April 15, 2011

So, we were at the mall and I was dying to go eat at a fun restaurant that sells crepes. They have a spinach one that I absolutely love. Went in, ordered it, and they promptly tell me they are out of spinach!! In a country where it grows like a weed??? But then, my friend went to a place Saturday night and asked for a sandwich. They were out of bread, so then she changed her order to a pepperoni pizza. They were out of pepperoni.
Wayne was helping a guy move a bed to an apartment on Sunday. Then, a security guard at the apartment complex got agitated and started complaining to Wayne. Of course, Wayne had no clue what he said. So, the guard had to get someone that spoke English. Well, little did we know (or several other people that we asked), but apparently there is a law in this country that you can NOT move on Sundays. You can drink, you can do any number of other things, but you cannot move. A “day of rest”? But, someone else mentioned to me that it is also illegal to move at night. Apparently, too many people skip out of their apartments without paying their rent.
Oh, does it rain a lot as the seasons change! Not all day, but you can be outside and it just decides to open the skies and let it pour. An umbrella is just literally a joke. Perhaps that is why this is the tropics? But, within a few days after the rain has started, the beautiful flowers and green grass are all coming back and once again we are seeing new flowers that we haven’t seen before. It is amazing to watch God’s creation change before our eyes as the seasons change again. I could really enjoy it other than the fact it gets really humid. You have to have your a/c on part of the day just to pull the humidity out. Apparently, someone told me today that if you leave your car parked for a couple weeks while going on vacation, you will find mold spots in it when you return.
One of my friends lives in the interior. Her house had all the plumbing that you would expect in a house, but the water pressure just doesn’t get the water into the pipes. So she has to have water delivered a couple times a week, put in big tanks in her yard and then she can live normally. Yet, at night they always leave a faucet on, so should the pressure become strong enough (which does happen occasionally), they will know and can get up and collect as much water as they can. I would find that so disturbing, yet she is living just fine with it. And she just moved here from California last summer to marry a Panamanian that she met on a missions trip here 20 some years ago and they reconnected. Not like she is used to this lifestyle.
Ready for socialized medicine? A gal at church had cataracts and was going blind. With socialized medicine here in Panama, you have to first get an appointment with a regular doctor who may or may not refer you to a specialist. You can wait MONTHS for that first appointment. So, while she was waiting, she rapidly was going blind. The church gathered money for her to go to a private hospital and have the surgery. She is fine now, but four months after she got home from the surgery, she finally got the call to come in for her first appointment with the government physician. Scary??? If you are really sick, you go to the hospital at 5:00 am, get a number and then wait perhaps ALL day to finally get in to see a doctor. I have heard too many of these scary stories.