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Published: October 4th 2011
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Oscar after his giant portion of all you can eat ribs The Week Continues...
On Wednesday we had the morning off because the school was closed for some reason, but went to Casa Esperanza in the afternoon to do some art projects. We brought some black and white outlines of pictures for them to color in and made a long chain out of construction paper which they had a lot of fun with.
On Thursday we had our first day at the school. It is a bit far away so we took a taxi there in the morning for about $3. While Tim worked with the guys outside I was in charge of teaching in front of a class of about 25 1st graders! As someone who has never taught a class before it was definitely a bit overwhelming. I had prepared a word search for them to do, but I guess it was a little too advanced for them, lots of them had trouble with the concept of it. After the word search I translated some common phrases for them on the board, but again I think my lesson plan was a bit too advanced. After we were done for the morning we walked home down a path that
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Our hike - waterfall # 1 led us straight to the center of Boquete. The path was WAY more rugged than we expected and it took about 45 minutes but we managed to make it home safely (I will be sure not to wear flip flops next time!).
Thursday night we did a date night with Kaytee and Oscar 😊 We went to a nicer restaurant called The Rock which has all you can eat ribs for $14 on Thursdays! Tim ordered the ribs (which of course I nibbled off of) and I had a delicious pasta. The ribs were definitely some of the best we have ever tasted! After our wonderful dinner we met up with some of their friends and went to a few different American hang outs for some drinks.
Rather than going to the school on Friday, we went straight to Casa Esperanza in the morning. The director their said they would be having some type of gathering/meeting and invited us to come. It turned out to be some type of quarterly review (I think!) of how all the districts had been doing. We basically sat in a room and watched various directors of the program get up and talk
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My maggoty orange! about statistics from the site they work at. It was interesting to be a part of but it was all in Spanish so lots of things went over our heads, and it lasted like 5 hours so needless to say it got a bit repetitive!
On Saturday we woke up early to do a hike with Kaytee and Oscar. They took us to a trail nearby that takes you up into the rain forest. We didn't really see any cool wildlife but the hike did take us by three awesome waterfalls! At the second one we stopped and had a little snack. I'm always hesitant about eating fruit because it is so rare that I get a good piece, but they had some oranges and I hadn't eaten breakfast so I went for it. The inside of the orange looked pretty withered and gross but I didn't want to be rude and not eat it so I munched on some of the better looking pieces. All the sudden I felt something on my leg, I look down and it was a maggot, the exact same color as the orange!!! As I turned to look at the rest of the
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celebrating waterfall three orange, there were 5 or so more maggots crawling under the gross looking piece!! Needless to say, I did not eat any more orange! Besides the frightening piece of fruit it was a great hike, Kaytee and Oscar even surprised us with a few beers at the third waterfall! After finishing our beers and jumping in the cold A$$ water to swim under the waterfall, we headed back down to the car.
Saturday night we went out again. We started out at our pool bar, then heard that there was some party going on a ways up the road at a place called Coca Cola. Our friend from the bar (Ricardo) agreed to drive us up there but needed to stop by his house first. So we went and witnessed our first traditional Boquete residence. It was basically a studio apartment made up completely of concrete, his closet was strings/wires hanging across the ceiling and his kitchen was pretty much two singular appliances sitting in a corner of the room (no cupboards). Anyways, after a little pit stop we headed towards the other bar. We walked in and I was pretty excited to hang out for a bit. The
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Me under waterfall # 3 crowd was a lot younger and they had a big dance floor and music playing. Well that didn't quite happen...After being in there for literally two minutes, I turn around and some guy is beating the sh*t out of Ricardo! Ricardo's eye was swollen and bloody, the cops drove up, and Ricardo wasn't allowed back in the bar so we left right away. We never did figure out exactly what the drama was about. From what I could gather the other dude was the boyfriend or exboyfriend of his daughter...not really sure. It was pretty clear that it was the result of some unresolved issues. After that Ricardo dropped us off, we swung by one more bar for awhile, then headed home.
Overall I had a great first week in Boquete/of work. Planning interesting but educational lesson plans is definitely going to take some getting used to, but I'm sure after 6 weeks I will have it down!
Here are a few surprising things I encountered in my first week that you may enjoy:
- The tap water in Boquete is just as safe and delicious as in Portland!!
- Crime is pretty much non existent in
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Me and our Panamanian friends at Lucky Pool (Ricardo on the left) our town
- You can't flush your toilet paper, you have to throw it away!
- The local school holds band practice at 8 am on Saturday mornings, lucky us, the field they practice on is right outside our balcony!!
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