!  Last week of classes, a language placement exit exam (to be a volunteer in Panama you have to be at Intermediate Medium by the end of training), the presentation of our mock SECNA, and the planning and execution of the despedida (going away party) for our host families.  It was a wild week that flew by. 

The despedida was really fun.  The LCFs (Language and Cultural Facilitators) brought a bunch of tipico clothes for us to borrow for the party.  I ended up wearing a beautiful blue montun (a skirt that is simpler than a polleron) and red tambleques (beautiful beaded flowers that women wear in their hair for celebrations). 

Then it was time for the great battle of fitting all the things I’d accumulated (notebooks and papers and clothes and supplies) into the luggage I initially brought with me.  I won in the end, but my hiking backpack was insanely stuffed and really, really heavy.

Week 10 

All of G76 returned to Ciudad del Saber to stay in the really swanky dorms.  We spent the week finishing up training sessions and other administrative things before swear in that Thursday.  I also had to have that infected wisdom tooth taken out, but due to magic (and probably some mad orthodontic surgeon skills) I never felt any pain and I was absolutely fine by the evening of the day of the procedure. 

The Swearing in Ceremony was really nice.  The training staff came to celebrate with us and the Country Director for Panama, representatives from ANAM and MEDUCA, and one of the US Embassy officers all made remarks.  Two of the trainees from G76 ((one CEC and one TE) also made speeches and it was really moving to hear them speak so eloquently about the craziness of training and our collective hopes for our two years of service.  After Swearing In we had a brief brindis (literally translates to “toast”, but in Panama usually looks more like tapas-style food and chicha—really sweet juice) before we started our weekend of celebrating.  G76 decided to stay in hostels in Panama City to celebrate there together for a few days before heading to our sites.

That brings us to present day.  I just finished moving to site!  More (hopefully) regular updates to follow!

All of my photo-taking technology wasn't functioning well for the majority of training, but please enjoy these cell phone shots from the past few days:

Catedral in Casco Viejeo

Cinta Costera

Gazebo in the Plaza next to the Cathedral

View from a Hammock

A (Wholly Incomplete) Summary of the Events of the Past 10 Weeks: Part 1

So, I've been pretty bad at this blogging thing...and the power just went out.

When I was doing research before I came to Panama I was frustrated by the lack of information I found about volunteers' perspectives on training in the blogs I was reading. I now understand that it’s because you’re constantly busy between classes, traveling to training events in other places, and making friends with the other crazy people (read: "trainees" or "new family members") who decided to step into this pressure cooker-wormhole-tornado (and you have very little internet access on top of that).

Honestly, it felt a lot like three months of college freshman orientation, but with more alphabet soup acronyms and Spanglish.

I've decided to attempt to remedy this perceived lack of information with a quick summary of the first ten (really eleven) weeks of my life in Panama.

Here we go:

Week 0
G76 arrived in Panama and stayed in the super swanky dorms (Hot showers, consistent water and electricity, Wifi, and access to a food court where you can buy shwarma for $6) near the Peace Corps office in Ciudad del Saber (CDS). CDS is the former Clayton military base that the US used when they had control over the Panama Canal. It's now the site of many homes, schools, and office buildings. We spend every day in training sessions (like lectures) from 8am-5pm on Peace Corps policies and Panama and Security and Health. We have an oral language placement exam. I stop being able to sleep past 6am, a phenomenon that hasn’t happened since high school. Dinamicas (like ice breaker/energizer games but on steroids) are introduced into our lives and we will never be the same.

Weeks 1-2
The TE (Teaching English) and CEC (Community Environmental Conservation) groups moved to their respective training communities to live with host families for the remainder of our training. Each Aspirante (trainee) lives with a different host family in the small community of Santa Rita. We have Spanish Class for 4 hours in the morning and Tech Class for TE-Specfic things for 4 hours in the afternoon. We spend one day in the Peace Corps office each week with the full group of TE and CEC to do general training, security, and health sessions. During week 2 we were assigned a group mock SECNA presentation. SECNA is the presentation (and paper) that we give to our communities after three months of observations to plan what kinds of initial projects community members are interested in collaborating on. It’s a big project, but if you do it little by little it’s totally manageable (which was the point of the mock SECNA).

Week 3


We each went to visit a current volunteer. I visited Taylor in the province of Herrera and we had a great time. It was really cool to see an example of real volunteer life and work and to feel more grounded in this crazy process (and to not eat any mayonnaise or rice all week). I loved seeing the school where she works and learning about other projects that are available outside of working in schools (organizing seminars, working with the Gender and Development group). We also celebrated my birthday with (a version of) baked ziti, garlic bread, and funfetti cake with chocolate frosting and then we watched a movie from Netflix on her computer. Probably one of the best birthdays ever.


Week 4-5

Back to class in the training community. During Week 4 we took another oral language exam to reassess our levels. I managed to move up two levels (!) and moved into another class. We also had interviews with our APCD for TE (my immediate supervisor) regarding our site placement preferences. He asked us a bunch of questions about what we thought about our volunteer visit and how training is going and our strengths and weaknesses with relation to our technical skills. At the end of the interview he asked for three things that we would look for in our sites (size, number of counterpart teachers, etc.). He humored my list of seven thoughts that I had scribbled down in my journal. Site placement was super nerve wracking because it is really important and you don’t have much (read: any) control over it. I tried not to think about it much because I didn’t want to stress myself out over something that I couldn't control. I wanted to trust in the PC staff to know what was best because I know about a teaspoon’s worth of what Panama is and what the communities are looking for.

We were also assigned a group community project where we were supposed to hold two one-hour community classes for members of the training community based on something that the community expressed interest in learning/doing. My group only managed to do about 20 minutes of one of those hours due to a series of unfortunate events.

There’s a phrase in Peace Corps/Panama (and maybe elsewhere) that people use a lot: “plus/delta”. It’s used for assessment of any given activities—what went well (+), and what could be improved for future implementations (delta). For my group’s community project we didn’t have many +’s, we really only had deltas (though I suppose delicious homemade cookies should always be counted as a +, no matter what else happens). It was a good learning experience on how to organize events better, communicate effectively, and to make sure you’re actually addressing something that the community has interest in learning (English slang didn't sell so well with the kids in the community, even when enticed with cookies).


To Be Continued...

My house in the Training Community

View from a Breakfast Table