Tag Archives: Curiouser and curiouser

Stash of miscellaneous thoughts/info

I have a bunch of random tidbits that I’ve been saving up, so I think I’m just going to dump them all out here for your enjoyment…or at least for your consumption.

  • When my dear friend Katie visited, she took the same tour that my parents took with Eric to Lake Gatún which is the lake in the middle of the Canal.  I just found out that both Katie and Eric wrestled the same ginormous crocodile and both lived to tell the tale.  I’m very proud of both of them for their incredible courage.  Look at the size of this thing!  And it’s only 2 years old!
Steady, Katie!

Steady, Katie!

Conquered!

Conquered!

Apparently someone asked if they could put their finger in the croc's mouth. The tour guide said sure! Eric said he knew the lawyer in me would be dying had I been there...

Apparently someone asked if they could put their finger in the croc’s mouth. The tour guide said sure! Eric said he knew the lawyer in me would be dying had I been there…

  • Next up, I have a few more photos from my parents’ visit that my mom didn’t share in her post:
This is me. I’m at the Canal. I’m smiling.
Mom and her raspado
At the top of a hill at the Parque Nacional Metropolitano…after seeing sloths, before seeing monkeys.
This is a common thing on the Cinta Costera. Mango with vinegar, salt, pepper, hot sauce if you want it. Sounds gross, but it’s actually really good and refreshing.
Mom never stops, but I insisted on a daily siesta. It’s too hot to go go go all day long.
Watching a chemical ship go through the Canal with only 2 feet leeway on either side of it.
Beautiful (Carolina blue!) dress from Carolina Herrera. Only $1370.
What Dad and Eric did while Mom and I went to Gucci, Dolce, Carolina Herrera, etc.
This is a really popular treat down here. It’s a snow cone, but with condensed milk added! Even MORE sugar!
  • This one is completely out of nowhere.  Have y’all heard that the BRONTOSAURUS IS BACK!?!?!?!  I remember being (semi-) crushed when scientists decided that the brontosaurus wasn’t a thing but that there was something sorta like it and it was a brachiosaurus.  I hated, and still hate, the brachiosaurus.  But now, and I don’t know the details, nor am I going to take the time to Google it now b/c no one’s going to click on a link to any article that I may link to, there’s something that they’re going to call a brontosaurus!  And I feel like 1) an old friend is back, and 2) there’s hope that Pluto is a planet after all.  8 year old Julie is super happy.
  • Eric told me the other day that public restroom cleaning ladies just hang out in the men’s rooms regardless of whether men are in there.  He said it was odd.  I can understand that.
  • LOTS of people rollerblade here.  Like, they still sell them in seemingly normal stores, and you’ll see multiple people rollerblading on any given walk down the Cinta Costera.  I feel like they should be wearing scrunched down socks with them, but sadly, they’re not.  Ooh, and maybe Hypercolor shirts.  Isn’t that what they were called?  Anyone?
  • Last Tuesday, April 7, a couple of things happened at capoeira training.  First of all, I got a round of applause for doing something well!  It’s not common for us to do this for each other during training, so I was really excited.  The funny thing (to me at least) was that I was doing cartwheels.  They’re supposed to be really controlled and slow, so there is a bit more skill than you’d think would be involved, but still, it made me giggle that that was what they complimented me on.  When I finished up, a girl whose nickname is Ninja (the girl from DC who’s amazing) asked me “so you’ve really never done capoeira before?”  I told her no, but in my head I was thinking…”but I was 9 once…I mean, it’s cartwheels!”  Then we switched to the other side and I showed them that, like everyone else in the non-capoeira/gymnastics world, I can only cartwheel to one side.  🙂  Whomp-whomp.
  • Later in that same practice, I was learning a new type of kick called a media lua.  The guy who teaches the classes, nicknamed Mono (monkey), came over to demonstrate how to do them one after another with a partner.  I went first, but I messed up and made the mistake of standing up in hopes of trying again.  Wrong move.  Mono kicked me square in the eye with his heel…hard.  You may remember him from earlier posts…he’s not a small guy:
He has hard heels. He's not small.

He has hard heels. He’s not small.

The next day my eyelid was bruised a bit – which I didn’t know was a thing – but no real blackeye.  Definitely disappointing after being knocked upside the head.  You want battle scars after that.  At least my Spanish teacher noticed something and didn’t let me read anything the next day b/c she didn’t want me to hurt myself.  🙂  Love her.

