Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Happy Thanksgiving

We wish everyone a happy and safe holiday weekend. We´ll miss dinner with our families, but we´ll be meeting up with the other volunteers here in the mountains for a few days. And we´ll have plenty of pavo y papas!

In other news, we got a new site, and we love it. It´s a sugar town in the middle of the country and it´s warm. The people are also really nice. We hope to move there sometime next week.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers and all the encouragement. It´s been a rough month, but we´re determined to be successful volunteers.

Special shout-out to our pals at SUNY and the paper.

God bless.

Love, Lisa and Matt

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Pixs from the day we were sworn in


These photos from the day we were sworn in are from our friend Ashley. The ceremony was at the Canal Museum in Casco Viejo, the old part of Panama City. After the ceremony we ate at a cool Italian place.




Matt and our friend Dennis, a business volunteer and a Cornell graduate.





Ashley and Peace Corps staff member Gil.




Our whole group on the steps of the Cathedral.






Sunday, November 11, 2007

Hey, it´s Matt´s Birthday today

Okay, let me just respond to everyone´s posts about Halloween. You see, Matt doesn´t really get ¨dressed up¨ for Halloween. He figures out a way to humor me without making himself uncomfortable. He was ¨arroz¨ so our friend Emily took one of his blank white t-shirts and wrote, ¨Arroz, Producto de Panama¨ on it. Yeah, I wore the construction paper chicken fixin´s.

Well, now for the updates. Unfortunately for everyone involved, I got really sick again. Matt and I were at our site for 4 days before we had to head back to the hospital. I was initially diagnosed with ameobas and then sent to rest at a hotel. Unfortunately after a couple of days, I got worse and had to go spend the next 3 nights in the hospital. While I was in the hospital, a piece of Matt´s tooth broke! Lovely.

So, we are currently in Panamá dealing with medical and administrative issues. Matt got his tooth repaired on Friday and I´ve been trying to lay low while my guts heal. Today we went to the Catholic church in our neighborhood, called Don Bosco. It´s a beautiful church built in the 1800´s and has mass every hour on Sundays, starting at 7:00am. The 11:00 am mass was packed. Tonight Matt wants chicken from one of his favorite restuarants down the road from our hotel.

Oh, and Matt´s Mom sent me an email to let me know that I got a check from my former employer because they decided that I should not have had to pay for parking throughout my tenure there. I´m so happy I could do cartwheels...well that might not be a good idea at this juncture! I always resented having to pay for parking! Life is unfair, but sometimes, justice is served.

In other news...my college roommate Olga, who as many of you know, is from Panama, has emailed me. She and her husband and daughter will be visiting Panama for Christmas and New Year´s and she has invited Matt and I to visit her parent´s house at some point. We´re very excited. Olga is currently living in Germany, so it will be great to see her and meet her family.

Stay warm...heard it´s in the 40´s up there.