Construction Progress….

I can’t just say ,”Casita” progress, because work is progressing to encompass the workshop as well. Things are moving along pretty well. We’ve started work on Scott’s workshop. We had hoped to get the roof on the workshop as fast as possible. So far, rainy season hasn’t been especially rainy. Which is good for us, but not so good for the water supply. So, the foundation is done and half of the floor has been poured. They are ready to start pouring the second half of the floor. All the plumbing has already been installed under the slab and the hole for the septic is dug, the leach field still needs to be done. Scott thinks the floor should be done this week. I think next week they will be starting on the walls, which will go up fast.

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Our latest Adventure….

Our latest adventure isn’t a fun one or an especially happy one. I thought about calling this post “Live & Learn” or “Lesson’s on Trust”, or possibly “How we Learned our lesson”…Pfffffft! But, although we trusted someone and that trust was betrayed, it wont stop us from continuing to be trusting people. This experience may just serve as a reminder of the necessity to be more discerning as to who we give that gift of trust to, but we wont stop trusting people. It’s just not the kind of people we are. Both Scott & I have a natural tendency to trust people until they prove they don’t deserve it. This mindset could be called a gamble or it could be called foolish by some. But I’ve found that most of the time its proven to be more of a benefit than not. Although there are times when we get let down and face disappointments, even feel rocked by how wrong we were in our assessment of someones character, I’d rather put out positive, generous energy than walk around feeling suspicious of everyone I come into contact with.

Back in Boquete, It’s Good To Be Home….

the mattress tied in!

Bye, Bye container!

Will it fit?

Its gonna be tight!

We had a great trip to California, but isn’t it always good to be home? The nicest thing about being back in California was seeing our friends and family, of course. And taking care of getting our container packed up was something we’ve been waiting to get done for a long time, so that was an accomplishment we were pleased to finally make. The logistics of seeing to the packing of the container was a bit of a challenge, and, I might even say, a pain in the you know what. !@# But in the end we were relieved to finally have it all done.

On The Bus To Panama City….

We’re 5 hours into a 7 hour bus ride to Panama City and the beginning of our journey to California. The busses here are not bad and the ride to the city, although looooooong, is comfortable, enough. We could opt to fly the short 45 minute flight from David to PC (which I would MUCH prefer ) but its hard to pass up the savings of a $15.00 bus ticket compared to a $250.00 plane ticket. The bus stops about halfway, in Santiago for a little lunch break. They stop at a cafeteria style place where we can stretch our legs and have a little lunch. It’s a really long day but we have our kindles charged and, as you can see, my iPad too.

Panama has been in the process of lots of construction this last few years. They have recently completed the construction of a brand new metro system in the city which is really quite impressive. When I was in the city with Emma she took me on a trial run ride so I could familiarize myself with it. So last time Scott and I were in town, just last week, we had our metro cards ready to go with money on them and knew how to easily go from the Albrook bus terminal to El Gongrejo neighborhood where The Hotel Milan is conveniently located. Its only about 4 stops from the bus terminal and is really fast and easy.

Another big project that’s currently underway is the expansion of the Interamerican highway. They are in the process of widening the highway and at the moment its quite a mess but this road is sorely in need of a makeover. This is the main road that goes all the way from Panama City to Costa Rica. For many years this road has been in pretty bad disrepair with big potholes that make it a very bad road to drive at night or during bad rain storms. Since we’ve been living here they completed the improvements and widening of the main road that goes from Boquete to David. This too has been a huge improvement when traveling down the hill from where we live.

While driving through Panama one can see many new housing developments and huge shopping malls and new hospitals and police stations under construction. There’s a lot happening here and it’s exciting to see. I can only imagine that there must be a lot of employment opportunity with all this work going on everywhere you look. Not to mention the huge expansion of the canal that’s been going on as well. What a lot of infrastructure improvements for Panama. Yea! Panama!! It’s great to see changes that are making life here even better for everyone.

We’re probably an hour or so outside the city now and I think I’ll do a bit of reading now. Cant wait to get on that plane in the morning and be back in Californina .

Going Back For A Visit For The First Time…

Going back where? Going back to California. We’ve been gone for nearly 14 months. Sigh… Can I be honest? I’m feeling a bit torn between excited and a little nervous about this first trip back to our old stomping grounds. I don’t really know why…but maybe by the time I finish writing this post I’ll have figured it out.

We’ll be in California for 10 days. Our biggest mission is to meet with the shipping company at our storage unit in San Jose and oversee the packing of all our belongings that have been patiently awaiting this day. We’re hoping this will take up only three or four of our days . But we also have to deal with a bunch of paperwork and things that we need to take to the shredder and dispose of. Do I really need to hold onto 30 years of tax returns? I think not. And it might be okay to let go of all those carefully filed receipts for the remodel we did on the house in Los Altos. I may not need to ship old PG&E bills and Water and Garbage bills either. I think the coast is clear to dump all those papers in that big shredder and just walk away…or runnnnn! Hah! The other job we have amidst the packing is to hold back a few things that we’ve decided are not absolutely essential to bring, just in case all our goodies don’t quite fit in the shipping container. We have a list of items that we will then need to figure out what to do with. Anyone wanna have a garage sale?

