Meet the peeps

Last week was Technical Week, which was every bit as tedious as it sounds. So I’m not going to waste too much precious blog space talking about it. A quick recap: we spent a lot of our time preparing and facilitating a meeting at the local coffee cooperative. The volunteer who lives there permanently has worked with the cooperative to develop vision and mission statements, and to formulate a business plan. It all seemed terrifically boring; hopefully I won’t end up doing the same sort of thing. The best thing about this week was getting to see again all the people we were separated from during Cultural Week the week before. It was strange to realize that after only a few weeks, I could miss these people. On that corny note, here a few of my best friends so far.

Fred AKA ‘Pájero Loco’

Fred might be the most well-known gringo in town, and that is due almost entirely to his infamous pájero loco (crazy bird) call. It’s impossible to replicate here, something like ah-AHH!!, but Fred’s expression while making this call gives you a pretty good idea. Here in the photo he is doing just that, as him and I had just climbed a tree. Every kid in town has their own, usually frighteningly bad, version of the pájero loco that greets Fred wherever he goes. Our personalities are damn near opposite, especially in terms of the introvert/extrovert scale, but we’ve become close friends. Like all friendships to some extent I guess, ours is one partly of coincidence. Fred lives just a few minutes down the hill from me, we’re in the same section, and we had all our language classes together.

Mo

Mo, seen here swinging wildly inaccurately at a piñata, is probably my best friend here. Like Fred, she ended up living relatively close by and was in our small language class. Now we’re the only two learning Ngabe, so I think we’re officially sick of each other. Since we will both be living in Ngabe sites, we were the only two that lived with Ngabe families in Las Nubes, and even though her situation wasn’t as extreme as mine, it was nice to have someone with whom to commiserate. Mo grew up on the Virgin Islands, so even though she is just as white as they come, she can quickly turn into ‘Island Mo,’ replete with neck-rolling attitude and a slanted form of English called ‘patwa.’

Elizabeth AKA ‘Hones’

Elizabeth, on the left in the picture, is my Northwest homie, originally from Portland. Her family pronounces her last name, Jones, ‘Hones,’ which is where her nickname comes from. She’s a Frisbee badass, and a badass in general. She lives just down the hill and is definitely one of the nicest people I know.

Dave AKA ‘Jersey Dave’

Dave, seen here about to die from putting too many marshmallows in his mouth at the same time, lost that particular game of ‘chubby bunny.’ Dave, despite his insistence that he doesn’t care if no one likes him, is the heart of our group. He refers to himself in the third person as ‘dudes,’ which is really obnoxious, but Dave is nothing if not obnoxious. And he can do Gob’s chicken dance amazingly well.

Stacey AKA ‘Rube’

In Spanish, ‘rubia’ means blonde, and even though Stacey dyed and cut her long, blonde, Southern California locks before Peace Corps, she can’t escape her rubianess, so she’s the Rube. She does and says so pretty dumb stuff, and, as per the requirement of living close to LA, cares about some really dumb stuff, but at heart she’s a nice person. This picture was taken at Las Lajas, where we spent our free day after Technical Week. The water was dirty, but it was beautiful.

Colin AKA ‘Modern Savage’

Colin is the only person from the other section (environment) with whom I am pretty close. I like most everybody in other group, in fact my closest volunteer in Cerro Iglesias is going to be a girl from that group, but we rarely get a chance to see them unfortunately. Colin’s nickname fits him to a t, as he is probably the most rugged volunteer in our group. Him and I see eye to eye on a lot of things, like reasons for being vegetarian and who would win in a battle between an elephant, a bear and a tiger (a tiger of course).