The Week It Wouldn’t Stop Raining

It rained in Panama for a week straight. Now I should clarify, it rains in Panama practically everyday, for an hour or so. It is the rainy season. But this week it rained practically 24 hours a day…everyday. Towns were flooded, the power went out – and it just created a gray and depressing atmosphere.

Monday: WiFi…Finally!
On Monday, after over a month of sharing one internet connection, we finally got WiFi. I know that multiple internet connections may sound like a luxury and not a need, but believe me, in this house…we need it. May I remind you that 50% of Eric and my day is spent online, and it became difficult to negotiate whose turn it was to google something and whose yahoo account should stay on.

The best part was that I didn’t have to stick around the apartment and wait for the cable guys. I braved the rain and went out to lunch with a woman from the Embassy and the president of a community organization in Casco Viejo. It was a great lunch (one of many meetings I have had, learning about the youth and community work that is happening in and around Panama City). When I got back to the apartment, we both had internet!!!!! And neither of us have gotten off the computer since.

Tuesday: We Got Cheated!!!
We went to the ATM to get cash for the rent. We have to pay our rent in cash because it takes 20 days to cash an international check (and our landlord doesn’t want to wait that long to get paid). We were going to take out one chunk of money from our joint account and another chunk from my personal checking – as you are only allowed to take out up to $500 per day from a single account. The first cash withdrawal was fine. The second one however was not. Eric entered in all the info and the machine made the sound as if it was counting and releasing the cash, but nothing came out. A note popped up on the screen saying that the machine ran out of money and we would have to try again later. So went we went to a different machine to get the money out – then we received a notice that we had already taken out our daily allowance for the day. When we got home, I checked online and saw that the money was withdrawn from our account! We went back to the bank and talked to the manager, we called our bank in the States, we emailed them and filed a report. They said that they would do “an investigation”. That was a lot of money. The worst part was that we had to take out more money the next day so that we could pay the rent. Now our account looks depressingly low. We better get our money back!

Wednesday: Nothing
We did nothing. Really. We watched some TV, went online of course, made food, played with Frankie, and that is about it. It was too rainy to go out.

Thursday: Gringo Thanksgiving
We didn’t think that we would be celebrating Thanksgiving while we were in Panama - both because we don’t like the origins of Thanksgiving and because we didn’t have anyone to celebrate it with. When we got invited to attend a Gringo Thanksgiving, with some of the other recipients of the Fulbright Grant, we were hesitant. We did not want to spend the whole night talking about what it is like to be foreigners, we would rather talked with Panamanians about being Panamanian, but the call to socialize and eat turkey eventually won us over.

Eric made tostones and mojo, in order to bring some Puerto Rican flare to the dinner. I made candied yams; I wanted to go the traditional route. I combined two recipes that I found online. It was yummy!!!

There were about twenty of us on the rooftop patio of one of the Fulbrighters. There were Panamanians and North Americans (and some other cultures peppered in). Apparently, many Panamanians celebrate Thanksgiving too. I think that is odd. We ate, talked, laughed and generally enjoyed each other’s company and the view. The one thing that we did not do, however, is give thanks. I did not even realize until it was over that we had not done the one thing that is supposed to make this day standout from all other days. So Eric and I made sure that we did it when we got home. We gave thanks for being safe, feeling productive, and having friends and each other so far from home.

Friday: Christmas Has Officially Begun
Though we are not huge fans of Thanksgiving, we are fans of the post-Thanksgiving tradition of decorating for Christmas.

Surprisingly, at least for me, Christmas is a big deal over here. The stores began decorating before Halloween and they have entire floors dedicated to Christmas stuff. After pricing some fake Christmas trees in the more main stream malls, Eric and I decided to go to Ave. Central. This avenue is probably what you picture when you think of Central America – people selling fruit, lottery tickets and other cheap stuff in small stores and on the street. We would much prefer a real tree, but seeing as how pine trees don’t grown in Panama, we settled for a 5’ plastic one. We got the tree, ornaments, lights and stockings (including a tiny red sock for Frankie) all for under $40. We came home, put on some Christmas music and started decorating our tree. It made us a bit homesick for the States.

We turned off all of the lights, except for the ones of the tree and listened to Christmas music. Cheesy…sure – but it was nice.

At around 12am, we were still on our computers, hanging out in the living room, when all of the lights turned off. Either lightning struck a transformer or all of the rain caused it to blow – all we know is we heard a loud noise outside and then the neighborhood went dark. Even though it was nighttime and the lights should have been off anyway, it felt really creepy to have this forced darkness. We could hear people in the hallway, coming out of their apartments to see what was going on, and we saw people (or rather flashlights) moving around in the building across from us. We filmed some of the darkness and tried to stay up to see what would happen, but eventually the darkness got boring and we went to bed. A few hours later, while we were sleeping, we heard the TV come back on.

