Swear In

The day arrives:
October 28th 2007

Here´s our group: well first, here are the ladies. The next photo is of the gentlemen. Thanks goes to Ashley, Emily, and Rebecca for sharing photos, it's hard to photograph and BE photographed without becoming a nuisance.

Here we are in the principle park of Casco Viejo, facing the Canal Museum with our backs to a renovated church and square. The photos came first, then the formalities. Once inside the museum we listened to our group representatives, for both of Group 60's two sectors: Environmental Health and Economic Development. There were also speeches from the US Ambassador to Panama, H.E. William Eaton and Country Director, Peter Redmond which included a recognition and farewell for Meegan March, one of our trainers.

After the ceremony there was time to explore the museum but then we quickly regrouped and prepared to celebrate our successful 3 months of training.

Step 1 of celebration: go eat! We found a wonderful Italian restaurant in Panama City (just one block south of Via Espana): try the gnocchi!

Step 2 of the celebration: go to the beach. Before leaving the city and getting into our new sites, we made plans to celebrate our PC training survival with a trip to the beach: the highly recommended ¨Las Veraneras¨ - I hope to go back there someday! They have very tasty batidos (milkshakes) and offer 2-story cabanas with serious penca roofs (that is to say, rain can't fall through the leaves!).

You can see all of us crowded on the steps of the old church of Casco Viejo - on the same plaza as the Canal Museum. Here we number 36 - a huge group! I plan on returning here someday, this is an interesting part of Panama City that still preserves some of the old architecture and offers nice boulevard -strolling. Later I learned that there is an emerald museum kitty-corner to this church... hmmm.Also, I had mentioned a really great Italian restaurant: That was where we had a final despedida with Meegan and our trainers.

Peace Corps Training

August - October 2007

Training, ah yes, what did Brian always tell me: Just get through training!

My introduction to the Peace Corps began on campus at Michigan Tech, but the real-life experience of it began with several days of staging in Washington, DC. After introductions and many reviews of the Peace Corps goals, challenges, and nuts-n-bolts, our group of 42 aspirantes flew to Panama. I suspect that, country to country the 3 months of training are similar in design but likely wildly different in the ways that the aspiring volunteers are challenged. My days were filled with language classes, tech training (big focus on aqueducts, latrines, and health education), official "Chorrera Meetings," and lots of host family interaction. Toward the end of the 3 months there were several visits to Volunteer sites (definitely high points of the experience). As for adjusting to culture shock and self-assessment/self-doubt, I wasn´t surprised by these challenges but my, they are sneaky mindgames!

The following are some images from the Tech and Cultural Weeks. Both were a good mix of hands-on work and cultural challenges. The EH group visited two different volunteer sites in the Comarca Ngäbe-Bugle and stayed with host families. For some of us, it was a tough challenge to reencounter host family introductions and adjustment issues. Having already lived with a family in our Training Community, it wasn´t so easy to go through the social awkwardness of: hi, my name is... and reexperience the newness of idioms, personal habits, and idiosyncrasies of a new household.

The Tech-Week experience was also great bonding time for us in Group 60. After a long day´s work, we could rely on a gathering at the Co-op. Cookies and sodas and then the pivotal discovery that we could order hojaldres... these were the golden hours.

I´ll be honest here and say that these last 2 photos are not from anywhere near the Comarca. They were taken from an area close to Volcan Baru - from the lower, forested flanks of the volcano. Why was I there during training? Well, there just happened to be a little extra time after Culture Week ended and enough time for a quick run (literally a run) up to Boquete for an afternoon; this proved to be a wondrous vacation for me. The cool climate, the high altitude fresh air, the somehow denser forests, the rugged terrain, the fresh coffee, and the moments of contemplative solitude were very satisfying. Some would complain that Boquete is not what it once was, that it is now a place quite overrun by external influence - this may be true, but up until that visit, I had not known any other place that would serve me a bowl-like mug of cafe con leche. Without shame, I will admit that a you can "supersize" me a latte any day (but I don´t want fries with that, please).

Also, a quick addition. Rebecca was savvy with her camera and documented one of the crazier ¨dynamicas¨ we encountered in Training. Here´s all of us Environmental Health aspirantes doing acrobatics.