Personality Tests

In all likelihood my toe is broken. It has been almost a week and it still hurts pretty bad. I've managed to stay off it today for most of the day so it does feel a little better and if by the end of the week I don't see significant improvement I will go to the nurse. I already need to call her tomorrow to allergy medicine which I desperately need. The last couple days have been terrible for my allergies. In the mornings I can hardly see my eyes are so swollen and I'm falling asleep constantly. I'm sleeping about 8-9 hours a night with a ½ hour siesta during the day. Hoping that Lourdes (the nurse) can send over some good stuff to get my head clear because there is a lot of information flying my way.

Today was very interesting. We finally got our first technical session and learned a little about what we will be trying to do in our communities. We are pretty much starting to learn the basic structures of the subsistence business models and how they fit into our communities. The whole thing boils down to observing what our communities need and then facilitating sessions that help them reach those goals and then writing business plans and finding funding. The best part of the day was definitely talking to the Economic Director to Panama from the U.S. Embassy. That guy rocks. I think his name was Bill.

Bill pretty much told us the short history of the Panama Canal and how the U.S. Effed Panama around for so long and then left. We also learned a great deal about Panama U.S. Relations and how it fits into what we are all doing. Turns out Panama has a shit load of money right now from the Canal and is looking to improve everything. At least they say they want to improve everything. Panama has one of the best economies in this Hemisphere and has one of the biggest skylines for the amount of people that live in the city. It also has one of the greatest disparities between the rich and the poor. The government wants to focus on value added goods, infrastructure, and tourism. They have also pledged to work on education which is desperately needed here.

In our tech session we also got to take one of those personality tests that tells us what kind of person we are. Once we took the test we all formed into groups depending upon what we answered. I ended up alone. We were then handed a sheet of paper that explained our exact personality type of which we were to write out the general ideas of the personalities of our group. Again, I was alone. We then presented these to the entire group. Other groups had personalities such as extrovert that likes to be the leader or names like Sheriff of the Land. Mine, which I did by myself, was The Healer. You would think was a good thing to be. Not-so-much. Apparently a Healer only does so because he/she has had bad experiences and wants to make the world a better place because of it. Whats more, and what I had to write on the sheet of construction paper for everyone to see, is that the Healer is profane, deeply conflicted between bad and good, pessimistic, and constantly struggles with the devil inside them. So I'm pretty sure everyone thinks I'm going to enslave my community and try to start a socialist regime. Apparently Joan of Arc was a Healer so I got that going for me. It was pretty funny for the class and I played it off like I didn't know why it said that, but I know it was dead on. Those things don't lie and most of it was true.

I remember once when I was young, my step father asked me why I cared so much about other people and that I should spend more time caring about myself instead. I guess you can say that it was because he didn't care about me at all and pretty much only cared about himself. Maybe I saw the way he was and thought “I really don't want to a person that everyone hates”. So maybe I'm making up for all the bad people in this world. So what. And ya, I have daemons inside. We all do. Mine just tell me that the world is mostly a bad place. I want to help change that for the better and is pretty much the reason why I'm in the Peace Corps. I haven't lost all hope for humanity just yet. Just most Americans.

Notes: Its raining so hard right now that I could yell as loud as I can and no one would here me.

I finally got mosquito bites. A lot.

I keep getting ham and melted cheese sandwiches for dinner and they are amazing.

Yesterday I had ice cream for desert with a strawberry milkshake

The biggest ant I have ever seen tried to climb in bed with me while I was laying here

I finally took a shower because the water came on for a little bit.

I still hate cold showers. They suck no matter how hot it is.

I slept with the fan off last night and my host mother thought I was crazy for doing it.

My host Sister who is 33 and looks like she is 40 and about 80lbs over weight has to take the bus for 4 hours total just to go to her crappy $2 an hour job as a travel agent.

I'm not tired, but if I stay awake any longer and keep watching random large insects come in through the window to escape the rain I'm never going to fall asleep.

On another note, I just watched a fairly large spider crawl into my bag so I have that to look forward to tomorrow.

Sweet.....