Finally, Easter Photos

Here are a few photos from the Easter celebrations here in Pesé:

 Dia de San José - Patron Saint of Pesé

This was the float during the parade around town at night after the mass.

 

 Statue of Jesus in the church

 The church on Palm Sunday

Jesus on the "donkey" heading to Jerusalem

Palm Sunday events - parading through the streets - note the flowers strewn about on the road

 
[Side-note: The Last Supper reenactment got rained out - the first real rain I saw here, which lasted practically all day on Thursday. Oh well, I have next year.]

 The angel appearing to Jesus on the Mount of Olives

 

Judas kissing Jesus right before he was arrested

Walking through the streets with the roman soldiers

Jesus vs. Barnabas - and the crowd wanted Barnabas free... 

Really? The funny looking guy with the fro vs. the guy in white? haha

Then they took Jesus behind the set and "beat" him, and he came out looking all bloody - then they put the crown of thorns on him. 

 

 The other criminals walking through the streets to be crucified.

 Jesus carrying his cross to be crucified, and being whipped as he went.

Jesus on the cross - this was pretty powerful for me as
I've never seen the Passion of the Christ or anything-
I was a little far away for my camera to get a really good shot,
but it really looked like he was nailed up there (though obviously he wasn't,
and they were standing on something), though the other two criminals were clearly tied

 Jesus and the two criminals surrounded by the soldiers and Mary

"My God, into Thy hands I commit my spirit."

Taking Jesus off of the cross

I wanted to get a photo of the 3 crosses alone, but my camera died. 

But it was beautiful with the white cloth.

Happy Easter! Jesus is risen! The float to be paraded around town on Easter Sunday. 

I actually helped push the one with the Virgin Mary (though I didn't get a good photo of it)

Easter here was definitely a new experience and really showed what Jesus went through in the days leading up to his crucifixion. Even with this fact, it seems to me that a lot of people here say they are Catholic, but don't really practice. It's not quite as extreme as it is in Europe, but it doesn't seem to me to be a true living-of-the-faith type culture, even though references to God and Catholicism are ever-present in Panamanian life. But either way, it's a good reminder of our Maker!

Final Weeks of Observations

Sorry for the delay in posting – the past (almost) month has been a whirlwind. I’ll post over the next few days and get caught up. 

So through the middle of April, I finished observing in the primaria. This was a little bit hectic because when I got to school on Monday, I was told that two of the teachers had switched classes they would be teaching – one of the teachers I had already observed, so I was going to see the older classes twice and the younger ones not at all. Because of this, I really worked with 3 teachers that week. But it was fine, I got to see all of the classes except for one (because the teacher that I had already worked with didn’t come one day and I couldn’t’ make the schedule work out to get to that class). 

The next week I started observing in the colegio again. That was a little bit of a stressful week because I was also going back to the primaria to meet with the teachers to give them feedback. While I was a little nervous about this, it went really well. I started with telling them the things about their teaching styles that I thought were really good, then I gave them some suggestions. Most of these were in regards to class management or activities for the different learning styles (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, tactile). For one teacher (the one who was switched to the younger kids), what will help his teaching the most is if he improves his English. He really can’t speak with me, even though I can tell he knows a good bit of vocabulary. So I offered to him that I come and work with him, and he seemed open to it and willing to meet with me. But when I came to meet with him the following week, he didn’t come to talk to me. I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the other teachers in the teacher’s room (aka the library – don’t get too excited, all they have are textbooks), so I said that I had some English materials to talk to him about and kind of showed him the papers I had prepared. I sat there for another couple of minutes, but he didn’t really show any signs of wanting to talk, so I said – I’m going to go to the cafeteria and when you want to talk, just come meet me. He never came.  I don’t know if I’m going to have to be more direct or what. But hopefully once I’m working there for the end of the trimester, I can get a schedule set with him that will work.

The following week brought my first shift of working with the aftenoon teachers. Again, I came to school on Monday only to find that one of the teachers, Porfirio, was not going to be working there anymore because an older teacher who had left the school 3 years ago to get another government job had lost said government job and was coming back. Oh the perils of the Panamanian school system. So I basically just worked with one teacher that week. I think she is one of the ones that I can help the most – her English is alright, but she’s already taking advantage of me as a resource which is great – and she was also already asking me to help her lesson-plan. I probably should have just observed her instead of giving her tips on how to teach, because then I didn’t get a full picture of what she normally does, but I think I got a good enough picture because she still had them do a lot of copying, even though all I suggested were interactive activities. I even helped with one class and did an ordinal numbers activity – I printed the ordinal numbers out, one for each student (the largest class has 44 students?!?!) and had them get in order. It worked pretty well, so that was a good success, though it could have been a lot more involved.

That brings us to this week, my last week of observing. I’m working with the returned teacher as well as one other. We didn’t have school on Monday, then yesterday one of them wasn’t there, so I spent the whole day with the returned teacher. Hopefully as this week continues to progress, I’ll be able to see the other teacher’s classes as well.

I’ll also be helping one of the teachers I’ve already observed work with her classes on spelling. They will be participating in the spelling bee for English Week in June, and she wants me to help prepare them, I’m planning on focusing on phonics since that will help them the most with spelling, I think. If anyone has any suggestions, as usual, I’m open!

More updates will come soon about some of the weekend adventures I’ve had over the past few weeks. ‘Till then! Besos.

Friends, and a fellow PCV's blog post

This week has been going pretty well, which is nice after I had a little bit of a tough weekend. I've been working with two teachers in the primary school, and have been able to see some of the younger kids who are super loving. One class of kindergartners basically jumped on me when I was getting ready to leave, and I got to take a photo with them.

