Annalisa en Panamá

Halloween is apparently going to be a lot of fun here in Panama.  While I collect experiences and maybe a few photos today, here are two photos related to my porch back in Pennsylvania to tide you over in the meanwhile. Photo number one is courtesy of a former student of mine who wrote to ask for a letter of recommendation as she applies to grad school.  She ended the letter with this postscript: PS. It was actually fall break when I was writing this email and I was drafting this email in Lancaster! [Another former student] and I passed your home when we were strolling around near the neighborhood and we  saw the cute message "The cows are on Vacation!" "The cows are on vacation; they will return June 2025" As for Photo Number Two . . . In spite of the cow shelves and all the cows themselves being stowed away in the basement while I'm here in Panama, and even though the "Take a Cow/Leave A Cow" Little Farm Library similarly sits in storage, my home car

Friday:  Parque Omar I'd been to Panama City's Parque Omar in the past, but this past Friday I went again, this time with a new friend.  Alexandra told me her favorite part of the Parque is the library, and then she told me she's a real nerd, and I said back that's why we get along so well.  So this time, we walked around outside a bit, but we also spent some time touring the library.  It's open and spacious, probably similar in size to the main library in my own home city,  or a little smaller.   The library had a bunch of neat art in the building.  In the children's section, there's a carved wooden block showing a woman reading to, or telling stories to, a large crowd of listeners.   I really admired this carving on the desk where kids can check out books or ask for help. There was also an exhibit of Ukraine-theme posters and paintings.   I had to take pictures of these to show my husband, who volunteers with Ukraine advocacy/aid groups. There weren't

 Forecast:  87°/77° with thundershowers possible in the afternoon;  Humidity :  91% Sunrise  6:06 am.,  Sunset  5:57 p.m. I am kind of fascinated by trash and garbage --- back home, I'm constantly trying to find ways to reduce the amount of trash I produce, for example --- and so figuring out how garbage works here in a completely different country is obviously something I've been paying attention to.   One of the most striking and obvious aspects of trash collection here are the garbage cages you see in front of many house.  A garbage cage on a stand. A different style of garbage cage on a stand. A garbage hut, on the ground. No cage, but a garbage can with a lid held in place by  large rocks hanging from ropes. A garbage can closet, with no gate. A garbage hut with a gate. And sometimes, plain old garbage cans like you'd see back in Pennsylvania. There's a raccoon-like creature here, the "gato solo" (coati mundi?) that people point to as the reason for these

Here are some random thoughts on stuff I've been learning about Spanish since the last miscellaneous post . "Chevere" means "cool, awesome".  It's the cool word to use here.  I tell someone I went whale watching, and they say, "¡Que chevere!"  ( I just realized I said that in the last post, too.  Oh well, it's still a fun word to say ). One time I was waiting for a bus, and it took much, much longer than I expected.  In general, the longest I've had to wait has been about 20 minutes, but on this particular day, it was nearly an hour. A group of men came to do some repairs on the bus stop structure, and I told them I was worried that maybe for some reason the bus had actually stopped running, or maybe changed routes.  They talked among themselves, and then explained to me I should keep waiting; the bus was delayed because of a "tranque".  I wasn't sure what that word meant: was it a terrorist attack? A crash? Since then, I'

I had two fun outings planned for this past weekend, and so I was delighted -- delighted , I tell you -- when I went for a morning walk on Saturday and the skies looked like this.  As I wrote to my family, "October is supposed to be the rainy month here in Panama, and we have indeed had a few torrential downpours, mostly at night. But we've also had quite a few days where the clouds clear and the skies are an amazing blue, with the blazing sun beating down and doing its own version of drenching me in sweat. I'm making good use of my big orange hat and my sunscreen!" Palm trees, but of course.  But Panama also has pine trees; those are the trees in the second row back there. But then: " Update : one hour after I took that picture, the skies clouded over and let loose. Thunder, lightning, and buckets of rain are all around me now, and it's only lunchtime." This is a picture of pouring rain in the city.   The friend I was supposed to meet sent me a pictu

 Back on October 8, I posted that I'd voted .   Silly me, thinking that getting an email from my polling place saying "your ballot has been received" means that, like, they'd, um . . . gotten my ballot.  That I'd voted.  I sent them an email with my ballot, and also with the form that came with my absentee ballot that says I relinquished my right to confidential voting if I mailed my ballot electronically, and I got back an email saying they'd gotten it all, and I thought I was done. So imagine my surprise that this past Thursday -- 9 days later -- I got another email, this one with three sentences: This must be printed and sent to us via mail. Your ballot must be in a secrecy envelope. It must arrive by 11/12/24 at 5pm. Arrghh.   Fortunately, I'd saved my ballot and paperwork.  So I picked it all up and took it over to "Mailboxes ETC", which turned into an exercise in bureaucracy.  It took the (admittedly, very friendly) clerk there about forty

Ever wondered what kinds of email people get from the embassy when they're overseas?   No, I thought not. I didn't wonder, either; still, it's interesting (and maybe helpful) to know about these outreach efforts. So far, the email blasts I've gotten have included A town-hall on absentee voting (this was in June, before I even arrived) An email about bringing ballots to the Embassy to mail back to the U.S. -- we can't vote at the Embassy, but we can use their mail service to mail ballots, which is lovely because regular Panamanian mail service is unreliable and Fed Ex and UPS are super  expensive. Walk-in services about social security issues (several times) Appointment slots for consular services such as notaries, help with passports.  I've gotten several of these. A curfew alert (see below for more about this) An evacuation drill day (again, see below) My favorite: career opportunities!  If you think a life of travel might be for you, check it out!  In fact, I&

On a recent Saturday, I decided to do some solo exploration in the city -- in particular, I wanted to return to Casco Viejo, a touristy section of town I'd been to before with friends acting as guides.  The goals of this trip were various: honestly, partly I did this just to get out of the house and kill time on a Saturday; there are a couple of cool museums I'd heard about that I want to peek into, including the Museo de Molas (kind of a quilt museum; that'll be a future post once I actually get there); I wanted to practice navigating around the city on my own some more; and finally, I needed to do some grocery shopping, and it's pretty easy to stop at a supermarket on the way back. What's Casco Viejo? It's a section of Panama often called the "old city" (although it's not the oldest section, which no longer exists: read on).  It has very picturesque buildings and very narrow streets; lots of shops and museums and restaurants and tattoo parlors an