“Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” – Benjamin Disraeli

After almost seven years of Spanish classes, I have learned one very important lesson: YOU have to be the one to make it fun.  If I hadn’t figured this out pretty quickly, I think I would have dropped out before I had to learn the dreadful subjunctive tense (which doesn’t really exist in English…making it all the more weird and complicated sometimes).  So throughout the many made-up dialogues, practice sentences, and long essays required from various courses, I learned that there’s nothing more fun than adding in a little surprise humor for your compañeros or unexpecting teacher.  Which brings me to tonight: another regular, ol’ boring night stuck in Spanish class.  Our profesora was teaching us how to write a memorandum using the proper technique and proceeded to explain that we would each be writing one to read out loud within the class period.  My mind started buzzing right away for creative topics, and I finally decided on taunting my fellow Panamanians a little…(as written and translated by yours truly)

*Note – for all of you non-soccer fans (myself included), there’s another game between Panama and the USA tomorrow…and to give you an idea of how important it is to people here, a boy in my class told me he skipped the geology test I had yesterday to have a beer and watch Panama defeat El Salvador.

“Date: June 21, 2011

To: The faculty and students of USMA

Subject: Free day tomorrow

The president of USMA wishes to communicate to the students of USMA that tomorrow, the 22 of June, there will be no night classes due to the fact that La Villa will be celebrating the victory of the United States over Panama.

Every United States citizen that lives here will receive a golden crown, and it is expected that all Panamanians will celebrate them eagerly until the early hours of the morning.”

The teacher laughed out loud when she proofread it for me (brownie point for me), and I got some more laughs and playful boos from the other students.  It made the two and a half hours go by a lot faster tonight.

This past Saturday marked the beginning of one of the biggest celebrations here in La Villa: Corpus Christi.  My experience was a whirlwind of loud drumming music, men dancing in strange devil costumes, fireworks going off starting at two in the morning, and one giant question bubble in my head reading “what the heck is going on???” Thanks to my first round of tests, presentations, and preparing to be a tour guide for mom and Coleen, I had very little time to do my homework on the weeklong celebration.  So take this as an “IOU” note and enjoy the pictures in the meantime. 

All I know is that this thing is called a "Diablo Sucio"...or "Dirty Devil." Good potential Halloween costume.

A few quick anecdotes I want to share:

I like to go to the Mass they offer in the village church during the week in the evening when I can, which is usually said by the more soft-spoken priest of the parish.  Last week when it was my turn to receive Communion, he looked at me and smiling bashfully said: “um, dee Body of Christ?” in English.  It came out as more of a question but I appreciated it all the same. 

Last Thursday while working at the clinic once again, a man who always waves to me on the street when I pass by came in (I think he works there) and gave all of us students and nurses a small piece of candy…or so I thought.  Turns out it was a cough drop which they sell here for 5cents as pieces of candy.

One of my favorite things about Panama is seeing the old men in the streets wearing their traditional Panamanian hats: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5090595329_9b6f6c4897.jpg.  And trust me, they LOVE their hats.  Rain or shine, they’re wearin’ em’.  All they do is put a plastic trash bag over it when it’s drizzling and they go on about their day.  At first I thought they wore the rims of their hats flipped up just because, but a friend from school later on explained the old tradition to me - if a guy has the front and back end of his hat flipped up it means he has a girlfriend or wife. But if he walks around with only the front up, he’s soltero and looking. Watch out ladies.  Unfortunately the tradition died out over the years, and the men just wear their hats however they please…which I guess is a good thing, otherwise there would be a lot of old, single Panamanian hombres I’d have to be avoiding.

Countdown until mom and Coleen get here: less than 24 hours! Forgive my absence and lack of blogging while I entertain them.  Hopefully I’ll have some good stories from their visit (I warned them that if they’re not nice to me I won’t translate anything…muahahaha). Ciao!

The crowded plaza square watching the diablos sucios dance...which will be even more crowded this week when the celebration is in full swing

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe” - Anatole France

Tonight I got in trouble for the first time in my college career for talking during class.  So the girl I was talking to and I spent the rest of the time passing notes back and forth and scribbling short messages about how much we don’t like the class…only to find out after that we have an extra makeup class this Thursday.  I think the word “karma” is the same in English and Spanish.

