Food Fest

A local charity hosts a food festival each year in Santiago, and representatives of each country are invited to participate in a parade and sell food to raise money. We agreed to bring mac and cheese and after watching so many parades here, the girls finally got to be in one! We had no idea what a huge, fun event it was going to be. Hanging out with friends, eating good food, costumes, music and dancing and seeing so many people out and about made me love Santiago a little more. Our booth's net profit was something like $12, but we also bought lots of food from more profitable countries like Spain (sangria), Mexico (tacos) and Venezuela (cupcakes).

More Scenes

More from life in Panama, including a Monday morning national anthem ceremony (with a Justin Beiber song in Spanish) a cultural show I came upon on a work trip to the capital. The chicken family when they first started visiting us, C at the mall food court, a group of girls who attended a conversation class about Peanut Butter, and a work horse we passed on the way to school.

Skirt Story

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.

Panama Scenes and a List

When my photographer friend Monika came to visit at the end of February, I realized that I had been leaving my camera tucked away too much and that I wanted to do a better job of documenting the details of life here in Panama. I also let my list-making go a while back, and I've been accumulating a mental list of things I want to remember, so I think I'll make this post (and maybe one or two more) a compilation of random photos and thoughts.

Some things I absolutely love about Panama:

• Grocery store empanadas for a quick meal. Love.
• We feel safe. I have never felt threatened or unsafe, even alone at night. There are armed guards and police EVERYwhere, but they are friendly, not scary.
• Smoking in public is prohibited and really uncommon. (There is smoke from diesel vehicles and burning trash and fields, so it's still not the freshest air.)
• Working at my school connects me to people all over the country. I always have something to talk about with strangers.
• People are friendly and patient and looove the girls. They always comment about their eyes.
• In the interior, you experience real Panama. Even in the touristy spots, locals living authentically are mixed in with foreigners. We often travel alongside Panamanians, so we don't feel like we're in completely contrived-for-tourists experiences.
• I'm reminded daily of all that I have. Yesterday, a teacher told me how some students need to leave class early on afternoons that it rains because they have to cross a river before it gets to high. Another teacher told me he can't get anything to stay stuck on the walls because it's so windy in his school. These are open-air classrooms in a country that hits 95 degrees daily. He also teaches two grades per class.
• There are virtually no mosquitos. Zika was my first concern when I was offered a position in Panama, but I'm the only one who's gotten bitten, and only once or twice. We actually got ticketed for standing water in a pipe when the mosquito inspector visited!