My weekend a couple of weekends ago...

Friday morning I got up and the teacher asked me to take a picture of every kid for the Ministry of Education.

This is the Latina teacher Lourdes that hikes in everyday. Now I know what you're thinking...I've thought about it too...but the truth is I can't understand her Spanish at all. It's way too grammatically correct and way too fast.

After the pictures, I came back to my house where I promised my neighbors I'd teach them how to make banana pancakes. They LOVED it! (They had given me the bananas).

After the banana pancake charla, I hiked out to the road, met a girl with a machete gash on her arm, then started the hike up to Nico's site where he was hosting the two new Bocas volunteers for training. They are currently building a road into Nico's site, so I caught a lift on top of the backhoe. I commented that this size backhoe (Cat 320L) is really small to cut a road with, and the driver said, "Tell me about it!"

I got up to Nico's house and met Jim and Rebecca, the two new vols. They were dressing a duck for dinner that night.

Mark came up with some friends, brought some cooking supplies, and we all hiked down to the swim hole to beat the afternoon heat. The hike was about 45 mins, filled with poison dart frogs, toucans, butterflies, and flowers.

We took a dip with some local kids - our guides.

We marinated the duck, wrapped it with peppers and onions in bacon, then grilled it. It turned out amazing.

Some of Nico's friends came over and brought us some cocoa, so we ground it up and made organic hot chocolate and talked over candles well into the night.

I crashed on Nico's floor. For breakfast we fried up the heart and liver with bacon, eggs and onions. Mmm....

After breakfast I hiked down with Nico's baseball team to a 3-team tournament being held adjacent to my site. It was funny: one team brought all the gear, another team had brand new donated jerseys but no shoes, and the third team had neither jerseys nor shoes. They shared gloves, bats, gear, and umpires.

Mo's team, Isla de Colón (the team with shoes and gear) won by a landslide.

I hiked back to my house and crashed for the night. I then got up early and cruised out to the islands to meet the family of another volunteer.

I spent all day Sunday swimming and relaxing and playing with starfish.

This was my weekend a couple of weekends ago...