mAdventures

So this fancy internet café has Microsoft Word so I have decided to write my blog posts here and then just copy and paste them to the blog. I know; I am a genius.

Panamanian life is really slow. For example the meeting for Neighborhood Watch started three hours late because the police arrived three hours late. Another example for those of you who speak Spanish, ahora means now but here it means soon. Ya means already and here it means now.  I think the Spanish example is actually kind of funny

Well things that have happened in my life:

Yesterday and today I took days off and spent them with my friend. She came in from another province to hang out. She is fabulous and I would love to give her credit but Peace Corps rules don´t allow it. Anyway, we had a delicious dinner last night with margaritas, wine and whine. We did a little/a lot of shopping and had just a wonderful time being together. It was so nice to feel like a person again.

Now one may ask: Madye where is Megalodon (or Magellan depending on the person)? Well Megalodon had to come with me to the city to receive more shots and I had him boarded at the vet for the night. I was actually looking forward to no roosters or dogs waking me up. I EVEN turned off my alarms. Alas, it did not matter. I was still up at 6:15 am. So I did sleep in an extra half hour but I went to sleep later than the usual 8:30 am so I didn´t really get more sleep.

Oh I few of you may appreciate a true Madye moment. Just as background: most people in my community know that I have a fear of snakes (it is really only Panamanian snakes because those son-of-a-guns are quite venomous) and cockroaches. Okay so I´m going to tell this from a third person stance. 

Madye was cleaning her room and left the door open and unattended. It was only for a few moments, and when Madye went back in she began screaming like she found a dead body. She ran back into the house for her host father but couldn´t get the words out to describe what had made her so upset. Her dad followed her quick pace back into her room with a garden hoe asking ´where is the snake´. Of course it was not a snake. It was a chicken. My dad could not stop laughing for the rest of the day. And somehow the whole town found out about my extravaganza and is now cracking chicken jokes every day.

I have also started teaching in the schools and it has made me feel so much less stressed (I know, bizarre).  I taught and entire science less in Spanish. It was an introduction to garbage and how to classify things as organic or inorganic. It went quite well and I was really proud when a few days later a government organization came down to talk about recycling. They showed the kids a picture of garbage (and all of it just happened to be organic) asked the kids what the picture was of. The person was just hoping for the answer of garbage but of course one of my little munchkins screamed out ¨ORGANIC GARBAGE! YOU HAVE TO COMPOST THAT!¨I was so happy. They learned. Of course I need to learn how to write a correct lesson plan (anybody have copies they want to email me??) and then learn to write in Spanish but every day I am feeling more and more comfortable.

I have also started (like yesterday morning) teaching English in the school. The older kids already get lessons from another woman but the first, second and third graders don´t get any English lessons. The teachers don´t speak a word so I am started on ground level. Of course there are kids who do speak some English. Mainly though just curse words they learn from their fathers who think it is hilarious. Let me tell you, it is not that funny to hear a five year old say a$$h0le. Now I am not going to commend child abuse in any form but the kids who get spanked are not the kids using fowl language.

I have also invested in a football and am trying to teach the kids how to play. I am all of a sudden very grateful for first period gym with Mr Chris.

Also I am thinking of starting a health class. I would like to teach the kids about the importance of brushing your teeth and hopefully being able to teach the adults. Many of the adults do not have teeth and many of the children´s baby teeth are brown and eroding in their mouths. I would also like to teach the importance of hand washing. FUN FACT! Did you know that 5 million people die a year because water sanitation and 42% can be helped by washing hands?

Another idea I have had was a landfill. Most people dump their garbage in the dump, a.k.a. the Mangroves, or burn it. Burning some of the garbage isn´t exactly end of the world as long as it is paper product but many people burn plastics and they don´t know what the Ozone Layer is. So I have to explain the reason for building and using a landfill in more simple terms. A landfill has potential to help a ton here.

I have a ton of more ideas but one that I am actually going to do is start an after school club. The kids don´t usually have homework (unless I taught that day) and generally speaking, live close to the school so they would be able to come back to school for the meetings. I was thinking of having the club be environmentally based and I have two reasons for thinking this: I am a Community Environmental Conservation specialist and there are TONS of resources for eco-clubs in Pamama.

Photos are on facebook. The flicker thing sucks. You can only add a certain amount of pictures per month and I have over 500 photos (only 200 are on facebook).

Anyway, thank you all for the love and support. I really appreciate it and the emails. I will try to be better about responding. I hope most of you don´t judge my spelling when I email you from the kindle. It is really difficult with a funky keyboard and lack of English speaking.

BIG PANAMANIAN HUGS FROM MY LITTLE MEGALODON!