One day during the first week of school, I had an epiphany. Maybe the school uniform skirt was so long on N because all the other moms had had theirs hemmed! So I set out to find a seamstress. As it always seems to happen, the first person I asked was the right one. It turned out the mother of my colleague does alterations on the side. So E gathered the skirts and we followed my friend to her mom's house after work. It was really lovely to see a snippet of a Panamanian family's life this way. N changed her clothes in a bedroom, and we met my friend's brother and son. Her mom offered us cashew fruit juice (good at first, but then weird, we agreed), and sewed while we waited.
Afterward, we needed to have the thousands little pleats pressed so that she could were one skirt to school the next day. I stopped into a place I had seen and asked for the service in Spanish. It was the first time someone laughed at me/my Spanish. It hurt a little, maybe because she didn't offer correction, but we still got the job done. And the laundromat was photo worthy, so I forgave the worker.
These are the details I love, when I get to experience real, day-in-day-out Panamanian life.
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