The real pain from that workout, however, was from the move we practiced which involved a sorta almost roll/cartwheel thing on your head.  I don’t know about you, but I do not believe that heads were made to have weight put on them.  Especially not all of my body weight on concrete.  No, sir.  Not this gringa.  I did it though.  Or rather, I tried it.  I did not succeed in any sense of the word, but I tried.

  • On Wednesday, the following day, we had our capoeira music practice.  I don’t know if I’ve explained that since capoeira has Brazilian roots, all of the songs played while it is played are in Brazilian Portuguese.  Also, the teachers often speak Portuguese during training and classes.  Really pretty difficult when you’re just trying to understand and follow the Spanish and learn the moves and all.  I feel like an idiot ALL the time.  Anyway, we learned two new songs on Wednesday, and to my horror, Lourdes, who leads the music practices and is engaged to Mono, started going around the circle asking each of us to sing each song solo to make sure we had it down.

In case you’re wondering, I did not have it down.  I do not know how to pronounce Portuguese words.  I do not have a strong singing voice or any desire to sing solos in public for newly discovered friends who I think are super cool and want to like me.  Yes, I’m a 7th grader down here…I just want friends.  Anyway, Lourdes helped me out a bit, but the seconds one was easier to follow and I was able to make it through the long chorus on my own.  I even did the “call,” the part where you call the rest of the group to join you, on my own, and maybe not in a beautiful voice, but it was strong.  A couple of the guys complimented me and seemed satisfied.  I was happy with that.  Just trying to keep from being a complete idiot…that’s the goal.  🙂

  • We finally sorted out our electricity bill and somehow managed to have the bill from our first month and a half in this apartment kicked back to the former renter who has disappeared and has been avoiding my calls.  The electric company would not let us put the bill in our name until she paid her bill, so that’s been a problem.  Finally…and I won’t bore you with the whole story…the owner of our apartment bribed the security guys in our building to keep out the electric company guys so they couldn’t get to the meter to read it and send us a bill, then we went to the company with us and she somehow worked it out.  In the process, the company insisted on knowing how many lights we had in the house (have you ever heard of such a thing?!), whether we had an iron (um, no…it’s called a dryer), and everything else that uses electricity.  Oh, and how many watts each thing uses.  Really?!  Who knows that stuff, and didn’t you just have this info from keeping up with the apartment 2 seconds ago with the last tenant?!

Anyway, here’s a photo of Isabel, our landlady, who is so sweet and wonderful, but ruthless and sneaky when she needs to be.  We love her, even when she’s a little ridiculous.  Doesn’t she look like she could be straight out of…I can’t decide between Florida and Savannah.  Probably Florida.

Our landlady

Our landlady

  • During the Summit of the Americas, we had a great time watching out for motorcades from our apartment.  It overlooks a big road, so whenever we saw that it was being blocked off, we knew that some world leader was coming through soon.  The best part?  We saw Obama’s motorcade twice!  The first time it was about 11:30 pm and we were taking Addie out for a walk.  Lo and behold, the President of the United States just goes driving by with two limos, lots of black SUVs, cops, and an ambulance.  Amazing!  The second time, we saw him from above, from our balcony.

It was interesting to compare the motorcades to one another.  Smaller countries (think Trinidad and Tobago) probably just rented 4Runners when they got here.  Not everyone can fly over tons of cars, at least one if not two helicopters, etc.  All the folks in my capoeira group commented on it.  The funny thing is, Obama didn’t do that to show off.  It’s what he uses for everyday stuff in the US too.  It’s just amazing the differences among all the countries in this continent (or these continents, depending on what your 5th grade teacher told you about North and South America v. the American continent).

One of these days I’ll have to get into Lourdes’s reaction to hearing the Apache helicopters this past weekend.  It reminded her of when the US invaded Panamá in 1989, when she was 5 years old.  She got really scared remembering it and told us all about it via WhatsApp.  I was ashamed that I knew absolutely nothing about us invading, and yet this was a hugely impactful event in my friend’s life.  Amazing how little we learn in the States about these things sometimes…

  • Coming up:  planning our first border run!  Although Eric took a trip to Boston a few weeks ago, I’ve been here for more than 90 days, meaning that I can no longer drive legally.  I’m not the type for taking chances with this kind of thing, so we’re leaving next Tuesday for Costa Rica.  We’re hoping to stop through Boquete (a major Expat retirement site b/c it’s cooler and beautiful) and Santa Catalina (a great surfing area where a friend owns a hotel) on our way back.  Exciting!

