Internet Troubles

So I wish I could be posting more, I even have a few posts drafted, but it has been incredibly difficult to upload posts because internet access is rare and very brief. I find uploading photos to be an even larger obstacle because of the internet speed. I just wanted to throw a quick post out there to let everyone know that I am still alive and everything is great, internet posting has just been reallllllyyyyy tricky. Hopefully things improve and I can start to catch everyone up on what life is like down here!

From a Pickle's Point of View

FINALLY! A post about how PCVs live and what their lives look like, with pictures!! So far I have visited two different PCV sites, and they were indeed very different. The first one was very easy access and only about 2 hours outside of Panama City. This site we went to as a group and only spent one day there, so I do not have that many photos, but I will go ahead and post a few that I have.

                  Making some hats

                    Group picture

                    Beautiful views

The second site is the one I just returned from. I spent 4 days there and it was much further away, about 6 hours in a bus to another 30 minutes in the back of a truck up a mountain to a 30 minute hike to get to his house. This site was in the mountains and had a view of the Pacific Ocean from his house, which was pretty awesome. We had plenty of down time to sit in hammocks and read, as well as take some hikes around the community to meet people and see other beautiful vistas. Two highlights of the trip: I saw a toucan (although not quick enough to get a picture of it) and we had a pretty cool shower. Here are some pictures of this site:

                 A PCV's house

                      Another view

             Again, out in the campo

              Growing corn and rice

                         The latrine

                    The shower

One of the main differences between the two sites I visited was how far along in the process they were. The first site was closing their service, so their aqueduct was complete and we could see the full project. The second site was a little under a year into service so a lot of the work was still in information retrieval to try and get an idea of how the project would pan out. I have some other good differences as well, but I need to leave this post fairly short so that I can get it posted with the pictures over our admittedly slower internet. Just shoot me an email or Facebook message if you ever wish to know more!

The Jar in Which I live

I know that some of you will be excited to see the reappearance of a pickle reference in the title of this blog post, and I also realize that some of you will be thinking “There were pickle references?” but that is OK. Now you have a fun thing to be on the look-out for! I decided that since I am in the middle of week 4 of training (week 5 of being out of country for those of you counting) it would be a nice time to update you on the place that I call home currently. We, the other Environmental Health volunteers and I, all live in a quaint little town called Santa Rita. It is not metropolis by any means, but it is certainly more developed than the sites we will be placed at eventually. Here we have electricity, running water, and a good number of us even have flushing toilets! There are four stores here where I can go get a Gatorade or soda or whatever it may be that I crave. We should probably put some strong limits on “whatever” in this scenario, but they have Snickers and peanut M&Ms so that covers most of my bases…no Dr. Pepper though or sweet tea or BBQ or sweet tea or Key Lime pie or sweet tea or fresh chocolate chip cookies or sweet tea or fried chicken. I feel like that list pretty accurately triangulates my hometown origins, Key Lime pie being the Florida give-a-way. But I digress, back to Santa Rita. It really is a nice town and a beautiful place with mountains, I suppose the non-Floridians in the crowd may call them hills, nearby. I also could not have asked for a better host family here. I live with a an older lady in her 70s that has basically adopted me as her own. I am also her 19^th volunteer that she has hosted so I doubt there is much I could do that would culturally shock or confuse her by this point. To give a quick perspective on the size of her family, I did a family tree for some Spanish practice one day and discovered that she has 7 great grand children. I should also mention that when I first arrived I was living with her and her husband who was 80, but unfortunately a week into my training he was transported to the hospital with chest pains and passed away that evening from a heart attack. It was a sad and sobering experience, but also uplifting to see the support of her family, the community, and even Peace Corps during her difficult time afterwards. We all got out of class early to attend his funeral and show support for their family.
  
What Austin? You have class? Yeah, that’s why I am so busy of course. Here in Santa Rita we have yet to swear-in as Peace Corps Volunteers, so as trainees we have 8 hours of class a day: 4 hours of Spanish and 4 hours of technical training. The technical training has been mostly over soft skills so far, although today we started in on some science. Hydraulic grade lines mostly, but what fun! These 8 hours of classes means that our days are quite full though and so it is hard at times to find the time to write up blog posts but I am trying. We have also had a several days of training that involved visiting volunteers’ sites. During our pre-Santa Rita training we had a day at the site of a nearby volunteer, and week 3 of training we spent visiting separate volunteers’ sites. I should have a post done pretty soon with some pictures of those sites that we got to visit. As for now I will post my first pictures, pictures of Santa Rita! Check back though because in a few days there should be another with the info on my site visit and some pictures from that.

                    The main drag

                      The church

                     My host home