Friday, November 9, 2012

Things I've accepted, learned, and still miss through living in Panama

8 months into my service in Panama, here are some reflections.

Things that I've become accustomed to:
- Not having air conditioning (though I'm NOT accustomed to the heat)
- Not having hot water
- Traveling by bus (or little 15 person van)
- Buses without a schedule
- Veering all over the road while in a bus to avoid major pot-holes
- The bus driver going over small bumps at about 5 mph
- Living 40 minutes from a real grocery store
- Excessive wait times
          - Example: I had to go to the doctor last week. In America, if I had to wait more than 20
          minutes for the doctor to arrive I would be frustrated and annoyed.
          The timeline here: 8:15 - I arrive and am told the doctor is just waking up
                                        9:00 - I think, hopefully he'll get here soon
                                        9:30 - I'm starting to get antsy, he really should be here soon.
                                        9:45 - I ask the nurse to call again, I am already going to be late arriving
                                        for my friend's project that I'm helping her with.
                                        10:00 - The doctor finally arrives and takes me into the office/room.
                                        10:05 - He is finished asking me how I feel and looking at my throat.
                                        10:20 - We finish our conversation about Peace Corps and politics. He tells
                                        me to call back for my final test results. I leave. Bit of a difference, huh?
- Being called a gringa (though the one time I got "china" when I was actually dressed in a typical panamanian outfit, I didn't quietly accept)
- Speaking Spanish!
- Tipica music
- Explaining US seasons (Many panamanians think it's cold year-round. Why wouldn't it be? It's hot here year-round)
- Slow internet
- That most actual work stops in November due to the abundance of national and local holidays
          - November calendar: 2 -All Soul's Day
                                              3 - Independence Day from Colombia
                                              4 - Flag Day
                                              5 - Colón Day
                                              8 - parades in Los Santos
                                              9 - parades in Chitré
                                              10 - First cry for independence in Los Santos
                                              16 & 17 - Founding of Pesé (includes days of celebrations & parades)
                                              28 - Independence Day from Spain (so of course they have the previous
                                              Monday off of school/work)
- English teachers not always speaking good English and never having teaching degrees
- 2 shifts at schools
- Lack of internet or phone service in a variety of places
- A constant presence of ants in certain parts of my house. Though I will NOT permit and crazy infestations or any invasions of my kitchen.

Things I've learned to love:
- Patacones (friend plaintains)
- Ojaldra (fried dough... think a round, softer, salty funnel cake)
- The rain - it cools things down!
- Panamanian typical outfits - polleras and guayaberas
- Talking with panamanians who have read about and pay attention to US news or have some grasp of its' culture
- Hammocks

Things I don't accept or still miss from the US:
- The constant heat and lack of seasons (seca to lluviosa doesn't really count in my book...)
          - I really miss fall!!
- The style of wearing really tight clothing that shows off all of your stomach rolls
- The fact that food is not usually considered a meal unless rice is involved
- The lack of a lot of vegetables
- The high price of good cheese, good deli meat, and good chocolate
- My comfy bed and need for blankets
- Random men cat-calling at me. No soy tu bebi.
- No passing time at school - how on earth are the kids supposed to pay attention all day, or, for that matter, even be in class on time?
- Students not doing homework or caring about school (certainly not all students, but a good number)
- The massive amount of sugar they put in their juices! :( I want good, fresh juice!
- Bad treatment of Panamanian pets - though I do think Americans go overboard frequently

Things I've realized/how I've changed:
- American culture intensely values personal independence
- Gained a LOT of patience - both for waiting times and for cultural misunderstandings
- I finally understand, from a personal perspective, why immigrants in the US (or in any country) cling to and live near other people from their country.
- Schools in the US are much more of a community (with other clubs, groups, and activities) than they are in most other parts of the world (at least in my European and Central American experience)
- I enjoy camping!
- I can handle a lot more bugs. I still don't do massive spiders - I'm talking tarantulas or other excessively large ones.
- It takes a while to get projects going - but don't give up - it will happen eventually!
- Lowered expectations of attendance for events. 

Moral of the story:
I've changed a lot and learned a lot, but I've also learned about what things I can't or won't change!

Monday, November 5, 2012

The Ups & Down of Teaching: A Story of Success and Frustration

Some days I love being in the schools: the kids are learning and interested, they come up and hug me, I enjoy talking with the teachers and feel like we're having a great exchange of ideas. Life in Panama is good.

Other days I feel like breaking down and crying, screaming in anger, or both simultaneously, at the students who don't care and who disrespect their teachers, and at teachers who aren't motivated to plan engaging lessons for their students and who don't put in effort to improve their English.

Most days are somewhere in between these two extremes. Let me shed some light on these emotions with a story of one of my weeks about a month ago.

The setting and characters:
I was working in the colegio with the professor who teaches 8th and 9th grade. Now this is a teacher who really means well and he wants to help his students. He has come to all of our charlas, so he has only shown me that he is motivated towards improving and helping his students, but as this story shows, there are some things that are still lacking.

The current unit was weather, so at the beginning of the week when I asked what he was working on, he showed me to handouts with some readings for the students on the topic of natural disasters. In my opinion, the one he had chosen for 8th grade was actually harder than the one for 9th grade, but both were over the heads of the students. But at this point, I couldn't talk him through choosing something else as he had already been working on these readings for a week and a half (?!?). So I went with it.

Act 1:
He told me he wanted to work on pronunciation - which made me happy, since I feel like that is something missing in most teachers' English curriculum here. So off we went to class. He proceeded to read the passages while the students thoughtlessly repeated after him. He then asked me to be the reader so that the students would learn a better accent from me. This killed me because the students - unless they are internally motivated and extremely interested in English already (not the norm) - aren't going to actually learn how to pronounce the words just by repeating after me.

The other issue was that only about one third to one half of the students actually had the handout. Here, the students have to pay 5 cents per page for copies (they are not covered by the school), so some of the students didn't want, or couldn't, pay for the copies, and others had lost or forgotten the handout(or as they say here: it left me at home), so only a few actually had the page to follow along. The others were talking, throwing things across the room, and generally not paying attention and being disruptive. While this in itself infuriated me, more than half of my anger and frustrations were directed at the teacher who had planned this lesson without any engaging materials or activities. If I were a student, I probably would have been behaving in a similar way (or at least considering it). I got so upset at one point, I left a class 5 minutes early. I was just about at the point of tears and/or screaming and yelling.