Today is June 14. Which means that as of today, and probably about this time, I have officially been in Panama for a month. How did that happen?

I think this past week has been my busiest so far, with two full clinical days, an upcoming test on Friday, a paper also due Friday over a movie in Ethics, slight panicking after not being able to understand the movie in the loud classroom, (resolved later with the help of youtube) and meeting more people in the meantime.  After walking to USMA last Wednesday only to find out that class was canceled that night, I spent two hours introducing a few fellow students to the wonders of Google Earth.  They were dumbfounded.  We got kicked out of the school at nine (when it closes) so one of the girls, Aranys, suggested that I go with her and Juan Carlos (he works at USMA but is close in age to us) to get pizza.  They were going to take me to one of the best pizza places in Chitré.  Excited and starving, I eagerly got in the car for the ten minute drive and watched as we pulled up to an exotic, fancy, one of a kind…Domino’s. 

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that Domino’s is (in my mind) far inferior to Pizza Hut back in the States, so I pretended like it was a first real treat for me.  

Saturday I spent the day on a shopping excursion in Chitré.  I’ve been there several times but never in the middle of the city center alone so it was kind of an adventure for me.  I walked into a movie rental store and was approached by one of the workers who asked me if I spoke Spanish.  I launched into my now memorized speech about how I’m from Kansas, am here during my vacation studying, live in La Villa, go to USMA, blah blah blah.  The worker lights up when I mention Kansas and tells me he studied there for a year…which makes him about the fourth or fifth person I’ve met in Panama that somehow has ties to Kansas.  What can I say? I can’t escape home even if I try.

Definitely a lot colder than it looks

I finished the weekend off in the region of El Valle about a two hour drive from La Villa.  I was told by Ana María (my official tour guide as always) that it was a mountainous region and the weather would feel “more like the US!” (aka – cooler) Well, I don’t really consider 80 degrees “cooler” but I’ll take what I can get.  The scenery was incredible and we visited a famous landmark in Panama called La Roca Pintada, which is basically a rock speculated to be over 35,000 years old and painted by ancient Indigenous people over 1,000 years ago.  Our tour guide left us there (and by the way, all of the tour guides were little kids) after we coughed up the dollar for the two minute explanation and we were on our own to finish exploring.  We hiked up a few more rocks (oh yeah, I had originally thought we were headed to the beach that morning so I was wearing flip flops. I don’t recommend it) until we finally reached a waterfall with a small pool underneath.  Ana María’s boyfriend yanked off his jeans revealing swimming trunks underneath and I decided I would be crazy not to get in too, even if the water was freezing (so my dressing for the beach paid off after all).  Just as I waded in to join him, it started to rain making the spot look even more exotic and scaring off the other tourists so it was just us three.  By far my favorite part of the day.

Funny sidenote – I know a lot of Hispanic people are notorious for being short, and while Panamanians aren’t exactly midgets, I have yet to meet a woman taller than me.  The whole time we were climbing up the rocks Ana María and her boyfriend were constantly making comments about how wide my steps were. You would think this would be kind of a self-confidence booster but I feel more like a giant between the two of them. (see below)

I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I am somehow enrolled in a geology class.  I don’t know how it happened exactly.  My teacher isn’t even Panamanian – she’s from Bulgaria and has as weird of an accent as I do.  Regardless of how I ended up in the class of five, it has come to be one of my favorites.  And, to my surprise, I even learned something useful the other day. (Useful to me as a nursing student anyway. Not hating on any of you rock or earth lovers out there) While listening to a part of the presentation about what to do during an earthquake and giggling at the strangely worded phrases (they kept repeating  the word “aplastado” which translates more or less into “plastered” or “crushed”… “they found a school of Chinese children plastered under their desks,”… “if you decide to hide under the bed during an earthquake you will be plastered too,”…I looked over once at a boy sitting next to me and realized I wasn’t the only one smiling at the nonchalant usage of the word) I learned that contrary to what I’ve always been taught, you should NOT take refuge under a doorway. You should instead find a large object (such as a bed), get on the floor next to it, and assume the fetal position. That way, if the roof collapses or something heavy falls from the ceiling, it will make sort of a triangle with the large object next to you and you will be saved from being aplastado. 

Alright. Bed time.  Countdown until mom and Coleen get here: one week.

