Cirque du Soleil in Panama City!

On Sunday, Brent said, "Guess what we're doing on Tuesday?" Naturally, I had no idea. What are we doing?

"Seeing Cirque du Soleil!"

In my favorite small-world fashion, when we lived in Buenos Aires, Brent regularly adjusted two Cirque artists -- one a performer, the other a director. It just so happened that they were touring here in Panama, a fact that Brent didn't realize until the weekend, just a few days before the final performance.

Despite a rough trip to the city (we got lost, and had both been so cocky in our ability to get to this convention center that we didn't even bring a map with), we had a lovely dinner and enjoyed fantastic seats to the always amazing show. This was Cirque's first time in Panama -- first of many, I hope.

After the show, Brent adjusted his friends and a few other cast members before we drove back to Coronado.

The show went on.

Last Friday night, Picasso Bar y Restaurante transformed into a stage so the international school students could perform their play, The Brothers Grimm.

The restaurant served a special menu to attendees, and most of the seats were taken that night. The students did a fantastic job with their show, and you could tell they really enjoyed themselves.

Brent and I talked later about how lucky those kids are. They're a close-knit group, free from the bullying and cliques that typically accompany a high school experience. They all seemed incredibly confident there on stage, and they worked so well together. Talking to some of the proud parents confirmed our suspicions: the kids are getting a great education and building strong bonds with each other, freeing themselves to BE themselves, just as they are. Thereby, the hardest part of high school is pretty much taken care of.

Not to mention the incredible, life-changing experience of living in another culture and learning a second language at a young age.

Lucky, lucky kids. I don't know if we'll ever have our own, but if we do, I hope we can give them a similar experience.

Ahhh, we live here.

The sunset through the trees from our back porch:

And this morning we woke up to rain and temperatures cool enough for a comfortable run. I love these days.

The Art of the Backyard Barbecue

Last night, we went to a neighbor's house for a going-away barbecue for a one of our colleagues and friends. It was a last-minute gathering: it was first mentioned late the night before (we just happened to be there) and then an email was sent out that morning. We left our house wondering how many people would show up.

Pretty much everyone showed up.

That's the beauty of getting together around here. Back in the States, I remember trying to put together a dinner with three friends, and we had so many things to schedule around. When I went back for a visit between lives in Argentina and Panama, I had a month in which to get all of them together -- and we could never make it work.

Last night was another on a list of many last-minute gatherings we've attended. One Sunday, for example, we went to play volleyball, not knowing we'd end up at one of the player's homes right afterward, eating a delicious lunch and spending the rest of the afternoon in the pool.

Of course, we do have things to do. We're getting our work lives together down here, and many of the people we hang out with work more than we do. But there is a real sense of priority when it comes to down time, and if a responsibility can be put off until tomorrow, it is so that today can be enjoyed with the people we love. It's not laziness or irresponsibility -- in fact, putting it off can sometimes result in a bit of a scramble the next day, but it's so worth it to enjoy warm evenings, good company, good food, and everything else that we're coming to love about life in Panama.

Surviving the bug bites.

During those first couple of weeks in Panama, when the no-see-ums ate me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, we went through a great variety of preventative and curative measures. Here's the rundown. I'm hoping something here will work for you.

Prevention is the Best Cure

• Natural bug spray: This was, by far, the most effective measure in avoiding bites. Melody of Melody's Garden makes a fantastic natural repellent, and we applied and reapplied daily. We refuse to use DEET, so this was the best discovery we made during our early days in Panama. She makes a bunch of other cool natural products, too. 
• Geckos: Your new best friends. I don't know if they eat no-see-ums (maybe they can-see-um?), but they eat a variety of other things that gather near the lights. Love the geckos in your house. We do. 
• Candles: We burned candles and incense, hoping the smoke or the flame or whatever would keep the bugs away. Inside, it was pretty effective, but I tend to believe that part of that was the closed doors. Outside, pretty much useless. 
• Pants: Pointless. I haven't worn anything but dresses and shorts since we got here. 