So what to do? That afternoon during a free period, I talked with the teacher about behavior. It doesn't matter if the students have the copy or not - they need to be actively trying to engage in the class. This means sharing with a student near you who does have the copy, sitting straight in their chair, looking at the speaker (whether the teacher or another student), and participating when asked. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to talk to him about how to make this kind of lesson more engaging at this point in time.

Act 2:
The next day we went to class and spent between 20 and 30 minutes (of the 40 minute class period) talking to the students about behavior. The teacher did most of the talking, but I also tried to impress upon them that the only way they were going to learn was to practice. The worst class (which is also the largest with about 35 students) was still talking and not paying attention while the teacher was trying to talk to them about this serious topic (in Spanish). I was getting more and more angry and when I finally was given the opportunity to talk, I refused to talk over them and waited until they quieted down. I then told them that their behavior was teaching me that panamanians aren't respectful, shouldn't be respected, and that since they weren't listening to their teacher, why should I listen to them? Now, I know that this isn't true. Panamanians are wonderful people and I hold many in high regard. But that's not what their behavior was communicating to me.

10 minutes later, I hope that I got something across to them about behavior and about how to learn a language. I understand - I learned French through middle and high school all the way through college. I have learned Spanish since arriving in Panama in January. I get that languages can be hard to learn. But you won't learn unless you pay attention and practice. Now, my little soap-box speech probably didn't change any lives or drastically change their attitude, but I did get a round of applause when I sat back down and I hope that it might have encouraged a couple of them in the right direction.

The teacher finished out the classes by continuing to work on pronunciation, which was just as un-engaging as before. But he asked if I could come to class the next day. I needed to prepare for a charla the following day, but I said I could come to the first 3 classes. Boy, am I glad I agreed to that.

Act 3:
I arrived, and he started going over some pronunciation but quickly let me have the reins for the class. I tried to tie the words back to their meanings and get the students to understand the words alongside learning how to pronounce them. I also tried to explain why you pronounce them a certain way. I really want to help the teachers teach phonics, but it's hard when I'm only with a teacher for 2 days every 3 or 4 weeks.

Then we went to that biggest class where I had my big speech. They were still misbehaving some, ut I took over and with an impromptu lesson got them interested, paying attention, and participating. Now, don't take this to mean that I have all the answers and I'm some magical teacher who knows the secrets to getting students to engage with and learn the material. It's much more likely that I just got lucky with this lesson, but I have learned a lot about how to try to connect with the students and not just have rote lessons of memorization with copying and repeating.

I wrote the words up on the board, had them do some repeting after me (they need to have some base to work from) but then had them do most of the pronunciation both in groups and individually. With some of the harder words (like biodegradable. No, I don't know why they need to know this word... again, I was just going with what I had to work with) I told them that we were going to repeat in rows, so I went row-by-row and had them repeat after me, then I told them that when I pointed at their row, they had to say the word. This aspect of competition and unexpectedness got their attention. I was still having trouble with one row in particular that just refused to say the word - only 1 or 2 students were saying it, and only softly. The competition helped them a fair bit.

But then I did the same thing with another word and that difficult row finally participated! I gave them some praise when they all said it loudly (the word before, it had pretty much stopped the game), but kept moving on because I didn't want to overly praise the behavior that I expected of them.

At the end of the lesson, the students were happy, wanting me to come back and teach all the time. That made me feel great. Then the icing on the cake: the teacher thanked me so much for being with him and helping him - that he had learned a lot from that lesson. Just from my impromptu lesson trying to focus on getting the students to participate.

Epilogue:
At that moment I thought: this is my Peace Corps experience in a nutshell and what I hope continues to happen. Occasionally there are extreme frustrations, but I keep on working and, in the end, hopefully the teacher learns how to become a better teacher and how to engage his students, and the students become interested in English and enjoy class. That's really the purpose of my work in the schools.

Now, this isn't an every day, every week, or even every month experience. But it does happen occasionally, and those are the days that I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing here. It was a great feeling to have that feedback from the students and the teacher, and I hope that I can continue with that kind of work as much as possible.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

My Work as a PCV: Charlas & Other Secondary Projects

The past month or so has been filled with charlas,co-teaching,  and planning for future projects. First, I'll fill you in on the charlas.

So another PCV, Miranda, and I have started a series of charlas for our teachers. We hope to use the presentations and workshops on more of a mass-quantity scale to communicate information to our teachers. The first one was about classroom management. We tried to tackle an excessive amount of information for the first charla, but since we wanted to cover certain topics before the end of the year, we had to rush through some of the information. But we learned a lot through the first charla - not only about our presentation styles (I needed to slow down and be more thorough, Miranda needed to give less detail and speed up), but also about the format of the presentation, location, timing, and, probably most importantly, our expectations of our teachers (only about half of the teachers we work with some each time, which we had higher hopes for the first time around).
Me, starting our first charla - at the training center in Pesé
Our second charla was about student-centered teaching. We tried to communicate engaging techniques and activities to reach the students and get them engaged in their own learning. The hiccup that came with this charla (and the change in location) was that the location closed at 4:00, which they neglected to tell us. Due to this, Miranda had to cut her section in half which, unfortunately, forced us to cut a lot of the interactive activities. Oh well, we knew for the next time...
Me about to begin our second charla at the National Assembly meeting space in Chitré
Miranda, walking a couple of the teachers through a workshop portion of the charla.
And next time was... lesson planning. Again, we covered a lot: trimester, unit, and daily lesson plans. But this time we had more of a workshop-based approach, and the teachers really enjoyed it. I think they learned a lot from it - both from what we presented and from each other - which is what we want to happen!
Miranda introducing the daily lesson plan format to our teachers.

We have one more planned for this year - how to create and implement a syllabus. Many teachers in Panama don't use a syllabus, and we want to show them how useful they can be - both for the students and the teachers.

Many of these topics our teachers already have some knowledge of - some of them even know a lot about them, and we've learned from them. But one of the big problems is that the English teachers haven't studied teaching - they have earned an English degree and then are qualified to teach English. But as anyone who has tried to teach knows, being thrown in the classroom without any preparation is insanely difficult, and without any guidance, it is hard to get through to your students - both with regards to classroom management and lesson delivery. We hope close that gap and to help those teachers who might have not had enough training, but it also requires the teachers to be pro-active, which is not always the case. Overall, however, the charlas have been a good experience and we plan to continue them into next year.

