Happy Separation Day!

The month of November in Panamá is packed full of patriotic holidays.  The 3rd celebrates Panamá’s separation from Colombia, 4th is Flag Day, 10th is for celebrating the first cry of independence from Spain, and the 28th celebrates Panamá’s independence from Spain.  Basically, 2015 is over because everyone is on vacation from now until after Christmas.  Woohoo!

I’m not sure what was going on yesterday, but for some reason the whole alcohol section of the grocery store was covered with Caution tape and there were signs up citing some law saying you couldn’t buy alcohol on November 2nd.  Haven’t figured that one out yet.

Last night we saw that the big road in front of our apartment was shutting down, and it turns out there was a little parade!  We walked down to check it out, and I’m glad we did.  It was all (well, hopefully not all, but whatever) the city’s firefighters (bomberos) and a good number of cops too.  Pretty cool.  I don’t know how to describe it, but you know how you always feel a sense of quiet awe and respect for what those folks do whenever there’s an event honoring them?  It was like that.  Meanwhile, Eric was commenting that only one guy was good at his job b/c his torch was out while everyone else was carrying fire around.  Apparently we were on different pages.  Haha.

We woke up at 5 am to the sound of…what else would it be in this country…fireworks!  It was quite an amazing show too!  One of the most well-coordinated (the best coordinated?  I’m not sure how to say that.) that we’ve seen, and it lasted forever!  Apparently they just could not stand to wait to start celebrating las fiestas patrias.  I decided that they were probably wanting to be the first to wish my brother-in-law, Drew, a happy birthday, so I took a picture and sent it to him.  Happy Birthday from Panamá, Drew!  They’re throwing a huge party for you!

This morning the streets are closed again for another parade.  As with other holidays, like Carnival, a ton of people have left the city.  It’s kinda nice, actually.  Everyone else gets their vacation out of town, and we get a nice quiet stay-cation.

Tomorrow we’re making Eastern style NC BBQ for way too many people…speaking of quiet stay-cations.  Mono and I have been talking about doing this for months now, and we finally decided that Flag Day would be a good day.  Great, I thought.  Just Mono and Lourdes and maybe their two girls…nice relaxing day.  That is, until Mono announced at practice on Saturday that I would be hosting a BBQ and having everyone over!  This is the second time he’s done this!  Sigh.  Oh well.  I know it’ll be fun…we just have to find a big enough pot to make gallons of Brunswick Stew!

Eric’s parents are getting into town tomorrow night!  We’re very excited to be hosting them.  They’ll only be here for a short time, but I think we’ve come up with a pretty good schedule that will allow them to see some sights and also relax in the mountains for a couple of nights.

Oh!  On Saturday we had capoeira practice at the Canal Administration building, which is really impressive.  I know my mom is rolling her eyes right now b/c she wanted to check it out when they were here in March/April.  I thought it sounded super boring.  Oops.  Anyway, not many of us were there, but we had a great practice and a fun, relaxed roda.  Mono has a GoPro that he takes everywhere, so he got some cool shots…