Hiking, Birdwatching, Orchid Festival and our first house guest…

We’re enjoying our first house guest here in our little casita.  Emma is on her spring break from teaching in Panama City.  She flew into David on Sunday morning and I drove down to pick her up.  This is the first time we’ve hosted anyone in our new casita.  I’m glad its Emma because she’s so low maintenance and doesn’t mind that we’re still kinda roughing it up here.   We don’t’ have a guest room in the casita so it’s the air mattress on the living room floor for her.  And we also don’t have any interior doors yet which means you must actually say the word, “SLAM!” when you shut the shower curtain that we have as our bathroom door! hah!  And then there’s the no electricity thing…well, we have electricity but its coming from that good ol’ generator still. So, Scott has to go out at night and turn it off and then he has to get out there in the morning to start it up again. And heaven forbid the generator should run out of gas in the middle of watching a movie or cooking dinner…ugh! All this hasn’t seemed to faze our first houseguest. She’s lived in Panama for nearly four years so she’s been thoroughly desensitized to things being ‘not-quite-right’ all the time.

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An Adventure…

Adventure!

Today (Monday) I shared on my Facebook page, a little adventure I had with one of our workers Martin. He came to talk to Scott this morning (Monday morning) as our crew was just getting started. Apparently he needed help getting his young wife to the hospital because she was in labor. Yikes! This conversation with Scott took place on my terrace right in front of the open kitchen window where I was washing dishes. I stopped what I was doing and grabbed my keys. I could understand enough of the conversation to get that Scott told Martin I would drive them to the hospital. So I happily grabbed my purse and my keys, Martin and I got into my car and he directed me to where they live. Martin is only about 21 years old, he’s been working with us on our construction project for about 6 months now. He and his wife are a very young indigenous couple and he speaks very broken Spanish she speaks no spanish or english. Their native language is the Ngobe language and he seems to have about as much Spanish as me, maybe even less! So his ability to direct me to where he lives was a comedy of errors, but I got there eventually.

A Buen Dia! (I know its not correct but its how they say it here, humph!

To Have A “Buen Dia”….

What does it mean to you to have a good day, or as they say here..”Buen Dia”? To smile. To see my friends, To laugh with my friends, this makes every day good. A day is good when I know the people I love and care about are well. When I know my daughter, my mother, my sister, my friends, my sweet hubby are all well, this alone can make my day a good one.

Here’s what I’ve learned about learning Spanish…

I’ve been living here in Panama for nearly two years. Before this move I had never in my life tried to learn any other language. As a matter of fact,I don’t even recall having ever spent much time learning my own language! Boy, nothing like learning how much you dont know about your own native tongue while trying to learn another language! I’ve had to re-learn English in order to learn Spanish! Seriously! I enjoy writing, and I also love talking, but when I write, I do my best but I’m sure all you Grammar junkies out there must cringe at my many naive errors. Run on sentences, horrible paragraphs, spelling errors, misuse of commas, wayyyyyyy too many exclamation marks!!!!! Grammatical boo boos that I can’t even begin to even realize I’ve made. As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure my spell check is about ready to throw in the towel! hah!

Things are really coming together…

This place is really beginning to feel more and more like a home! Even without having electricity its feeling so cozy and homey. The generator works just fine for providing power, who needs electricity! hah! I have to keep our gasoline tanks full, but I don’t mind. Even though Scott may be getting a little tired of going outside at night before we go to bed and in the morning when we get up to start the generator, we’re not feeling like we’re missing out on much not having electricity. Eventually we’ll have power, our architect has told us that our electrical plans are at Union Fenosa (the electric company), for approval for our permit. He had already gotten the permit but it was not for the correct amount of amps. So he had to amend it. As soon as we have the permit we’ll be ready to have the electrician pull the wire through the conduit which Scott already put in the ground . Although….we still need to buy the wire and we had to special order the two transformers which have not yet arrived. So, who knows how long that whole process will take…and as long as I have my handy little generator all is well in my mind.

I Wish You Were Here…

Sigh…this is what my daughter said to me in a text last night, “I wish you were here.”.  Gulp.  Those are hard words for mom to hear from so far away.  Especially when I know she’s having a particularly difficult day and really just wants to connect with her mom.  Its times like this when I wonder, “Am I a terrible mom for moving so far away?”…Most of the time my daughters life is so fast paced and busy she doesn’t have time to think about me or miss me much, which is as it should be.  This dynamic between the two of us was the same when we lived nearby, so its not completely a function of my living in Central America.  When we lived near each other I wouldn’t hear from her for weeks on end and I’d be sad that we didn’t spend more time together.  Kids grow up and go their own way, which is what’s supposed to happen.  But the hardest thing is not having the ability to spontaneously drop by to get a hug every once in a blue moon when we need it.