The homesickness is starting to sink in. The past week, I’ve cried every time I talked to my family. I’ve been struggling with finding my place here.
Luckily, I’ve been in the school more to help out with a robotics program and building a school website on Google Sites. I’ve been talking with a physics teacher and she is very motivated to learn more about digital literacy. Many people don’t know how to type, upload or download files, and complete simple tasks on the computer. I see this as a big opportunity to work with students and teachers. The school has an Arduino kit that includes programmable microcontrollers to connect to components such as motors and LED screens; unfortunately, I don’t have much experience with Arduino so I’m watching lots of videos in both English and Spanish. Explaining anything to the students is quite painful because I want to articulate myself but the words are so poorly formed.
I’m slowly forming relationships with the students and teachers. I get frustrated when I want to have more in-depth conversations, but that takes more time and practice. My Spanish comprehension is improving but my speaking is still a big bottleneck to feeling comfortable.
The school brings a lot of life to the town. On the weekends, it’s very quiet and not much movement happens. I enjoy meeting up with my friend and fellow volunteer, Isabel, to catch up and have a nice meal. I’m doing my best to take initiative and meet new people while also letting things unravel themselves. I’m used to fast-paced environments and making quick decisions. Here, I seem to dwell on every decision. I don’t have a lot of control. On the few things I can choose, I realize I spin my wheels in my head thinking of all the worse case scenarios.
Religion has also been hard to navigate. I did not grow up religious. The first time I went to mass was in Panamá. My mom was Catholic and my dad was Jewish but my siblings and I did not grow up religious. Here, everyone is religious and very dedicated to their respective church. It makes me uncomfortable to tell people I’m not religious and wait for their reaction but I need to stay true to myself. Lying has never worked for me. It’s definitely a touchy subject; I’m doing my best to be patient with myself and others.
This past weekend was a big celebration for my district’s establishment. I got to hang out with other volunteers which was really nice to decompress and be myself. November is a big month for Panamá because it contains both of their independence days from Columbia and Spain. I’m trying to keep days to look forward to within a week. This helps me break down what I’m doing. My energy levels definitely fluctuate and missing home makes it harder.
I like to tell myself that things will get better, little by little.