A what? A Yaris? I’ve never even heard of that!

Yep!  We did it!  We bought a car!  In Panama.  Who’d’ve thunk?  On Tuesday I was saying that I didn’t know if we really even needed one.  By Tuesday night we were doing research on the Central American version of Craigslist (www.encuentra24.com).  By Wednesday at noon, we strolled downstairs to test drive this cute little Toyota Yaris.  Yes, Eric was brave enough to go out on the main street in front of our apartment in someone else’s car on his first attempt at driving in Panama traffic!  When we got back, we talked the guy down about $700 from what really was a pretty fair price to start with (fingers crossed that the engine doesn’t fall out of the car as I type this) compared to other Yarises from the same year and with similar mileage, shook hands, and agreed to make it happen!  Mind you, all of this was done in Spanish.

We went to our bank almost immediately to see if we could go ahead and get the car insurance policy set up and ready to go whenever we got the paperwork done.  Turns out, on this visit to the bank we were greeted by the woman who helped us to open our account with kisses and hugs, then we were ushered to the front of the line!  She gave us the debit card we’d been waiting on, then took us directly to the woman who handles car insurance.  After about 20-30 minutes with this other lovely woman, we were all set!  All we had to do was email her copies of scanned documents when the deal was done.  AMAZING!  How was that so easy!?

I’ll try to pare (pair?  pear?) down the details of the actual car/money transfer a bit, but when we left the seller, Alberto, that first day after seeing the car, we understood that the plan was to wire money directly into his account after all the paperwork was done and the car was officially mine.  I say mine rather than ours b/c Panama insurance companies give female drivers a 50% lower deductible than male drivers.  Easy decision as to whose name it was going into.  I wonder if all the crazy male taxi drivers screw up the stats or if women are just more cautious or what.  Either way, nice perk.

Turns out, Alberto thought the plan was for us to get a “cheque de gerencia,” a cashiers check, from a particular bank.  Of course, this made more sense b/c we could directly exchange the check for the paperwork, but we had already discussed doing it the other way.   Anyway, after a bunch of miscommunications and a lot of weirdness from someone who seemed in person to be a normal guy, we figured out the process.  For example, we had originally decided to meet on Thursday at noon to do the paperwork at the Municipio (municipal building, i guess, is the translation), but once he said he wanted the check instead of the transfer, we told him that we didn’t know how long it would take our Panamanian bank to actually acknowledge the transfer.  “But I thought wire transfers happened instantaneously?!”  I know.  But remember…Panama.

Anyway, after Bank of America called Eric and he confirmed that yes, he did in fact want a bunch of money sent to a random country for the first time ever, they sent it and our Panamanian bank received it immediately.  Amazing.  We got the check pretty quickly and were able to meet Alberto at 2:30 pm.  When I texted him to tell him we could be there at 2:30, he told me he had been there all day.  I apologized, asked if I had led him to believe that we would still be there at noon, but he said no, it wasn’t a problem, he lived very nearby and it just made sense.  I’m not sure how, but that’s what he said.  Um…okay.

That same afternoon, however, the owner of our apartment, Isabel, who I may have described to you as the Panamanian version of a 60-something lady from Buckhead in Atlanta or maybe Savannah or Charleston, but who Marianela, our Spanish teacher, simply refers to as “un Judeo,” – a Jew – was having some guys bring over a new dining room table for us.  Turns out this thing is a monstrosity.  It took four big guys to carry the glass tabletop, so Eric had to stay here to let them in rather than them just leaving it in the hall for us to bring in.  He later said that he had a pretty good conversation with one of the guys – in Spanish!  I’m so proud of his progress, even though he doesn’t see it.

The table.

The table.

The guys with the table.

The guys with the table.

That meant that I was on my own to go ensure that all the proper paperwork was done on a rather large purchase in a confusing government building in a foreign country where I know some of the language but where they speak VERY quickly and where the government workers love to mumble.  Jerks.

