Baby turtles!!!!

I saw baby sea turtles! They were so precious! One of my best friends here, Cassie, lives on the beach in the province of Veraguas so I went to stay at her house for a couple days before we did our Captain Planet fair there and I got to see baby turtles! And I got to dig up turtle eggs to put in the hatchery, safe from things like dogs and people. Turtle eggs are a hot commodity here to sell for food, as some people don't really care whether or not they're endangered (which, you know, they are). The eggs are pretty much the exact size and color as a ping pong ball. But surprisingly softer. The baby turtles hatch after about 5 weeks (I think) and they usually hatch in the morning when it's cooler, as they can get cooked by the sun. They hatch as a nest and use each other to crawl out of the sand. For this reason, when people steal the eggs to sell and think they're being nice by leaving 4 or 10, they're actually still killing them all because those left won't be able to get out of the nest without the help of their lost brethren (there are usually between 70-90 per nest). Unfortunetely, just putting the eggs in the hatchery doesn't guarantee they'll hatch of course. A couple of the nests I saw that hatched and had baby turtles run to the water also had some dead ones inside. Definitely got to see the behind-the-scenes Discovery channel business, which includes maggots. But overall it was totally worth it. Kind of emotional when you see the last turtle get swept away by the current, hoping it'll make it to a long life and come back to that beach if it's female. :) The whole time in her site was amazing. Got to do some beach horse back riding as well. And we worked - built an estufa lorena for a family (a mud stove that is cheap to build as all materials are natural and it cooks hotter and faster, and reduces smoke). And come on, a couple of days sleeping to the sound of crashing waves never hurt anyone. :) But no, I did not get to see any mama turtles laying the eggs. I'll have to return earlier in the season next year for that. We also did the Captain Planet in her site and in another site furthur north in Veraguas. Both were successful of course, it just keeps getting better and better (P.S. you can still donate! https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=525-102 ). We have now finished for this school year (school is out on Dec. 12th) and will pick it up back again in April.
December has arrived and summer (dry season) should be coming soon. However unfortunetely just this last week there was some major flooding here in Panama. Not so much in my province, but in the two large province of Chiriqui and Bocas del Toro that border Costa Rica, and also pretty much the whole Carribbean cost. Whole towns got swept away. Houses, corps and aquaducts are ruined. Not to mention roads. Some communitites did not have food for 6 days before the emergency relief people got to them in a helicopter to deliver some. Since all the people in these areas are dependent on the crops for sustence and the crops were all destroyed, and the roads out of their towns where completely washed away, they had no options. All the Peace Corps volunteers in the area are safe and were evacuated to David, the provincial captial of Chiriqui. Some of them will have some very intense work to do when they get back to their communitites, but all of their communities are secure enough that no one has to have a site change. There has been major flooding in other Latin American countries as well, such as Brazil.
This all happened right before and after Thanksgiving. We were supposed to have Thanksgiving in Chiriqui, where we had it last year, but the road leading to that town got washed away and was inaccessible. So three days before the event a couple volunteers came together and did some serious event adjustment. New hotel, new food, new province, new everything. Luckily for us, they are awesome and we have some great hotel connections so we were set up really quick and Thanksgiving was still had. And it was really an amazing Thanksgiving. Some of the volunteers from flooded areas were not able to attend, but by that point they had been evacuated so at least weren't alone. There was even a lone American woman, who didn't speak Spanish, wandering the town we were in alone so we invited her to eat with us and before she left, said it was one of the best Thanksgivings she'd ever had. That was pretty nice. :) I hope everyone at home had a great Thanksgiving as well! I did miss you all.
I have about a million pictures to add to Facebook and add the links on the right. And I'm trying to get that done, but it can take awhile here. So keep checking back for turtle pictures! They'll be here soon, I promise! :)