Today has been our first day back in Cineguita after visiting Boquete for the weekend. We started the day off with Fina’s amazing eggs while getting ready for the day of teaching. First block consisted of teaching the fist graders PE while the others taught the other grades. For some reason the first graders had trouble with the forward lunges in their lines. Once the day of teaching ended most of the kids gathered in front of the school to play basketball in the rain. I thin

Today was our last day in Boquete. We spent the morning cleaning Bella’s beautiful house and got the opportunity to visit possible schools that will be helped in the future. While waiting for the bus to take us to the schools, we all got to chill a little bit and finish our cleaning and packing. As soon as the bus arrived at the house, we all headed to our first school. After talking to teachers, principals, and even teaching a few classes on the spot, we discovered that two

Today started pretty early and we were all picked up from Javier’s house around 9 in Wilfur’s truck and his wife’s little car. We drove about 45 minutes to a natural hot spring, and the last 15 minutes of the drive all 11 of us piled in 1 car and drove over boulders the size of the car… the hot spring was so warm and felt oddly good, considering it was probably 95 degrees outside! we also swam in the rio, which was about 50 feet from the hot spring; the water felt so refreshi

Today was our first full day in the beautiful mountain town of Boquete. We started off by visiting Finca Lerida, a small batch coffee producer high above Boquete. We hiked the trails around the plantation and finished with a coffee tasting and a fabulous lunch. This afternoon, we ventured back to our house for some much needed rest. I was so tired that I dozed off in my Chacos! Later, we visited a roadside market to bargain for many handmade panamanian goods. Lastly, we arriv

Today we woke up to Fina’s fresh pineapple and pancakes. We had short classes due to parent and teacher meetings, so we only taught two class each rather than three. I taught first grade again and it was great! The students are starting to get the hang of "ingles" class and we continued working on colors and parts of the body. After class and lunch, we played sports like football and soccer with some boys, and made friendship bracelets with girls. We spent the rest of our nig

On Wednesday, we started the day off with a group favorite - pineapple at breakfast. We’ve found that the fruit, especially the pineapple, is much more sweet and enjoyable in Panama. The morning started out with us teaching PE, and even though it felt like Caroline and I swung the jump rope for eternity, everyone had fun. Teaching fifth and sixth grade went well, and my experience teaching has improved as the trip has progressed. For the afternoon, Mrs. Gina arranged a trip f

Yesterday was our first day teaching and it has been great so far! I have been teaching 3rd and 4th grade and we have been teaching them pronouns. Today, we started off with a morning full of teaching the kids. Then we ate a wonderful lunch cooked by Fina. In the afternoon we walked to the camp, where we reunited with friends and watched Owen get most of his hair shaved off. We ended the day by surprising Virginia with a cake for her birthday.

Today is Virginia’s birthday. Today I decided to join Mrs. Gina in going to a meeting with the Ministry of Health. I joined Mrs. Gina because I want to provide engineering solutions to communities in 2nd and 3rd world countries after college, and I felt like it might relate. The meeting was about ways to prevent mosquito infestations in the communities. Also after the meeting, we returned to the school where we had delicious food as always thanks to the amazing talent of our