I confess, I'm worn out. Usually I try to write my blog in when I'm in a good mood and have lots of energy, but I've been away from my village for three days now and I'm tired. Life in the city is draining when you're not used to it.

There's been a lot of city time lately. My first three months it seemed like I only spent two nights in town every three weeks or so, but lately I've been running around Panama doing various things. This weekend, I went to Cocle to hear a presentation by Lazy John of the Finca Perezoza, an organic farm run by an ex-Peace Corps volunteer. And later today I'll be meeting with my contact in Panama's environmental agency to see if we can better coordinate our work together. In two weeks I get five days of language training from the Peace Corps and a week later is Thanksgiving and our five month training seminar. By that time we're into December. Stuff just comes up like that.

Oh, Lazy John though. Maybe not extremely innovative, but I think I'll steal some of what I learned. He has a cool technique, planting a leguminous tree in the same hole as his fruit trees. They grow together and he periodically cuts limbs off the leguminous tree and drops them on the ground, preventing competition and fertilizing the fruit tree. It's a lot simpler than making enough compost for a whole orchard.

I've just passed another important milestone in my service. For the first three months, my job was to work mostly on integrating to the community and to put together an analysis of the culture, school, environmental state of the region, and history of the community. This past week, my director Francisco visited and I gave a presentation of what I've learned. I was stressed out about it, but it turned out to be much more relaxed than I expected and I think the visit went well. So now I should be completely integrated, understand the community completely and be ready to go kick ass and change the world.

But specific jobs on my schedule? Few at the moment.

On Thursdays I teach English to the sixth grade. I bring the mandolin and we sing American folk songs. They know Yankee Doodle. It might be my favorite day. Soon I'll start teaching Environmental Education as well.

I work with the agricultural agency when they come, about once a week. We make compost and terraces and talk about how cool it would be to put a biodigestor in here. And one of their extension agents recently asked me to help on a fish tank project, to raise tilapia and catfish. I'm going to go scout out locations and talk to people to see who is interested and he will bring the necessary materials and help teach the best process for tanks. I'm excited about this because fish are much cheaper to raise than chickens so there will be more meat and any concentrated agriculture will help the environment in the area.

We're in the process of soliciting a grant for a artesans' workshop, so the ladies in town can get together to do their sewing.

And I'm asking around, seeing if I can find community leadership for a project to bring efficient woodstoves to reduce the amount of firewood needed. It would be easier just to do it, but my trainers repeated endlessly that it's better if community members take charge, so I'm trying it like this.

So those are my jobs right now. Well, I'll be writing again soon. Maybe I can send you an update in two weeks when I'm on my way to language training. Miss you, everybody.

Andy