November 7,8, & 9

November 7 & 8, 2009

Boquete

I moved in with my host family today and I must admit I was a little nervous. They are a family of eight, none of whom speak English. But they are nice. There is the mom and dad, Nieva and Guillermo, a younger son, Antonio (middle school), a daughter, Stefanie (high school), and an older son who I have yet to really even meet (he’s in his 20s, I think). Then we also live with grandma and grandpa (Guillermo’s Parents) who are probably in their late 80s, early 90s, and a cousin of someone. Then there are two doggies, Sofie and Fergie, and a bird. It’s a bustling household. And no one speaks English, but I suppose that is the point…

The house is about the size of the house I grew up in. There are six bedrooms, a kitchen, an outdoor kitchen, a living room, a dining room and three or four bathrooms, I don’t know, there are a lot of doors and I don’t know where they all go. The best part of the house is that it is 50 yards from the awesome coffee place, Café Ruiz.

I went for a lot of walks on Saturday in between moving out of my hotel into the house. The first one I walked up to Valle Escondito, which is the gated community which sits in a valley out of town and it is kind of a resort. Actually, it is totally a resort, with a pool and nine hole golf course. However, being in the valley, they got their behinds kicked in that storm last week and really suffered some bad damage. Word on the street was that they had to evacuate the whole valley for a few days it was so bad…so obviously I had to go see. This is what I saw. If they give me a house here, I’ll draw up plans for how to keep this river from eating up more of their precious golf course. Dealing with the landslides probably need to be someone else’s brain child, though.

Ah, natural processes.

After I moved, I read and read and read some more. It started raining a bit earlier than yesterday so I was stuck inside and unable to really talk and unwilling to watch TV, so I read. I read a lot. In fact, I read the entire new John Grisham book, The Associate. I have to admit, I am no longer in control of what I read, as I read purely what is available to me (in English) at the book exchanges at hotels. But as will all Grisham books, I enjoyed it; it was just a fast read. My host family has two English books sitting around that previous students have left, and I started one later that evening that is, uh, a pseudo-romance novel. It is terrible. But its not like I have a whole lot else, so I am going with it.

After dinner, I walked farther up the valley until it started to get dark.

The valley at night.

I then sat down and read a women’s magazine in Spanish, I actually only read read two articles with the help of my Spanish dictionary. The more entertaining of the two was about Michelle Obama going on Seasame Street and talking about eating fruits and veggies. Apparently, the muppets are referred to using the word for “hairy mat”.

On Sunday I got up early and went for a run up the valley, and well, it was hard. Running up anything is hard. But running down was a piece of cake, as you would expect.

Boquete

I then walked about 3 miles to this wildlife sanctuary that I am going to volunteer at and spent most of the day there petting and holding hands with monkeys. Seriously. http://paradisegardensboquete.com/ Aren’t you proud of me Cassie. The sanctuary is not a zoo, but it houses and rehabs animals that have been confiscated by the government from bad people like drug dealers and exotic pets that have been abused or abandoned. Then I walked back to the house. Aren’t you proud of me Nicki, that’s a lot of walking!

I didn’t take any pictures, but I will when I go back on Tuesday. There are three or four different types of monkeys, there is one jungle cat and a puma-like kitten, and the many many birds are beautiful. One of the birds, who speaks to you, even likes to be pet.

Also, I somehow get sun burnt here for no apparent reason. I don’t feel like it is that sunny, nor that I spend all that much time in the sun, and might I remind you it is November, and I do put sunscreen on my arms and shoulders and face, but somehow, I am pink. Hmm.

We all had dinner this evening together, it was good. It was spaghetti but with a different, and dare I say, better, sauce. It had more spice and was lighter. Then, we played cards. I have a feeling I am going to play cards just as much here as I did in Tibet. And wouldn’t you know, we play the same game. I don’t even know the name of it, in English, Spanish, or Tibetan, maybe Gin, Rummy, Gin Rummy, I don’t know. But it’s the exact same game I spent hundreds of hours playing in Tibet. Meanwhile, Granny was watching WWE wrestling in the living room. I’m not kidding about this either.

Noviembre 9, 2009

Boquete

I seriously didn’t even notice I wrote the month in Spanish until I re-read this…that’s good right?

I am so tired after today. Ugh. Its 7 pm and I want to go to bed. If I was not with this family, you better bet that I’d be in bed right now, but being with them makes me want to seem not to lazy so I get up earlier, which is probably good. And really, I probably shouldn’t be going to bed at 7 anyways. But I am so so so tired. Today was my first day of classes, and I was a bit nervous, however, it went well. I went for a run this morning and passed this tall western looking man and I feel like I need to find out who he is and become his friend.

I intended, after my shower and breakfast, to go directly to the café and start reading Harry Potter in Spanish. I got side tracked however, by our neighbor Cesar, who I talked to for over an hour in his garden. It was hard, but I think we actually had a conversation, mostly Spanish, but also cheating and using English on occasion. I also learned from him that in Panama, at least, the “ll” is not “ya” but a rather hard “ja”. Yes, it is confusing, but it clears up why everyone is always talking about “la juvia”and why up until this point I had no idea that they were talking about the rain. So a llama, like you would find in the Andes is pronounced like the last syllable in pajama.

Then I went to the café, and needed a Spanish break, so I did, and actually completed a crossword puzzle. While I was there, some of the folks from Paradise Gardens came by and I talked to them for a while. I then walked to my class in town, about fifteen minutes from my host family’s house.

My class has three people, me and a couple from St. Louis who are looking to relocate to Oregon or Colorado. They are nice, younger than me, and just got married this summer. Our teacher is nice and very good at what she does. All four hours of our lessons are in Spanish. Every single second.

Thanks to Katie Dickinson, my high school Spanish teacher from over 10 years ago, I am in an intermediate class. I really can’t believe that I remember that much, but it seems to be working out just fine. I think these first few days will be scraping the rust off of what I had previously known all those years ago. And might I add that four hours a day of instruction is a lot. That’s about how much instruction in a subject area I was getting at Berkeley per week. My brain just about exploded by the end of class.

After class I got back to the house and sat down with the family to eat dinner. After just one day of functioning mostly in Spanish, I am able to understand and say so much more. They were funny because I heard them say after dinner, “ah, now she talks in Spanish” :)