My Spanish Teacher

Angela is a dream-come-true for a would-be anthropologist trying to learn a new language. Every Tuesday and Thursday at 3:15 pm I arrive at her middle school classroom at the International School of Panama (ISP) for my one-hour session. There are usually 2 or 3 young students in the room, being tutored by another teacher. It is a warm, welcoming, and colorfully decorated room. Angela greets me warmly and we sit down to begin.

I might be the most non-traditional student she has ever had. We never do any drills or standard language training. I figure, she does that all day with middle schoolers, and I can (and do) work with textbooks to learn the grammar. What I need is practical instruction in how to get around town, how to shop for groceries, how to talk to shopkeepers, and how to understand cultural nuances. So I prepare a lesson each time based on my needs. I think she is enjoying it because not only does she not have to prepare a boring lesson, but she gets to expound upon Panamanian culture and customs to an eager audience.

Angela is a very attractive, fit woman in her late forties; the mother of two daughters (one a senior at the school and the other a freshman in college). I know she is divorced from their father, but I don’t know if she has remarried. I wait for her confidences rather than asking many personal questions, although she is very forthcoming with stories and examples from her own experience. I know she adored her father, who died some years ago, and that she spends every Thursday evening with her 82 year old mother, who loves to go to the casino. Her daughters both live at home with her in a neighborhood near our own. The younger one is a tall basketball-playing senior at ISP whom my husband says is “a great kid”.

I arrive with a page of notes and questions from my preceding few days of adventures and misadventures, and after a few minutes of polite pleasantries, she asks, (in Spanish) “What’s on for today?”

Here are the topics we have discussed so far: politics and the current Panamanian elections, public and private education in Panama, shopping for housewares and for groceries, Panamanian recipes, travel destinations in Panama, religious affiliations and observance, holidays and cultural celebrations, crime and violence, and oodles of linguistic and grammatical trivia. Topics I have in mind for the future include: pets, ecology and the environment, public health and the health care system, youth culture, and the elderly. Angela is a goldmine of information and perceptions, which, I realize, are one person’s perspective, but I feel so lucky to have found her.

Here’s to teachers everywhere!

We've got a screecher

Our daily round of sounds in Panama goes something like this:

6 am: The pet bird belonging to the people who live in back of us starts screeching. (Unless it never stopped, the night before.) Its calls sound like barks, harsh and desperate, although I’m open to learning that this is really a melodious mating call. I’m not sure what the owners do to turn the bird off and on, or if it is completely self-determined.

6:30 am: The little yellow school bus (“Collegiales”) roars up our little dead-end street and honks for the little girl who lives across the street. She comes out with her mom, or dad, and climbs in. The bus roars away. On a good day, it is a newer bus which does not spew black smoke in its wake.

6:50 am: Rich and I start up our car (a 2003 Nissan Maxima), glance at each other to acknowledge the ominous rattle it has sprouted, and pull out of our little carport to head for school. I go with him most days to drop him off so I will have use of the car. The 6-mile round trip takes 15-20 minutes.

En route up the hill to the International School of Panama (ISP), we slow down at the huge cut in the mountain to take in the day’s assortment of noise, trucks, men, construction equipment, cement mixers, and “caliche” (construction debris) which will some day result in a local connection to the highway between the airport and downtown.

7:00 am: Rich gets out at the school gate and shouts pleasantries to the ISP security guards. They like him because he is kind to them and speaks colloquial campesino Spanish.

Midday: The next door neighbor’s doorbell sounds many times a day. It is a classic Ding! Dong! and is mostly pleasant, since it means bustle and activity, but unfortunately our house has the exact same doorbell, so I am never sure that it’s not ours. Our neighbor, Marcia, is a customs official who works from home, and received packages and visitors all day long. It’s better than any house alarm or security system we could have. Other sounds contributed by Marcia’s family include the quiet putt-putt of her son’s motorcycle as he comes and goes, the prattling of two little boys who are cared for during the day by the family, and the good-natured yelling of Marcia’s mother, who arrives each morning to manage the household. My favorite, though, is the lovely singing in the shower by Marcia’s 20 year old daughter. Their bathroom is literally 6 feet from our living room, and unless our house is closed up and the air conditioner on, the sounds of splashing water and her voice fill our living room.