We had to go to two offices.  One gave you a piece of paper saying that you were transferring the car from one person to the other and the other printed a piece of paper saying that the car is now in the new owner’s name.  Kinda silly, but hey, that’s government everywhere.  We only made it to one office before the other closed.  No worries though, Alberto and his son (one of the few really good-looking folks I’ve seen since we got here, honestly) assured me that the important part had been done, that I officially owned the car, and that we’d come back the next day to finish up.  He handed me the keys, I handed him the check, and I got into my new (used) car!!!

It had been Eric’s plan to meet me once the table guys had left, but I finished up first, so that meant that I was going to have to drive home.  I was actually pretty excited.  I didn’t have to go too far.  I could actually see my building from the Municipio and vice versa, but I didn’t know exactly which streets were one way, how to get into our garage, or which parking spot was ours.  But I made it!  Completely without incident (incidence?).  Here’s my shot of my first drive.  Mom, stop it…I was at a red light and I didn’t even look when I hit the shutter button on my phone.  🙂

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I got it home safely and promptly took photos of it.  I wanted to wait to post this until we took it out in the sun so I could take better pictures, but I can’t wait.  It’s a big step for us down here.

You probably can’t tell, but the lugnuts are blue, just like the car!
See my smiling face in the chrome? I’m a goober.
The spedometer is only in km and is in the middle of the dash. Very strange.
Maybe this covers the antennae? Not sure. Looks like a shark fin to me, and I like it!
The fancy remote that promptly stopped working today. Eric’s been trying to fix it for the past hour.
From the front.
Alberto insisted it was “celestre” or sky blue when I called it “azul” or just blue. I think he’s mistaken. It’s blue. I like it though.
I can’t believe we own a car with a Panama license plate.
Side view. I still just love spoilers, even on corolla type cars. It ain’t fancy, but it’s awful cute.
I let Eric sit in the driver’s seat for a minute.
Fancy remotes again. The only pic I sent to my parents when the deal was done.

So, as for the rest of the weirdness with Alberto, we decided to meet up at 8:15 the next morning to be ready for the office to open at 8:30.  In the meantime, I discovered that the transfer document said that my name was “Paris Julie Solms” because US passports list our last names on the top line and our first and middle on the next line.  Luckily that turned out not to be a big deal.  Anyway, at 6 am, I got a text (Whatsapp) from Alberto saying that he was already at the Municipio because the first office that we had to go back to to check about the order of my name opened at 7.  WHAT?  Exactly.  It made no sense.  I ignored it and tried to go back to sleep.  About an hour later he texted again (still over an hour before we were supposed to meet up) saying “Que bueno!” or “How great!” for no apparent reason.  I hadn’t responded to the first text.  It was completely out of nowhere.  Really weird.

Anyway, I got there around 8 or 8:15 and we finished the paperwork and all is well.  A few other interesting tidbits.  If you have WhatsApp, you might know that when you text someone, you can see their profile photo.  So when I first received a message from the person who I only knew as the owner of this Yaris that I was interested in, I thought it was a really beautiful young woman.  Needless to say, it was surprising to see this guy show up.  He then told me that he was a helicopter pilot and showed me a picture of the giant helicopter that he flew.  He also had all his gear in the backseat of the car.  He used to be in what was formerly the Army and the Air Force and has since combined into one military branch.  He now, if I understood him correctly, works for the Presidential administration in some way, again, as a helicopter pilot.  I wanted to ask more, but felt stupid that I wasn’t understanding him.  It was also 8:30 am, I didn’t feel well, and I just wanted to get the paperwork done.

So now I’m googling him to see what I can find out.  I do have his full name, after all, and the equivalent of his social security number – although those numbers are much less of a secret here.  He texted his to me so I could get the cashier’s check, for example.

Now for a few UNC matters:

In remembrance of the (I believe 7th?) anniversary of Eve Carson’s death, I wanted to post this.  I love this quote.  It very much embodies my feelings about Carolina.

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On Carolina/Dook game day, I believe that Eve would be with me in saying GO HEELS!!!  And, having not known her, I won’t bring her into this one, but GO TO HELL DOOK!

Thanks to Becca for sending me this photo, taken today at my beautiful Alma Mater:

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Here’s hoping my parents let me FaceTime with their TV tonight!

