Hope this email finds you all well. I am just heading back to my community after an amazing vacation with my mom!...Tomorrow I´ll be back in the thick of the campo life but while I still have internet I´ll take a second to tell you about our trip.. It was only ten days but it felt longer....We spent the first night eating delicious fresh ceviche in the city, then headed over to the beach in Guarare to enjoy the beautiful pacific ocean. After that we dove right into the peace corps life (or should I say we rode into it, in the back of my overly crowded pick up truck) and spent 3 nights in my community. On two of the days we were there we did an environmental youth camp with a handful of excited elementary students, which they LOVED and I´m sure that I will never stop hearing the ram sam sam song now that they know it. and mom had the kids come up with chants for our camp slogan, which was Yo Cuido a Mi Comunidad....they were soo excited to present their chants in front of the group. adorable! :) we went and visited most of my community members during the afternoons, and bunked up in my little ranchito at night. Of course my latrine was not finished by the time we arrived and the water kept running out, but hey, the latrine got down in a flash and every morning i filled up the shower buckets at the crack of dawn, so we made it through alright. (And now I have a composting latrine!! Thanks, mom!) After adventures in Ciprian we headed to a mountain town to rest up for a day, take a hike, swim in a river, and wash the campo funk out of our clothes. We got a car at this point (wow! such freedom! i forgot how cool that is) and we drove over to my friend Kendras community in the indigenous reserve Ngobe Bugle. We went to the cacique´s house but she was on an important mission, so we didnt actually end up meeting her, nonetheless it was awesome to see kendras village and learn about the ngobe people. Our next adventure was an archeological dig in Nata which was totally random and unplanned and absolutely amazing.... here´s the national geographic article about it. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.
anyway, the same day we went hiking in gamboa rainforest reserve in panama and saw monkeys and trogons and toucans and frogs and probably a lot of other things that were well camoflauged :) and our last day was spent checking out another volunteer´s site in an indigenous embera wounaan community on the banks of the river gatun, followed by a stroll through the spainish ruins in the city. oh and did i mention, a microbrewery. that´s right. REAL beer. and all along eating GREEN things and CHEESE and WINE and APPLES. ;) yesssss what a life.
it was such an awesome trip...i cant believe we managed to do all of that in just 10 days...i feel so well fed and well loved and lucky to have had this vacation with my mama. we will get some photos out to yall soon (sweet new camera!! thank you to all you who helped me to get it. i LOVE it, and my other one is officially muerto so it was perfect timing. )
i love you all so much and miss you and wonder which of you will be my next visitor....come on down!
xoxo
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