Jake PC Panama: Dia de Gracias

I finally got a little bit of internet time. First of all, I want to look into the 100 dollar laptops that can be used for children in remote parts of the world but I don´t have much computer time. They are made to be used to teach children about computers that usually wouldn´t have access to computers. It is through the One Laptop per Child (OLPC). If someone could get the ball rolling on that for me, I would appreciate it along with so many of my fellow volunteers. E-mail me some information maybe so I can get a couple for the kids in my community.

Now, for all concerned, I did have a chance to celebrate Thanksgiving. Since we are East of the Canal, we had not planned on going to the Party that some of the volunteers were setting up. It is really far away and we didn´t think we could make it. Finally, the East siders realized nothing was going on in the city for turkey day, so at the last minute we thought we might as well see everyone from our group. To do that, Deborah (my closest volunteer) and I had to take a boat to the port at 1 pm. We then caught a bus to the bus terminal in Panamá City where we had to wait for the midnight bus. That bus took us on a 6 hour trip to David were we grabbed another little bus for 2 hours up into the mountains to the resort of Los Quetzales. It was beautiful up there. We arrived at 7 in the morning of Thanksgiving. Here is a picture of the main lodge and some of our friends playing football. Too bad the view was horrible (just kidding).

We were able to catch breakfast and hang out with our buddies. It was nice to catch up and just relax for a day, even though we didn´t sleep at all on the cramped bus. Even though we missed being with family for a holiday we are usually with family, we were able to share food with our new extended family of volunteers. The resort let us take over the kitchen for the day and some volunteers made us a feast. There was so much food and we were all so very full. It was an amazing day. Here is a pic of a bunch of people from my group just relaxing with some conversation (in English!).

We jumped on a bus at 6:30 pm that same day and made another sleepless bus ride back to our site. We arrived at my site at about 8 in the morning only to fall asleep shortly after.

Here is a pic from the Tourist house my community is building. The old one was toar down with the heave of the rope and half the community at the other end. The said once they finish this one we can start on my house. After the next full moon of course.

Here are a few people from my community waiting for a boat of tourists. The older guy on the left cracks me up. I usually can´t understand him, but he is hilarious. And when my host dad was very sick and I was worried, he said something to me, most of which I didn´t understand, that was very heartfelt. He saw that I was shaken up from the whole incident and tried to explain things there.