Two months in Panama

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 Forecast: 83°/76° with thundershowers possible in the afternoon; 
Humidity:  93%
Sunrise 6:06 am., Sunset 6:01 p.m.


Two months into Panama, and what is life like?

Well, I'm still learning about local foods.  

For example, Chayote: it looks a bit like a pear, but you cook it like summer squash (and it's in the gourd family, so that makes sense).  Many people describe the taste and texture like a cross between a potato and a cucumber, and I think that description is apt.


I am also getting better at picking the ripe papayas.  Papayas that aren't ripe are as hard to cut up as wood, and also not very yummy.  Hooray for ripe papayas, though!

The "found food" experiences seem to have mostly disappeared as we head into October.
Royal palm nuts, some local gardeners guessed.
Definitely not edible.  

On the other hand, I'm having more fun looking at and discovering things about trees and plants here. This flower (blossom) is called an "ylang ylang", and it has to be smelled to be believed.  It's amazing.  

Ylang ylang. Really.  Fun to say and amazing to smell.

Animals

Not a lot of cows, or even cow images here. 
This statue of a "toro" on the Cinta Costera
is the closest I've come to seeing cow statues.

It's not very cow-y, compared to my porch back in Pennsylvania.

I have gotten to see lots of non-cow animals: toucans cavorting on the roof where a papaya had fallen, an iguana whose body was as big as a cat (with a tail as long again as the body), herons hanging out on the balconies of sky scrapers, ñeques digging around for nuts, lizards darting up the side of a wall, leaf-cutter ants having a parade across the sidewalk, gato solos (coatis) demanding food from passers by, gallinazas (buzzards) congregating to discuss their latest meal.  

This is a spider, enjoying breakfast out on the porch 
while I was enjoying my breakfast, too.  
We were eating quite different kinds of foods.

Exercise: 

I'm still looking for reliable/regular running buddies; but in the meantime, I signed up for the subscription version of Fitness Blender, and between that and a bunch of walking I'm doing, that's keeping me more or less in shape.

The book:

I've plowed my way through the introduction, the first chapter (intro to perspective), and the second chapter (forced perspective).  I've started chapter three (anamorphic art), and am realizing just how difficult it is to have a book about pictures when that means actually getting permission to include other people's pictures in the book.  Also, I'm looking forward to getting an iPad to have a bit more control (I hope) over the pictures that I draw.

As I've started chapter 3, I keep finding more examples of cool things I want to stick back in Chapter 2.  This actually makes me happy; I want the book to have a lot of nifty stuff in it, so thinking of more and more nifty stuff to include is fun.  
The desk in the Fundapromat office
where I do a lot of my writing.

Spanish language

I still have trouble understanding people when they're having conversations with each other, but most of the time when people are talking directly to me, I can understand them.  A lot of people remark with surprise that I'm really good at speaking Spanish.  Usually they do this about two sentences before they ask me a question for which I have to say, "¿como? un poquito más despacio, por favor . . ." 

I'm still practicing verb conjugation via Linguno daily.  I'm up to A2-level 3.  It doesn't help with hearing comprehension, but it's definitely helping me remember how to deal with past tense and irregular verbs.  

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