And today José, our tech trainer, came to Pesé to inspect my potential housing for after I live for there months with my host family. Then he asked me if I wanted to go with him to visit a few other volunteers! So we picked up Jessica and Miranda from near-by towns, then drove down into Los Santos to visit Harrison. It was really great to see him. He was the last volunteer I said goodbye to when we moved to our sites permanently, so seeing him again and getting to see his site was really great. Then went into Las Tablas and had dinner and just chatted. On the way home we stopped at a bakery too! So all-in-all it was a good day.

Lastly, and why I really wanted to write this blog post, is that I found another of my fellow PCV's blogs today, and really loved one of his posts about our swear in. It also includes the speech that he gave, which communicates a lot about our experiences here. It's pretty impactful, so I wanted to share it!

Here's the link:
http://thoseolpurpleshoes.blogspot.com/2012/03/from-trainee-to-volunteer-swear-in.html

Hope y'all are having a good week!

Photos from the Matanza

Here are some photos from the matanza I went to a few weeks ago. A matanza is basically a slaughter (best translation I can find) and the one I went to, they killed a cow on Friday and we all went to the farm on Saturday and spent the whole day hanging out and eating (and for the men - drinking). It was pretty interesting, and the food was pretty good.

Bruni stirring the pot of meat & sauce - the other pot is cooking chicken for the soup (yuca, corn, and culantro was added later)

The "kitchen": huge pots cooking over fogons (country-style fires for cooking - a fire in the middle of 3 or 4 rocks that support the pot), and meat drying on the lines to be grilled later - this is known as carne asoleada.

One of the cooks - stirring the massive pot of rice with the massive wooden spoon.

 Where we hung out all day and night

My host brother/nephew - Roderick - playing in the trough. He's the one doing the peace sign.

Another one of the cooks cutting up yuca. The entire bag is full of it!

Of course there was a piñata for the kids

We ended up staying the night, and the sunset was absolutely gorgeous. Can you see the first stars?

Then the next day we went swimming in a river about 30 mins away. This waterfall coming out of the rock was gorgeous.

River & surrounding country side

Me, Eliceo (Bruni's brother aka my host uncle), Isabelle (Brunis sister aka my host aunt), and Roderick

Then when I was talking to my parents, this bright blue bird landed on a tree about 30 feet in front of me. I couldn't get a great photo, but this is the clearest one I got. It was gorgeous!

Second week of school and Easter Celebrations

Written Sunday 4/8/12

So for this second week of school, I was working with my PC assigned counterpart and another teacher in the colegio (secondary school). Unfortunately I was not previously aware that they had Thursday and Friday off from school, so it was a short week with them, but I was definitely impressed by some of their teaching styles, and I think with them, I will be more of a resources of activity ideas. But it was nice to also get to know the colegio a little bit better.

As the weeks go by, I'm coming to an understanding that the currently schedule I'm working with is not going to be sufficient to help the teachers like I want to. I think I'm going to end up alternating between schools every other trimester. That way I'll have fewer teachers to concentrate on and will be able to devote more time to each. I'm planning on running this idea by them in the coming month, so hopefully they will think it's a good idea!

This week, as you probably know, is Holy Week, ending in Easter tomorrow. Pesé is known for its re-enactments of The Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. It started last Friday with a mass for the Viernes de Dolores (Friday of Sorrows) and procession of the statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene. It was really nice - the women went with the statues of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene in one direction around the town, and the men went with the statue of Christ in the other direction, then we met basically behind the church and sang some songs, then went around again, pausing at certain points to read some Scripture. I had a hard time understanding it all, but it was definitely a nice thing to experience.

Then of course Sunday was Palm Sunday. Everyone met at one end of town, passed out the palms, the priest said a few words, then we paraded through the town with the statue of Christ on a donkey (well, it was actually a horse) to represent his going to Jerusalem.

Thursday was supposed to be the Last Supper, but it actually started raining this week (Mother Nature must have a calendar, and when it says that the rainy season starts in April, she knows and on April 2nd I had my first real panamanian thunderstorm), and it rained pretty hard all day and through the night on Thursday, so they did both the Last Supper and the Crucifixion on Good Friday. It was definitely impressive to see, and when Christ died and said "My God, into your hands I commit my spirit.", the actor collapsed against the ropes holding him up to the cross and three fireworks were set off super close. The sound was deafening and really added to the emotion of the moment. It was definitely impactful.

There was a lot of family in town as well, so it was nice to meet more of Bruni's family - they are all very nice and say if I am every in their town/city (Chitre, Chorrera, Los Santos, Panama) that I am welcome at their house, so it is nice to have an extended family here! Her brother and his family who came down during the Sugar Cane Festival were planning on camping at the river that we had previously gone to, but since it was raining so much, they just camped in our living room. I also had some PC friends come into town on Friday, though unfortunately they couldn't stay through the re-enactments. We thought they started at 1 or 2... they didn't start till 4. So when you're relying on public transportation, you have to go when you can get rides. But it was great to see them nonetheless and show them around Pesé!

Finally came Sunday where there was a short procession with the images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and Mary Magdalene before the mass. It was a typical Easter mass, I believe. Plus they baptized 12 babies! Apparently having your baby baptized on Easter is a big deal here. It was a nice service, but getting up at 6:30 after staying up until midnight was a little rough.

In other news, I'm just preparing for another week at school, trying to get over being sick (I may go to the doctor tomorrow... I've had a cold that's zapping my energy for about a week now), and searching for housing to rent starting in June.

Hope everyone back home had a happy Easter. I missed being there with everyone, especially my friend Paz who came all the way from Colombia to visit!

Love from Panama

P.S. Check back in a few days - I'll add photos!