Not Maid for Each Other

First of all, I’d like to thank Amber for noticing in one of the photos of Marta in the last post, my computer screen showed that I was googling “how do i turn off the camera shutter sound iphone 5?”  I cracked up when she called me out on it.  I was trying so hard to be sneaky for y’all!

Alas, my relationship with Marta was not to be.  She broke up with us today.  Abruptly.  She changed her clothes at 1:30, after beginning work at 8 am.  That was my signal that she thought she had done enough work for the day and she was leaving.  HOWEVER, this is not the way things were going to go if I had anything to say about it.  I think I mentioned last time that Eric and I had made a basic list of things that needed cleaning around the apartment.  Basic things – clean out the microwave, do the dishes, do the laundry, clean the bathroom, etc.  She refused to work by a list and got an attitude with me.  So this time, I decided that I would see when she was ready to leave, then I would check my list and see what had not been done.

I also went around the apartment to see how things looked.  There was still dust in corners where she hadn’t moved our suitcases out of the way to sweep and mop.  There was dust under the beds that was easily visible.  There was dust in the tub that she had cleaned so perfectly last week.  She asked last week that I buy a squeegee for her to clean the showers, but when I looked at the glass in the showers, it was just as dirty as ever.

But she had an answer for everything.  She told me the soap scum on the shower glass was permanent.  I pressed her on it, and she insisted that there was no possible way to get it off.  No cleaner, no brush, no rag, nothing would remove it.  Eric noticed that the edge of a door was dirty from people closing it – you know how people press on the edge of a door to close it instead of using the doorknob?  She said it was just that the building was old and there’s no way to clean it.  My mother had me cleaning that stuff when I was 7 with soap and water.  After she left, it took Eric about 2 minutes to restore it to a beautiful white color.

I could go on with these stories.  I didn’t yell.  I tried to reason with her.  I asked her about things.  I told her that if I was paying her for a full day’s work, that meant that I got to say when she left.  She didn’t just get to pick up and leave at 1:30 because that’s when she wanted to go.  So there was one more thing.  Some dust in Eric’s office’s doorway.  A really easy thing.  I asked Eric to point it out b/c I was kinda afraid she was reaching her limit with me and it was time to put some man-of-the-houseness behind things.  I wondered if she would talk back to him like she did to me.  He asked me to get her attention and tell her that he had one more thing for her.  But that was the breaking point.  She said she was done.  It was better that she left and that she didn’t work for us anymore.  She took her stuff, let me check her bag, and offered to give our number to another girl she knows (to whom I’m sure she’ll say we’re tyrants).  And that was it!  I shouldn’t have given her the full $25, but I did.  Just was time for a clean break at that point.

I guess some of you will be shocked that I was assertive enough to run a large-ish Nicaraguan woman out of my house.  I didn’t yell.  I didn’t get mad even.  I just tried to use what I would call common sense.  She just wasn’t having it.  I did stand my ground.  I did respond when she gave me answers that were just plain sorry excuses.  I didn’t let her take advantage of me.

I don’t know what her experiences have been like in the past.  I really would like to know.  She told me that she had 3 years of experience working in Panama, but then she told me today that she only got to Panama in January of this year – a few weeks AFTER we arrived here.  I don’t know.  Anyway, that short chapter is over.  I’m not upset, just sad that I have to go through the process of meeting a new person and starting to get her accustomed to how I do things again.  Sigh.  I know, I know…again, poor Julie.  She’s having trouble with The Help.  Downton Abbey has been good therapy for me.  They totally get me.

Before she left, however, and before she got upset (I hope), she made some pork chops with ajies (or ajis?  I’m not sure) – little peppers – and onions and garlic, plus a squash pureé out of that big ole squash that you saw a few posts back.  Not bad.  She wasn’t the best cook, but the idea is a good one.  I’ll have to try it later.

Pork chops, squash, and our plant from...the bank? Why? Because...Panama.

Pork chops, squash, and our plant from…the bank? Why? Because…Panama.

More on our trip to the bank – or rather – the reason for it, in coming posts.

For now, I’ll leave you with a picture of Eric and the guy who stalked him for a good 20 minutes while he waited for a lady to bring him the coffeemaker we wanted from the storeroom.  It was pretty funny.  I have no idea what he thought Eric was doing, although I suppose he looked a little strange carrying the plant (above) from the bank around…

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