Battling the Itch

• Don't scratch: HA HA HA HA HA!!! 
• Clear nail polish: My friend coated all my bites with clear nail polish, swearing that it stopped the itch. And it did. When I washed the polish off, though, the itch returned -- though I do believe it was not as powerfully irritating. 
• Various anti-itch creams from the pharmacy: Ehhh. Some seemed to work better than others. We also had the experience of one that worked great the first time, then never seemed to work again. One of our friends had an anti-itch stick that contained alcohol, so it burned a bit when applied -- that was by far my favorite. 
• Vinegar: When we were at home, I applied vinegar to my bites as soon as they started itching, and it eased the itch for awhile. Overall, the longest-lasting solution for me. 
• Tea tree oil: I'm not sure this really helped the itch, but mentally it felt good to apply it, so I did so.

Itchy little devils: no-see-ums.

Sometimes, when I used to think of the tropics, I thought of bug hell. (Or rather, bug heaven, if you're a bug. Bug hell if you're the rest of us.) The relatively dry two-to-four-seasoned South Dakota, where I grew up, has its share of mosquitos and spiders, but doesn't have to deal with scorpions, cockroaches, or these no-see-ums.

Great news about Panama: we're not dealing with a lot of those things, either. I've seen one cockroach and zero scorpions since I've been here, and the bites on my legs aren't from mosquitos. They're from the no-see-ums.

A clever name, because it's true: I've occasionally heard them called sand fleas, but whatever you call them, you don't see them bite you. You just wake up the next day itching like mad.

During my first week here, I actually woke up in the middle of the night scratching my legs, and I ran to the bathroom to douse the red bumps in vinegar (one of my many anti-itch treatments), which relieved it enough for me to go back to sleep.

At one point, I actually questioned whether or not we could stay here, because the itching was so bad. Then I noticed something:

No one else around me was scratching. I had to ask: What the heck?

They shrugged. "I've been here for years -- haven't had a problem," one guy said. Another added, "Yeah, after the first few weeks, they never bugged me again."

Hm.

Now, three months later, I have to say, those guys might be on to something. I'm no longer battling the bites. Occasionally one will turn up on my ankle, but for the most part I've forgotten my bug spray every day, and I no longer have a problem.

What I'm saying is this: don't get discouraged. Maybe it's this weird initiation the bugs put us through to see if we really want to be here. I don't know. But it will get better. It did for me.

Community Library in Coronado

When we lived in Argentina, books in English were like gold. Brent and I both love to read, but it doesn't take much traveling to realize how unhandy they are to carry around the world (yes, we have since acquired an e-reader).

Therefore, when we left, we carefully packed a few of our favorites, a few we were wanting to read, and a big lot of hope that we would have no trouble finding books when we needed them.

Not so easy in Argentina. There is a limited selection of English-language books in the bookstores, and they tended to be pretty pricey. We still managed to acquire a small collection, most of which had to be left behind when we left the country.

Fast forward to Panama and the most lovely book-related thing of all: a community library at Picasso.

This room in the back of the restaurant is full of books that pass through travelers' hands. The library operates on a take one, leave one (or take one, leave $1) policy, and judging by the number of books in there, everyone does okay with this honor system.

There are countless books organized alphabetically by last name. Since we arrived, I've read everything from Chuck Palahniuk to Tom Robbins, Deepak Chopra to Joseph Murphy, how to analyze handwriting to how to use ordinary products for just about everything. It's a beautiful room with a beautiful purpose, and I can't wait to finish the book I'm reading so I can go uncover another treasure there.

To kiss, or not so much?

Living in another country means getting used to the local customs. When it comes to greeting people, I've adapted to several different ways: three alternating cheek kisses in the Netherlands, two in France, one in Argentina. When we got to Panama, we asked around: what's the tradition here? Should I kiss people when I greet them?

