This Morning

Good Morning! Yesterday was Luis´birthday. I made a homemade vegetable lasagna to celebrate and we ate cake and ice cream in the evening and sang Happy Birthday in Spanish and English.
Today looks like a beautiful day. The sun is shining. A couple of days recently it has been raining. Summer is beginning here in Panama. On Friday we were planning to travel to Panama City to meet Luis´brother Jose and his wife Stephanie from Montreal. Plans have changed though because Stephanie has been in the hospital after an unexpected surgery she needed to have and now they are planning to come next week. Everyone here is hoping she is going to feel better soon.
There are lot of stories to tell and I don´t know where to start! Something funny happened this morning. Luis and I had just woken up and we went outside on the patio before breakfast. I sat down to enjoy the morning in my robe and nightgown. Luis was in his shorts and white t-shirt. We hadn´t brushed our teeth or gotten ready for the day. Luis settled himself into the hammock and looked relaxed. Suddenly a fast moving woman with short clipped grey hair came bursting into the house without knocking and came out to the back patio where we were.
She said in spanish,
"Oh its not important that you´re in your pajamas....." and began to talk rapidly and looked over at me
"Nice tuuuu miiiiit yooo." she said in slowly in English with a great amount of pride. She turned to Luis and switched to Spanish. Luis had immediately gotten out of the hammock and we were both standing.
"Does she understand Spanish?" she asked him.
"Yes she understands a lot." Luis said.
"Oh good." she said and proceeded to ignore me launching into a long speech about hot springs and volcanoes as I stood there, my mouth agape still wondering who in the world this woman was, why it was up to her to decide that is wasn´t important that I was in my pajamas, and why whatever she was saying about hot springs and miracles was worth me standing up for a long period of time, before I had had a cup of coffee!
A religious nut maybe? Seeing that the rapid flow of words wasn´t about to come to a halt, I decided to interrupt the woman.
"Excuse me, who exactly are you? Are you a friend of Rosalina´s or a teacher of Luis´?"
She said she was a friend of Rosalina´s and that she had know Luis and Jose all their lives. Luis told me later that that was pretty much a big exaggeration.
Wow. It took me a few minutes to recover. hahaha. Breakfast helped. I washed the experience of the woman down with a glass of fresh orange juice. That´s what I like about orange juice here, it is an experience that cannot be denied when you are having it. Even if you are deep in thought about something serious, the taste is so good it´s like a delicious slap in the face that´ll knock you right back into reality. I also really like that in latin american culture food is a big topic of conversation. While we eat dinner everyone talks about the deliciousness of the food and it reminds you to enjoy it, and to enjoy life and the fact that we have food to eat.
The music is that way too. Panamanian typico music is so happy and cheerful and it is hard to not feel good.
I am experiencing culture shock here though for sure. It´s like the boundaries are different or something. I get tired of meeting so many people, because there are always a lot of people to meet everywhere we go. At first whenever I met someone new I really tried to learn something about who they were and I assumed that because I was being introduced to them they must be someone important for me to know. However, eventually I realised it is just a cultural thing....you say "Nice to meet you." You kiss the person on the cheek, but it isn´t really an intimate thing as it would be in our culture. Besides I have met so many people it would be impossible to remember all of them at this point. One day after going shopping with Luis´mom
we met three ladies on the sidewalk and I was so tired after the huge social experience of shopping that when I saw that Luis´mom was going to introduce me to them as well, I almost wanted to hide behind Luis! Rosalina, seeing that I was not approaching the ladies...took me by the shoulders and guided me toward them, where I proceeded to kiss all of them and tell them how nice it was to meet them...even though I had no real idea who the poor ladies were!
Last night while Luis was at home working on his paper for his upcoming conference in Orlando. Luis´Mom took me to Boquete to meet an american lady who sings and plays the piano that we had heard about from a very nice English student of hers. The student´s name is Jose Luis and his is a very sweet kid. He speaks 4 languages and is very smart and extroverted. There is a young lady named Alessandra who lives here in Luis´parent´s house and works here. (She is 17 and she dreams of being a doctor one day. I have been meaning to write about her for a while. She comes from a very large family and they need her to work. This year she asked her English teacher, Luis´mother, for a job in her house, and that is how we came to meet. I´ll write more about her soon. ) A couple of evenings ago Alessandra and I were talking in the courtyard of the school in Boquete where Luis´mom teaches when Jose Luis came up to us and began to talk to me in English. He remembered my name from the English oral exam that I helped read for the students the week before. He told us he had done well on the exam and that he speaks English a lot because he works with some Americans in a ceramic studio in Boquete. He explained that he didn´t grow up speaking spanish either and that he had to learn that after he learned to speak two indigeonous Panamanian tribal languages. After talking to him for a while, I told him that my brother was coming to Panama soon and that he would like to hike on the volcano Baru and we were looking for a guide. To my surprise he said that he would be happy to be our guide and that he loves to lead people on walks up the volcano! So we will definitely have to see about that before Alex comes. Several of the other English students said they would like to come along and Alessandra as well. He said he thinks it is best to go at night, so that we will make it to the top in the early morning when it is clear and we can see both oceans and even Costa Rica! He said we´ll have to watch the weather before we go because sometimes it is so foggy up there that you can only see the feet of the person in front of you!
Ok well I am getting tired of writing, but I´ll continue these stories later!
Hasta Luego!