Tag Archives: Visitors

David kites and Rocco plays fútbol

I’m fighting with WordPress a little. That’s why I haven’t posted in awhile.

Eric’s cousin David was in town from February 8-12. It took us about 2 minutes to get him to the fish market for an afternoon snack of ceviche for Eric, ceviche and patacones for me, and a whole fried fish with yuca for Dave. The boys made me walk through the inside of the fish market for the first time ever, in flip-flops. Ugh. Fishy water – at least I choose to call it water – all over the floor, carcasses strewn across tables and scales, goodness knows what else b/c I just tried to focus on keeping my head down and holding my breath. Yuck. Luckily patacones are pretty good at lifting my spirits and erasing bad thoughts from my memory.

We showed him the Cinta Costera…

Then we headed to Casco Viejo where we had dinner reservations. We walked around the old part of town to show off the excellent architecture and let David soak up a bit of the culture, as well as some of the touristy bits, then I got in touch with Jessie from my capoeira group. She lives in Casco, and she invited us to visit for a few minutes before dinner! It was great to see her and her mom, Tonette, who was visiting from El Valle de Antón, nearish to where we are staying this time around. Tonette and David, both from the Silver Spring, MD area, talked about….terrapins and crabs, I imagine, while I had my first chance to catch up with Jessie since we moved back to Raleigh last April. And of course we had to take advantage of her apartment’s views!

We had dinner at a new place (to us) that was right on the beach. I had made reservations, but you might be able to tell that we were almost the only people there. We then hit the grocery store and headed back to our rental house in Punta Chame.

The next morning, we headed out to the beach for David’s first kiteboarding lesson with Nino! Eric was excited for his cousin to take an interest in his new sport. I enjoyed bonding with Rocco.

 

 

I had warned David weeks in advance that he would be in town during the Carolina/Dook game, and I laid out for him exactly what that meant in my house. An excerpt from my email to him on January 19th: “just realized that the UNC/Dook game is Feb. 9th. A couple things: I get hateful on these days. I do NOT tolerate teasing or any pro-Dook talk in my house. I will have a UNC shirt for you to put on and, barring any moral reasons why you cannot wear it (appropriate reason being that you are a hardcore MD fan and you have always hated UNC – which I don’t think is the case), I must insist that you wear it and either A) watch the game quietly with me, B) cheer for UNC and hate on Dook, or C) get out of the house for the evening. I’m fine with any of those.”

For those of you who don’t know David, he’s not exactly the go-with-the-flow, I’ll-do-my-thing-and-you-do-yours kinda guy. He likes to pick at people. He enjoys debating. He’s my worst enemy on game days. Becca, you would kick him out of your house. And folks, that’s not to say anything bad about David or about Becca. David just did not have the privilege to grow up a Tar Heel fan, so he doesn’t know any better. Becca is my college basketball soulmate and, like me, she requires very specific etiquette out of fellow game-watchers. This is why Becca and I generally prefer to watch games together at one of our houses with no one else around. It’s better for everyone this way.

Anyway, David was very respectful considering his complete lack of understanding of the passion I feel for my Heels. Thanks, David. And that’s all I want to say about that game.

When David and Eric are together, they play board games. Prior to David’s arrival, I sent the following Onion article around to the boys, plus Eric’s brother, sister-in-law, and cousin (David’s sister, Kristin): “SCHENECTADY, NY—Repeatedly seeking to ease his friends’ growing skepticism and disinterest, local man Joel Mayhew peppered his explanation of the rules of the board game Pandemic with reassurances that it will be fun, sources confirmed Friday.”

  1. Eric had been telling me for a few weeks that his new game was going to be fun, and even more important that that, it would be short.
  2. David brought Pandemic after seeing my email. I instituted mandatory drinking rules promptly after the boys made my participation unnecessary by strategizing together and deciding what my moves should be on my behalf, then getting disappointed when I wasn’t invested in the game. The night got a little better after that.

On Saturday, we drove to El Valle de Antón, where we have taken many visitors. This time, however, we did something new. We hiked up La India Dormida, the Sleeping Indian, a series of mountains that together supposedly look like a woman lying down and sleeping. I’ve never really seen it, but whatever. It was a decent hike with steep slippery hills and giant boulders. I made it about 7 minutes in before I rolled my ankle. Not badly though, just enough to look silly.

We were rewarded at the top with incredible views and REALLY strong wind.

 

That night, we went out to the beach for David’s last Panamanian sunset.

And as a bonus, we got to see Rocco playing fútbol with some of the folks around Machete. He doesn’t often move fast, but he’s hilarious when he does! They tell me the death rattle-type breathing patterns are normal for a winded bulldog…

The following morning, we set off to take David to the Canal, and then on to the airport. As we drove, we passed a few cars that each flashed their lights at us. Eric slowed down, wondering what kind of hazard we might come across. All of a sudden we turned a corner and saw this!

You know, just a bunch of cows out for a morning jog! Oh Panama! You always deliver when we have guests!

 

 

Uninspired Writing, but Pics of a Hot Panamanian, So There’s That…

We had a great weekend relaxing with our friends Mono and Lourdes and their daughters Cari and baby Sereia. No big rumba this weekend, just a lot of pool time. It was pretty excellent.

The baby was hung by the pool with care.

And since Lourdes is Panameña and gorgeous, we did a bit of a photo shoot. There’s something about Panamanian women – they all know how to pose and they love to do it!

