School clean-up

I'm just going to skip over the travel to get here, because that's boring. Getting up at 2:30 am to catch a 5:30 am flight...blah blah, we're here, that's over.

I will start with the first day, because we literally just got right into it.

School clean-up 12/29

We met up with some study-abroad students from St. Louis University to do a school clean-up. We were cleaning up Maria Josefa Torrijos in Juan Diaz, in the outskirts of Panama City. The project was a part of "Estudiantes Apoyando Estudiantes" (Students Helping Students) under the Fundacion ProEd, an incredible organization that works to enhance the education process of students in Panama.

The school had been torn apart by torrential rainfall (it is rainy season for about 7 months every year in Panama) and the school simply didn't have the funds to put it all back together. So we worked to pick up trash, clear out areas they had thrown all the old, ruined furniture to, and clean up the garden areas. It was ridiculous how much glass I found lying around in the grass. How scary is that that children are around that all the time? We cleaned up the playground next to the school and there was so much litter that when I took before/after pictures...it literally looked like we had just strategically placed trash there to make the scene look bad. The back of the school had this large, grassy area that could have been a great play area for kids but it had mounds of old furniture infested with weeds and insects all around it. I don't think anybody is to blame for this at all...it's simply a really unfortunate situation. But hopefully we made some difference.

After the clean-up

I think I forgot to mention this before...but our house here is incredible. It's so adorable and the community is quite enclosed. There's even a community pool and basketball courts and the like...so nice! 

So, after the clean-up, our dirty selves jumped in the pool to clean off the scum/coat our scummy selves with some chlorine-y water. It was so refreshing, then after that we made dinner and Suz's neighbors came over to eat. 

I forgot to mention this also, but Suz's son/our friend Allen and his girlfriend/our friend Megan are also here. They came to the school clean-up but are leaving today (1/1) to go backpacking around Panama. What adventurers!

Anyway, very eventful first day. Sweaty and a tiny bit disheartening, but much more inspiring and eye-opening.