In-Site Visit!

1/31/12

Well, time is flying here. It seems crazy that I’ve only been down here for 3 weeks, but it’s been wonderful so far! Days are getting into a rhythm in our little training community. Language classes every morning and technical classes in the afternoons, then usually homework and talking with the family or pasear-ing around the community at night. But this past weekend was a little different – we got to go visit PCVs in their sites! I went to the province of Coclé. My host’s, Jessica’s, site was about 45 minutes outside of the capital city of Penonomé. A group of us traveled to Penonomé together and met up with our volunteers. We walked around at the market, got some lunch, then Jessica and I ran some errands. We picked up a package at the post office, which was a good process for me to see, as well as bought some paint for a new room in her house.

We ended up back at her house around 5 that afternoon. We walked down the street to the store, bought some chicken, eggs and a refill for her stove’s gas tank, and also were able to see the school because people were practicing their dance for the fair. So that was nice to be able to see where she works. We cooked dinner – salad, chicken and rice – then just chatted before going to bed. On Saturday we painted her new room in the morning. Her house is basically attached to this other house and she just rents it from the family. Originally it was just one room and a bathroom, but the dad has since finished the kitchen and another room, which she’s going to turn into her bedroom. So with the help of the mom and daughter of the family, we painted the room! They told us first we had to put down a layer of “Concreto Blanco” which I think just functioned as primer. But even with that, the paint seemed kind of splotchy. But we evened it out as best as we could, and it looked better than we expected the next morning. We ended up putting a second coat over some of it the next morning, until we ran out of paint haha.

But also on Saturday we went into a neighboring town to their fair. It was much different than the fair in La Chorrera. It was smaller, but had more small food vendors with fresh veggies and things like carrot muffins. Jessica and I both got a carrot muffin, we bought some corn for dinner (funny story…), we shared a coconut – well, actually it was called leche de pipa, which is basically when you drink the coconut milk from a still-green coconut. It was pretty good, but a little bland. She also bought some plantain chips which were delicious and I got an orange. All of the fruit here is delicious, of course. Then we thought about going back to the fair for the baile (dance) later that night, but we were too tired after dinner. We had a good dinner of chicken nuggets (that we made ourselves!) rice and the corn.

But the funny thing about the corn… So normally you boil corn for 8-10 minutes, right? Right. Well we kind of forgot and probably cooked it longer than that. But it should be alright, right? Right.

Wrong.

It was still really hard and the kernels all came out whole, not breaking apart like they usually do. It was really strange. Tasted alright, but was just kind of tough to chew. We ate some of it. But from this little experience came my list:

Things you would never do/say in the US.

Item #1: I think this corn might be just for chickens.

It was really funny. But that’s life.

Then on Sunday we walked a little over an hour to a gorgeous swimming hole at a river and spent the afternoon there. There were kids that were jumping off of the probably 15- or 20-foot waterfall into the swimming hole. They also jumped off of a tree that was even higher… it was crazy! I dived in, but definitely not from that high up. It was deep though, so I guess it was alright. It was a beautiful area, just on the edge of the mountains. And also only about 45 minutes from the beach! It seems like a place that I would really like to be because it was a smaller community – only about 2,000 people Jessica said, and close to the mountains, but it still had good roads and transportation.

It was a really great weekend and I was able to learn a lot from her about PCV life. It made me really excited to get to my own site! And I REALLY enjoyed cooking. Reyna is a great cook and is always making sure that I’m happy and healthy and not sick or anything, but it was so great to be able to eat things that I decided and wanted. We had chips and salsa, a PB&J, biscuits that we made, a salad, and Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. It tasted like home and it was so good. 

One cultural thing that I found really interesting this weekend was the chiva drivers. So chivas are basically tiny little buses that function as public transportation and usually there is a driver and a "pavo", or door man. For those of you that know Spanish, yes, that means turkey. Don't ask me why. Anyway, so along the route from the fair back to her site, the driver kept stopping and either dropping off packages (like groceries or food) or picking up things to drop off farther along the route. It was so interesting - he knew every single house along the 20 minute drive and would blow his little horn (which actually sounds like a somewhat quiet car alarm) to let people know he was coming. I thought that was really cool - it really felt like a close-knit community. He even knew that we weren't from that town where he originally had picked us up (we had the same driver going to and then back home from the fair) and he took us all the way to our site! It was really nice - and only 10 cents more!

But things are still happy here! Still loving life and am enjoying everything!

Hope everyone there is doing well. Hopefully I’ll be able to get internet sometime today so I can actually post this!