January 15, 2011

I think we are almost real Panamanians. On one of my early morning walks this week, I stopped by a nearby pizza parlor to check their hours, since Wayne needed to go pick up a pizza as we were having a friend over for lunch. (yep, still don’t cook). Typical - no hours were posted. So I picked up my little dog and walked into the bakery next door. I figured, hey in Panama who cares if you bring a pet into an eating establishment. Apparently, no one does. Anyway, I got out ENOUGH words in Spanish that the gal at the counter actually understood me well enough to answer my question. And what is even more important is that I understood her one word answer to tell me about what time it opened. Talk about a mountain top experience! Today, we went with some friends to a couple of local places. Wayne, trying to get out of a parking lot, went down a one way street the wrong way. I, of course, mentioned to him the arrow pointing in the opposite direction we were going and he just laughed and said that he is NOW a Panamanian driver. Hey, we got where we were going must faster than we would have doing it the correct way, so that makes it alright. Does this sound like we are finally “getting into the country???” Of course, our friends have lived in other countries and honestly think the driving is “sane” around here.
People use these large tanks of propane gas for cooking, hot water heaters, and dryers here since electricity is so expensive. There are no main gas lines. You have two tanks and when one tank is getting low, you order a new one. You don’t want to order it too soon as it might get stolen, so you wait until you feel like you have only a few days left. We were at that position today. So, we look up the telephone number, but knew we couldn’t just call and order it. It is really, really hard to use hand gestures and charades over the phone. We had to wait until we saw our neighbor and ask her to call for us. We got from point A to point B, but we still need lots of help to do so.
Met a new friend in the park today. The park close to our apartment is a fertile field to meet new and interesting people. Today, I met a gal that actually came up to me asking directions (in English). She was on her way to a Peace Corp breakfast (in our neighborhood / town). Guess she, along with a group of 39 others, were on their way to outlying areas of Panama to do Peace Corp work. Each person was going into a village by themselves for 27 months with no water, no sewer, no electricity (no nothing) to teach English to local people. They drop them off someplace 3 to 5 km from their final destination and point them in the direction they should go. Sometimes, they actually use a pack animal to help haul things. Yikes. It sounds interesting, but something that I would certainly not want to do?
This has been a marvelous four week vacation. Perfect weather in my mind. Hot, humid during the days, but cool and windy at night. Our a/c is off every evening and it is as pleasant as can be. It is still raining a little every afternoon, which is really strange since this is the dry season. Probably for the first time in my life, I am not ready to go back to school. I think it is the weather. I would rather be outside. In the states, I am always ready to go back as it is hot in August, cold in January, and rainy in March.