On Tuesday (11/17 – I’m a little behind in writing) we had big plans to go to the Panamá v. Costa Rica fútbol game.  Now, I don’t understand how any of this works, but apparently this was a World Cup 2018 qualifying game.  Seems kinda silly to me given that we’re a few years out still, but what do I know.  If you can explain it to me, I’m all ears.  Samba?  Little David?  Eh, they’re not reading this, but I’ll give them a call.

So Mono was all excited and ready to start pre-gaming at 3 pm, but we had to wait until everyone got off work at 5.  Unfortunately, by that time, traffic was horrendous.  The worst I’ve ever seen it.  We manage to avoid traffic most of the time because we don’t have to drive to work.  Additionally, it had been pouring rain, so it was worse than usual.  Oh, and Mono’s car broke down earlier that day, so we had to pick him and Lourdes up on the way.  Terrible timing for them because they were trying to prepare both for our batizado (hosting international guests, putting on a show, logistics for everyone for two weeks) and their wedding!  We set out at 5:20 pm and the game started at 8:30 pm.  Here’s a map of where we had to go.

It took us about an hour to go from our house (the southern-most stop on the map) to the next point up which is just about a km away.  Awful.  Poor Eric drove for a total of 3 hours before we got to the game.  We got there maybe 10 minutes before halftime.  Crazy!

I was planning on making this a more detailed story, but so much has happened since then, I’m feeling a little too overwhelmed to remember all the details!  The talking points of the night are as follows:

• It continued to rain all night, but we had a blast anyway
• TONS of Ticos (Costa Ricans) were there, and they were perfectly positioned in the upper deck so they could throw beer at us.  Fútbol fans make sense to me.  They love their teams with a fiery passion, and they aren’t quite sure how to act when things don’t go their way.  Does this remind anyone else of Carolina Basketball?  I think that’s why I felt such a strong urge to cheer hard for Panamá and why I took it a little personally when…
• We lost.  2-1.  I have to say though, it was an incredible moment when we scored!  There’s nothing like it.  Sheer joy bursting out of 14,000 of your (at the moment) closest allies, everyone chanting, jumping up and down, throwing things, beer raining down from the Ticos above…it was awesome.

Soaking wet but having a great time!

Great friends.

I felt badly that this guy didn’t get to watch the game! But he and his buddies were necessary at the end of the game. Pretty rowdy.

Notice the super-Panamanian Spanish here. “Tas ready?” instead of “Estas listo?” “Pa’l” instead of “Para la.” And this is an ad for what is basically the President of Panama’s passion fruit Zima.

The next day, I lived out the quintessential Family Circus cartoon.

I had offered the night before to help Mono run some errands for the batizado and the wedding since he didn’t have his car.  I was a little surprised though, when Lourdes texted me several times at 8:30 am.  As it turns out, Mono locked out of the house.  Across town.  And Lourdes had the keys at work.  So, I jumped up and, without showering or anything, left the house…not to return again until 4 pm.  Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.  Here’s what my/our route looked like throughout the day:

I got to Lourdes’s work and found out the plans had changed.  She asked me to go further across town to a place called El Dorado so I could pick up their birth certificates and certificado de solteria (certificate of singleness – a required document to get married in Panamá apparently).  I was prepared for this to take approximately…forever.  Luckily, God decided to smile down on me in the little oficina del Tribunal Electoral that morning.  I was in and out in about 4 minutes…and I was absolutely sure that meant that something was wrong.  But I headed to Mono’s house (across a different part of town again – maybe a 20 min drive) at that point to pick him up, and he assured me that everything was in order.

From there, Mono drove.  Thank goodness.  We went from way up at the red pin on the map above (near Panamá Viejo) down to Avenida Central, right next to Casco Viejo for those of you who have visited…the furthest point south on the map.  We searched for t-shirts for the batizado in a few stores, found nothing, and decided to head back up to El Dorado (NWish part of the map – where I had picked up the birth certificates) for lunch and another tshirt shop.  We managed to get 40 tshirts, hopefully in the right sizes for everyone, and poor Mono insisted on carrying them to the car even though his back was still not in good shape.  Chivalrous to a fault, that one.

Once we got back to the car, our car alarm let me know that it had been a whole month or so since I had put fresh batteries in the clicker by proceeding to go off for a good 7 minutes.  Somehow Mono beat it into submission and we got the engine started.  We headed back to Lourdes’s work after that, I think, and that’s where I left him.

Long day with lots of driving and erranding, but I was grateful for the one-on-one time with my teacher and friend.

The next night, I had the privilege of seeing Los Monólogos de la Vagina with my energetic and adorable 19 year old friend Lucero.  It was a real treat to go with her for a million reasons:  she’s been a great friend to me and had the patience of a saint when I couldn’t understand her accent back when she moved here 6 months ago, she was really interested in seeing the show whereas Eric has NO desire to go with me…go figure, we hadn’t spent much one-on-one time together, and we’ve had some great conversations about sensitive topics in the past.

I wish I had written a whole post on the show that night.  It was incredible.  I wasn’t expecting for so much to have been changed to specifically speak to a Panamanian audience.  It’s not just that the names of Panamanian cities were thrown in, but rather that entire portions of the show were rewritten to take into consideration the importance of language.  One monologue, for example, essentially talks about reclaiming vulgar words for the female genitalia.  Of course, this whole portion of the show is dependent upon the audience’s use and understanding of particular words, and it was beautifully rewritten.  A variety of Panamanian accents were also used throughout the show for different characters – street slang, yeye (uppity rich people accent), and folks from the Interior, the Panamanian version of rednecks.

Overall, the show was very good, very funny, and very poignant.  Loved it.