Sadly, today was my last volleyball practice since I leave at the end of the week. We ended up scheduling a 'friendly' game with our Volleyball rivals that are part of our local Ciudad del Saber league. After playing a few games with them we all quickly realized how much practice we needed, and we also figured out that we actually need to play in a gym instead of an arbitrary parking lot. I definitely had a good time playing, especially since right after we went out for some drinks! To end off the night we went to Karaoke and I got to sing a couple of songs :) I noticed the main difference between the karaoke here in Panama and the ones I'm used to going to in Montreal is that the music is all shared, so if you have stage fright, Karaoke in Panama is definitely a hardecore and potentially different thing. On the other hand, if you are a karaoke veteran (like myself, as I used to go to Karaoke in Montreal on a regular basis) the stage fright isnt so much of a problem but the massive amounts of people!
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![]() As my roommate (Mexico) starts to pack up her bags (because today is her last day) I started to really get these strong pangs of homesickness. Even though our internship doesnt formally end until this coming Friday, she got a special pardon to leave a few days early. The moment was quite sad because it brought back memories of us as roommies and on our trip to San Blas together! Her leaving really made me think about how I'm leaving behind such a huge part of my life here. A part of me will really miss Panama and here are the following Panamisms that I will miss the most: 1.) Patacones or Plantain Chips -Fried Goodness! 2.) Fresh Fruits -always loved mangoes and papayas and always will 3.) The Music -So filled with passion and love, each bachata song I hear makes me want to dance! 4.) Dancing -Speaking of music... cant have a good party without some awesome dancing! They make you really feel the rhythm and thats part of why i love latin music and culture. These key components really made life in Panama super enjoyable. Of course, these things might seem really small, but its those minute things that make a place change from a place you have visited to a place you have called home for a period of time.
![]() All of the projects assigned were definitely catered to my interests in Politics and Communications. My inherent technology and social media obsession definitely came out through the Web Strategy. To a great extent my work has stretched into a really wide variety of fields. However, a setback for me was definitely my lack of fluency in Spanish. It was apparent that the amount of work available was based on my language abilities as my co-workers did have quite a lot of translations to do. One component that I really managed to secretly evolve in is actually my COOKING. If you know me well, then you know that I don't really cook (nor do I like to) mostly because I hate cleaning all the dishes at the end. However, after living here in Panama I have truly mastered a few dishes (that I kind of made-up): -Japanese Vegetable Curry -Garlic Onion Chicken Breast in Coconut Milk Sauce -Grilled Fish on Coconut Thai Chili Lentils and Eggplant I guess when you don't have the luxuries of home or nearby delivery, cooking by yourself (to be cost effective) becomes your next best option! ![]() This weekend I visited a coffee plantation in Boquete, Chiriquí. The plantation is owned by the coffee family and brand: Café Ruiz. The company is owned by 92 year old Señor Ruiz, who owns 11 plantations in the Boquete area. The city itself hosts many other coffee growers that grow for other companies as well. The reasoning behind so many coffee plantations is in the soil. The city lies right beside the Volcano Baru, which is the tallest point in Panama. Additionally, the volcano means the surrounding area has very fertile soil. The plantation owns a special bean called Geisha Coffee Bean, which originates from Ethiopia (despite its Japanese name). These beans are very sought after and very expensive (close in price to the poop coffee sold in Indonesia). At wholesale and auction, the Geisha beans can go for $800/lbs and a shipped box of dried and packaged Geisha Coffee Beans costs $20,000. At the plantation we got to see the whole processing routine from Bean to Cup! THE STEPS:![]() After we finished walking through the entire process, we sat down at the Ruiz Family cafe and tasted 3 of their house blends: European (Light Roast), Latin American (Medium Roast) and Italian (Dark Roast). We ended up staying longer at the cafe to ask questions of the vendors. The locally sold Geisha coffee is expensive but not as near expensive as the bags of coffee sold abroad. Because the beans are roasted here in Panama I felt that the taste would definitely be more authentic rather than trying the externally roasted beans purchased by other companies (like Illy Italian coffee company). While at the cafe we even tasted 6 more types of coffee that they specialize in: Geisha, Arabica Typica, Arabica Pacamara, Berlina Estate, Panamaria and Maunier. My favourite was the Arabica Pacamara because of its Dark Chocolatey taste! boquete botanical gardenAfter leaving the Botanical Gardens in Boquete we wandered around the city a bit more and then took a Diablo Rojo bus back to Terminal David, then made our way to the second city of our stay: Volcán. The area of Volcán is actually very close to the border of Costa Rica and Panama. In that area is a dormant volcano which is the tallest point in Panama. The area itself is very popular for hikers and most people spend the day hiking. A friend of a friend of ours had a house in the city which we stayed overnight at. It was