Exciting News Soon to Come!!!

In a few hours, we’ll find out our sites!!! Baaahhhh so nervewracking. I wanted to go ahead and post this when I know I have free time, but hopefully I’ll be able to update it after I find out as well. Joel, my APCD, gave me a few hints the other day – like it was going to be 15 or 20 minutes from a regional capital, and only about 3 or 4 hours from Panama City. So those things are great! But he also hinted that it’s a bigger school, which I’m nervous about. But I’m sure it will all work out in the end. We shall see.

In other news, this week was On Tuesday, we had several different Valentine’s Day activities haha. During class, we did a secret Valentine’s exchange. I gave mine a coconut bar that I helped Reyna make (basically just coconut, a pound of sugar and water boiled down with some pink food coloring haha), a card I made and some crackers from the tienda. Then I got a card and some delicious chocolates from Heather! It was fun to see what you got, and a lot of the cards were pretty funny – like you’re the pollo to my arroz and the bugs to my latrine haha.

Then at night we had a party!! It was a ton of fun. I didn’t realize how much I needed a night to relax American-style until we were all there. We had snacks and stuff and blasted (mostly) American music all night and danced like crazy. To the late late hour of 11, when I was headed home haha. A few others stayed until 12, but I felt like I should get home plus we walked another girl home who lives a ways away from the rest of us. The night was SO fun though. Definitely awesome to get to know the rest of my group in a different setting too haha.

Then this week brought the last few normal language (with a new teacher… kind of difficult!) and tech classes. On Wednesday my class went into La Chorrera to buy food for Thursday when we had our “cultural day” and all cooked! It was fun – my class cooked pollo asado (or something like that – basically boiled chicken with a bunch of herbs and sauces), ensalata de papas (boiled potatoes, carrots and beets with a mayo/onion sauce – I thought it was delicious), and platanos (plaintains that were cooked with fruit punch, sugar, and some cinnamon – surprisingly you would never guess that they were cooked w the fruit punch, but they were pretty good!). We also had chicha de meracoya (I think I spelled that wrong), but basically passion fruit juice. We scooped out the seeds, blended and strained them for the juice, then also boiled the shells/skin and blended and strained them too for more juice. It ended up being pretty good with a pound and a half of sugar added haha. But overall it was a fun day, learning how to cook Panamanian-style.

Then last night I went to another birthday party for a few minutes. One of the women who lives with Harrison turned 23. She’s really sweet, so I made her a card and had several of the trainees sign it. It’s nice to be able to relate to someone around our age here, but it’s also pretty different since she already has 2 kids – a 2 year old and a 5-month old baby. Her husband works as a teacher in another province, so he is around right now since it is “summer” break, but in a week or two he’ll only be able to come back once every month. So hard with kids that young! But he’s really great with the kids, so I know that’s hard.

But now we’re on the bus getting ready to head to the office. Like I said, first thing on dock is Site Reveal (why does that sound like ASB?? haha).

And then this weekend we have 4 days off! Woohooo! Also, it’s Carnaval this weekend, so hopefully we’ll be able to do some fun things and get into Panamanian culture haha.

Hope everyone had a happy Valentine’s Day and is looking forward to the weekend! For those of you headed to Mardi Gras – have a blast (and don’t die! Haha)!!