A man at a random coconut stand on the side of the road.  For just a few cents, he'll drill a hole into those huge things, give you a straw and let you drink the water inside.

“All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson

On the bus ride to the hospital yesterday morning we almost hit two stray dogs and a chicken.  I guess you could say the landscape here is a little…different.  I decided to run outside for the first time a few days ago and ran past two horses grazing in a field, a bunch of cows standing around chewing grass, a few houses, and a giant bull standing on top of a pile of dirt.  And that was all on one street.

Going back quickly to the clinicals:

I don’t think I’ve written anything about the actual hospital itself, which is actually a lot more modern than I expected it to be…but still nothing compared to some of the technology we have back in the US.  Consisting of three floors, cheesy elevator music that plays in the halls, and some passages that lead outside, Hospital de la Vigila wouldn’t stand a chance against the almighty Barnes Jewish Hospital. (For all of you non-St. Louisans…if that’s even a word…here ya go: http://www.siteman.wustl.edu/uploadedImages/About_Us/Partner_Institutions/Barnes-Jewish-Hospital-aeri.jpg) I can’t believe I spent all last semester complaining about working in SLU Hospital with paper charting (I think it will be the LAST hospital in America to switch to computers) when there is no computer to be found here in literally any hospital.  And some of the basic 10 Commandments of nursing school back at SLU don’t really seem to exist anymore:

1) Thou shalt never recap a dirty needle…seen it done several times here. Eek.

2) Save your back by always raising the bed…although if we had crank beds back in the US for every patient like they have here I might ignore this one too

3) Thou shalt always wear gloves when working with body fluids…self-explanatory.  

4) You must attend some kind of seminar or training that lasts no less than five hours on the importance of patient privacy…not complaining about this one.

Don’t you like how I said “quickly?”

One thing I really like about this little town – anywhere I go to sit for a while there is always someone that comes up to talk to me. Example: today I was back at my favorite refresquería (http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/refresqueria) by school drinking another malteada and doing some homework when a boy in my ethics class sat down at the table and just started talking. Just simple, natural conversation for about an hour. I’m amazed every day at how friendly everyone here is.

But while we were talking, I was watching a woman dressed in what looked like to me very traditional Panamanian clothes walk by with a small boy.  They crossed the street, came up to the patio we were sitting on, and the little boy walked directly over to me smiling and saying “ayuda, por favor.”  (or “help, please”) I was a little confused about what was going on because the woman (who I assumed was his mother) had sat down to watch.  The little boy walked over to the guy I was talking with who then proceeded to pull out a quarter and put it in the small bag the boy was carrying…which is when I started to realize that I was having my first encounter with poverty here in La Villa.  My friend from class later on explained to me that they were indigenous Panamanians (complete with a language even he couldn’t understand) and that this kind of thing happens quite a bit, even though it’s prohibited by law to have a child do the begging.  

Some new Panamanian friends having a "traditional" Panamanian

 lunch

But to lighten the mood a little bit, this past Saturday I traveled with a group of about 15 students to the University’s farm about an hour and a half away from Los Santos.  We spent the day with a bunch of law students from Panama City (who, by the way, immediately greeted and started talking to me in English. I’m so glad I chose to get away from the city for that exact reason).  And you could definitely tell they were law students (no offense dad).  They proved to be extremely talkative and very animated actors as they taught us the techniques of debating (why we went to a farm to learn all of that I have no idea).  Obviously this was all done in Spanish for everyone else there…which means I had to participate in spontaneous discussions/arguments in front of about 30 people (students from other USMA schools in Panama came too) who all spoke perfect Spanish about light, casual topics such as affirming or denying the existence of God.  The whole day was kind of an adrenaline rush. 

Finishing up here with another one of my new favorite Panama sayings:

To say “that’s cool!” or “that looks great!” or “oooh, I really like it!” (basically anything along those lines) you say “Que pretty!!!”…or loosely translated “How pretty!”…but the pretty is pronounced “preeee-teeeee.” Spanglish. It’s everywhere.

Happy 27^th anniversary mom and dad! I hope you don’t spend it missing your favorite child too much. 

Speaking of new friends, this little guy was at our house to greet me a few days ago. Little kids are the cutest when they speak in Spanish.