I have also been planning a workshop for my 9th grade students called Elige tu Vida. This program encourages them to think about their future, set life-, education- and career-goals, teaches them about sexual health and family planning. I'm working with the Psychological-Pedagogical Office (that's the best translation I can come up with...) to present this to to the students. The colegio is going to donate a snack for the students and the health center in Pesé is going to supply the condoms. I still have to write a grant to print the workbooks for the students. I'm hoping to get the grant money in December and perform the workshop during their summer break. I'm a little bit concerned about the timing and if the students will come, but the women I'm working with say they will, so we'll see.

Lastly, I'm also starting to help with an Ultimate Frisbee initiative called Ultimate Without Borders started by an RPCV and another PCV here in Panama. We're promoting youth clubs through Ultimate Frisbee. It's a engaging and enjoyable sport that has the ability to facilitate teaching many life-skills such as teamwork, conflict management, and confidence. We are also planning to integrate some curriculum into the club, to teach some other topics as well. I'm really excited to be able to help with this project - I think it has great potential and I really love the means (ultimate!) and message. More to come on this in the future, I'm sure!

This past week has been a bit rough since I've been sick with strep. But the doctor gave me antibiotics on Thursday, so thankfully I was well enough to participate in the independence day celebrations this weekend. And this was after the incident a couple of weeks ago where I cut my hand on a glass while washing it, leading to a 2 hour emergency visit to the doctor and 3 stitches. But I'm on the mend, both my hand and throat, and looking to be healthy and avoid any more sicknesses or injuries!

Next posts, soon to come: (1) the ups & downs of teaching and (2) Panamanian holidays in November - el mes de patria.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Details about Abuelo & Veronica's Visit

Hello friends. Time for some details about Abuelo... then a description about Veronica's visit! The two are not related... don't worry.

First, let's rewind.

Last time I updated I said that I had just gone on a tour of the seco and rum factory in my site with another PCV who came to visit me. It was actually really interesting, so I'll fill you in a little bit.

Varela Hermanos S.A. is the largest liquor factory in Panama - and it's right here in my site! Not only is this the sole largest factory (even though there are others around) the company itself also has about 80% of the liquor market in Panama.  Both Ron Abeulo (literally, Grandad rum) and Seco (a clear almost vodka-like liquor) are made here in Pesé - both distilled from sugar cane that comes from the fields that surround our town. Seco doesn't have to age, it is simply distilled and bottled, ready to go. But the rum is aged anywhere from 3-5 years (the cheap stuff), 10 years, 20 years, or 50 years (the most expensive version.

The sugar cane is harvested between February and May (the growing cycle is about 10 months long), initiating the processing and production of the liquors, continuing through June or July. After this process is complete, they take apart the huge machine that processes the raw sugar cane, and clean it - a process that takes about a month. The workers are given a month of vacation, then in October they go back to work to reassemble the machine and prepare the plant for  the harvest again. It was shocking how much the building where they distill the liquors still smelled like rum - even though there hadn't been any liquor in the huge containers in several months. I can't imagine what it must smell like during production!

The most interesting aspect of the tour for me was learning about how the rum is distilled. Now, it's not all that different from how other rums and liquors are distilled but I think I discovered why I somewhat enjoy this rum, as opposed to the dark rums that I typically dislike in the US. In the US there is a law (so said our tour guide) that barrels cannot be used more than once to age liquor, so after they are used in the US, they are shipped other places to be used - like here in Panama. Varela Hermanos gets their barrels from a company that produces whiskey. The rum that is then aged in these barrels comes out with a slight whiskey-esque flavor.

Voilà! The reason I like this rum - it tastes a little like whiskey.

So that was my fun fact for the next few weeks after we went on that tour - I definitely found it interesting though! This factory employs at least a quarter of my town - so it's definitely the largest industry around. Not to mention all of the labor that is required to plant and harvest the sugar cane.

Right after that friend left I had another, wonderful friend come and visit from home - Veronica! The trip was short, but we did a TON. We're similar travellers in that we want to do and see as much as we can while we are there.

The first night we had a typical (though somewhat pricey) Panamanian meal to introduce her to the country! The next day we skipped out of town quickly, stopping at the beach for a couple hours - leaving just before the rains, finding an amazing cigar factory that produces thousands of cigars a day (400 per worker, usually before noon - pretty impressive) that are then exported to the US and sold for $8/cigar (seems pricey to me! though I know next to nothing about cigars), all on our way down to Chitré. We were so lucky that we were spending that particular weekend in Chitré because there was a huge festival going on all weekend - Fiesta de Fiestas (yes... it was called Party of the Parties) - that showed off some of the unique and wonderful parts of Panamanian culture for Veronica to see!

Saturday brought a day full of travelling - we hit up Pesé, Ocu, a tiny town where we saw someone who makes the typical, hand-embroidered dresses, La Arena and Las Tablas, all before going back to Chitré to see the parade in the afternoon. Veronica got to see the typical dresses called polleras, diablo sucios from La Arena, typical outfits/parade costumes from Colon, and much more. It was wonderful! I hadn't seem some of the things yet either, so we had a great time. At night there was another parade with all of the reynas (queens) on their elaborate floats. Think Brazil's Carnaval, and you'll get the idea.

Back to Panama early on Sunday to sight-see in the city: Panama Viejo, Cerro Ancón, and the canal. Then finally we took a break to nap and relax for the afternoon so that we could enjoy going out that night! It was a Sunday night, so the bars/clubs were pretty dead, but we had a nice dinner of room service :) then had a drink on a roof-top bar before dancing for about an hour at a club. We didn't want to stay out too late so that we could enjoy the last day together, but we also wanted to make sure we celebrated her birthday in style!

Veronica's birthday was the last day she was here with me in Panama, and I hope I helped make it memorable! One of the best things was that I called down to room service before we went out the night before to ask if they could bring up a cake while we were out. The message got a little mixed up, but it ended up wonderfully anyway - they came right before we were about to leave with a delicious cake, her name on the plate, candles, and balloons to boot!! It was so great.