great because we got to walk around the community, which was small and super quaint. The most amazing part about the region was that the air was very similar to that of Vancouver--crisp and colder because of the elevation and proximity to the mountains. The house we stayed in had a super cool wall made of bottles, and they even put a design of a tree on the front! After walking around we played UNO and drank rum all night for a really nice and fun relaxing evening in the small volcano town :) The next morning we decided to get up at 6am and head to the Volcano to attempt to climb at least the bottom. It turns out the Volcano though seemingly close was actually a 30 minute walk away, plus once we got there we needed to cross a national park trail in order to get there. The area was filled with beautiful landscapes and views of the Volcano Baru, but we ended up turning back after a few hours because there was eerily no one around on the trail (not even a park guard) and a few weeks ago there was a report regarding 2 missing Dutch women which made the whole abandoned trail kind of unnerving. Instead we opted to head back to the city for some breakfast and then head on home. For breakfast we went to a local restaurant where I got to try a 'Panamanian Style' meal including Hojaldres (like a beavertail without sugar) and Salchichas (sausage). My whole breakfast cost me 50cents which I thought was crazy but also very sustainable for the local people. We ended up walking around looking for a dessert in the area called Fresas con Crema. However, after 2 hours of walking back and forth through the entire town, we stopped at a local Panaderia outside the Bus station and I settled for a delicious Tres Leches cake before our trip home! The bus ride was 1.5 hours back to Terminal David and then 8 hours from David to Panama. We basically crossed more than half the country which was crazy! The last bus was express, but since we didn't get the express bus back to Panama, our bus ride was longer but they had movies playing in Spanish. It was interesting to see what kind of comedy they had here and they even showed two movies that were American (but dubbed in spanish). The ride back was definitely long, but it was bearable because the seats reclined and we also had a lot of leg space in the front of the bus! I highly recommend getting to the terminal early to get seats like these :D This weekend we decided to make a trip to the other side of Panama in order to visit the Chiriquí Province's beautiful Volcano, Coffee Plantations and wildlife! We started our trip at the Albrook Bus Terminal and went from there to the province's main city called David. The city of David is located 6 hours by bus away from Panama, so we took the Express overnight bus at midnight on Friday in order to arrive in David by 6am. From David we took a 1.5 hour connecting Diablo Rojo bus to the city (called Boquete) of our first stop the COFFEE PLANTATION. We arrived at Boquete at around 7am and the others decided to grab some breakfast. I opted to eat some of the snacks that I'd brought with me (just to lighten the load I was carrying) and the food in Boquete seemed to be much cheaper than any of the other cities that we'd visited. The Coffee Tour began at 9am and it was run by the well known Panamanian Coffee Company: Café Ruiz. As a package of $30 they give you a full tour of one of the Plantations, including a full run down of the coffee making process (from Coffee Tree to Cup). The tour also included a complementary tour of the factory, the packaging and roasting plant, a tasting of the 3 house blends and a free bag of the light roast to take home with you! Our tour guide Carlos taught us all about the process of coffee growing and how the plantation works. I will talk about the actual coffee plantation experience in a blog post next week! We ended up staying at Cafe Ruiz for a very long time and even testing some extra types of coffee sold at Cafe Ruiz. After doing the tasting at the end of the tour and hanging around at the Cafe Ruiz offices, we went to the Boquete city and wandered until we stopped upon these beautiful Botanical Gardens.
Panama is well known for its wide variety of beautiful nature, and the gardens were definitely examples of that. They had may breathtaking species that were very well grown and bloomed quite nicely. ![]() The whole 3 month Internship has gone by so quickly. Starting tomorrow I will only have 7 more days here in Panama, then its back to Canada and shortly off to my new adventure in Asia! The beginning of my trip was definitely filled with hardships as I was here in Panama alone and homeless for a few days. However, once everyone arrived it became easier to persevere and get used to having a schedule. Life definitely got easier when we moved into our home! This weekend is going to be our last weekend, so hopefully I can have one last great adventure while here in Panama before we have our last week of work. I spent today at work really finishing off the majority of my projects. I'd submitted two more Country Office applications for Dominican Republic and Bolivia WFP to a world wide competition! (If WFP wins anything I'll keep you posted). Also I handed in a project for my boss, Alejandro Lopez-Chicheri, on the topic of "Food Security and Violent Conflict: Drawing the Correlation". I hope that my work thus far will be useful for the WFP as all of us in the department are really only here to help make WFP a better place to work and progress the multiple projects our departments have to produce. In the end, at the Information Management and Knowledge Unit, we produce a lot of what the public sees, so one day I hope to see some of my work randomly on the interwebz affiliated with WFP.
