“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

Invasion of the gringas

I think it’s kind of ironic that the hottest days the Midwest has seen this summer (hot enough to make the Spanish version of CNN here on tv) are happening during some of the coolest, rainiest days I’ve been here.  I’m not laughing at you guys…but then again, I definitely don’t feel sorry for you either.

I realized after reading some of the notes I scribbled down quickly to remember from when Mom and Coleen were here have already been mentioned.  Oops. So how about some of the more random blurbs from the jumbled mind of Tere Nelson*?  

1) Just for the record, the two Nelson women adjusted well to a week of stifling temperatures, little air conditioning, and pretty much zero English. They ate their very first bowls of sancocho, suffered their first Panamanian sunburns, (which, oddly enough, appeared on all of us after a day of clouds and rain. Thanks European ancestry.) and made it through the Panamanian customs at the airport alone. I only had to threaten revoking my translating services once or twice. So I’d say it was a successful week.

2) Being in La Villa de Los Santos during that week of Corpus Christi was WEIRD. Why? Because I have never seen so many white people here before.  There were at least 10 to 15 other tourists there besides us.

3)  None of the other tourists proved to be as popular  though.  While sitting down in the park during the celebrations, a man with a large microphone sat down next to me, asked if I spoke Spanish, and, upon hearing my affirmative response, stuck a big camera in our faces and began to interview us.  Strangely enough, on our very last day (keep in mind we were at a hotel in Panama City and NOT in La Villa), I was randomly flipping through the channels on the tv in the morning for about five minutes before having to leave for the airport and stumbled on a program featuring the priest from the church in La Villa.  What appears next? Our short, 30 second interview of course.  What are the odds? And coming home later the next day, a friend of Vanessa, a woman at the gym, and a fellow classmate all told me they had seen the footage.  So yes, I am now famous (never mind that I only said about two sentences and caught a grammatical error or two while watching myself again).

4) And you know who else is more famous than I thought? The Royals. That mediocre baseball team I’ve never cared about somehow made its way to Panama because during that week I saw a kid wearing a blue cap with the big, white “KC” plastered in the middle.  I started walking after him, gesturing toward his hat and telling my Mom and sister to look when I noticed he was giving me a weird stare and slowly moving in the other direction.  I guess it’s not really a good idea to point at a stranger while talking in another language.  Now that I think about it, it might weird me out too.

5) Speaking of hometown memoirs, we also passed a guy wearing a K-State shirt. Disgusting.

6) Something else disgusting – while sitting in Pedasí (the town you hit right before all of the beaches) waiting for a certain festival that was happening that weekend to start, I noticed the sudden appearance of a nasty stench coming from the general direction of my sister…or so I thought.  I looked over at her, immediately accusing her of tirándose un pedo (you can all guess what that means), but then noticed there was a group of giggling kids about five feet away from me looking at something that had just exploded on the ground.  When one of them passed by, I asked what they had popped and a boy responded simply: “biochemical.” Hmmm. Well that sounds awfully safe.  About fifteen minutes later, they were back with another one.  They gathered around, threw it on the ground and this time a little girl proceeded to step on it.  We heard a loud popping sound and some kind of fizzing chemical leaked out of the aluminum bag.  The girl picked it up excitedly and ran over to us. She squealed, “Here, smell this!” and then proceeded to shove the thing right underneath my nose so I could take a whiff.  People around us laughed as she ran next to my Mom and sister doing the same.  I picked it up after she ran away, read the front and saw that my initial suspicions were somewhat right: “FART BOMB.” 

Before you even ask, I didn’t bring any home with me.  My four younger brothers don’t need the help of any biochemical in our house.

7) I’m just going to admit right here that I have no idea when the word “Mom” should be capitalized. And I’m too lazy to look it up.  Pretend like you haven’t noticed…

8) Moving on, I rented my first car in a foreign country.  Well, my mom rented it and I drove it illegally.  And what’s a car rental without getting stopped by the Panamanian police at least once? Don’t worry, they were checking everyone’s ID’s on that road. I think I even had a leg-up on everyone else because mine was in English. The cop tried to decipher the writing for about 10 seconds before handing it back to me and telling me to enjoy the rest of my vacation in Panama. Pays to be a gringa sometimes.

9) except when you’re in Panama City and get ripped off by Chinese people.  Let me explain: here in Panama the Chinese immigrant population is surprisingly huge.  They run these little stores called “Mini Supers” that are literally EVERYWHERE. We walked into one in Panama City to buy a phone card for me and a bag of Hershey Kisses to split.  I placed the candy on the counter, asked how much, and got “cinco dólares” back as an answer. Woah woah woah. Espera un momentito. FIVE DOLLARS???  I was so baffled by the price for the bag of Kisses that seemed to be growing smaller and smaller every second that I pulled out the money and paid instead of doing what I should have done: turn around and march to the shelf to put them back.  Thanks for being so kind fellow foreigners.   

I think that about does it for my mental checklist.  Sorry to end on an angry note.  It still fires me up just thinking about it. But next week I have the joy of playing host again to one of my best friends from high school Señorita Abby Hannifan.  Plenty of adventures to come…

Not a bad view to wake up to, eh?

*It’s kind of weird to hear people call me by my full name “Teresa” (Spanish spelling…I’ve just accepted the fact that no matter how many times I insist that my name has an “h” in it, no one here will ever spell it that way).  I’m known to everyone here as “Tere” instead.  (Or “Teresita” to the woman I see during the week at the gym) It’s sort of endearing and I’ve come to like it.  But if anyone back in the US ever calls me “Terri” I will explode a Fart Bo, er, Biochemical bag under his or her nose.