Tag Archives: Settling in

I think that’s a cricket?

We found the house without much trouble on Monday night around 9:30. After a few minutes of yelling his name, Raúl, the caretaker, appeared and came to open the gate. Also at the gate was a cute, if very skinny, dog who was eager to meet us. I have forgotten her name at the moment, but I’ll get back to you. She’s super sweet and I’m glad for her company.

Our vicious killer of a guard dog.

Raúl let us into the house and immediately my mind went into snap judgment mode, as I imagine (hope? selfishly, for the sake of making me normal, not because snap judgments are good) it does for most people when they arrive in a new place. The first thing I noticed were the very clean and shiny stone floors. Then the huge thatched roof. It feels like we live in a big tiki hut, honestly. Those were some of the positive parts.

As we continued exploring, I found both positive and negative elements. Or maybe I’ll just say positive and interesting. That’s a better way for me to handle it.

Interesting: outside of the fridge is quite rusted and gross looking. Positive: the inside looks clean and feels cold.

Positive: there is a desk and chair for Eric! Interesting: the seat of the chair is not parallel to the floor.

Positive: there are screens on the windows to keep bugs out. Interesting: It doesn’t really matter because various portions of the roof do not completely come together, leaving fairly large spaces for creatures to enter.

Interesting: The GIANT cricket on the wall just outside our bathroom. Positive: My husband is trained in the art of capturing these guys in towels and releasing them outside…so as to challenge them to re-enter via the roofline.

Positive: Salamanders/various lizards are not harmful. They’re not even gross. Interesting: They will scare the absolute hell out of you when they sneak up on you in the water closet.

Positive: Eric is willing to go after these with his patented towel method…at least until they hide behind the toilet.

Positive: I feel safe here. Interesting: Rusty barbed wire outside our window. This one isn’t actually so bad. I’m pretty used to seeing this around here. Doesn’t bother me.

See the rusty barbed wire just outside the window?

Positive: Really beautiful and fun tiki-style thatched roof. Interesting: No windows to open upstairs to allow for the amazing Punta Chame breezes to come through the 2nd floor. Positive: We have a 2nd floor. It’s pretty silly.

Positive: We have a stove and oven. Interesting: We have completely unlabeled knobs. How hot is the oven supposed to be for those potatoes? 425? Well, fun. I’m going to set it on plain white kinda far away from the dot. Positive: Eric is a good cook. Last night we had a lovely meal of rosemary potatoes and various fried things filled with meat. Man, did we miss our fried things filled with meat!

Eric was the first to have a go at the shower yesterday (Tuesday) morning. We had been told that we would have hot water, which was pretty special. We weren’t surprised to find out that it was one of those plastic contraptions stuck onto the pipe as it comes out of the wall…I’m not a plumber, I don’t know how to better describe it. Let’s just say it’s a fairly basic system. Not a problem…until the water just stops. Yes, we have hot water, but only for 2 minutes at a time. If Eric didn’t have time to finish his shower, I knew I was doomed.

Last night I gave it a try. I immediately realized that buying separate shampoo and conditioner had been a big mistake. It turns out that I can either wash my hair or my body, but not both in the same go. I’ll have to work on a solution to this one. Currently I have 12 hour old hair and the rest of me is freshly washed. Well, freshly washed with a thick coating of 100% deet.

If you didn’t know it before, you are now realizing that I am not an outdoorsy kind of girl. I desperately want to be. I grew up in Asheville and played in the woods every day when I was little. I love the idea of camping. I love hiking, as long as there are no bugs or spiderwebs. I love fresh air and quiet. I love that I cannot hear any cars right now and that the breeze blows through the [first floor of the] house in the evenings. But gosh, I do not like any kind of insects. I hate the feeling of grass on my wet feet (Mom, remember how I was never good with slip-n-slides on the front lawn?). I think my parents have photos of me on the beach with one foot in a bucket of water. Apparently I would wash the sand off of one foot, then switch feet, only to have to do it all over again. I like to think that maybe that made me an easy kid to keep busy. I was diligent at least.

And yes, this is a completely different type of experience from our last time in Panamá. I knew that coming in, and I am prepared to do some adapting. We’ll get to that part.

But first, the most unsettling thing by far…the smell of the toilet paper. Yep. Seriously.

