First Week in Laguna

Those building down there are my community, Laguna (Nurude in Ngabere). The big building is the school.
View as I am hiking into my site. It makes the hike in much easier with views like this. On this particular hike, I was leaving my site because there was a cow being slaughtered in Chami, the nearby city. We don´t have meat in our site, so I thought it was worth the hour hike each way. It was.

My two host sisters with Meliciado and Angela in the back as we are preparing to leave the field after harvesting rice all day. The little girl on the right seems cute, but she loves to hit me. She tried to stab me with a safety pin. Still a little cute, though.

The views from my site are gorgeous.

My host sister playing around while the family is harvesting rice.

Little kids, carrying wood to cook with.

Meliciado, my host dad and I carried wood like this for a day to repair a fence. The logs he was carrying were probably 150 lbs, while I was carrying wimpy 100 lb logs. We each did 15 trips of about a quarter mile. He didn´t seem that tired after it all.

This is the view from my cell phone reception spot, so when you talk to me on the phone, this is what I´m looking at. Not bad.

The building on the right is where my host family lives. The building on the left is the kitchen.

This is where I sleep.

My neighbor´s house. Usually it is filled with smoke from the wood fire going on inside. This is very common and I really don´t like it.

Kids really like having their picture taken. The girl in the back every day asks me to take her picture. In my mind, I have nicknamed her ¨Saca mi foto,¨(take my picture) because she asks me almost every day.

This is what my hands looked like after the first day of work.

My host family. They´ve been great. As you can see, ¨Saca mi foto¨ has snuck into the picture in the back.

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Culture Week

Theses pictures are from cultutre week, technical week and a few random pictures during training.

This is the synogogue in Panama.
Neighbors. From left, Gracy, Arraichell (Gorda Bella), and Tita.
From right, me, Daniella (my host mom), Daniella`s daughter from Panama and her husband.

Tech week family.

It was my neighbors birthday. Her name is Eli too.

Pig head stew.

In Santa Clara, where we have classes, shortly after the Piñata broke.

Some mountains.

The pacific ocean from Cerro Iglesias.

My technical week family. Count it, 8 kids.

Ngabe women showing us how they get fibers to make their chacras (purses).

Las Lajas, a beach that we went to after the week to rest up.

Surprised baby holding kitten.

This girls name is China and is the cutest.

A bunch of kids.

These are the people who hosted me during the week.

Lisa got pink eye and seems pretty stoked about it.

A standard fogom. Everyone here uses them. Basically, it´s three rocks with a wood fire underneath.

View from the road.

The cutest, hungriest puppy you have every seen.

A normal house.

Some kids on the side of the road through town. White people are always looked at as something strange. Often times, people in the comarca will stand and stare at you, without saying anything for a long time, if at all.

The school. We did a short lesson there teaching the names of the continents to the kids.

Host kids, giving their Ngabe smile.

Neighbors, with my host kids mixed in. Women are wearing the usual Naguas which I believe comes from missionaries way back.

This was one of my host kids. He loves to play with my stuff and finds anything I do hilarious.

Both my host brothers. They really like getting their picture taken because they don´t see electronics much. They stared at me pretty much the whole week.

A chicken. They are everywhere here and act as a garbage system. I have not been to a house yet that doesn´t have chickens.