Our One Year Anniversary Of Living In Panama!

Wow! A year has already gone by! How the heck did that happen? I have no idea, but it’s certainly been a wild ride!. It’s funny how the year ‘before’ our move seemed to drag on and on, but our first year living here in Boquete seems to have flown by like the blink of any eye. Anniversaries are usually a good time to reflect on many things about the previous year and the experiences that we had. I’ve tried to share the good, as well as the not so good or especially challenging parts of my first year of adjusting to living in another country and adapting to a totally different life. I’ve shared my story and my own personal perspective on my expat experience. We’ve accomplished a lot in the first year of our new adventure. We’ve managed to create a new life here that suits us and is making us very happy. Building a new life takes a lot of time and energy and the great news is, we have all the time in the world! We’re in no hurry and our adventure is moving along at a pace that suits us just fine.

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Panama City, Albrook Mall

This gallery contains 19 photos.

Originally posted on The Panama Adventure:
When Holly and I arrived in Panama City, we had some extra time and went to Albrook Mall which is conveniently located next to the Albrook Bus Terminal. I heard it was a big mall but my goodness, it was HUGE! We walked and walked but never seemed to run…

My Time So Far With Mariah…

For months I’ve been counting the day’s until Mariah got to Panama! She arrived on May 11th and today she has 10 more days of her visit left, she goes home on June 3rd. We’ve had so much fun exploring together and reconnecting in a way that we never have before. I must say that I ‘m enjoying the company of my daughter as a mature, (mostly! 🙂 Hah! ) young women, for the first time. It’s been so incredible to get to know this independent, young women and to discover and renew a relationship with her like I’ve never had before. We’ve been working on putting the past travails behind us and on establishing a relationship based on who we are now. The past is long gone and although we all three went through a lot of pain and sorrow together , it’s time that we all let go and forgive. We’ll just chalk it up to a nasty adolescence and move forward from here…

Summit Zoo and Gamboa

This gallery contains 16 photos.

Originally posted on The Panama Adventure:
Friday was our day to do whatever we wanted while while Emma worked. She fixed us up with a driver for the day and we sure felt spoiled. We had this really nice guy with a comfortable vehicle who knew his way around the city, and he was all…

Casita Progress…

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As I've been running around with Mariah enjoying every second with her, Scott continues to slave away up at the property. He's determined to get the roof on the casita before the rainy season begins in earnest. We've had a little rain, but not too much yet. He thinks by next week we should be pretty close to having the entire house covered with the first part of the roof. Yea! I was up there this week having lunch with him and was very impressed and not a little overwhelmed just watching all the different projects that he's overseeing all at the same time! While Two guys are up on the roof doing all the welding, another two are setting forms and pouring the concrete pillars on the terrace, and then two are working on making a retaining wall and one other guy was digging the long ditch for the septic system. Whew! And Scott must oversee all these different projects simultaneously while he's running back and forth with materials and planning what comes next. I tell ya, it's darn right exhausting just thinking about all the forethought it takes to make a project like this happen, and he's doing it all in a language that he has just learned! That guy! (big, proud smile!)

My Best Ever Mother’s Day Present…

Well, all the waiting and anticipation is over and my precious daughter is finally here with me in Panama. I had the best Mother’s Day ! It’s been almost a whole year since I’ve seen her and to have her right here next to me makes my heart so happy. Her journey went well and she arrived in Panama City without having any problems with her flights from California. I must admit, I had a bit of a panic attack when she told me that her friend was arriving at her house in San Jose at 6:30 to drive her to the San Francisco Airport for an 8:30 P.M. flight! “WHAT!” Oh my god, I was quickly texting her that she needed to get to the airport at least 2 hours early for an international flight. She had a layover in Vegas but her bags would have to be checked in for the international flight. The drive from San Jose to SF is at least 45 minutes, which means she would not get to the airport until after 7:00 for an 8:30 departure. This is her first time traveling internationally and I was very nervous, I know….”Where’s that ‘tranquilo’ Holly?” Humph! The possibility of her missing the flight had my stomach in knots! My daughter has a natural ability to have that affect on me…hah! Some things never change…

We all have such different views, all spectacular in different ways…

Spending time here in the city with Emma and experiencing a little bit of how her life plays out in Panama City, has been a lot of fun and pretty interesting. She’s lived in Panama City for about 3 years. What brought her here from Arizona was a job as a music teacher at an international school. As much as I’m enjoying the tranquility of life in the highlands of Panama in a small town, I must say, Living in the city is much more conducive to being an active, ambitious 20 something career women with a social life. She lives in a beautiful high rise apartment on the 16th floor (27 floors in the building), that has a spectacular view of the skyline of the city. I’m struck by just how safe it feels living in an apartment like this with a very secure parking garage and a security guard in the lobby. Of course, that’s the “mom” in me thinking about safety, hah!

Isla Iguana 07/05/2014

This is Karens post from our day on the beach..short , and to the point….Life soooooo doesn’t suck!

In Da Campo

On Sunday I met a young lady who asked me a common question; “What do you do all day.?” With mis amigas Kris and Holly visiting this is what Girls Day looks like in the campo. Life sure sucks…not.

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Pedasi and Isla Iguana (A post written by Kris)

Pedasi and Isla Iguana.

A Girls Getaway on My Way To Get Mariah….