Any old time: Huge thunderclouds spill over the mountains to the north and roll over our neighborhood toward the sea. Deep booms of thunder and cracks of lightning usually precede by a few minutes a torrent of rain, which can last from a few minutes to a few hours. The roofs are specially designed to soften the sound of the rain, which our neighbor says could otherwise drive you insane. I like the sound of tropical rain – big, huge drops, and little streams rustling everywhere.

Late afternoon: Lots of street noise as workers head home. Everyone honks their horns constantly. It’s hard to know exactly what they mean, but since there are virtually no traffic lights or rules, we’re guessing it’s just communication. Drivers seem less angry than in the U.S., but no less hazardous.

Evening: If we do evening errands down at our local shopping center, which is quiet during the day, we marvel at the swarm of people, laughing and chatting while picking up take-out food, dry cleaning, groceries, hardware, and housewares. Sometimes I meet a fellow teacher of Rich’s at the ice cream store for a dip top cone (pronounced “deep top”) and we sit at an outdoor table to watch the crowd. She is here in Panama alone, and is struggling with the adjustment.

9 pm: We tune in to CNN or ESPN, now that we have cable, to find out what’s happening outside of Panama. Or even in Panama, since we don’t yet understand the Spanish news channels. Even CNN en espanol is focused on the US election. The other day there was a one-day workers strike in Panama which even shut down Rich’s school, and we still can’t seem to find out what it was all about.

10 pm: It’s hard to describe the sounds made by the huge frogs which live everywhere, but especially along the edge of the cliff, a few hundred yards from our house. They sound like a chorus of sore-throated old men who practice nightly, but can’t get the unison-thing down yet. I’m told they never will.

8.31.08 "I'm not dead yet..."

8/31/08 “I’m not dead yet!”

Two weeks have flown by and we’re now in our house in Brisas del Golf, which you can find on Google Earth, east of downtown Panama City, three quarters of the way to the airport. The community is named after the road leading to a nearby golf club, but it’s really a HUGE suburban development of hundreds upon hundreds of little houses laid out in grids, and built wherever the undulating, hilly landscape will allow.

I stopped writing for awhile because I became really ill with dehydration and traveler’s digestive upset, landing me in our local medical clinic for a 2-hour treatment with IV fluids, and a bunch of prescriptions for vitamins and antibiotics. It took me a week to feel halfway decent again! Part of it was that we were literally camping in our house for the first week, with no refrigerator, stove, washing machine, or air conditioner. Camping is hard in NICE weather, let alone heat and humidity! Rich spends each workday in air conditioning, but here at the house the indoor temperature climbs past 90 most days. Now, we have all the major appliances, so all we need is some furniture. We sure did start from scratch! Rich is mildly horrified at the expense, but I had done a projected budget and we’re coming in under budget for the most part. How in the world has he retained such a 1950s idea of what things cost???

Panama’s rural landscape is visible from our front steps and we can drive to the country in about 20 minutes. Huge palm trees of all kinds are interspersed with cinderblock houses and lush vegetation, none of whose names I know yet. Unlike all of Panama City, there is little traffic on country roads, and people saunter down the middle of the road, ceding right-of-way very slowly. Rich is trying to revisit something of the rural Panama he knew in 1970; some of the roads to Villalobos and beyond do capture it.

What in the world am I doing in Panama? I’m not depressed, but definitely lonely and adrift. I study Spanish every day, do lots of errands to keep us in food and supplies, and talk with the neighbors, haltingly. A family living behind us has two cute little girls who are entertaining to watch, as they are bathed in large outdoor utility sinks. Another neighbor has a screeching pet bird, whom Rich nicknamed “Dinner”, implying what will happen if it doesn’t shut up. Our neighbors on either side have been wonderful to us. The end house, with the beautiful view, is owned by a retired French couple who have invited us over to enjoy their view and speak French. On the other side is a Panamanian couple with 2 or 3 children (about ages 10, 16, and 18) and a very friendly, talkative mother-in-law, who has offered us help at every turn. Everyone seems happy that we have moved into the vacant house, and Rich has charmed everyone with his (apparently highly translatable) sense of humor.

8.13.08 Panama City drivers are NUTS!

8/13/08 Panama City drivers are NUTS!

The Olympics are in full swing, but we missed the opening ceremonies last Friday evening because we were VERY lost, driving around in circles in crazy downtown Panama City traffic. I particularly wanted to see the opening ceremonies because my nephew, Zach, at 23 has just spent three months in Beijing working on the lighting for the opening and closing ceremonies! Quite an amazing experience, I’m sure.

