Site Placement!

I received my site placement on Wednesday. Kind of a big deal! We arm wrestled for the beach sites. Just kidding!

I made it very clear to my boss that I’m hardcore. I gave him good examples too – the time that I single handedly killed a medium to large sized spider with my flippy floppy, the summer I survived the truck shop, and the time I swam in the lake alone… at night (ha! I’m not that hardcore!). So I was a bit surprised when I was placed in Cocle, the closest site to Panama from our group. :) To get there it’s about 2 hours on a bus, one hour in a truck, and one hour hiking. It’s a great site though! (And don’t worry, it’s not too yay yay – I won’t have electricity or indoor plumbing.) This is the site we visited our first week in Panama. The volunteer before me is really cool (she reminds me of my friend Jill!) and I’m pretty sure she didn’t leave too many bad gringa stereotypes behind for me to deal with! She was a rockstar volunteer so I’ll have big shoes to fill. Thank goodness I have big feet!

It’s a community of about 250 people that’s in the center of 3 more towns a little smaller than this that are interested in Environmental Health projects as well, so I have the potential to stay pretty busy!

Peace Corps is supposed to be difficult. Maybe my boss just thought I was too ready to live in the mountains and wear a nagua (muu muu) every day. It will be a challenge for me to live in a community that highly values appearance for two years. I might have to go shopping…. I think I’m going to dive in head first and buy some skinny jeans with rhinestones. The skinnier the jeans, the better they tuck into your rubber boots!

I’ve updated my new address on the right. It may look sketch. Like you’re sending a letter to:
Bri Drake
DHH
Houghton, MI 49931
But as Evie found out, that’ll get there too! It’s no more sketch than anything else in Panama. Just roll with it! :)

The view from the school at my new site!