If Panama was Arizona I would be Mexican

Its now November 5th 2010 and I have been here in Panama almost 3 months now. Since my last post I have moved out of my first family’s house and into another. The difference is that now I am in my assigned community and the other volunteers are all in their own communities. I no longer have anyone to speak English to and I only know a handful of people here.

But before I say what’s happening in the present day, Ill back track to where I left off last time.

When I was in the states I was against carrying the man bag. I always wondered why men carried purses, it made no since to me. Here everyone has a man bag, me included. I discovered that you always need to carry an umbrella, toilet paper, and your passport. Umbrella, because it rains all the time here. Walk into a store for 20 minutes and when you leave it’ll be pouring down rain. Toilet paper because I don’t have a car. There’s no way I can hold it in when I have a 20 minute walk to get to the house, and a lot of places here don’t have toilet paper in the bathrooms for some reason. No one told me these things when I arrived, so I had to find out the hard way. And you have to always ALWAYS, ALWAYS, carry your passport or an in country ID. If Panama was Arizona I would be Mexican. A few weeks ago I was walking down the street visiting the city of David with 2 other volunteers. One is brown skinned like me and the other had blond hair blue eyes (the true definition of gringo). We were just going to get something to eat when the police told me and the other volunteer to get against the wall and show our IDs. We asked him why and he just said pa revisar. At the time I didn’t know what that word was but I figured it was do it because I said so. Then I looked to my side and saw that they let blond hair blue eyes go. Oh and the exact place that this happened is now the community that is assigned to me for the next 2 years.

Sometimes living with a family from a different cultural background is difficult. When I first arrived at my host family’s house in Santa Clara it was real cool. I ate pretty well and they gave me space when I needed it. As time went by things started to change a little bit. Breakfast became bread and more bread.  I was being asked for the weekly allowance earlier and earlier. That was probably the most frustrating to me. It was already too early in the week to be asking for the money and he stuttered, so it was like he was asking me 5 times at once. The host father for some reason started walking in on me whenever he wanted. Just 2 weeks ago he walked in on me in the shower.  I looked at him like what the hell are you doing in here. After that his wife yelled at him and said didn’t you see the towel on the shower. For some reason I got along with her very well. Maybe because she was 28 and he was almost 50. After that incident she realized that I was over it, and asked me am I ready to move out on my own yet.

Soon after we all left Santa Clara we moved back into the army base in Panama City to do our final training and to participate in the swear in ceremony. Our  swear in ceremony was real nice. It took place in the ambassador of the United States house and we all had the opportunity to meet and take pictures with the president of Panama. I have one with him but I have to find the guy who took the picture. After swear -in we all went out to eat and a club. It was the first time I have been out in 2 and a half months. In those months I lost my ability to stay up late and my salsa skills diminished.

Currently I am living in David and enjoying it. I’ve had 2 host families here so far and they are both great. One was a house with a stay at home mother, the father and 3 daughters around the age of 20. The father was away working for the majority of the time so I was treated better than I deserved. I had nice big meals and coffee with every one of them. They were really nice and made sure I had everything that I needed. The second house I moved into and that I’m currently living in is a retired women and her husband. They are super cool.

To wrap things up, I hope all of you are doing well in the states. My thought are with all of you, take care. Till next time