Los Patronales de Remedios

Jenita my old year dummy

Jenita with Albania, in her last moments before a fiery death

The old year is cleansed as the new year comes in (one day later!)

The conference at Lajitas

Thousands of Ngäbes gathered to camp and listen to the words of Ngöbö


Chichica!








So here I am in Panama, with my dad sitting right next to me! He doesn´t feel very good right now, but hopefully we can have a good trip. Last night I went to the airport to get him. Before that I wandered around the mall all day. I got my legs waxed, which wasn´t as bad as I thought it would be. I bought some new underwear because all mine is full of holes. I told my panamanian friend Recicila that my panties were all full of holes because ants got into them one night and ate them, and she thought that was hysterical, a great joke. The sad thing is I was telling the truth! I also bought myself a little black dress, I don´t have any dresses here and wanted one. And last of all, I bought myself a book about synesthesia, which is the phenomenon where some people experience a mix of their senses, like hearing colors, seeing sound, tasting shapes, etc. I heard about this back in college on NPR and have been interested ever since, and at Christmas time when I was hanging out with Mile´s friends they were talking about beer and one of them accidentally said sonido amargo instead of sabor amargo (bitter sound instead of bitter taste), which he got a lot of crap for, but it reminded me of synesthesia so when I saw this book in the store I decided to read it. It´s also in spanish so it will be good practice.

Anyway, thats yesterday, but earlier in the week I began English classes. The first day not one person showed up for the English for tourism class, except for Ruben who came as the time was ending to appologize for not being there but promising to come tomorrow. The next one was better, slowly but surely about 12 kids showed up and more will come next monday I´m sure. The next day I had five people in the tourism class and nobody for the adult English club so we´ll see if I don´t just turn that day into an additional class day for the kids since they seem to be more enthusiastic.

Then on Wednesday I went down to Remedios with Jessica and Recilia to see her house and stay with Encarnaciona, and that night we went to the fair-type thing that they have for their patron saint day that they have every year. There was some bull fighting, which is a far cry from the bull fighting of spain. Here all they do is grab some bulls from some farm, get drunk, and bother the bull so they can wave a cloth at it. The bull that they were fighting was pretty pathetic, he looked like he didn´t know what was going on and all he wanted to do was get away from the crazy men pulling his tail and pouring beer on his face. He didn´t put on a very good show in short, even when some guy got on him and was riding him around the corral, he didn´t get very mad at all.

After that we went to Catholic mass, which was kind of strange because they had some Mexican missionaries there who apparently were also mariachis and there was plenty of mariachi music throughout the evening! Their patron saint is Mary, and they took down the statue they have of Mary and baby Jesus as the highlight of the ceremony. Then they brought in this guy who is apparently a famous accordion player here, Ulpiano. It´s amusing to me that an accordian player can be so popular! Fortunatly we didn´t stay for the dance, I had no desire to be a part of that. We walked back to the house (well, I ran part of the way with the kids, they like it when I race them. Jenny sí corre duro!) Jessica stayed with Recilia and I stayed with Encarnaciona. The night was nice and cool, which was wonderful because normally Remedios is like an oven and horrible to sleep in.

The next day was travel day, which pretty much just involved one bus after the next. I tried to make it only three bus rides instead of five, but the Panama-David busses came full so I had to get from Remedios to Tolé, Tolé to Viguí, Viguí to Santiago, Santiago to Panamá, and then from the terminal to the hotel. Eight hours in total. I am looking forward to that same trip with the rental car, it will be lovely! Probably cuts the time in half at least. Fortunately it all went smoothly and relatively quickly for the number of transfers I had to make.

And here I am now in Panama with Dadoo! Later today we will go see the canal and just see the city. My host mother Ruperta was supposed to come with us but she called me late last night to cancel saying that her granddaughter is sick. So that´s too bad, I would have liked to see her but the reason I invited her in the first place is we´re not going to have time to go out there. And hopefully Dad will get feeling better too, it was a long trip yesterday and he´s not feeling too great today so we´re just going to take it easy. Well, that´s all for now. Cheerio!