Anyway, back to Panama traffic, I have not yet driven here and am NOT looking forward to it! The roads are full of potholes, the drivers are insane, and the streets are mostly without names! Well, maybe they have names, but no one agrees on what they are, and there are no up-to-date maps available. Having driven around for two weeks now, we pretty much understand the major arteries, but couldn’t give you directions to save our lives. When you come to visit, TAKE TAXIS!!!

Rich started teaching this week, and I have been on foot downtown doing errands to advance our cause of moving out of the hotel into a house near school. It is so hot by midday that I am drained and have to collapse in our air-conditioned room. Rich’s school is fully air conditioned, fortunately.

8.5.08 There's a gecko in my suitcase

8/5/08 There’s a gecko in my suitcase…

Ever since the millennium, when we were told the world might end, it has been my annual New Year’s resolution to become more flexible; more open to new and spontaneous experiences. My natural (Meyers-Briggs) “J” tendencies are all in the opposite direction, so this is no mean undertaking. I am organized to a fault (my dear son, Ira, calls me “frighteningly organized”). On day 5 in Panama I can already tell that Panama is going to do more for me in this regard than a New Year’s resolution ever could!

This morning I awoke to the jumbled chaos of our hotel room at the Crystal Suites, a down-in-the-mouth hotel in Panama City where the commodious rooms have kitchenettes and a widely variable assortment of other conveniences. Michelle has an iron and ironing board in her room, but not a coffee pot. Marilyn has a coffee pot, but not a coffee cup. We have dishes galore, and a stove, but no pots or pans to use on it. This morning we spent a hilarious half hour making coffee without a coffee maker or coffee pot (Marilyn, our potential source thereof, checked out yesterday…)

According to one of our Panama guidebooks, the Crystal Suites was built in 1999. This we can’t believe. More like 1969! The building is perfectly pleasantly designed, but very shabby and rundown. The towels are threadbare, the floors stained, and the furniture in need of cleaning. There is an army of very pleasant maids and maintenance staff, and they clean the bathrooms and make the beds daily, but they can only work with what they’re given. Our guess is that a developer with an eye for Panama City’s impending business boom built the place and then flipped it immediately to another company to manage. The current owner is probably making the most possible money off the place without reinvesting in the facility.

The Internet connection was “down” in the little hotel “Business Center” so I couldn’t call or Skype-chat with my sisters this morning, as arranged. The two hotel computers are a mess – full of viruses and clearly in need of cleaning and updating (both inside and out). One is missing its front panel, so the buss connection thingy is sticking out, probably getting dusty, moldy, and coffee drenched. Both computers are equipped with Windows 2003.

Once back in our room after breakfast, I started to pick up our messes. I lifted my straw hat from a pile of clothes atop my open suitcase and a gecko scurried around the brim. I yelped in surprise, dropped the hat, and the gecko disappeared into the suitcase. Throughout the morning, as I pass the suitcase, I gingerly pull one article of clothing at a time off the pile; shake it, fold it, and put it into a drawer. No sign of the gecko yet. My son would have already tamed and named it by now, so maybe I should do that.

In 5 days we have accomplished about 3 ½ things: 1) opened a bank account (well, started the process… they wouldn’t accept our first deposit until they complete the paperwork on their end, sometime next week); 2) scouted out and paid for car insurance on the car we bought here in May (though we haven’t yet managed to pick up the car); 3) looked at half a dozen places to live (but not found one yet); and 3 ½ ) bought a coffee grinder! Actually, the coffee grinder merits full-accomplishment status, since morning coffee will be Rich’s lifeline before his 7 am start-time.

I’m not saying it’s entirely Panama’s fault that things are so hard to accomplish here. We arrived exhausted, following a three month run-up marathon of preparations. I am not yet even minimally conversant in the local language (thank god for Rich’s good command of Spanish!). And we are bemused and bewildered by the procedural catch 22’s that lie in wait with everything we do. Panama is a 2nd world country in terms of its infrastructure - spotty, but improving. The school at which Rich will teach is friendly, supportive, but not necessarily very well organized. Plus, it is going through a huge expansion – from 650 students last year to 800+ this year! The administrators are quite upbeat – hopefully, they are sincere.