We never really got a straight answer. Most replies sounded something like this:

"Ehhh, no, not really. Well, I guess you can. Sometimes, sure. But no. Yes."

This uncertainty has led to lots of awkward hugs, half-kisses, and weird handshake hybrids.

Luckily, when introduced to someone for the first time, the process is clear: handshake, pure and simple. Hopefully you get to know them pretty well that first time, because after that, things get muddy.

We find that with most of our close friends here, we hug and kiss them hello and good-bye. Most of our close friends are fellow North Americans (who aren't always known for their hugging and kissing back home). At Happy Hour, there tends to be even more hugging and kissing than usual, even among people we don't know as well.

I find that the easiest way to do this is to lead the charge: decide how you want to handle the greeting, and do that. They'll either follow your lead or get the hell out of the way. You'll naturally get a sense of who thinks that cheek kisses are too close for comfort, and you will continue to shake hands with those people. Otherwise, after a few weeks you'll find yourself using the hug-and-kiss a lot more here than you ever would in North America.

A Different Kind of Sunday

Not that we have much of a routine in Panama, but for the last couple of months, Sunday has meant one thing: beach volleyball. It was difficult, but we deviated from that a bit today.

We started things off with a private Krav Maga class! It was a great extension of what we've learned in our twice-weekly class at the Bahia, but we were able to focus more specifically on certain things. It was also great to work with Brent. At the class, we're always partnering with different people. That's great, but I trust Brent completely (he knows if he accidentally hits me, he'll pay for it one way or another). I know what he's capable of, I know where he has aches and pains in his body, and I know he has good body awareness. Therefore, we're able to be a little more aggressive with each other, a little more like a real-life attack might be. Very little, but it makes a difference in practicing.

From there, we met Brent's dad for breakfast at Cholo's. We ended up being a little too late for breakfast, and although he said we could still order whatever we wanted, we chose from the regular menu.

Then we drove to Westland Mall, about 40 minutes from here toward Panama City. We don't make many trips to the mall, but Brent's dad needed some clothes, and Brent needed to price some items for a kitchen renovation he's helping with.

The mall is big and includes several large department stores with very reasonably priced goods. You have to be careful -- sometimes you get what you pay for, and those four-dollar shoes feel like four-dollar shoes. Other times, you can find high-quality shirts and dresses for less than $10. Today, I bought a pair of running shoes with a very familiar brand name -- regularly $89 here in Panama (and probably about that much in the States as well), but were on sale for $25. Now, this might mean they suck, but I'm trying them anyway.

And I bought jelly beans. Successful day.

Mangoes: The Dark Side

On the heels of my mango overjoy comes a sobering truth: those suckers can mess you up.

Those lovely mangos pictured in Monday's post were picked last week by Brent. I didn't know at the time whether he touched the tree or not. Who cares! Mangos are delicious, and that is obviously all we know about them.

Well, on Tuesday Brent was breaking out in a rash and his entire body was itching. He had eaten shrimp on Sunday, and another one of our friends who ate the same shrimp experienced similar symptoms, so we figured it was that. He endured a brutal three days of swelling and mad scratching.

Just as he was starting to heal up on this afternoon, I happened upon a Facebook post expressing a joy as great as my own about mangos. A commenter advised to be careful, because she had been twice to the emergency room after picking mangos -- apparently, the sap in the stems is quite poisonous.

I read this aloud to Brent because I thought it was interesting, though I didn't realize the full significance until he stood up and said, "So THAT's what this is!"

He had picked those mangos off the tree and held them to his chest on his way home. Then he rubbed his neck and eye and tugged his pants up -- details too mundane to remember unless you have giant red rashes to remind you.

I have long loved the mango, but we had no idea that the rest of the tree held any danger.