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was when we went to the beach to see Eric kite. Mono started doing a little capoeira, and I asked him for a jogo (a game). It had been nearly a year since I had last trained with him, and it was invigorating, though tiring, to be back out there with him.

In other news, Addie’s birthday was on February 1st. I had the chance to FaceTime with her briefly.

We’re off to the airport soon to pick up Eric’s cousin David! We’ll show him Casco Viejo and have dinner in the city before we head back this way. While I love the quiet life we have here, I’m pumped to get some time in my city. We’ll go back up on Sunday to return David to the airport. We’re going to stay the night in a hotel in Casco as a little treat since we’re picking up our friend Sarah Jessica the next day. Exciting times!

A Word Problem

I have a quick word problem for you. You invite a group of Panamanian, Venezuelan, Colombian, and Gringo capoeiristas to your house for the weekend of Jan. 27-29 via text around January 5th. All say they are coming and excited. On Jan. 26th, you haven’t heard anything from anyone, so you text asking who is definitely coming and start trying to organize who’s bringing what food and drinks. You hear that Person A is coming on Friday night, Persons B and C are coming on Saturday, and Persons D and E may come pending a health issue. You announce that you will provide breakfasts and dinner on Saturday, and ask they they supply lunch on Saturday.

Question 1: How many people show up on Friday? Who are they?

Question 2: How many people show up on Saturday? Who are they?

Question 3: What time do they show up?

Question 4: How many meals do you have to cook?

 

If you’re keeping score at home, the answers are:

1) zero, no one;

2) 5, Person A, Person B, Person C, and – tricky one here – Persons F and Child Person G!

3) Another tricky one, so here’s a hint. You get a text from Person A at 1:12 pm saying she is waiting for Persons B and C to pick her up to go to the grocery store.  You then get a text from Person B at 1:30 pm saying he is leaving class in the city (an hour and a half away) and going to pick up – not Person A – but Child Person G. At 4:45 pm, you get a text from Person A asking what to buy at the grocery store. There. That’s your hint. The answer? Persons A, B, C, and Child Person G arrive at 6:45 pm. Person F arrives at 9 pm. Obviously.

Oh and also, Persons H and I, plus H’s mom, Person J, stop by for a bit around 2:30 pm. But you probably already knew that.

4) One. If you look at the aforementioned discussion notes about who is bringing what, it would appear that you would be cooking breakfast on Saturday, dinner on Saturday night, and breakfast on Sunday. You’ve asked them to bring lunch on Saturday. Again, these are so obvious…they aren’t going to arrive until after their assigned lunch meal, but being crazy generous, they bring enough meat to feed nearly half of Punta Chame. They also bring every condiment you can imagine, bread, veggies, soda, and a huge cooler full of – wait for it – Balboa Dark beer. I’ll address the dark beer news in a moment. That is huge and deserves its own paragraph.

So yeah. We had a typical weekend with my capoeira friends, which means the following: we had very little idea of who was coming and when, or for how long they were staying, we didn’t know what they were bringing, we didn’t know if kids were coming or not. What we did know is that we would eat and drink a lot and stay up to some ungodly hour of the morning even though everyone is falling asleep in their chairs while music blasts from a bluetooth speaker. And was going to be a lot of fun.

I was so excited to see these people. I hadn’t seen any of them since April after hanging out with them 5x a week for a year, so there may have been some running and jumping and yelling and kisses and hugs when they arrived. You may remember some of them: Árabe (Antonio), Lucero (who is now dating Árabe!), Árabe’s 4 year old son Alejandro, Mahalia, and Moisés.

We cooked about 3 animals worth of meat on the grill on Friday night, then stayed up until 1:30 or 2 eating, dancing, and drinking. Eric even ended up dancing because Lucero (Traquina, if you know her by her Capoeira name) always takes the time to teach and reteach him.

Check out Eric’s face!

These three are so sweet together. Ale, Árabe y Lucero

Lucero is a phenomenal dancer – absolutely amazing to watch. Moisés is also quite good. They’re both characters, so we love watching them dance when they get together. We also enjoyed “un baile típico panameño” from Mahalia and Árabe. It was just awesome. We had seen some folks do this kind of folk dancing before, but never our friends! So cool.

Here’s a video of Lucero and Moisés. I’ve never tried to insert a video before, so y’all will have to let me know if it works for you.

Here’s the Panamanian dance by Mahalia and Árabe, hopefully.

Sunday was pool party time. I’ll just share a few pics here, as this is getting to be a long post. Oh, and we found out what choripan is – basically a chorizo in a hoagie bun with onions, tomatoes, ranch or ketchup, kinda whatever. A latin hot dog. What’s not to like?

 

I also mentioned that we had other visitors on Saturday afternoon. Stella and Elliott, our upstairs neighbors from last year, came by with Stella’s mom after a morning at the beach! It was excellent to reconnect with them. You’ll remember Stella as the model (for a day) that I snuck in to see during Fashion Week in 2015 and Elliott as the neighbor we adopted every time Stella was out of town. They also watched Addie for us a few times.

Speaking of Addie, she’s doing some sightseeing these days. She’s on holiday in Asheville, living it up at the Biltmore House with my parents. Not a bad life. Her birthday is in two days – February 2nd. She’ll be 11 and is still jumping the fence in the backyard. Silly girl.