What is evidently the most common brand of toilet paper in this country has an intensely strong smell. It’s not a bad smell. It’s a bit like baby powder and a bit like a cleaning product. The problem for me is that the smell is intricately intertwined with my month-long illness and week-long hospital stay in early 2015. More on that in a later post. For now I’ll just say that it brought back some terrifying memories and added unnecessary anxieties to this new experience. But, I’m making small changes to alleviate my anxieties. Don’t like the toilet paper? Get new toilet paper! Done. Think all the dishes are gross? Wash them all and clean out the drawers (*we don’t have a pantry or cabinets, just drawers).

So today, I am making a list of ways to work through my worries and anxieties about the house and being here in general. Here’s what I have so far. I’m sure I’ll add to the list as the days go by.

  1. Deal with one anxiety at a time.
  2. Blog your way through those anxieties. Find humor in the inconveniences. Or at least allow others to find humor in it.
  3. Clean one thing at a time.
  4. If the spoons look really disgusting, buy new spoons.
  5. Deal with bugs when you see them, not when you imagine them coming.
  6. Remember that you do NOT have c.diff. this time around. And even if you get it, we now know what to look for and how to handle it a lot more quickly.
  7. Locate the closest medical facilities, just to put your mind at ease.
  8. STAY HYDRATED.
  9. If the smell of the perfumed toilet paper reminds you of having c.diff., get new toilet paper.
  10. Accept that cleanliness is relative (i.e. clean + bug spray + sunscreen + whatever kind of dirt blows in through the windows = clean).
  11. When overwhelmed, stick your feet in the pool, pet the dog, and read a book.
  12. Don’t pee in a shower that doesn’t drain properly. The next day will not be awesome.

And now, a few more photos of the house. It’s a weird shape, so it’s hard to get your bearings with just pictures, but here goes:

This morning I was a little groggy from cold medicine when Eric left the bedroom to start his day. I picked my head up to see him go. He stopped abruptly and said, “I think that’s a cricket?” I went right back to sleep, but remembered his words later in the day and decided to ask about it. His response? “I mean, I think it was a cricket! I just think it was injured or something. So it was just laying there, flopping all silly.”

So there’s that.

In other news, Eric got his kite today! Very exciting! He hasn’t fully unfolded it yet, but it’s blue and a darker blue and kinda reddish. Photo coming soon. We went over to the kite school around 3:30 today and caught up with Itzick – “the Ab Master” – Millie, who is responsible for keeping the school running, and Nino, Eric’s adorable 20-something Austrian instructor.

Machete Kites

We went for a long walk along the beach, then headed up to the “Machete Swing Bar.” Calm down, it’s nothing kinky. It’s the outdoor bar at the kite school that has swings instead of seats. The temperature was perfect and the sun was starting to go down. Beautiful. We discovered something slightly unnerving – the bar no longer carries Balboa, Eric’s Panamanian beer of choice. It now carries only Quilmes, an Argentine (Argentinian? I’m never sure) beer. Luckily, it’s not so bad. Whew!

Real men drink beer on swings.

We walked down to the beach to watch the sunset. I’m not usually a sucker for sunsets on the beach. To me, most beachscapes are boring. There’s water, there’s sky. That’s it. But here, there are beautiful mountains across the water. There are brightly colored kites all over the sky. It’s always exactly the right temperature. There’s always a nice breeze. The instructors usually go out to kite, so you’re also watching a pretty spectacular show. Tonight Eric gestured for me to stand in front of him so he could wrap his arms around me. At the same time, we both sighed. Perfection.

The Journey South

We’re here! We made it to Punta Chame, 90 min southwest of Panama City (20 min as the crow flies). We have our rental car, we’re in the house, and I even made us a gourmet breakfast!

But let me back up a bit. We found out on Sunday night that our flight from RDU to Miami was delayed 75 min. We would be arriving in Miami at 9:43 and our flight to Panamá was scheduled to take off at 9:44. No bueno. This meant taking the next flight from Miami, arriving in Panamá at 4:00 pm. Perfect! That way we could get our rental car and get on the road by rush hour!!!