Sure enough, here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Contact with oils in mango leaves, stems, sap, and skin can cause dermatitis and/or anaphylaxis in susceptible individuals.[42] Those with a history of poison ivy or poison oak contact dermatitis may be most at risk for mango contact dermatitis.[43] Cross-reactions between mango allergens and urushiol, a chemical in poison ivy and poison sumac that can cause dermatitis, have been observed.[44] Urushiol is also present in mango leaves and stems.
So, Brent is totally off mangos. I still have every intention of eating as many as I can get my hands on, but I'm going to keep my hands off anything but the actual fruit.

The Mighty Mango

Nearly coinciding with rainy season in Panama is mango season. Mango season! I remember buying the occasional mango at back in the states: though expensive, it was delicious, as mangos are, but the flavor was nothing like what you experience right off the tree here.

A small start to our mango fortune, but I'm still excited.

We do not have any mango trees in our yard, but they are not hard to find, and we're collecting the fallen fruits whenever we have a chance -- like from the trees in that empty lot or on the golf course. We have friends with a mango tree who said they collected about 50 mangos EVERY DAY during last year's mango season.

I'm setting aside a Mango Day, at which time I will chop up the mangos we've collected and put in the freezer the ones that manage to make it past my mouth. I love smoothies, and I've long been dreaming about mango-banana-pineapple-coconut milk.

If we come into mango riches to the extent that our friends did with their tree, I'm looking forward to trying this recipe for Mango Salsa, which I am sharing here mostly so that I do not lose it:

2 mangos
1 onion
1/2 cucumber
1/2 green pepper
2 garlic gloves (I'll probably use more -- we love our garlic)
1 tablespoon finely chopped jalapeño
2 tablespoons lemon juice
cilantro to taste (a lot, in our case)
sea salt to taste

Dice and combine all ingredients. Get me some crackers and call it lunch.

Rainy season? Yes, please.

For our purposes, rainy season started about four days ago, when the scorching early morning heat gave way to overcast skies and a pleasant coolness, resulting in about an hour of rain in the afternoon, followed by additional coolness. Not jacket-cool, mind you, just pleasant and comfortable.

Living in the arco seco (dry arc) of Panama has its benefits. I've heard horror stories about rainy season in Costa Rica and other parts of the tropics: all rain, all day, every day, for months. The last few days have confirmed what others here have told us: in the Coronado beach area, rainy season means a few hours of rain each afternoon.

The plants are loving it, as well, and the grass is turning green after months without water. Just be careful with those clouds -- they make you think you might not be getting sunburned when, in fact, you are.

Panama's Energy Crisis

While I was trying yesterday to make my water even more drinkable, the rest of Panama was just looking for water, period.

The rainy season generally starts in mid-April, and we had a few days there where it did rain every day. But then it stopped, and it's only been back once or twice.

A good chunk of the country's power runs on water, so the government declared a national crisis and is closing the schools and universities for three days to reduce use of electricity in an effort to avoid a nation-wide rationing order.

Meanwhile, the malls and casinos will be open as usual.

I did read that they would have some air conditioning restrictions, and a friend pointed out that if every restaurant, mall, and other place of business would just raise the temperature by a few degrees, they would save a lot of power and actually make those place more comfortable. (When you go from the heat outside to a majorly air conditioned store or restaurant, it feels so cold.)

But still. Close the schools -- many of which aren't that well-equipped and possibly don't even have air conditioning units -- and leave the malls open for business? This display of priorities isn't necessarily surprising, but it's disheartening. It's sadder yet to realize that it would probably go down this way no matter what country you're in -- the economy is nothing to mess with, after all.

Meanwhile, farmers and ranchers are having some trouble, too -- cows are dying, crops aren't being planted.

So, we're taking extra care to turn off our fans and lights (which we do pretty well anyway, just to avoid high electric bills), and willing the rain to come.

The quest for clean(er) water.

The tap water in Panama is fine to drink, and I usually order it at restaurants to avoid buying bottled water, which I always hate to do. When I'm thirsty I just take it from the tap, no problem.

However, just like in the State, I know there's stuff in that water I'd like to filter out, so we do. In our first place, we had a handy filter that fit right over the tap. Even though it came with a bunch of different connectors to accommodate different faucet styles, none of them are built to handle the particular spigots in this house.

