Zoo

I visited the Paramaribo zoo with several friends. We found it funny that so many wild animals that did NOT belong to the zoo had come to the zoo looking for food that people drop. There were stray dogs, birds, and even monkeys. One wild parrot flew down to stare at the caged zoo parrots.
There were wild squirrel monkeys hanging out in a huge tree across from the caged zoo monkeys. The wild monkeys did not appreciate being photographed. When throwing food at us did not work, they tried peeing on us, since they were in a huge tree overhead. Actually, I was not beneath them. I decided not to dodge monkey pee, so I backed away. I did not get any photos of that ignorant mess. Oh well.

Pink Bananas!

These are my personal statements and do not reflect the opinions of PeaceCorps.

I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Suriname. Suriname contains a massive amount of unspoiled Amazon rainforest. This place has the most beautiful plants I have ever seen.  My personal favorites were the pink bananas I saw yesterday.

I have stopped working with the schools in the district. I was teaching biweekly typing lessons at a primary school and a junior high school / high school. There was a HUGE range of skill levels. Some kids had never used computer before while others had their own computers at home. On Fridays I worked with the teachers on Powerpoint, Excel, Word and Google. The hope was to eventually train them to teach the lessons in my place.

Now, I have moved to the city.

Yesterday I visited a flower shop. I thought it was a small indoor flower shop selling fresh cut flowers like the ones in the US.  Instead, it was a huge outdoor field, and all the flowers were still on the trees. The walkway through it was like a giant maze, so they hung traditionally decorated cloth (Maroon cloth is called pangie or kosu, Javanese cloth is called batik) to keep us from getting lost.
Along the way, I tried guava jelly/ jam/ marmalade (not sure which one) and awara juice. Awara looks like an orange but tastes like a mix of melon with citrus. 

At the end of the maze was food stand with performers. I saw a traditional Amerindian dance.