Annalisa en Panamá

 Forecast:  88°/76° and partly with thundershowers likely;  Humidity : 90% Sunrise  5:58 am.,  Sunset  6:30 p.m. I knew Panama would be hot, and I knew Panama would be rainy.  Panama is also humid, very humid.  Just how humid is it? The gray line in the graph below shows the average humidity by month: in March and April, it dips to a low of just above 70%, but for much of the year, it's 80-90% humidity.   It's so humid, that in our air-conditioned bedroom, the humidity is still 68%. Photo evidence: it's moist here. It's so humid, that sometimes after I go for a run or a long walk, instead of doing a breath meditation or listening meditation, I do a sweat meditation.   It's so humid that when my husband gets off his bike and starts walking, his Garmin stops working: he's so sweaty it can't read his pulse. If an *exercise watch* can't keep up with the heat and humidity, imagine how hard it is for mere mortals like us! It's so hum...

Juntos Podemos (which translates to "Together we can") is a school in Curundú, a very poor and crime-ridden neighborhood in the city of Panama. The neighborhood was once thriving: across the street from the school is the former Olympic Stadium, and the building itself is in the now-defunct offices of Gulf Oil, which left the place about 40 years ago. You can still see the Gulf logo on the front stairs. Juntos Podemos bought this building about 20 years ago and started a bilingual school.  Inside, the school has decorated and painted the walls with brightly colored and cheerful murals.  The cafeteria inside the school Another view of the cafeteria, with doors that lead into classrooms on two floors. There are about 250 children who come on Saturdays; they get food and activities and of course a bit of bible outreach.  While I was visiting (on a Wednesday), a brother/sister who normally come on Saturday were there to get school shoes, which the school gives away when they h...

I'm trying to squeeze in All The Adventures in my short time remaining here, and so last Sunday I skipped church (!) to go on a fishing adventure in Lake Gatun.  That's the lake that was formed in the middle of Panama by damming the Gatun River with a big dam called the Gatun Dam.  (Sense a pattern here?) Damming the river not only kept the erratic rains from creating huge river surges that would have flooded and eroded the canal, it also meant that now the whole middle of the canal is a wide lake where boats can pass one another.  One of my daughters thought the canal would look like a skinny channel all the way across: it doesn't.  It has skinny channels at either end, where the locks are, but in the middle there's a lake surrounded by a beautiful rainforest preserve. That's where we went fishing, and where we got to see MASSIVE container ships passing through. My boat mates.  They were almost all newbies to fishing, like me. I brought my swimsuit, just in cas...

This past weekend, I traveled all the way from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic side.  It's a lot easier to do in Panama than in the U.S., that's for sure!  Even with Panama roads, driving from Panama City to Portobello, which includes a bunch of driving along the Caribbean shore, took about 2 or 2.5 hours. I was going as part of a road trip to see Portobello's annual "Congos y Diablos" festival, which celebrates the history of the area from the point of view of the formerly enslaved people. It's a raucous celebration.  The "Congos" part of the title refers to the Congolese who were brought to the country as slaves, and the "Diablos" are the Spanish overseers.  Before the festival started, we got to explore a bit of the history of Portobello itself, a city founded in the 1500's.  One of the beautiful old buildings has been preserved and turned into an interactive museum.   Clearly, we need to play the drums.  We did it.  "El fin d...

For a quick glimpse of a Fulbright experience that has some big differences from my own, here's a peek at a lovely dinner I had about a week ago.  M, a Fulbrighter who arrived in December, moved with her daughter into a two-bedroom apartment in the heart of Panama City, in a popular neighborhood called "El Cangrejo" ("the Crab").   She doesn't walk past crocodiles, ñeques, coatis, parakeets, etc like I do, but she has much more immediate access to people-related things: a nearby park with active playdates for her daughter and Zumba classes for neighbors, stores and restaurants galore literally around the corner, a short walk to pedestrian- and bike-friendly areas like the Cinta Costera, a metro station just down the street.   One view from the balcony.  It's the city! Kind of ironically, even though I chose my AirBnB partly for its walkability, M is getting LOTS more walking and general exercise in her life than she did in the U.S., which is the exact op...

A couple of people suggested that I visit the Bahá’í Temple here in Panama, and so when an English Language Fellow (another program, like Fulbright, run by the U.S. State Department) expressed interest, I made it a date.  Here's the plan:  We'll meet at the San Isidro Metro station shortly before 11:45 a.m Sunday (April 27), and take the Temple Bus to the temple itself.  For more detail, see https://templo.panamabahai.net/ That site says El Templo Bahá’í is open to all, free, Mon-Sun, 9 to 6.  They offer free transportation from the San Isidro metro to the Temple.  Directions to the bus:  "bájate en la estación de San Isidro y camina unos cuantos pasos, verás un gran portón negro."  That is, "Get off at San Isidro station and walk a few steps, you will see a large black gate." The directions online on how to get there were surprisingly helpful (even listing the times for hopping on the free shuttle from the metro to the temple).  And to my delight...