A Few Photos Of The Casita…

Today I took a few pictures and I thought I would share them with you, so here they are….

The Casita project update…

All this traveling and leaving Boquete has created a bit of a difficult crimp in our project, but progress continues in spite of it all. Luckily for us, we have a very dependable crew of hard working guys who we can trust to continue doing what they are supposed to do even when Scott isn’t there to watch their every move. It’s not everyday that you end up with men like that. It means a lot to us that we can leave them unsupervised for short period of time and come back to see that they kept working hard and doing a good job. And our neighbors are also a huge help when we have to go out of town. Al has very kindly taken care of giving the guys their pay when we are gone for a payday. It is something that is more helpful than he even realizes. We are so blessed to have such amazing neighbors who I can tell will be like family to us when we live there. I often marvel at our good luck. 🙂

One Big Step Closer To Being ‘Legit’ In Panama…

Our trip to Panama City was a mix of good and not so good. The good is that we’re now ‘officially’ in the system and we have our temporary Panama ID’s in our hot little hands….Yes! Our permanent ID’s should be in our possession in a few months time. The bad part of our trip was the disappointing realization that our plans to fly to California had to be cancelled at least temporarily. This due to a tiny little detail our attorney neglected to make perfectly clear to us clueless Gringos…. When I asked our attorney if it would be okay for us to plan to return to the states as soon as our application was in process she said,”yes, as soon as your application is in process you can leave Panama”. Okay, that seemed clear to us so we booked the trip for the day after meeting with her. But when I mentioned we were leaving on Saturday, (the very next day) I got…”What?, you cant do that!” SCREEEEEECH! (this is the sound of our plans coming to a screeching halt!)

Our Tranquilo Is Being Tested ….

We’re in Panama City to officially begin the application process for our residency visa. Our attorney told us to bring copies of our passports, copies of the last entry stamp in our passports. Copies of a bill or contract that shows proof of our address in Boquete and five passport photos along with cash to pay for application. No problema….

She seems to have been very thorough except for one tiny little detail…. We must have a multi entry visa before leaving Panama when our visa application is in process! Which we knew , what we did not know is… This visa takes two business days to process..Gasp !! This little bit if information somehow didn’t get explained to us when I very clearly asked about leaving the country when the application is “in process”, which she very clearly answered, “YES you can leave as soon as it is “in Process”. If we had left panama we would have been fined $ 4,000.00! Deep breath…. Okay… So, my mistake was not asking extremely specific questions . When I asked if we could leave after our application was officially ‘in process’ I should have asked ‘WHEN” we could leave. Ugggggg! Oh Boy! Gotta chalk this one up to yet another lesson learned. Be more specific Holly.

We should have known better to plan things so tightly. This is Panama after all, right. Things just seem to get done much differently than one would expect. It would have been so nice to have had a list of important things and this whole entire process has been such a trial and error for us. You would think this was the first Residency Visa ever to be applied for. I mean come on! When someone asks about leaving during the application process why not include in your answer,”Be aware, you must not leave the country until the multi entry visa is processed which takes TWO days!” Uggggg! And our attorney specializes in immigration law. Well, I cant put the blame all on her, I am the one who didn’t ask the right questions. As a matter of fact, even besides our mistake of planning to leave the country, we couldn’t even return to Boquete if we wanted to until Tuesday because the immigration will have our passports. So no matter what, even besides the snafoo on the trip back to the states, had we planned only to be here in Panama City for Thursday & Friday, we would have been in for a big surprise because we wont have or passports back until Tuesday. So, We sit, time to start the fun of canceling all the hotels, the rental car, the airline itinerary, and oh yes…letting all our friends and family know the bad news.

We have already arranged the shipping company to meet us at our storage in San Jose, to pack our container. Right this minute we are thinking about sticking with that part of our plan. We might just have to get to Ca on Wed, meet with the shippers on Thursday and fly home on Friday. But, nothing is set in stone at the moment. We are relaxing and recovering from our crazy morning, I’m pretty sure Scott is fast asleep, a nap will cure everything. In a little bit we will regroup and strategize about what to do. There must be an upside to this dilemma, I just haven’t seen it quite yet. But, don’t you worry, I’ll figure out why its a good thing and get right back to ya….For now my mantra is ….Breath…Tranquilo….Breathe….Tranquilo…..Ahhhh feeling better already! Whew…what an Adventure! PFFFFFFT…

A Whirlwind Day…

Yesterday, (Monday) was a crazy day. We had made plans to go to Panama City on Wednesday so that we would be there in the morning on Thursday to meet with Mayra, our Attorney. She had emailed us to let us know we need to be there to sign paperwork to start the application process of our residency visa. At long last all the documents we’ve been working on gathering are all acceptable. They’ve been processed and now we can go To Panama City to meet with the Attorney and begin the official application process for our visa and then to California to prepare our container to be shipped to Panama. In the morning Scott said,”Why don’t we go ahead and try to get our trip to the States in while we’re at it.” Oh Boy, that’s gonna take some organizing….