Saying Goodbye

This last weekend was our last weekend in our training community with our host families.  It was pretty low-key – we got back from our site visit Thursday, and aside from a goodbye party we threw on Saturday, not a whole lot happened.  I did make one last trip to swim in the river with all the kids from the community, and that was a little sad because I love those kids and I love swimming in the river.  I know that there will be more kids and another river at my new site, but saying goodbye is always a sad thing for me.  Goodbyes make me forget all the inconveniences and frustrations I felt about a site, such as the fact that I was mainly served fried hotdogs and rice while my host dad ate eggs and toast, or that my host mom never seemed particularly fond of me, and think only about the good fuzzy moments, such as the good conversations I had with my family or the fun times at the river.

                Saturday afternoon we had our goodbye party, or despedida, in our training community at the casa comunal.  We made arroz con pollo, basically the national dish of Panama with shredded chicken and rice with some vegetables, a Panamanian salad, which is shredded white cabbage and carrots with white vinegar, salt and pepper, and brownies.  We also gave the families certificates for hosting us.  And, of course, there was a piñata and stuffed it with candy and flour.  The kids loved it!  And I did, too.  A party here isn’t a party without arroz con pollo and a piñata, so we succeeded in that, but we did run out of plates so we ended up rinsing the used plates with water from a water bottle (there was no spigot) behind the casa comunal and reusing them.  Classy.

                Monday morning we met on the soccer field at 6am and loaded up a Diablo rojo (public transportation consisting of a school bus decked out with blinking lights, red feather boas and painted on the side) with our bags and ourselves.  Everyone’s host family showed up to show us off – well, my family didn’t want to leave the house that early, but everyone else’s family was there – and they were all crying and hugged us goodbye and waved as we drove away.  Honestly, it was cute and tugged at my heartstrings.

                We have now been staying at the Peace Corps office while we take care of last minute training and paperwork before we swear in tomorrow afternoon.  It’s a little surreal being here.  After 8 weeks of living with a latrine, rice and hotdogs, and surrounded by Panamanians, living in apartment-style dormitories with air conditioning, flush toilets, comfortable beds, no roosters crowing at 4am, and easy access to a convenience store seems like a luxurious vacation.  That and college, because we have been able to get together to hang out after dinner, play cards, and sit on the computer for hours at a time.  But this time will end soon, too.  Tomorrow we become official volunteers at our swearing-in ceremony, and then we have until Saturday to get to our site, when we will stay for good.  I know that everything is about to get real, but this little reprieve has been really nice and lets me forget for a few days the overwhelming change that I’m going to go through in a few days.

Thursday and Friday we are all planning on going to a beach on the Pacific for two last days of relaxation and celebration with good friends and without worrying about perceptions or misunderstandings.  We are basically renting out a few hostels to accommodate all of us, and since my birthday is Friday we are going to make delicious American brownies.

Tomorrow we have our swearing-in ceremony where we will become “official” volunteers, but really I have no idea what that means.  I feel like I have been a real volunteer this entire time, but now I can officially call myself that and it will mark the end of our pretend-study-abroad experience we have had and the beginning of a terrifying, thrilling and (so they say) life-changing experience.  Honestly, while I am excited, I am very overwhelmed by what I will have to do.  The past two months have been pretty crazy, learning how to navigate through a new culture in a new language with new food and a new environment, but at least we have been with a safety net of friends who are just a short walk away experiencing the same thing.  On Saturday we will be in a brand new community with new accents, slightly different cultural nuances, new food and no friends.  Well, that’s an exaggeration.  We will have friends we can call or go visit, but we have to do this for ourselves.  We have to engage with our community and make a new network of friends and support in our new Panamanian community.  Frankly it sounds exhausting and I have been coping by not thinking about it.

I love everyone in my training group.  We have managed to stay cohesive without being cliquey, and despite our differences we work well with together and support each other through everything.  I’m going to be sad to say goodbye to them on Saturday morning.