Visiting some other volunteers

The last month I visited some fellow volunteers in their respective sites around the country. It was a good trip, I went the first week in January to visit a new province called Herrera for a friends bday which was pretty fun. Then a few later I visited another friend who lives in my province who is up in the mountains and lives near this awesome lake and has some awesome waterfalls nearby. Check it out everyone.

Here are pics from a typical Panamanian bday party. I went to visit a fellow peace corps volunteer for his birthday and his host family really went all out for him for his birthday.



My friend Robert and Matt with Rob´s host dad at his birthday party.


Here are pics from when I visited my friend Ashley in her site near a really cool lake. She also has some cooler weather here than in other parts of the country which is nice.

A cool waterfall about 10 minutes from her house



Me at the top of the hill above her town. You can see the cool lake down below.

Patronales

People here in Panama are hardcore Catholics and take all the holidays and festivals seriously. Every year in every community they have something called patronales which is the day that they celebrate their patron saint, well its actually 9 days long. Its nine days of mass that end the last day with a big mass and then a huge party afterwards. My town definately likes to have a good time and party and this day was no exception and was probably one of the biggest party days they have had since I have been there. The day of patronales in La Mesa was January 16th. They had a huge mass in the morning then had huge party the rest of the day, people from all over the country came for the party. They had Los Plumas Negras play which are a traditional Panamanian band that are very popular and who usually only play in big cities so its kind of a big deal. They also had a discoteca going too (which is a big dancw with a hired DJ). They had cockfights going on from 7pm till 2am. It was a good time, I had some friends come visit that day and hang out. It was a good time. I have some video from the cockfights, check them out.







This happened about 20 feet from my house.

Unsure of what to do...

I kind of don´t know what to put down in this blog because its kind of a weird situation that caught me completely off guard. I live in the town of La Mesa and work with a cooperative group whose main branch is in La Mesa but none of its members live here and live in 3 other communities. Well this week I went to visit the president of the cooperative who lives in one of these other communties. These 3 other communnities that I work in are by far the poorest communnities I have ever seen in my life, they are subsistence farmers who have no other work besides tending their farms to feed their families. Their is no clean water and no electricty. So this week I went to his town to go talk to him and upon arriving in the community I find out that they had a malaria outbreak and at least 5 people have been identified with malaria (and there are only about 80 people that live in the whole community). So it was kind of shock because they were all dealing with problem and well I didn´t know what to say or do. I mean what do you say people who are the poorest of the poor to begin with and then they find out they have malaria. Luckily I didn´t get it because I stayed in their town during the time period that the other people got malaria. But its just a wake up call that these crazy things are out there and that they are happening to people I know.

BenBall Warriors

Just got to give it up to my boys in blue back at UCLA who are killing it right now. I wish them luck this week against the Washington kids that are coming into Pauley. No one expects to come into Pauley and come out with any easy W. Also wish I could be back home checking out my boy Love handling business.



My boy Shipp taking it all the way. You just got youtubed fool!!



And yet again my boy Westbrook handling biz against the boys from Cal!

GO BRUINS!!!

Doing some social work with the Girl Scouts

I am labeled in peace corps as a follow-up volunteer because there was a peace corps vounteer in my site before I arrived. The peace corps volunteer before me helped form a Girl Scouts group so many people in my town have encouraged me to help out with the group. Honestly, I am little hesitant to help out because I am a guy but they invited me to go with them this week to do some social work to donate a bunch of clothes and take food to a poorer community nearby. The city council man from town also came along with us. By the way many people in my town are not as poor as most communities in Panama. Well, poor in the sense of that they are not starrving for food some of the people in my town would be labeled as middle class and are ok to well off relatively speaking. But on the other hand these girls don´t have much and are donating and helping out the little that they have to those less fortunate.

San Pablo River which is about 10 minutes from where I live.

There´s also an awesome river right by this community thats about 10 minutes from where I live. Oh yeah there was these kids that just wanted me to keep taking photos of them nonstop. You will see... Some of the kids that couldn´t get enough of the camera.

The kids couldn´t get enough of the camera.Especially this guy.The Girl Scouts passing out food to the community.This is where they cooked the food for lunch. A mom asked me to take a picture of her little baby.The girls passing out clothes to the kids.

Happy Mothers Day(better late than never)

For those mother´s out there, Mother´s Day falls in December here in Panama. I have some pics from a small party that was hosted at a school about 30 minutes down a dirt road from my community. I spoke with one of the mother´s who had 9 children graduate from this elementary school and said that in all her years as a parent that the school had never done anything like this before for them. She was pretty excited as were most of the mother´s. There was even a piñata for the mothers, it was a fun event. By the way this is a really small school with about 20 students in a poor rural area, some of these students walk 2-3 hrs everyday just to get to school.
Some of the kids playing soccer before the Mom´s day party.

Mom´s and their kids at the party.The piñata for the moms.

The aftermath of the piñata.

Happy Holidays everyone

The Christmas tree that my friends and I had and the gifts we had for our small gift exchange.

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Holidays especially a Happy New Years and I wish everyone the best for 2008. For me this has been an interesting year in many regards and is the first time in my life that I haven´t spent the holidays my family and friends. I have been reflecting a lot about family and what that means ( and I include my friends as part of family many have you and you know who you are have been like family to me) to me and how important family really is. I think I haven´t taken for granted a little my family and friends over the last few years because I see them so much and think they are always going to be there. But as I am here in Panama without any of you I understand a little better that you really have to appreciate your family and friends always because you never know when they are going to gone. But anyways don´t want to make this e-mail too sappy but I miss you all and I am having a great time here in Panama. I enjoyed a good Christmas with my Peace Corps friends and celebrated the New Years with my host family.


The view we had from the house we rented for Christmas in El Valle de Anton. It has to be one of the greenest places I´ve ever been to in Panama.


The house we rented for Christmas in El Valle de Anton.


Having some fun with friends at Christmas!