So the last day was our most relaxed day of them all - we spent a long time in Casco Viejo walking around, buying souvenirs, and enjoying the food! We had delicious ice cream, ceviche, then came across one of the only microbreweries in Panama, so of course I had to have a Pale Ale - my first real beer (aside from the crappy <$1 canned ones) since I've been in Panama. It was glorious. I'll post pictures at some point... but we used her camera since mine is breaking, and we couldn't upload them to my computer... so as soon as I get them in the mail, I will share!

She left super early the next day - September 11th - but I stuck around in the city to relax a bit, then headed back to site to jump back into the swing of things. It was tough - I think having her here made me miss people at home a lot. But thankfully after maybe 10 days or so (only a few of which were particularly bad) I got back into the groove at school.

I've been doing a lot since then - in school and out. But that's enough for this post. Another one will quickly follow with updates on my work! Charlas, frustration, successes, and a small injury. All to come!

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Secondary Projects & the End of the Trimester

As I’ve gotten more comfortable with my role in the schools, I’ve been working on some secondary project ideas that will hopefully come to fruition soon. One is a computer class that I was sort of roped into doing by the manager of the community training center. These classes will probably start in September sometime and will be for adults in the community. A second project is a girls’ exercise group. Several girls have asked to join me when I go running. I would love for them to come, but when they do, I don’t get much of a workout. But I definitely want to encourage them to exercise and live a healthy life, so I’m hoping to start an exercise club for them that has some curriculum regarding body image, healthy living, and girls’ empowerment. If any of you have resources or curriculum for this, please let me know! But, I realized that as we are getting towards the worst of the rainy season (October and November), this might not be the ideal time to start the club – so I think I may put that off until the next school year.

Other ideas are an English conversation club, a recycling program, and a life choices/sex-ed workshop for 9th graders (I’m probably partnering with a few people who work at the school for this, which will be great).

I’m also working with another PCV, Miranda, on putting together some seminars/workshops for our teachers. We’re planning on doing several of them over the course of the next few months. So I’m is going to be busy for sure through the end of the year!

As for right now, we’re wrapping up the second trimester and anticipating the week-long break the first full week of September. I didn’t have too much to do the past couple of weeks since the teachers were mainly reviewing, but the past week I’ve been planning fo the next trimester. It’s been nice to actually have some free time to plan (I definitely didn’t have that at the primary school – they don’t have exams, so don’t have any down time).

In other news, I was able to go to the beach in the province of Chiriqui this past weekend, which was a lot of fun. It was my first time in that province (it’s the most south-western province in Panama, bordering with Costa Rica). It’s gorgeous! The Interamerican highway isn’t in great repair in areas, but the trip is beautiful – huge, lush, green mountains along the way - then add nice beaches to that! I stayed at a hostel one night, roomed with three of the guys in my group and joined in the guys-night dominoes game after we left the other girls, then in the nicer hotel with the girls the second night - the boys didn't run me out, I just wanted a hot shower! We celebrated Sydney’s birthday, so I took Funfetti cupcakes as a gift (thanks for the mix mom!).

Unfortunately because we had to wait a while for the bus, I didn’t make it all the way back to Pesé on Sunday. But that just gave me an excuse to visit another volunteer friend north of Santiago (the capital of the Veraguas province). Her site is in the hills leading up to the mountains, and has some gorgeous views as well!

Lastly, I had a friend from the province of Bocas del Toro (most north-western province, next to Costa Rica) stay with me last night. It was great to hang out with her and we made some delicious meals; tacos for dinner last night complete with sour cream, salsa, and cheese then black bean burgers and a tomato/cucumber/onion & vinegar  salad for lunch. Yumm!!

We also got an impromptu tour of the Varela Hermanos alcohol factory here in Pesé and it was super interesting! We even got to wear hard-hats at one point haha. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera, but I’ll write a detailed post about that soon.

Now I get to look forward to the visit of my friend Veronica from the US! It will be great to see a friend from home!

For now, I’ll leave you with an interesting article that I saw recently calledWhat if Jesus Meant All That Stuff? by Shane Claiborne. Whether you’re a Christian, atheist, or any other religion, I think it’s an interesting and insightful article. I’m also in the middle of reading the author’s book – The Irresistible Revolution. So far, it’s great – I’m sure you will be hearing more about it from me when I finish it.

HERE’s the link.

Happy mid-week!
Sav

Saturday, August 25, 2012

In-Service Training

The day after my parents left, I went straight into two weeks of Peace Corps Training. My friends and I left Panama City, but I actually had to go back to Chitré to go with my friend from Pesé to her doctor's appointment. For those of you who keep up with my blog, you'll remember Ana - my friend who I offered to go with to a psychiastrist appointment, well, of course it happened to be the first day of training. But it was ok - my other PCV friend let me crash at her house closer to Chitré, and I was able to with Ana. I was glad I could be there for her - she was brave and did very well. Though it took an absurdly long time - for an appointment that lasted about 45 minutes, we spent about 7 hours at the social security office (like a hospital almost with lots of different doctors). So that was a little frustrating, but I finally got to the terminal to head back to training around 1.

I was sorry I missed the first night with everyone together, but it was nice walking into training and having a lot of people who I hadn’t seen come up and hug me. It was awesome to be together with my entire group again after 4 months of being apart. Coming down here with them, we bonded really quickly in this totally new environment, so they are my support network here in Panama and I loved hanging out with them for two straight weeks! Training consisted of sessions from 8-5 with lunch in there somewhere. Then nights we would chill, party sometimes, and occasionally went down to the beach (about a 40 minute walk).

On our free weekend, most of us went into Panama City, enjoyed hanging out at the mall, seeing the new Batman movie (SOO good! Go see it if you haven’t already!!), then going out to a club. I skipped out a little bit early on Sunday so that I could spend a couple of hours on the beach at Santa Clara before heading back to the training center.

Over the course of the two weeks we got a lot of good information – the most helpful came from other volunteers who came and presented. But it also was a little bit overwhelming – we didn’t have a whole lot of time to process all of the information. The information presented by the other volunteers from previous groups was inspiring and made me want to follow in their steps, but most of it also requires a significant amount of time with each teacher, which just isn’t feasible for me with 11 teachers to work with. So coming back to site with those kinds of ambitions and expectations was overwhelming. Add that to leaving all of my PCV friends after 2 weeks together following on the heels of my parents’ visit and coming back to a (somewhat) new job – working at the colegio – and the first few days in site were a bit rough. I was sad to leave my family and friends, and I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to do anything productive in my schools I just kind of holed up in my house for a couple of days, but on Monday I had to go to school. Of course, this is the thing that made me feel better.

