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!

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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.