Panama or Bust: One Week Down!

I have officially been in my host town a week! Well a little over a week, since I got here last Sunday.

I'm not sure if I posted about it when I first got here, but the first Sunday night there was a party. Apparently it was my host sister's birthday (but I didn't know that until later), and there was a lot of drinking, and dancing, and eating. My sister is 25 (as of last Sunday) and has two young kids. The kids live with us, but my sister works in Panama City about three hours away and only comes home every other weekend.

The next day, a Monday, we went to Aguadulce, which is a bigger town about 15 minutes away. We were supposed to be buying school supplies, but as I have learned, the people in Panama are a lot smaller than me, and they didn't have all the stuff I needed for my uniform. Though I am about the height of the average US American, Panamanians are MUCH shorter. Today I learned that I am the tallest in my class, even out of the boys. The stores in Aguadulce didn't have skirts to fit me. They were all too short as well as too small in the waist. The rest of my Monday was spent reading on my Kindle, which I would ABSOLUTELY recommend taking on an exchange if you go on one! It's really handy for the down time and you can download books in the language of your host country.

There are three more exchange students from AFS in my town. Two are from Germany, and one is from Austria. The Austrian girl and one of the Germans are on a volunteer program here and are working at the local primary school, but the other German girl goes to school with me. The student from Austria lives really close to me, and on Tuesday I went to her house for another party. This time it was her host sisters birthday. This party was a little more tame than the first one at my house, and it was nice to spend a few hours with Ana from Austria and Veronika from Germany who both speak English. Earlier on Tuesday me and my host Dad returned to Aguadulce to see if they had a skirt for school.. they didn't.

Wednesday the local AFS volunteer took the four of us students to a dance class where local kids were learning traditional Panamanian dances. I will post a picture at the bottom of the post. It was really cool at first to see the outfits and watch the kids dance, but after about two hours it got kind of boring, not to mention HOT!

About thirty minutes away from my host town is a city called Penonome. It's not HUGE, but its bigger than Nata and Aguadulce. On Thursday we went to Penonome to look for a skirt.. we didn't find one there either. We ended up buying fabric and paying a woman to sew me one to fit. Unfortunately it's actually too big. Haha. The school uniforms are really different from the US. That night me and my host brother (19) went out with some of his friends. We started watching a video that was in half spanish and half english. It was kind of offensive from what I gathered. One of the parts I remember said that many more people go to church in South America than the US because in the US we are all sinners and are scared to show ourselves to God. That was kind of irritating, but it turned out to be an OK night. We ended up just getting snacks and playing UNO for the rest of the night.

Friday me, my host mom, and my host sisters kids walked to my aunts house. It was kind of a long walk, but I got to meet my cousin, who happens to be in my class. We went to the park near her house, and watched some local boys and girls play baseball, volleyball, and soccer. I like their spirit. Even though they don't have a great facility to play their sports, and even though there are not teams here, they still get out there on the crappy grass fields and give it their all because they love the game so much! We came home that night to find the other exchange students at my house. It turned out that they came over to invite me to another party at Ana's! I'm not sure what this one was for, but I went with them for a little while. We had barbecue which was kind of comforting, because mostly my family here eats rice and some sort of meat. Often with plantains.

The next day me and my host Mom went back to Aguadulce to get my skirts for school ironed. It was a pretty uneventful day.. we went to the store, and the laundry shop and back to Nata. Later, I went to watch more of the dance class. I wasn't very excited about this since it was kind of boring the last time, but it's better than just sitting at home :)

Yesterday, me and the other AFS girls here planned to go to the beach in another town a few hours away. For some reason the local AFS volunteer let them go, but not me. It was kind of irritating, but it ended up being an okay day. Me and my host mom went back to my aunts house, and I spent more time with my cousins and went and watched more football. Also, I found some peanut butter and jelly at a little store in my town and made everyone sandwiches. Its SO comforting to have some of the same food you have at home, even if it's not Jif Peanut Butter, and the only kind of Jelly available is peach :)

Today I started school! It was really different from school in the US. For one, I only go to school in the morning. I am in the 'Comercias' track. There is also a 'Siencias' track of classes in the afternoon, which probably would have been easier, but I wanted to go to school with my cousin and the other exchange student, Paulina from Germany. I think my classes are different every day, but today I had informacion (which is some sort of tech class), ingles (I think its funny that they teach english at the schools here and NOBODY speaks it!!), spanish (which is like a language arts/english class), and a class called cooperativas. I'm not sure what that one is. School was okay over all. It's nice to be in the same class as my cousin and all her friends are very nice. Unfortunately I'm not with Paulina. The uniforms we have to wear are very different and I don't like them at all! But I guess at least I don't have to pick a school outfit every day. This country is very religious. We even have mass at school, which would be illegal at a public school in the US. It's really different.