Marie asked me last week for more “stories” and Luke asked me “what’s one thing you learned in the last week?” Both of which I didn’t have good answers to at the time. Many of the things that would normally be a “good story” from a regular trip are simply turning into the norm around here. And let’s be real, I am constantly learning. Everything is new, which makes nothing seem new because nothing is old since I just didn’t know before?!?!?!

The creek was gushing full with rain water and Erica Jones single handedly saved a small boy and his dog. I was oblivious. I thought the wave meant she made it across safely… No big deal.

This week was full of working with aqueducts, surveying, concrete mixing techniques, and bridge building. The coolest thing I learned about though was thermoforming PVC pipes. First off, I don’t know how I never knew about this because it’s pretty amazing. If you heat up a pot of vegetable oil and dip PVC pipe into the oil it becomes super malleable. You can create bells and connections as well as end caps and reductions which then are just quenched in a bucket of cold water to seal the deal. We even made the pipe flat so we had a sheet of PVC that we cut circular flow reducers out of. I didn’t seem to take a picture, probably because I was too awestruck! The best part is that if you mess up, you can just put the pipe right back into the oil and it will snap back to its original size and shape.

Back to the stories. I was thinking about Marie’s question as I was hiking down a rocky clay hill with 315 feet of elevation change in the pouring rain with the equivalent of a 5 gallon bag of gravel on my shoulders/back of my neck. Know what makes you unbalanced? That. Know what you need extra balance for? Crossing the stream with quick knee deep water. It’s a dangerous combination, but those construction supplies won’t haul themselves!

My host mom Thelma came to the table with a plate today while I was studying. She made is sound like dinner was ready but really, she just had a plate with a cooked chicken head and neck on it. That wasn’t about to be my dinner. She tried explaining what part of the chicken it was, which was confusing because it was obviously the HEAD. Couldn’t she see that?! I told her I wasn’t hungry anymore, which she thought was pretty hilarious. I became unconcerned when I asked her who was going to eat the head and she said no one. Turns out they cleaned out the neck and stuffed it with some chicken parts (still questionable, right?!), onions, and celery and cooked it. So then we ate slices of “Neck Stuffing Log”, which was actually pretty darn delicious!


Other than that the week was pretty calm; I took a gnarly digger in front of a crowd of people, had hornets making a nest in my room, saw a (thankfully) dead tarantula, learned some Panamanian dances, and discovered a new fruit that tastes like a mango but grows in a month other than May.