So, we bought a Culligan pitcher filter. Perfect!

Until about a week later, when the filter started merely dripping the water through. It took HOURS (no joke) to get one reservoir through the filter. When we left it all night and it still wasn't finished by morning, we figured it was faulty.

So we bought a new cartridge and all was well. Fast forward about a week, and it's happening again.

We drink a lot of water, and would probably be well-advised to replace the filters more often than the recommended two months. However, I've gone through a lot of water filtration systems in my day, and even at the point of replacement, they were still letting water through -- whether it was clean or not is why I was on my way to buy a new cartridge, but the water still came through.

I don't feel like we could have purchased two faulty cartridges in a row. Maybe Culligan makes crappy products, but I doubt that, too. The only remaining conclusion is that there is so much crap in the water that it's clogging up the filter within seven days -- a good reason to keep filtering.

Unfortunately, new filters every week is not a terribly economical way to do it. I'll keep you posted.

Beach volleyball in Gorgona!

Every Sunday, and sometimes at random points during the week, we get together with a few of our athletic and/or margarita-minded Inside Panama friends, as well as any passersby who want to get in on the action, and play volleyball.

The more the merrier, of course -- but we do love three-on-three.

There's a net right outside the Bahia in Gorgona, and we show up at about 8:30 in the morning to beat the heat of the day. Denise brings the balls (we've put holes in two of them so far -- darn spiny yucca plants), Cat brings a jug of margaritas, and we go at it for about two hours.

There are definitely varying levels of ability on the court, but we still keep score and have a great time.

I fell in love with volleyball when I was 13 years old, but it's been several years since I last played. I've been missing it, and am pleasantly surprised at how quickly the old court instincts kick in. I always preferred hard-court games to beach volleyball, because on the court you can actually jump and move so much more quickly, but I'm getting used to the sand and enjoying it all the same.

Speaking of the sand, it gets really hot! The first time we played, we did it barefoot and were all sorry the next day (and half-way through our game). After that, most people have had foot coverings: I wear tennis shoes, Brent wears the Vibram toe shoes, and most of the others wear handy-dandy sand socks that they ordered online.

The cook's in the kitchen.

Making cake batter fudge sounds like a great idea, which it is -- which is why it is also a very, very bad idea.

Having a real kitchen again has me back in cooking and baking mode, and we're currently the victims of a brand new recipe for cake batter fudge: two very awesome things in one. And the best part of preparation is that I didn't have to use the stove or the oven, so I didn't heat up the house any more than the outside world was already doing!

Cooking here in Panama is a huge upgrade from cooking in Argentina last year, where we were unable to find a lot of basic ingredients. Panama has a lot available. There are three main grocery stores in Coronado: Machetazo, Super 99, and El Rey. Between the three of them, plus the small natural food and products store Organica, they manage to provide me with pretty much everything I need.


Of course, I've also got a blender again, so that puppy is in use every day. I've made hummus, maracuya/melon juice, and a variety of smoothies. The fruit situation in Panama lends itself well to smoothie-making, and my refrigerator is currently full of fresh pineapple, melon, mango, papaya, and bananas. Add some hazelnut milk and you've got breakfast.

A little Krav Maga to get things started.

We have Krav Maga classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at the Bahia. I had my first absence on Tuesday, because there were people working on the house and we had to be here, so I was eager to get back into it this morning.

Krav Maga is an Israeli self-defense technique. It's aggressive and a bit brutal -- so, naturally, class is great fun.

There are about 12 of us, give or take a few depending on the day, and I'm usually the youngest participant (there was one day when there was another girl there who might have been younger than me, but not by much). It's really impressive, actually -- most of the participants are retirees in their 60s, but they're all in it to win it and they're doing great.

The instructor is a testament to the idea that you never lose it if you keep using it. He's a certified teacher who has taught and competed in various martial arts for years, and at 68 he's in better shape than any of us.