We began the day/night with 3:30 am wake-up call to ensure that American Airlines hadn’t suddenly found a well-rested crew in order to keep our flight on time, followed by a 45 min snooze (Eric in a whiny voice: “I can’t sleeeeep!”), then a 4:15 alarm, and 5 am departure for the airport. The first flight was BUMPY. And Eric was checking for the airsick bag in his seatback pocket by the time we were over Florida. Luckily, we landed (hard) with empty airsick bags and had 3 hours in Miami to recover.

The next flight was fairly uneventful, though it was on a smaller plane than we are used to. This change made the trip about 3.5 hours instead of maybe 2.5 or 2.75. Whatever, we made it.

Next step: car rental. I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say that rental car insurance is expensive and a big pain in this country. I argued my way out of $500 worth of unnecessary insurance (which our credit card company already covered and which the sales guy tried to slip by us after I told him we didn’t want it), and we set off towards our Kia Picanto. Don’t get too jealous. Petey, as we’ve named him, is pretty rockin’. Unrelated question: can cars run on 2 cylinders?

We went to the home of the Uruguayan owners of our rental house next and spent a lovely 30 min or so with them signing final papers and giving them money. It never ceases to amaze me (wait for it, this is going to sound SO American and white) how many differences there are among each of the Latin American countries. I’m not particularly proud of that fact, but there it is. In just this short visit, we learned about mate (pronounced “mah-tay”), or yerba mate, a highly caffeinated tea-like beverage that is essential to Uruguayans and drunk in varying quantities by Argentinos, Bolivianos, and southern Brazilians. This guy was serious about his mate. He drank it from the traditional small gourd with a straw that looked like the stem of a pipe. He explained to us that you’ll usually see Uruguayans carrying a thermos of hot water under one arm and the gourd in that hand, so they do a lot of things one-handed.

Although the wife, Marcela, has been alternately communicating with me in Spanish and perfect English, the couple spoke only rapidfire Spanish to us. Eric kept up impressively well, although he noted that the husband’s slower, relaxed speech was easier to understand, at least until Marcela entered the room. I loved their accents and clarity of speech, although that could be due to their formality in our company in comparison to my capoeira friends.

**Sidenote: As I’m writing this, I am discovering more and more blog-worthy things about this house. Stay tuned. It will get more interesting.

We decided to delay our battle with traffic until after dinner and grocery shopping. We sat down at Habibi’s, a Lebanese restaurant that we regularly frequented last year. They have a nice outside patio, passable curry chicken, decent hummus, and a bi-weekly belly dancer. You know, the usual.

So we are seated next to a large tv. No sooner do we order when we saw this:

We were there in perfect time for tip-off! Crazy, huh? Now Eric, being the kind and loving man that he is, immediately offered to trade seats with me so I wouldn’t have to see Satan’s face (some of you call him Coach K…but those who do have simply not had the pleasure of a proper education by yours truly) during dinner. I declined and just sat in complete shock that a game being played not 20 min from where we had been that morning was on, over 1000 miles away. So bizarre.

Another strange thing at dinner was this:

I know it may look completely normal to many of you. Many of you are wrong. Green salads just don’t happen here in Panamá, as you may remember from last year’s blog. This is the most lettuce I’ve seen together on a plate in this country, ever. Super exciting.

I’ll spare you my whining about being dehydrated and actually shivering a little at dinner (Eric: “did you bring long sleeves?” Me: “I don’t understand.”) because I think I’m getting a cold and chances are I’ll wine whine about that later.

We had no trouble getting out of town and over the Bridge of the Americas, which leads west towards Punta Chame and eventually, Costa Rica. 90 min later we pulled up at the locked gate of our house for the next two months: Casa Ukaiki. Watch for our first impressions, surprises, uninvited visitors, and more photos in the next post.

 

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.

From the front.
You probably can’t tell, but the lugnuts are blue, just like the car!
I let Eric sit in the driver’s seat for a minute.
I can’t believe we own a car with a Panama license plate.
The spedometer is only in km and is in the middle of the dash. Very strange.
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.
See my smiling face in the chrome? I’m a goober.
Side view. I still just love spoilers, even on corolla type cars. It ain’t fancy, but it’s awful cute.
Fancy remotes again. The only pic I sent to my parents when the deal was done.
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.

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:

IMG_4477

 

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