Red, Orange, Yell-ow, Green, Blue, Pur-ple...

This past week, Brandon and I began teaching English to seventeen 1st through 6th grade students. Seventeen 1st-6th graders who have had no formal English training, now walk (or skip) through the 'streets' of our small town singing the pre-school song about colors in english. Don't get me wrong, they don't actually pronounce all of the consonants (or vowels for that matter) but they definetly have the tune down. For those of you who are not familiar with this particular song (those unfortunates, like Brandon, who were cheated out of a pre-school classic) it goes like this:

"Red, orange, yell-ow, green, blue, pur-ple
Red, orange, yell-ow, green, blue, pur-ple
Red, orange, yell-ow, green, blue, pur-ple,
Makes the rainbow bright!"

It has been great to see some actual progress in our community this past month. Brandon and I had been working the first part of September preparing for a trash seminar where we learned some new techniques for helping our community start a trash and recycling program. We are hoping that we will be able to work with individual families in our community to start separating their organics from their inorganics so that we will be able to start compost piles as well as a recycling program where non-biodigradeable products will (hopefully) be sold to outside parties. This is more of a lifestyle change and mentality change, and we know that it will take a while to catch on with some people, so we are hoping that poco a poco (little by little) we will eventually have the entire community separating their trash. Right now the only trash system in town is to pour all of the garbage into a small garbage pit at the back edge of town- much like we do in our city dumps. This will be filling up quite quickly with the increase in tourists (which will be coming in a few years) and also with the over-use of plastics and non-renewables. The goal would be to reduce the amount of garbage that actually needs to be put into the landfill, thereby extending its life, while at the same time providing a small incentive for people to separate their plastics, tin, aluminum, glass etc. through the resale of their recyclables. This program would also provide a great organic fertilizer/compost that could be used in the home gardens that (cross your fingers) will be catching on soon.

We then spent the last part of the month preparing for a 'site visit' from our APCD (Associate Peace Corps Director, Aka: Boss) Francisco. His visit came the first week of October, and the intent was to gather the community together for a 'reunion' or meeting and go over what Brandon and I had learned about the community so far, what they thought our purpose in the community was, based on what we had talked to them about over the past several months, and also about what our work may be during the coming two years (a year and nine months actually!). We had been working dilligently the previous 3 months to collect information for this meeting, as well as to help us understand how the community functions, who its dominant/leading members are, the social system, health care, basically everything about how the community functions and its history. So during the end of September we were kept quite busy putting all of our found-information up on posters (the usual form of presentation here), in spanish, for all of our community members to paruse during our meeting. All in all, we ended up with over 20 posters (with full-text spanish), including a 3'x4' hand-drawn community map- to us it seemed like a 300-level final project for a spanish class. The night before the meeting I was kept busy making homemade oatmeal raisin cookies, one tray of 9 by tray of 9 as most of the ovens here are quite small and no one has a baking sheet to speak of. (It ended up taking me 8 hours to bake 150 cookies inside of a medium-sized cake pan.)

When the day finally came, everything was set up an hour or two ahead of time, but we didn't end up starting until about a half-hour late (this is actually quite punctual in terms of Panamanian time- or so we've heard.) Our boss gave a good speech to the 'crowd' of 17 people that attended (also good attendance for a town of about 60 adults), informing them of what Peace Corps is, what the Peace Corps mission is, why we were placed in this particular community, and what we would possibly be working on in the upcoming time. Group participation was decent as we asked for questions or comments, but all-in-all we were quite pleased with the people that came, the information that was provided (and hopefully retained), and the thought that people in town have a more clear understanding of why we are there (and it's not just to teach english!)

We then spent the night in town, only to leave the next morning to go to a regional meeting, where all of the PCV's (Peace Corps Volunteers) in our region (kind of like a county in the states) get together to discuss what's been going on, go over office news, and things of that nature- mostly pretty boring stuff, but this time we actually found out about a great book exchange for children's spanish books through our office. Brandon and I had been thinking about a way to spend time reading with the kids as most of them don't read outside of what is required in school, and they don't have access to any children's books or literature, so we had been thinking about just purchasing some spanish-language children's books to have in town to read with the kids- like an after-school reading program. Well we found out that there have actually been a few donations from people state-side to start a lending library here in Panama for children through the Peace Corps office. We will now be able to check out a bag of books every 3 months to take back to our community and use in any way we choose. After three months, you return the bag and can check out another one. Brandon and I are really excited about this as we can use the books any way we choose within our community. We have decided that we will be starting (or try to start, depending on community interest) an after-school program where the children will sign up for a time to come and read with us in our home for an hour or so, one night a week. We will try and help them with their homework, practice their english, or they can choose to read with us one of the new childrens books that we will have in our house. It will be kind of like a 'Book-It' club, where after 10 or 15 (yet tbd) completed 'meetings' or 'sessions' they will be rewarded with an american-style dinner with us in our house. We figured that it would be a good way to get to know the kids a bit better, to help them to learn more outside of the classroom, to hopefully cultivate an interest in reading and knowledge, and to also share some of our american culture with them through a meal. It all seems great on paper, but we will see how it goes in practice- we are hoping to start in the coming weeks after we get settled into our house.

Yes! We have a house! Isn't it exciting!? We finally, after living with relatives, friends, and host families in the states and in Panama since APRIL, we finally have our own space (well technically we aren't living there yet, but will be, hopefully, by the end of this week.) We have taken the only house that is currently available for rent in town- smack-dab-in-the-middle of everything. We have neighbors on all sides, and are inbetween very frequently used trafic paths (foot trafic, as there are no vehicles in town)- but the house is great. This past week we have spent about 8 hours a day, every day, scrubbing 10 years of neglect and mold (and a bit of crumbling paint) off of the walls and floors, and finally started painting this past Thursday and Friday. We will have 3 (!!!) bedrooms, a bathroom (sans sink), a kitchen (sans refrigerator), a living room and a small porch at the front. (We will make sure to take pictures for the next blog-entry.) The outside of the house is a schmorgasboard of colors including green, red-orange and purple. The inside however, will be all white (it is currently a mix of dark blue, green and pink- all crumbling off the walls) with blue and green trim. At first we were pretty disgusted by the interior as it has been neglected for quite a while, but after a good couple of days of hard work, it seems quite liveable and we are really excited to actually have our own home.

The coming months will be quite busy for us as well-the end of this month we will be heading out to Isla Grande in the Azuero for a Sea Turtle Seminar provided by an environmental agency here in Panama. Then Halloween is right around the corner, and the most major of all Panamanian holidays- their independence days and flag day, the 3rd, 4th and 5th of November (and lets not forget Brandon's Birthday!). Then several weeks will pass and we will have another training- IST (In-Service Training) with Peace Corps where we will hopefully be learning new techniques for working with our communities and in-country agencies. The day after IST ends is Thanksgiving, and we will be headed to the western side of the country to get together with other PCV's in Panama for an american-style Thanksgiving, complete with hiking a volcano and making diner together in a hotel. Then the Saturday after Thanksgiving my sister will be coming (yay Courtney!) and will be staying with us for a couple of weeks. Then before you know it, Christmas will be here! This year already seems to be over, but we haven't even made it to Halloween yet. We hope that all of you are not feeling the end-of-year pressure yet, and that you have a wonderful rest-of-October. We miss you all, and as always, want to leave you with this message: Write to us!!! Or better yet- come visit.

Love and hugs,

Ashley and Brandon