“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D. H. Lawrence

Today it rained for almost eight hours straight. 

This whole week actually we’ve practically been living in a monsoon.

The good: it makes the weather much more “fresco” (or “cooler”) as everyone here says.  I’ve been able to leave the house without starting to instantly sweat.  Tuesday in class (after it had been raining the whole day for about six hours) a guy sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “Tienes mucho frío?” or “Are you cold?”  Their mouths dropped open in amazement when I told them I was actually still a little bit warm – I mean come on, it couldn’t have been any colder than 75 degrees.  I looked around the room, and sure enough the rest of the students were all bundled up in sweatshirts and long-sleeved tees like it was the middle of winter.  Look who’s laughing now.

But of course the bad: mosquito bite count is through the roof. I don’t know how they manage to pick the weirdest places to get you.  On the end of my pinky? Really?

Right now I’m sitting in the living room table doing homework (“doing homework” I should clarify) with Césil.  Neither of us is actually talking to the other, but I find it oddly satisfying that the silence in his head is broken by thoughts all in Spanish while mine are purely in English. 

Something else I find slightly humorous: women here like to walk around with curlers in their hair.  It could be the middle of the day and a completely open, public place and they still come with their hair pulled up so tightly in those perfect little circles that it looks like they’ve had a recent face lift.  (Or they could be big curlers too – the other day while at the gym I looked over from my treadmill just in time to see a woman with curlers as big as my fists in her hair pass by. Impressive. Lucky for me the humidity is my nature’s hair curler here.)

Today I had my second day of vaccinating poor little babies in the clinic.  But Monday was the big hospital day.  After a frantic hour of getting on and off two separate buses to the hospital early in the morning, I finally arrived in one piece to el Hospital Vigia.  (And I was already exhausted – navigating Panama’s public transportation is no walk in the park, thank you very much. And you better know where you need to get off because it’s up to you to yell “PARADA!!” (stop) when it comes. Otherwise you’re stuck in an old, smelly, small bus with zero air conditioning and people all around you standing too close for comfort) I met first thing with my new clinical instructor who gave me an extended tour of the hospital.  *Sidenote – did I tell you that all nurses here also have to wear a cofia? Me: http://grupos.emagister.com/alumnos/4/9/5/3/7/foto_4953789b.jpg

I’m working with second year nursing students on a post-surgery floor of sorts.  Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be doing much since they’re just getting into passing medicine to patients, but that actually suits me just fine.  It was overwhelming enough just getting being in a hospital world completely in Spanish.  So not too much to report just yet but I did notice that men and women are completely separated in different areas on each floor.  Interesting.  And, on our little tour through the ER, I got to see a guy with a small chunk of wood sticking out of his bloody shin.  Wish I could work there instead…

Some of the Panama landscape we passed on the way...definitely surpassed all my expectations

Sunday (backtracking here) was spent at a small laboratory near the beach called Achotines where we (Ana María, Chavalín, Dinah and I) got to tour their facility known for its extensive research in all kinds of sea plants and animals.  They actually partner with a university in Miami to do their research.  I caught the gist of the tuna/algae/rotifer cycle the guide was talking about, but was more happy to stand in some of the coldest air conditioned rooms I’ve been in since first stepping on Panama territory.  I also saw a monkey in the trees surrounding the laboratory.  Can’t say that’s a regular occasion in Kansas. 

Walking back from the bus stop after the day at the beach, I was stopped by three girls and their brother playing in the front yard.  “Excuse me miss, but are you Colombian?” asked one of the girls, referring to me as “usted” or the formal version of “you.”  (For those of you with little Spanish, there are two forms of you and, depending on what country you’re in, usted is used for older people, people you don’t know very well, or persons deserving respect.  In Spain they almost NEVER use it…so for her to be referring to me as “usted” sounded really really really weird to me) I couldn’t help but smiling – my first reaction: “do I look Colombian to you???” But of course I didn’t say that. I explained I was from the US and the girls all looked at each other with wide eyes and half open mouths...making me smile even more.  So, before leaving my new friends, I made a deal with them: I’m going to teach them English and they’re going to help me with my Spanish.  Perfecto.

I think I’m going to end it here seeing as I’ve had to pause every two minutes to scratch a newly appearing mosquito bite.  Happy June to everyone! 

Where's Waldo?