Yesterday (Tuesday) was a smooth travel day on our way to Pedasi. We left David around 10:00 a.m. and after changing buses in Diviso and then in Chitre and then Las Tablas, Karen picked us up at about 5:30. I know it sounds like a complicated series of buses but it was actually quite easy and incredibly smooth with each transfer. Even the very start of our journey turned out super easy because just as soon as we got our backpacks out of Joel’s car a guy kinda grabbed us (well, not ‘grabbed’ exactly, but you know, approached us intending to get us on his bus) and asked if we were going to Panama City, Kris said, “No, Las Tablas”, and he told us to get right on the but that was about to leave instead of going to stand in the long line for the bigger, double decker bus. (No Problem, we’d much rather get on your bus than stand in that line!) So… we marched on over and gave the guy our bags to be stowed under the bus and found our seats. We made sure he knew we were traveling to Las Tablas and he was diligent about letting us know when it was time for us to exit at Diviso which was really just a little bus stop on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere. There were two Panamanian women also waiting at that stop and they asked us where we were going and made sure we got on the right little van , the same van they got on, and we heard them tell the driver that we were going to Chitre. We had only waited for a few minutes at that little stop before the van drove up and we were once again swept away to the next leg of our little journey. Once we got to Chitre, the driver gave us our bags from the back of the van and kindly directed us to the Bus for Las Tablas ,right around the corner, second bus, that was just about to leave. Geesh! This whole day we felt so taken care of by all these kind, generous Panamanians who seemed to help us at every turn, even when we didn’t even ask for help. It was really very touching and heartwarming. Even though we were on buses and vans for about 7 hours Kris and I both felt like the day just flew by so fast (could that be due to all the chatting and playing on our iPads?, maybe!) . We only waited a few minutes before Karen showed up and Whisked us off to Pedasi, just about a 20ish minute drive from Las Tablas.

I’m Off To Pedasi This Morning And When I Return To Boquete It Will Be With Mariah!!!! Yipeeeeee….

This morning My friend Kris & I are taking the bus from David to Santiago and switching buses to get our selves to Las Tablas and our friend Karen will pick us up there and drive us to her home in Pedasi. She lives in a small town on the coast, going towards Panama City. Both Karen and Kris are fellow bloggers who I’ve met through writing my blog, well, I haven’t actually ‘met’ Karen yet, we’ve been corresponding through our blogs for a couple of years now. So I’m really excited to be finally getting a chance to spend some time getting to know her in real life. Kris & I will spend two nights in Pedasi and hopefully get some beach time in while we’re there. Then we get back on the bus on Thursday and make the remainder of the journey to Panama City to meet up with another blogging friend Emma, who teaches music at an international school in the city. She invited us to attend a production that her students are performing in on Friday night. Emma has arranged for a driver to entertain us on Friday while she’s at work and he will show us some of the touristy spots that we haven’t seen and then get us to the school in time for the show. Kris will head back to David on Saturday and then Emma & I will go to the airport on Sunday morning to pick up my Daughter, Mariah!!! If it werent exciting enough to have my baby here in Panama with me, It’s also U.S. Mother’s Day and Emma arranged for a Champagn Brunch at a nice restaurant that she knows, in an area of the city called Casco Viejo. You can imagine how excited I am for this next couple of days. I’ve been fluttering around my house for the last two days just getting ready for her visit and making everything just right. We will take the bus back here to Boquete on Monday oh how nice it will be to have her here with me and to show her around our new home. I hope she likes it as much as I do….

A Quick Trip To Houston & Back To Our Peaceful Mountain Home…..

A trip to Houston Texas to personally deal with getting documents notarized and authenticated as well as getting our new set of fingerprints for our new FBI background check, was a success. And it was also time for our border run so we got that out of the way at the same time. Mind you, we already went through this whole notarize, authenticate, apostle process once before and we knew from experience that mailing it all would take way too much time. Not to mention we were in serious need of a little shopping spree! (Insert Happy Dance Right Here!) So Flying into Houston and walking over to the Panamanian consulate to deal with it all in person was a much more efficient way to do it. Getting our fingerprints done there was also much easier although the ‘runaround’ that we went through was very reminiscent of Panama. Before we even arrived in Houston we had gone online to Google maps to locate the nearest Police station to go for our fingerprints. When we got there the guy told us we would need to go to the Main Police Station downtown Houston….Okay. Off we went to the Main Police station. After searching for a place to park and paying $10.00 for the precious spot, we went into the building only to be told by the friendly man at the reception desk that we would have to go to the Permit office in a different area of town…..Okay….off we went AGAIN, laughing all the way because it’s not just Panama that makes you pull out your hair! Hah! At least it was all in English so even though we were getting the ‘runaround’, we felt just a tiny bit less clueless just understanding how to get someplace and what we were supposed to do. After finding the permit office we again had a “Panama” moment when we were told to take the elevator down to the basement then the guy down there told us to take the elevator back up to where we had already been to pay at the window and then come back down to the basement! HAh!!! Okay…..down, up , down again… We had to laugh at how similar to Panama some parts of our trip turned out to be. Of course, finding your way around a strange place when they have actual street names and addresses on buildings is an amazing experience! No problem! Oh! And GPS is a dream come true! YEA for GPS!! The smartest thing we did on this trip was to rent a car from the Hertz office in the hotel for a day. We had planned to take taxi’s but Sheesh! The taxi from the airport to the hotel was $45.00! We’re not in Boquete anymore! The rental car was only $65.00 for 24 hours, not bad. We were really glad to have it, especially given the fact that we ended up doing so much running a round.