One Month In!

Hola everyone! It’s hard to believe we’ve only been here a month and some change. Then again it’s also hard to believe we’re not even halfway done with training. SO MUCH INFORMATION... It’s worth it, though, because I’m finally starting to feel confident in my English-teaching abilities. Hooray for that!
Let me fill you in on what I’ve been up to for the last few weeks! Starting with my volunteer visit!!! So, a few weeks ago we each went to visit a current TE volunteer for a week to see what real Peace Corps life is like. The volunteer I visited has been serving for a year with her husband (who is a CEC volunteer) in the south of Panama in the province of Herrera. Words barely begin to describe how beautiful her community is. I’ll just let you see for yourselves:

Here is the view from the front porch of her lovely cabin (note the “Howler Monkey Mountain” in the background):

Her site is on the rural side and would be considered “medium-sized” with around 100 houses. Spending the week in this type of close-knit community definitely solidified that I want a smaller site. It was so nice to be able to walk around with my volunteer and feel like everyone knew her as we passed and wanted to talk to us/offer us fruit.
At this point I want to introduce you to a term you’ll be hearing a lot from me in the next few months: pasear. To “pasear” means walking around town, visiting people, sitting on their porches and chatting while they offer you coffee and snacks (fruit, tortillas, pieces of sugar cane, potentially an entire meal, etc). Because everyone is just hanging out on their porches after dinner anyway, this is the perfect opportunity for a volunteer to get to know her community. My first three months in site will pretty much be: observe in the school all day, pasear all evening.
Anyway, my week with my volunteer was like a beautiful vacation from training. We pasear’d, we made delicious food, we played music and sang, we attended a town baile (which is so much more than just a dance), we napped in hammocks, we had deep philosophical conversations over breakfast, and we worked in her garden (I learned a lot about compost this week, you guys). We also went on an intense hike to a sort-of-secret waterfall:

So, above all it was a fun week. We did more than just relax, though! This was my opportunity to see a TE volunteer in action, so I went with my volunteer to the school and saw how she works as a resource for the English teachers to help them practice their own English and to plan more engaging, interactive lessons.
This is something that’s important to understand: TE PCVs are not in Panama to teach students English. The goal is to be a resource (as a native English speaker and as a person trained in TEFL techniques) for our Panamanian counterparts to improve their own abilities as English teachers. This way, even after we leave, they can continue using the skills we helped them develop. Three cheers for sustainability!
Something else I loved was helping my volunteer facilitate an English club meeting after school. Her school (like many Panamanian schools) has students who come from smaller, far-away communities. These kids stay in a dorm during the week so they don’t have to hike three hours every day to get to class. Once the school day is done, though, there aren’t typically any planned activities for these kids. So having a game-based English club was something fun and educational for them to do. This was definitely one of my favorite moments of my visit. :)
A major take-away from this visit was that Peace Corps life is going to be extremely self-directed. There is no boss to report to every day, no rules saying we have to spend X amount of hours doing this or that…everything is up to the volunteer. If I have awesome, motivated counterparts, I could spend every day in the school working with them. If I think I could be more helpful doing secondary projects outside the school, I could do that. If I want to plan a huge seminar for all teachers in my region, I could do that! If I need to just take a day to decompress in my hammock, I could do that too. I’m going to have to be a very organized, motivated, self-sufficient person to be successful at this job.
But I look forward to growing to meet that challenge.
Next week we’re going to Penonomé for “tech week” where we’ll be paired with an English teacher and putting all our training into practice!!!
And at the end of next week we get our SITE PLACEMENTS. Ohhhhhh my gosh. I’m so excited to find out where I’ll be calling home for the next two years!!!
We had an interview with our Program Director and he asked us for three adjectives to describe our perfect site. I said small, mostly indigenous, but close enough to other volunteers that I could still collaborate on big projects/seminars. We'll see what happens! Truthfully, though, my attitude is what matters- it doesn't matter what kind of site I get, it'll be up to me to make the most of it.
Well, hasta la próxima!