This summer I went abroad to the Azuero Peninsula in Panama for 6 weeks. I went with AMIGOS. AMIGOS is a non-profit, non-government, non-religious, organization. They send high school and college students to Latin American countries for summer and gap year programs. They believe in a world where all youth can become a social catalyst for change. AMIGOS want us to improve our Spanish and leadership skills. We fully immersed into a new culture and learned a lot about our community and ourselves.
I was placed in a community called La Canoa with one other participant named Rachel. It was a rural community with about 200 people in it. Most houses were on the main dirt road but we had a few houses that were on smaller trails off the main one. There were a lot of adults and only a few kids in La Canoa. There were about 5-10 kids that we saw everyday at Campamentos. Campamentos is a required activity for all participants to do. For 2 hours every week day we did activities relation to different topics, including personal health, reforestation, leadership, teamwork, environment, creative expression and more. Our kids were very rambunctious so we would usually end the 2 hours with playing some soccer. We did get to hang out with some people our age. There were three high school girls that came every other weekend to visit their families. My community only had one small elementary school, so for middle school most kids went to the biggest community closest to us, Los Pozos. The girls that came on the weekend go to school in Chitere during the week.
I took a lot of photos during the 6 weeks that I was in Panama and I wanted to be able to share them with everyone. I will most likely be uploading more photos for some time as I have more photos I want to share but not a lot of time to upload and organize them all. I hope you enjoy these photos.
*Disclaimer* some of these photos were taken by kids. They loved taking my camera and taking pictures. All of the photos were taken on a Panasonic 300 and on my Partner's iPhone 6.