Once I was in school for a couple of days, I started getting used to the new routine at the colegio and realizing that while I might not be able to make the big changes like I learned about at training, I was doing some good and people were enjoying and benefiting from my presence in the schools.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Hicks/Dunn Panamanian Adventure

On July 14th my parents touched down in Panama Tocumen International Airport! They landed at 9, so I just decided to meet them at the hotel. They got there around 11 and it was great to see them! It had been 6 months and 3 days – the longest I had ever gone without seeing my parents (or being home, for that matter).


In the hotel!

The first couple of days we spent in Panama city. After spending a relaxing morning in the hotel, first on the sightseeing docket was Casco Viejo – the old city that was founded after the original colony was destroyed by pirates. We walked around, had a nice lunch, and saw the Canal Museum (the same place where I had my swearing in ceremony). That night we had a delicious dinner at Beirut – a Lebanese restaurant.
Views of the city from Casco Viejo

Mom posing next to colonial ruins 

More views of the city - you can spot my favorite twisty-building on the left.

The next day we headed up to see the Canal, which was really cool. To think that it was built over 100 years ago is pretty incredible. They are currently expanding it, to be finished in 2014. We watched 2 huge ships go through with only a couple of feet to spare on either side – pretty impressive!
 Locks waiting for a ship to enter - the one on the right/far side is full and just had a ship go through it, the one on the left/close side is empty and about to let the ship in. 

Locks opening!

Pretty amazing that these huge ships pass through the locks 
with just a couple of feet of space on either side.

Huge container ship that just passed through... 
Wonder where it came from and is going?
 
After that we saw the Summit Zoo and Botanical Garden  - it wasn’t all that impressive, but we saw a few cool animals and plants:

Necklace-plant (so-called by Mom)

Turtles sunning next to a pond

huge palm trees!

Oh hi - just hanging around...
 
On the way back into the city, we stopped at the Peace Corps office to let my parents meet a few of the staff, had lunch at Pan y Canela – where PCVs go all the time when we’re at the office, we drove up Cerro Ancón (the highest point in the city), then we had a drink on the Amador Causeway before heading back to the hotel and dinner at an absolutely delicious Italian restaurant. 

View from Cerro Ancón

On Tuesday we rented a car and headed out of town. After a detour that made us drive through La Chorrera, we stopped in Santa Rita to meet my first host family. Unfortunately only my host mom, Reyna, was there. I really enjoyed seeing her though – I had a great time living there for the first couple of months.

From there we finished driving to El Valle de Antón. El Valle is in a crater of a volcano that has been dormant for millions of years (I think I’m remembering that right). Now it is one of the best places to go birding in Panama, which is already one of the most bio-diverse places on earth. We stayed in a small hotel that caters to birders. We were there with a group from the Audobon (sp? I hadn’t heard of this before…) society and one other family. Good thing that other family was there because they were in just about the same position we were with regard to bird knowledge. It was great to get to know them – their daughter is working as a music teacher in Panama City and her parents came to visit, just like mine.
Us and the family we met on the hotel's bridge

Views from the hotel
 
The one full day we were in El Valle, we went on a hike with a birding guide. We saw a few cool birds, but the coolest ones were the hardest to see, and I don’t have quite the patience required – but we also saw some cool other animals and insects including an iguana and a big spider catching a fly.

Mom and Dad on the hike in front of a gorgeous waterfall

Awesome spider wrapping it's catch of a fly.

Banana flower!

Beautiful, colorful birds

This lovely lady was nesting in a planter on our porch.
Can you see the little birds tucked underneath her?

After showering after the hike, we drove around town, had lunch at a cute restaurant, then dessert at a nice restaurant/hotel. 


On Thursday we finally headed down to Pesé and Chitré. After checking into the hotel and a lunch at Ebenezer’s (a PCV hotspot in Chitré) then finally to Pesé. After a quick stop at my house to drop off some stuff that my parents brought and take inventory of what we needed to buy. We quickly met my landlady and family, my host family, and my counterpart – César. Then we drove back to Chitré, bought a table, futon , and shelving for my kitchen. After a scarfed dinner, we drove back out to Pesé and put my house together for a couple of hours, then finally back to Chitré to crash and go to sleep.

The next day we did another run out to Pesé to have breakfast at my host family’s house (Bruni definitely put a lot of effort into it, which I was very appreciative for), stopped by the primary school (my parents were a big hit), finalized things in my house, and then headed back to Panama City.
Me with my landlady (almost 75 years old), her daughter and her grand-daughter

My host mom and her grandson sporting their gifts from NC!
 
It was a quick 6 days, but it was great to have my parents here, to see and hang out with them, and to show them my life and friends here in Pesé.

The other major perk was that I got to enjoy air conditioning, really comfy beds, and hot water for the whole time we were together. Also, since they left on an early flight the day before my training was supposed to start, so they were kind enough to rent me the hotel room for the night as well. A couple of friends and I enjoyed the pool, a massage, and room service. It was a little piece of heaven and DEFINITELY a vacation from Peace Corps life!

I was sad when they left, but it wasn’t like saying goodbye last time since I know I’m probably coming home for Christmas! We had a good trip and I hope that they will be able to come back next year.

Last Weeks in the Primaria and Explaining MEDUCA

Continuing off of my English Week post – I spent the next couple of weeks tying up loose ends and cleaning up the school after the English Week celebrations. I also was trying to set some goals to accomplish before my time at the primary school came to an end. My main goal was to help the teachers implement phonics. In order to explain why I thought this was important, let me explain a little bit about the English teaching and educational system here in Panama.

The Ministry of Education (MEDUCA) hires people to be English teachers who have studied English in college – this means that most of the time the English teachers have not actually studied teaching and that speaking English (at least on paper) is one of the only requirements. This results in having some great teachers that are completely dedicated to their students and will go above and beyond to be the best teacher they can be. But also, on the flip side, there are also a good number of teachers who don’t know much about teaching techniques and aren’t very motivated to improve. They care about their students, of course, but they just view their job as an 8-3 (or, as it may be here, 7-1) job and they aren’t willing to do much outside of that. Of course, these are generalizations and there are teachers all over the spectrum, but that gives you an idea of the source of some of the issues in the schools here.

