What else.....

So shortly after I began work on my house, I snapped this picture of the river early one of the mornings.  In the summer (here, which came and past already), the river and lake filled up, and in the mornings the men prepare the boats for tourists and the women clean the fish in the river.  On these days I would sit down in our community port to talk with the old guys and look at the lake of glass.

Here are some pictures of the men carrying gasoline and the motors.  They carry the motors daily, and the lower the river, the longer and harder the trip.

We had a few meetings where we were put up in a place near the beach.  These are beaches on the Pacific side. 

Early on morning at the beginning of march, I found a little surprise in my towel.  Sometime in the night a scorpion decided to bed himself in my towel.  He stung me in the thumb as I grabbed it.  Since I was using some special language in English, the whole house was wondering what happened.  I pulled my towel out and the scorpion started running across the floor.  My host dad ended it with my water bottle.  That day my arm hurt up to my mid-forearm and my thumb and part of my hand were swollen.  The next day my thumb hurt and my hand was numb.  After a couple days it returned to normal with a little blister.  This would be the same thumb I tried to cut off a couple weeks later with my machete.

Here is a picture of a cockroach that had chewed his way into my bread, but was too hungry to chew the whole a little bit larger and was stuck.

 

After I got back from the states (everything up till now was written a while ago), I had machete accident.  I won't repeat myself on that.  One day some tourists came to the community and landed 2 helicopters there.  My community is very welcoming, so when the first one started coming in, the people all ran out to greet them and play music.  Before long, the people were running from the dusty wind kicked up by the helicopters.  Here are a couple pics.

Our community meetings, which usually last long into the night, are always very open with the men and women and sometimes even myself talking to the group.  I snapped a picture but it's hard to know what its really like until you sit in on one.

While my dad was here, we visited the Mira Flores Locks on the Panama Canal. 

The following are a few pictures my dad took while he was at my place.  The first one are my main tools I used to build my house.

The next one was me clearing the trail for him to pass.  I did let my dad carry the little machete, but under the condition that it stay in the sheath.

Here was some grilled cheese I made for us in the evening.

And a butterfly at the waterfall that my dad caught in this picture:

What a bad-ass

Those were pictures of when my dad and I went on a short hike around the forest and followed our community's water line.  I had to show him that even though we didn't come across any snakes or spiders or anything, the jungle still plays very dirty.  Overall, it was a great trip and I loved having may dad here. He was a little weaker than I expected, but I tried to fight off the beautiful weather and minimal bugs we encountered.  I'm kidding, but I enjoy having visitors, and now he has an idea of some of the things I talk about on the phone.  (hint, hint. VISIT!)  He was also able to meet my host family, the people that have been raising me this past year.