WFP VOLLEYBALL TEAM 2014!Throughout the year, WFP has two sports teams: fútbol and volibol! Last week they started organizing practices for the volibol team. Naturally, as a former volibol lover I had to play. Normally, the teams will enter a league that goes against other teams in the area from different Ciudad del Saber and UN agencies! For today's practice, we went to the UNHRD parking lot only a few minutes away from Ciudad del Saber, where we set up a makeshift (really ghetto) net and just had fun tossing around the ball in 4v4 games!
Today's practice went from 6-8:30pm and it was super fun and I even got to meet some people from other offices and departments that I hadn't met before. I found it a great way to exercise and have fun at work, but I was definitely sad that this opportunity only came in my last two weeks here in Panama :( ![]() One of the main reasons I came to Panama was so that I could practice my Spanish. One of the biggest struggles when living in a country where you don't speak the language is those cravings to negate the culture and cocoon in a little English Bubble. To be fully honest, I did that when I was in living in Montreal (where the official language is French). And recently I've noticed that I've used English as a crutch here as well. At the office, yes everyone speaks to each other in Spanish, but when discussing something important like a new assignment or project, they speak to me in English. Stepping out and speaking as much Spanish is not as easy when you live and work with people that all speak English, and it doesn't help that all the work I do is in English as well! Here are a few ways I try to keep connected to my Spanish: 1.) Keep it Casual The only way I've figured how to keep connected is to try and speak with other co-workers in Spanish in the Office casually. This is a good way of bulking up your practice in a low intensity situation. 2.) Music Even if you are listening to the same songs over and over again, at least they are in another language, and one day you might be able to make out some of the words and even understand them without a translator! 3.) Cuisine To keep from going totally broke it is best to make your own meals at home, but on those nights out when you want to eat something made by someone else speaking to locals in as much Spanish as possible is really the best way of plunging yourself into the language with people who have to be patient with customers. ![]() Today for lunch I got kind of lazy (also ran out of food) and decided to order delivery again. The menu for today was a Fish Fillet with Mango sauce on rice with a side of veggies and potatoes. Very simple and definitely my type of lunch! Maybe without the rice for healthy reasons but it was great nonetheless. During lunch I had a good chat with one of our supervisors: Janett Wilson. She has worked with the WFP for quite a long time so she has a lot of experience with the ins and outs of the NGO. Furthermore, she is also a born and bred Panamanian so she knows the ins and outs of the nation in which we are living in! Our conversation was quite elaborate, and it was definitely a good chance to get to know a bit more about her and her life. At some point the subject of 'WOMEN' came up just casually, as I told her the seemingly extreme differences of things that I'd experienced when I first arrived in Panama. To be specific I meant the cat-calling and the NOISE when men would call out to women as the pass by on the street or walk along the road. ![]() IN CANADA: Women are never honked at publicly and never have I been cat-called in my life in my hometown or in Montreal unless I was in a clubbing district where everyone was super drunk and in party mode. When just walking around in casual dress wear in Canada there is never an instance where it is acceptable for a man to call out to a woman and expect her to respond in a calm and endearing fashion. HOWEVER IN PANAMA: there is a stark contrast when it comes to how women are treated just on the streets. Yes it is definitely a Latin American cultural thing that I have noticed BUT it is also a women's rights issue as a foreigner it did make me (still makes me) uncomfortable to hear and endure. For Panamanian women, on the other hand, cat-calls and comments on the street are entirely common and have become something that women get used to. The reasoning behind this whole situation of cat-calling is rooted in the idea that women are and can be admired by men, and that all women are beautiful and should be acknowledged as such in a 'complimenting' way. In a sense I do get where these men come from, if I think you are beautiful I want to tell you. But at the same time I wonder if girls in Panama would continue to endure the cat-calls if they had a choice on the subject? |
AuthorGeneva is currently a student from Canada during her time in Panama she was fulfilling a 3 month Internship Archives
August 2014
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