In order to help their teachers improve their methodology, MEDUCA provides a week-long summer seminar (during their summer – January) and other workshop opportunities throughout the year. By attending these seminars and workshops, the teachers earn MEDUCA points. With these points they can apply for better jobs within MEDUCA. I don’t quite understand this system for one main reason – while the couple of seminars that I have attended have been useful information and well presented, the teachers don’t always implement what they learn, implying that they aren’t actually changing or improving their methodologies, so the points don’t actually correspond to whether or not they are good teachers (for example, one of the best teachers that I work with is only a second year teacher, and one of the worst has years of teaching experience, is a permanent teacher, and can’t speak English very well).

The result of this system is that students are graduating high school after having English for 12 years and are not able to speak or understand the language. This is why MEDUCA invited Peace Corps volunteers to work alongside their teachers so that we could bring some fresh ideas into the system.

So… one long explanation later – I decided that one of the things that I might be able to successfully implement with my four primary school teachers was teaching phonics. They weren’t teaching phonics, and a lot of the way that they are used to teaching pronunciation is to write letters that, when said with a Spanish pronunciation, will sound like the English word. While this can be helpful at times, over using it will teach the students only the Spanish-pronunciation word, not the actual English word.

I wanted to show my teachers that if they start teaching the pronunciation of English letters and words from a  young age, the students will have a much better accent and be able to sound out words instead of always looking to the teacher when they encounter a word that they don’t recognize as a sight-word (word that they’ve just memorized). Granted, phonics won’t be as effective for ESL or EFL students as they are with native speakers because the ESL/EFL students won’t have encountered as many words in conversation, but it can still be an extremely useful tool for pronunciation and word recognition.

In the couple of weeks I had left at the primary school after English Week, I tried to plan with each of them to implement some phonics lessons. I even gave them suggestions as to what letters/sounds to teach with each of their lessons for the trimester and went to each one of their classes and gave a sample lesson with phonics. This had mixed results because I ended up trying to do it all in the last week I was there. Of the days that I actually taught, one of the teachers had something else planned that day, so I didn’t actually get to show him the lesson, another teacher had a prior commitment, so I ended up teaching half of his classes without him there, and half of the other students were too young to really start teaching phonics (I decided to start doing this is 2nd grade). So, it didn’t go as smoothly as I hoped, but hopefully with continued encouragement from me, they might end up working it into some of their lesson plans.

After that last week, I was kind of sad to have to leave the lower school because I felt like I was finally truly getting into the rhythm of things there and figuring out how I could be of the most help. But, then it was time to switch to the high school. But first – my parents came and I had two weeks of training. Descriptions of those to come in the next couple of posts!

I'll leave you with a few pictures from English Week:


A group of 6th grade students performing The 3 Little Pigs (plus 2 of the teachers assisting)

 The lovely English teachers with me after pulling off English Week!

The students (one from each grade) that participated in the Monday Meeting.
 
The 9th grade boy who I found wearing a Vanderbilt Commons shirt!! SMALL world!

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

My House!

Finally, here’s the update about my new house! It’s really more like an apartment, but it’s been wonderful having my own place and being able to cook and everything. Here are some photos:

My front porch:
 
My living room (I’m hoping to get a table muy pronto):


My bedroom:




Hallway:


 
My kitchen:



My bathroom:



The three things that have been the besr about living alone have been being able to eat what I want, when I want, being able to unpack my things (I’ve been living out of my bags for 6 months now… it gets old fast), and getting to decorate! I finally put up photos last weekend, which made me so happy, and made it feel like my place. 

Since my last post I have finished up working in the primary school, which included two days of celebration for the kind and queen of pre-school and kindergarten (it was incredible how big of a deal this was.... I was blown away) as well as a field day for the Día del Niño (Day of the Child). 

Here are some photos of the celebrations recently:

Me dressed up as a typical person from Los Santos (province)

 Me with the Reyna of Pre-school

 the Reyna and Rey on their float (back of a pick-up)

 me with a couple of my 3rd grade students (I think) on the Día del Niño

Then on  Saturday my parents got to town! It's been a great vacation so far and we have a few more days to go. I'll update with some great photos over the course of the next couple of weeks.

Sunday, July 1, 2012

English Week

So just about every waking moment for the past two weeks has been devoted to preparing for the MEDUCA-dictated English Week. I’m pretty lucky because the teachers at my school got really into it.

Every Monday there is the weekly school meeting called the Civic Act/National Hymn where they say the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary, the Pledge to the Flag and the Student’s Promise. They did all of this in English for English Week! Each one was led by a student – one student from each of the grades participated. The pre-school and kindergarten students hoisted the flag, the first grade student said the Oath to the National Flag, the second grade student said the Student’s Promise, the third grade student (my former host nephew – Roderik) said Hail Mary, the fourth grade student said the Lord’s Prayer, the fifth grade student read the program, and the sixth grade student read a short speech about the importance of English.

Afterwards, we gave all of the students certificates (that I made and printed, that was a formatting ordeal with the tienda that prints things that took an hour…) and I baked the Funfetti cupcakes that Mom sent me for my birthday and gave one to each of the students as well as the English teachers and a couple of others.

Then on Wednesday we had contests for each of the grades. The teachers had competitions in each of their classrooms to  choose one per class who would compete against the others in their grade. For these students, I also printed certificates and Eliseo, Rafael and I went to Santiago to get small gifts for each student. The contests were everything from reading a story, to picture identification, to reciting a poem, to a spelling bee.

Then Friday came the main event -  Talent Show! It was definitely stressful to prepare for, but the kids loved it. I have a whole new respect for those teachers and camp counselors who try to organize kids’ performances. Each grade ended up doing a different performance from songs like 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, to plays like The Three Little Pigs, to modeling and dancing. I put together a slide show that had the words to all of the plays or songs as well as translations into Spanish so the other teachers could understand more.

The last act – the 6th graders – did a dance to the song “Follow the Leader” that I helped them put together. All of the other students loved it – I think it was the favorite act of the show!

