Hola from David, Panama! It is morning and I am going to get a few words in before and after breakfast. Everything is going well. Last night Luis and I put up more pictures. The ones we chose are some of the best ones. It is so much fun to have a nice camera to be able to show you what this trip has been like. We are going to add more soon.


It is hard to know where to start with this entry because there are so many things on my mind. I have made many mental notes of experiences to remember to share that I am starting to forget the order in which things happened. But, I suppose that doesn't matter so much.


One of my first sights in David was a trip to the downtown shops to buy Christmas decorations with Luis' Mom. Luis' parents had already begun to decorate their imported Canadian Christmas tree before we arrived with lights, different shaped red bulbs, a christmas star, and a variety of different stuffed bear and snowmen ornaments. I felt sorry for the snowmen and Luis, his mother, and I all laughed because the snowmen were trying hard to smile and keep their carrot noses up in spite of the heat. I felt particularly sorry for the ones with full body jackets and scarves, and hats. The Piccadily store was packed the day we went. We picked out some more christmas ornaments. I chose a rich blue box of ornaments, and we picked out some green and red lights. We have the tree all set up now and it is an invigorating experience to watch the lights flashing. Luis and I thought about how humans perceive order and pattern. The lights had us mesmerized. Perhaps our philosophical thoughts were the influence of the lights or perhaps they came from a visit with a man who Luis' father refers to as ¨Señor España¨ ¨Mr. Spain.¨ He has been friends with this Spanish philosopher for many years and now they are both ¨viejitos¨ together. Mr. Spain is quite a character. He is a person that loves to tell stories. He smokes like a chimney and is very thin. He has a thin face which is hysterically similar to the stereotypical image of Don Quixote. I made Luis' Dad laugh by asking him what happened to Rocinante. Angela was very unimpressed with the evidence of himself Mr. Spain left in the bedroom he slept in during his visit which we can perceive with what we'll call ¨the human sense most connected with memory.¨ She had to leave the bedroom window open for a good portion of the day. He spoke so quickly and in a strong accent that I was envious of Luis and his mother and father for being able to follow all the stories and jokes. They were laughing so hard. The evening Mr. Spain came to visit we all went on a trip to the beautiful beach shown in some of the pictures Luis and I posted. He told many stories and jokes and Luis translated some of them for me as follows. He was very expressive with his hands and like any good story teller in his version of the story there was a very detailed setup for each tale:


¨There was a man who was very rich. He was single and lived alone, but he had a chauffer, a cook, a maid, someone to do the ironing, and all of that. But, he had a parakeet. One day he received the phone bill and there were phone calls from all around the world, China, Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Vietnam, all around the world. The phone bill cost over $2,000. He thought ¨I have to find out who did this and punish them.¨ But he thought if he asked his staff personally each one would just blame someone else. So he installed a closed circuit camera in front of the phone to see who was making the phone calls. He found out that the one who was using the phone was the parakeet. So he confronted the parakeet and he said ¨Hey you sonovabitch! You live here for free and this is the way you pay me back!?¨ So he grabbed him, spread his wings and his feet and nailed him to the wall crucifying the parakeet. The parakeet was taken to a room he had never been before. He started to look around to see what was there and he saw another small figure of a guy being crucified and above him was written ¨INRI¨ so he said ¨Hey Inri! Hey you!¨ So poor Inri lifted his head to talk to the parakeet. The parakeet told him what had happened and why he had been crucified. Then the parakeet asked him ¨Hey man how long have you been here?¨
The man answered ¨Oh, well I've been crucified for the last 2,000 years.¨
The parakeet asked in amazement,¨Oh wow! Tell me, who the hell did you call!?¨
Mr. Spain also said:
¨If Mother Theresa is in heaven and all the whores are in hell, when someone asks me where I'd rather go, I would definitely say hell.¨
He was very funny and after a relaxing walk on the beach, Luis and I offered to cook our famous mushroom soup for dinner. We went to two grocery stores and we couldn't find mushrooms. We also did not have the recipe. I crossed my fingers that the canned mushrooms we bought would work in the soup and that I could remember how to make the soup. It turned out well. Like last time I made it I added too much cayenne! But, it was actually delicious and quite spicy. Mr. Spain liked it very much and was pleased with the cayenne. He told me that the best compliment to any chef is a clean plate.

Well this seems like enough for now. I also have to tell you about the town of Boquete which is the ideal place in the world for Luis' father and Luis' father's farm. The pictures with the cows are from the farm. We also took a video of a very curious young white bull, who kept trying to run at us. Although he was young he was big, and I was still afraid of him. Luis' Dad and his cousin Pepe (Don Juan de Boquete) had to threaten him with a stick to keep him away. We drank fresh sugar cane juice from the farm...well I'll tell you more about that later! Have a great day!