Check out all the pictures I´ve ever taken

So although it took me half of my Peace Corps service to do, I finally put all the photos that I have taken online. In one spot. For all to see. Check her out, although it may take you forever to review them all.

http://flickr.com/photos/84362300@N00/

Enjoy!

One Year in!

Its amazing how time passes without being noted in the day to day activities of life. And in PeaceCorps/Sara world, this is surely the case. Its true that I have arrived at my one year anniversary in country and my time here is half over, but I still like I have barily scratched the surface of it all. What the hell did I do for the last year of my young life? I know that I moved to Panama, lived in a varity of towns, with a variety of families, none of them my own, for various months, struggled to learn two different languanges, probably walked about 10,000 miles collectively, and saw some really weird stuff, some of which has become totally normal background scenery to me, others I´ve personally absorbed forever (Ne!). I´ve loved and hated, fought with and against the people, and somehow always came back for more, like a disfunctional relationship, the Ngäbes use and mistreat me, yet we love eachother just the same. So here I am, one year later, hopefully wiser and stronger or whatever, but probably just a little exhausted and jaded on the idea of sustainability. I´ll fully admit that I´ve become a Peace Corps cliche and found Buddism along the way to help me fight the anger that I sometimes feel for the people that I´m trying so hard to love and to help, to fight that American gene in me that tells me I must produce, be productive, have a purpose. But I have those rare afternoons when I sit with the people in silence for hours on end and watch the clouds slowly creep from one end of the sky to the other or watch a horse eat grass as if it was an opera and I feel totally content and OK with life. My favorite are those conversations when I´m asked to describe snow, or how a total eclipse works, or how the dollar bill is fabricated and if its the paper itself that has value, or what this whole HIV-AIDS epedemic is. And they sit and listen, captured, and I know that I´m describing something that they would have never ever considerd before. But on the flipside, I have those days when people come to my house and ask for money, don´t show up to work days they´ve asked me to plan, make fun of me to my face in a Ngäbere specificly because they don´t want me to understand, or they won´t give me the time of day because I´m a women and then ask me for money.
Oh, Panama. What have you done to me? Me dejaste en la selva y me perdí. Ahorra me estoy poniendo india..... What a sad entry. The truth is, there really is no other place I´d rather be. Psychoanalyse that one.