Today I'm writing from Las Lajas, from a stick and palm hut on the beach. It's about as beautiful as a place can be and it's only three hours from my site, the nearest place where I can find internet.

This past week has been hectic, preparing to enter site. I have vocabulary cards copied out of the dictionary, so I now know how to say in Ngobere that I have fleas (gwara ti kwete). I figure that the more random words that I learn, the better chances I'll have to understand a sentence every once in awhile. Actually forming my own sentences will take longer.

I've also been hunting seeds. Felix is operating a nursery to distribute trees to rural farmers, in an effort to reforest with lumber species and to bring fruit species around the houses to increase the variety of food. He uses native wood species, but he's always excited at the prospect of bringing new fruit species to the area. So in my time in the city, I went and found some tropical almonds, tropical cherry, passion fruit, and guava. I'm excited to watch the trees sprout and to go help plant them with the farmers. Also I'm going to be able to start my garden this week, so I have habanero (a perennial here), okra, cucumber, pumpkin for thanksgiving pies, basil, cabbage, onion, and leeks. A large part of my work will be to introduce the idea of soil improvement, so I'll also start a large compost pile first thing.

The other thing we did this week was to swear in. Serve and defend the constitution and all that. I don't usually go for ceremonies and speeches, but this one got me. The vice president and first lady were nice enough to come speak to us and talk about what the work of the Peace Corps had meant to Panama and did a great job of making us all feel that we were part of something important and good. After that, it was just a party for the host families, a few days in the city for some admin stuff and another round of inoculations (my veins are collapsing), and now a two day vacation. Tomorrow, I'm off to Cerro Papayo to get to work. Wish me luck. I'll tell you how it's going in three weeks when I come out to talk to the boss.

So, everybody have a good fourth. I'll think of you all, ok?