What I did for my summer vacation, pt. 1

It’s over.  Just when you think you’ve gotten the hang of it—afternoon trips to the river, sleeping in, little weekend jaunts to the beach, and sitting on the street talking to the neighbors late into the cool nights—it ends.  The kids go back to school on Monday.  

Summer, for me, was simply a schedule change.  Instead of starting at seven in the morning, I started around eight or nine.  The number of students I gave class to lowered significantly.  And my afternoons were almost always free.  

Vacation time started off with a marathon of celebrations.  First, immediately after graduation, there was Christmas.  Then New Year’s.  And then, my town’s biggest festival of the year—El Festival de los Reyes.  We celebrated January 6^th, the day that the three wise men supposedly arrived to greet baby Jesus.  Like the foundation festival in September, I got used to seeing the streets teeming with people, with street meat stands and typical fondas that specialize in greasy fair food.  The discoteca could be heard from my house until four or five in the morning.  Each night, there was always something to do.  And then, as quickly as the fair swept into town it was packed up and all was quiet.  Macaracans sleepily went back to work.  Summer vacation, part two, will be focused on this particular hootenanny. 

The mayor and I in our typical shirts for the wedding during the festival

Once all the parties quieted down, I started a summer course that I organized with some of the students from the middle and high school.  For four days a week, I ran four groups of students that I divided by year in school.  Each group only came two days a week.  Fridays were clear for going to the library to do a bit of volunteering.  

At the end of January, the other three volunteers in Los Santos (my province) and I collaborated with the ministry of education to give a week-long seminar to the English teachers in the province.  Each volunteer gave her own session, and even though our seminar was small compared to seminars carried out in other provinces, I was happy to see two teachers from Macaracas schools there.  My session went so well, in fact, that I organized with the Macaracas teacher to give the same presentation to rest of the teachers at the high school right before the students came back.   

Seminaring!

Shortly after the ministry seminar, I hosted a new trainee who will soon be sworn in as a Teaching English volunteer for this round.  She got the full Los Santos treatment: a trip to my friend’s farm for crawdad fishing (at night, with machetes and spears.  Seriously.), hen chasing, dancing, and horse riding; an afternoon at the river; and a morning teaching what had become a seriously dwindled number of students from the English course I had started a few weeks before.  

Next, I spent a week in Panama City helping train the same group of the trainees that my visitor was from.  And then, the following week, it was all over.  The teachers came back to organize, plan, and prepare for the upcoming school year and I went back with them.

Finally, the rest of country gave summer a raucous, resounding sendoff: CARNAVAL.  I have to put this event in all caps because it is the Alpha and the Omega of all Panamanian holidays.  If it weren’t for Rio, Panama would probably have the top spot for Carnival in Latin America.  What we know as Mardi Gras, celebrated generally only on Fat Tuesday (which was the 20^th, by the way), starts here on Thursday or Friday night with the first appearance of the reina and her brass band and her tuna (the noise-making happy people behind the float), concerts, and endless amounts of the national liquor, seco, which is distilled sugar cane and has a taste mildly reminiscent of acetone.  The symbols for Carnival are not mardi gras masks.  They are the queen in her sequiny-feathery glory, the air mattress, hot pants, water, and most importantly, the cooler.  My province happens to be the capital of carnival, and I would bet we had half of the country here in the azuero peninsula.  Two to six days of pure fiesta and everybody makes the foggy pilgrimage back to their home cities to start lent.  

So here I sit on a sleepy Ash Wednesday, full from a generous helping of hen soup at my host mom’s house (also known as the national hangover cure), sending off the summer from my hammock, which, now that we’re back in school, is probably going to get significantly less use.