Blackout over.

Saturday: Eggs, Spaghetti and Salad
Nothing much happened during the day on Saturday. We cleaned. This has become a weekly ritual (my father would be proud!). We have a bird and ceramic floors, so weekly mopping is a must. We sweep, mop, clean the bathroom, water the plants and Windex the tables.

We did make it out in the afternoon to see Max Pain at the movie theater in the mall. That was the most recent movie available to see – our other choices were An American Haunting (which came out in 2005), Nim's Island (which on DVD in the States), Juno (which on DVD in the States), College Road Trip (yes, with Martin Lawrence…and yes it is on DVD in the States), High School Musical 3 and Quantum of Solace 007 (which Panamanians are totally into because it was filmed in Panama). So we chose Max Pain. It was bad. Didn’t make sense, poor character development, just stupid – even by brainless-comic book-action movie standards. What was also bad were the two granola-gringos in front of us talking the whole time. It is people like them that make us sometimes feel embarrassed to be North Americans.

After the movie, and as we do on most evenings, we settled in for our daily dose of Dr. Phil, House and Law & Order. Now I never watched much TV in New York – I wasn’t home enough to watch. We try to keep the TV off for most of the day when we are home, and try to fill our time with work, music, art, reading and internet exploration. But in the evening – it is hard not to get sucked in.

This evening, however, we were reduced to a dinner made up of eggs, spaghetti noodles and salad – basically, what we had left in the fridge. We have tried hard to stick to about $10 a day, for both of us, and that includes eating most of our meals at home. That also means that we run out of things quick. But in the interest of being economical, we decided to make due with what we had left over. Eggs were Eric’s suggestion. I was happy with the spaghetti and salad, but he insisted that we had a protein. So we ate our protein, our starch and our greens…and watched House. Just another Saturday night in Panama City – exciting, huh?!

Sunday: Sun!!!!
The sun finally decided to come out on Sunday morning…and just in time for church. Eric and I have been passively looking for a church since we got here. We wanted to find something close, energetic and bilingual (ok, that last one was my request). Almost across the street from our apartment building in the Hosanna Evangelical Church. Most of the churches in Panama are Catholic, so we were happy to find a Protestant church near by. This particular church seats 5,000 people – crazy right. They have a TV show, radio station and mega services. We attempted to go the week previous, but didn’t know what time the service was – and in very Panamanian fashion, there is NO information about services or times on their website or answering machine. This Sunday we guessed a time, got dressed and went.

Turns out we were a half-hour early for their next service and they were in the middle of Sunday School. There was at least a thousand people in the congregation and each section had a person standing in front teaching (or shouting) to the people in that section. It was Sunday School in mass, but subdivided – if you can picture it. The pulpit was large, with three movie-screen-sized screens hanging above it so that each section could see the preacher and musicians up close. There was also a camera crane on the side of the pulpit which would produce epic shots of the congregation praying and singing on the screen. Also hanging above the pulpit was a HUGE wooden eagle – yea, I don’t understand it either. It was about 16’ x 30’ and was in flight with it’s claws extended to the crowd. And if you think that is odd, there was an actual live bat flying around the church. Yea, that’s right. It flew right over people’s heads, near enough to grab. No one moved or screamed, as if everyone was used to this church mascot. Eric and I were not amused.

When the service started, a choir of about 20 went up to sing. They sand “Our God is an Awesome God”…in English. I thought that that was pretty funny, since everything else before and afterwards was in Spanish. The choir and band played about four more songs. The congregation was dancing and singing, and the children moved to the front of the pulpit to form a mini-Christian mosh-pit. We were happy to finally make it to a service, and were glad to learn two important things: what time it started and to sit on the first floor (away from the bat). We will be better prepared next Sunday.

After church we got something to eat (35¢ pastelitos, thank you very much) and took a cab to Casco Viejo. Picture Old San Juan, except poor…really poor. Picture if everyone from La Perla picked up their stuff, kicked out the artists, restaurants and tourists and moved into Old San Juan – that is Casco Viejo. It is beautiful – Spanish architecture, cobble stone streets, near the water, it is lovely. But I wouldn’t walk around at night. There was a flea market/ craft fair. They had masks, molas, paintings, clothes and jewelry. They also had $2.50 plates of food prepared by the local culinary school. We met some friends there, ate, looked around, watched the tourists try to haggle in bad Spanish, watched the local kids try to get money from the tourists and struck up conversations with Panamanian tour guides waiting for their North American clients to get out of the near by museum. It was a pretty cool afternoon – especially after feeling cooped up in the house the whole week.

So there you go. All of that in just one week. Imagine what fun and hilarity we will have in the 28 weeks to come.

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Make sure to watch the videos that I made about my life here in Panama. Look at "Capturing Panama" on the right-hand side of the blog.

Check it ever few weeks for new videos.