I was happy to help out and put all of this together, but since I have a computer, speak English natively, and am a girl, a lot of the things fell to me like the powerpoint, the certificates, putting the gifts together, teaching the dance, making the houses for the Three Little Pigs, etc. So it was a very stressful couple of weeks.

One of the things that has started bothering me especially because I’ve been stressed is because of the primary school kids, when they want to say hi to me (which is every time they see me, no matter how many times in a day) they just say my name “Savannah! Savannah! Savannah!”. Normally it makes me smile, but the past couple of weeks since I’ve been kind of stressed, it sounds to me like it’s someone wanting my attention or wanting something from me. So when I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off this morning trying to get everything together at the last minute, having the kids calling my name every 5 seconds was more than I could handle.

My primary goal over the next week: teach the students to say “Hello, Savannah” instead of just calling out my name in order to greet me.

I’m also going to try to implement phonics with my primary school teachers over the course of the next 2 weeks that I’m with them. I’m worrying already about changing over to the colegio in August, but I guess it has to happen. I just wish there were two volunteers here so that I wouldn’t feel stretched so thin. But I’m lucky that I enjoy working with so many of my teachers and that I’ve had a warm welcome here. There are definitely worse feelings for a PCV!

But for the exciting news – my parents are coming to visit! They’ll be here for a week, and then I go to In-Service Training, which will be great to see the rest of the PCVs in my group. So July will be a good, if busy, month with all of the traveling I’ll be doing.

I'll upload photos soon of the kid in the Vandy shirt, English Week performances, and my house! I'm at the mall right now and I need to go buy some groceries and head back to site - I spent the night at my friend Miranda's last night for her birthday - there were 9 of us together, which was a lot of fun. Now back to work! And my PC TE boss, Joel, is coming to visit on Tuesday, so it'll be an official week. Busy busy busy as usual. 

Love and miss you all - I hope everyone has a very happy 4th of July!
Sav

The Month of June

6/26/12 

Hello friends –

I’m sorry that it’s been a while since I updated. I guess between getting settled here and how busy things have been, I haven’t gotten around to it. But here’s what’s been happening the last few weeks:

I finished out the first trimester at the primary school, working with the 4 teachers there. Then we had a week-long break between trimesters. The first weekend I just chilled here in Pesé, but then on Monday I ventured to the province of Coclé to go to the beach – Santa Clara. It was really great – I ended up seeing 13 other volunteers from my group as well as a handful of older volunteers. We camped on the beach under these little ranchitos, which was a fun experience – chilling on the beach all day and night was great. Though, I have to say, sand is not nearly as comfortable to sleep on as I imagined it to be. But we had a great, relaxed time. We also found 2 AMAZING restaurants right off of the InterAmericana near the beach. One was a nice Spanish restaurant that I hope to take my parents to and the other was basically an American sports bar owned by this couple who is stuck in the 70’s (the probably 60-year-old husband had a mullet that was down to his waist…) – but they served the most delicious burgers… It felt like we were back in the States for a bit. Overall I relaxed, got some sun, some Frisbee time, and a lot of time with good PCV friends! Most people left on Thursday, but I was talked into staying until Friday when I finally made the trek back to Pesé.

On Saturday I woke up kind of in a funk – I think it was because I felt like I had just left all of my friends who are here in Panama and I don’t feel quite that close to people in my site. But later that day I ended up meeting up with Steve and Heather in Chitre and shopping for kitchen appliances, then I spent the nigh at Miranda’s house in Parita with 5 other volunteers (and an Australian friend of a PCV – the first person from Australia I have ever met!) as a housewarming party. It was a lot of fun to see them too – one of which I hadn’t seen since training and I missed her a ton!

Sunday was a blur because I was pretty tired, but then when I got to school on Monday I realized how silly I was being on Saturday – I was actually really happy to be back at school. I’m feeling really connected to one of the English teachers in particular, and a few of the other teachers and staff are really nice and always make me laugh. One of these is the science teacher, Celson. He is always cracking jokes and making me laugh. Put him with the woman who cooks and takes care of the cafeteria, Kathia, and you can’t stop laughing, or singing typical Panamanian music. Then there’s Señora Maribel who sits in the library, makes copies for the students, and opens the school in the morning – she’s as sweet as can be and is good company when I’m working in the library or waiting for the English teachers. Lastly, there’s Maria, one of the cleaning staff, who I have gotten to know through working with her to learn a song for the English Week Talent Show. So long story short, I’ve been feeling more and more connected at school, which has been great.

So that brings us back from the trimester break. Since then, I haven’t really gone to any classes. The first week back I was helping the teachers make their trimester plans. This was a bit of a process, but ended up being decently good work, especially with one of the teachers. Since then, I’ve also been working on a plan for each of the teachers to implement teaching phonics with each of their units. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to work with them to implement it yet because of English Week work, but hopefully that will happen soon.

As referred to above, this week is English Week, which means that last week was SUPER hectic and stressful trying to get everything prepared and a lot of it fell to me. I’ll give a detailed post about the preparations and events this coming weekend once it is all over and I can give a recap.

In addition to working and traveling, I’ve also been involved with/attended several community events such as a Bingo afternoon – I helped cook (aka fry) fish, ojaldra (the panamanian version of a salty funnel cake), and plantains – a basketball-court-soccer tournament, some normal soccer games, and a church choir competition at the school one night (4 choirs were competing to go to the regional competition – they ended up leaving it to chance, though I think the winners actually were the ones who deserved to go).

Lastly, I moved into my new house!!! I was super excited. I will also have a post devoted to this very soon, because that comes with some stories as well, and I think this post is long enough for now!

More to come soon. I promise not to leave you hanging so long this time!

Besos de Panamá,
Savannah

P.S. If I didn’t already know that this world is tiny, it was proved a million times over for me today. I was sitting in the park using the internet for a few minutes (sorry I didn’t get to post my blog) and this family starts unloading some things out of a truck in front of their house right in front of me. At first I just glance up, but I immediately do a double-take. The 9th grade son who is helping move things out of the truck is wearing a yellow t-shirt that has a V on it… wait… it says Hank Ingram… oh my gosh he’s wearing a Hank Ingram Vanderbilt Commons shirt. It was absolutely crazy. That I happened to see him today, this afternoon, and that the shirt made its way from a printer in Nashville, to a freshman student, donated somewhere, then to Panama, then to my small town in Herrera. What are the odds of all of that happening so that I would see it? Absolutely crazy. (I'll add a photo soon!) Needless to say, it definitely made me nostalgic for Vandy!

Friday, June 1, 2012

The Day I Discovered Why I'm Here

Today I discovered why I am here.

I know that God put me here in Panama, in Pesé, in the schools I’m working in, and living with the host family I'm with for a reason. Probably many reasons – some concerning myself, and some concerning others. Some of these reasons I’m sure I’ll never know. Many I’ll uncover through lessons that I will learn and things that I will discover about myself. And, hopefully, I’ll be able to see some of those reasons regarding how my presence here affects others.

Recently I’ve been struggling a little bit with this last part - why I am here, what I am doing, and if I am making (or going to make) an impact. As many of you know, I have a strong interest in community development, which is a big part of why I joined the Peace Corps. While community development, of course, includes education, my life goal has never been to be a teacher. I would love to work on a more holistic level, or perhaps focus more on small business or microeconomics (also, for those of you who know, that’s not necessarily my background… so we’ll see where I end up). But being placed in a large town (for a PCV that is) and in two large schools with students from pre-school through 12th grade has limited my chances to do projects outside of the schools, and I’ve been struggling some with that fact.

On the other hand, I am lucky that I have so many teachers that want to work with me, that I have had a warm welcome, that I have already made a little bit of progress with at least one of the teachers, and that I am (for the most part) enjoying my work. But sometimes I still doubt what kind of impact I really am making and I wish that I were also able to be able to devote some time to work outside of the schools instead of coming home tired and still having to prepare for the next day. Additionally, the past week or so I’ve realized that I’ve been holing myself up in my room some because of this – I feel tired, I don’t want to make much of an effort to walk around and talk to people in Spanish, and I’ve been stressed about school.

So that brings us to today.

It was already a relaxed day because it was the last day of school for the first trimester. That means that only about half of the students were at school, and those that were there were having parties in their classrooms. The teachers were just hanging around: eating food given to us by the students and talking in the cafeteria. This evolved into some dancing and tamborito – a traditional Panamanian form of singing with a couple of drums keeping the beat. So I was having a good time, just relaxing. Then after school about 12 of the teachers and I went into Chitre to have a nice, celebratory lunch, which was great to socialize and bond with the other teachers. I felt a real cohesion among the teachers, which was wonderful. Then I came home and just got to relax for the afternoon.

Somewhere in there is when I realized why I am here. I don’t want to give details about when, where, or who in case someone in Pesé comes across this – so we’ll call her Ana. I have gotten to know Ana a little bit over the past few weeks, but our relationship was still pretty professional. One day last week, I could tell she was really upset, so I gave her a note saying ‘I don’t know what’s wrong, but I’m here if you want to talk’. She didn’t, so I just gave her a hug and went about my day.

Then today we were alone and working on something and we got to talking. She ended up telling me things about her life that she said she has only told one other person – her doctor.

Ana has had a tough life. Physical (and probably emotional) abuse when she was very young, betrayal by her mother, father, and ex-husband (of varying degrees and situations), and now she has two young children and is in a stressful living situation. She has a job, but is afraid that it might not be permanent, so she feels trapped where she is living since she needs to give her children some stability. To top it all off, Ana has never had a friend to whom she can tell any of this.

But she told me.

As I was explaining above – the knowledge that I am doing some good doesn’t necessarily mean that I feel it in my heart, which is why I’ve struggled some with my assignment. This is similar to my knowledge that I have certain skills and talents: that sometimes I feel like I’m just scraping by and I’m not actually that talented or smart (whether it is true or not). One thing I do like to think that I am kind of good at is being a friend. Of course, I make mistakes. I have hurt people and let people down. But I really try my best to be there for people, no matter what it takes.

This is why I am here: to be a friend to Ana.

I have been incredibly blessed in my life with 5 girls from my high school that I consider my best friends, my neighbor who I consider my sister, the best college roommate I could have asked for, and a number of other people from college who I immensely value as close friends - and that's just the start. These people are the most important people in my life aside from my parents. The amazing experiences I’ve had would not have been the same without them. The times I have laughed so hard that I cried would not have been the same without them. The times I’ve cried so hard I couldn’t breath, I wouldn’t have gotten through without them.

And to think – Ana never had this. This is where I come in. I think this is why God placed me here.

Ana has just recently sought medical help to deal with all of her emotional scars that these events have given her, and her primary doctor referred her to a psychiatrist, so she is going to have to go and tell her whole story to someone – a stranger. I have never been a big fan of psychiatrists or psychologists personally, but I whole-heartedly support people going to them. Their professional counseling has significantly helped many people in my life. When Ana told me this, and that she was scared because I’m only the second person that she has told any of this to, my heart went out to her. I offered to go with her. Before she responded, and before I could even finish getting out my offer in my broken Spanish, I was already wondering whether I should have offered at all. I thought either she would grab hold of my offer or start to pull away because she didn’t want to get that close. She grabbed hold.

She said yes, she’s terrified to go talk to someone, but knows she needs to get some help. And that it would help if I came. I’m going to have to do some talking to PC because I think her appointment is during a meeting that I have. But I feel sick thinking about letting her down and not going. Everyone in her life has betrayed her. I am not going to if I can do anything in my power to avoid it. She needs a true friend and I think I can be that. True, I will probably only be here for two years. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t be there for her while I am here or that I can’t keep in touch later on. And I know I’m not going to “fix” her life or her emotional issues. But I hope that I can be someone in her life who doesn’t betray her, who is actually there for her and can love on her; To be someone who gives her some joy and trust in humanity again, and to make her feel that she is not alone.

All I can do is pray that God will give me the wisdom and strength to be what she needs and to help me pour into her. I have enough people pouring into me, and all I want to do is give her that same support.  I can imagine some people think I’m getting in over my head (Mom, I’m talking to you), but I can’t imagine doing anything but being there for Ana and being her friend as far as I can be. I really believe that this is (part of) why God led me here and I pray that He continues to lead me down the path he intends for me. While this doesn't change my feelings towards the actual work I'm doing, it makes me realize that I'm here for a bigger purpose and that all good things come with time. 

I promise I’ll give some updates about teaching over the next week, since we don’t have school, but I had to share this for today. I hope everyone has a good weekend!