Critters: friend or foe?

Well I'm happy to say that I survived with Chris being out of town in Chicago for a few days last week. .... I also survived a few bugs! Mosquitos, cockroaches, bees, sand bugs, iguanas, stray dogs, and a quite a few geckos. Plus a few frogs or rather toads and the occasional crab.

It's not so bad when I have Kami and Lincoln to the rescue with a shoe or a container. Kamila wanted to keep a gecko as a pet and decided to use a Tupperware to hold it in. Even made holes in the lid. But we let that one go because it's mom was probably looking for the lost baby gecko.... The friendly critters happen to be the spiders (who trap the bugs, who eat the ants) and we have a few but not too scary. Nothing bigger than a quarter (25 cents). Those I can handle. Squish or send out the door.

Gecko above the AC in our bedroom

Note - baby gecko hanging out above the air unit in the picture above.  The gecko or rather the baby iguanas??? The kids find rather funny when I scream. Of course I say "Gecko!" and Kami is ready to pick it up. Though she does remind me NOT to pick it up from it's tail.
As if....
I've had those little critters behind the stove, in the bedroom, in the living room and of course outside walls. Kami thinks they are the cutest pets. Well at least they are low maintenance. LOL plus: They don't make noise but they can sure run fast!

Mosquitos - ha! I still have scabs that are not healing and I'm almost out of caladryl lotion. $6 at the Rey for a bottle.

I've also mistaken a small Panamanian bee for a mosquito. Rather interesting bee. My hand swelled up and remained puffy for a day. Thanks for the benadryl it acted quick in reducing the swelling. Note to self about striped "mosquitos". We do apply almost ritually OFF! Spray when we step outside or go out to dinner. I even carry a can in the car. Here on the beach we have MosquitoTime - between 5:30-7:30 depending on the humidity and temperature. It gets dark around 6-6:30 so when the sun starts going down, the Mosquitos come out to play.

I've been pretty diligent about keeping food tightly sealed, zip locs, or refrigerating things because of cockroaches. But I must say cockroaches not only love food, but also damp towels. For example, kids had a few damp towels from swimming in the dirty clothes hamper. Yup. You guessed. I was sorting out the clothes, put them in the laundry basket to bring to wash. Out of the corner of my eye I knew I saw something. My nerves said it was a gecko. However, as I'm walking with the dirty towels basket, I screamed bloody murder because this cockroach with wings landed on my shoulder. I drop the basket, shake the bug off and it flew inside my shirt!! Talk about sweating. I'm shaking and too afraid to feel the critter on my skin until I finally see it come out on the floor. I had our little neighbor kid Jose over to play at the time, and he squished the critter for me. But it was still moving. Kamila grabbed another shoe and smashed it. That critter had a little funky post death smell. I left it on the stairs for the cleaning lady to pick up the next day. That was a about 2 1/2 inches HUGE!!

Similar to the cockroach I encountered

Lesson is to do the wash ASAP. Ugh!

In the mornings, almost everyday, Lincoln cleans the pool.  Every now and then we have a crab (or two or three) floating or a frog in the pool.  We have also left a door open and a big toad went inside the house. We had to chase it out.

For a city girl, I think I'm adjusting pretty well to the climate, culture and little critters. At least I find myself not screaming any more.  Just calling the kids to come get rid of it.  No problemo. :)

-Lita

Shop til you Drop in Panama

Settling in Panama and getting the shopping routine down has been a little challenging and at times fun.
Basic Shopping includes: grocery store, hardware stores, and going to the city for the major shopping.

It seems that every other day I'm going to the grocery store.  Here at home we don't have the huge pantry or the space to store the essentials of having food just to have it fill up the pantry.  We also have the power outages so you can't stock your 'fridge with too much food just in case the outage last longer than an hour.  So far we've had one that lasted a few minutes in the weeks that we have been here.

Right now my pantry consists of cereal, rice, beans, pasta sauce, and cooking oils and a few snacks for school lunches.  My grocery store runs from $40-$100 a week.  This includes our much loved Panamanian beer Panama.  My list consists of bottled water, meat for cooking for the day, vegetables and fruit.  We have two grocery stores to choose from: Supermercado Rey and Super 99.  Super 99 has fewer selections but a better layout to find things.  Also at the grocery store, you can reload your minutes on the phone (I spend about $20 for 2 weeks).

The Rey grocery store rocks! You can shop, go to the meat department, bakery, pay bills, take money out from ATM, and go to the pharmacy all in one stop. I just got to avoid the parking spot where the birds love to decorate parked cars. I will be paying my electric/gas bill there and my water bill. I hear our water bill should be about $8-10 and the electric bill about $80-140 depending how much we use the AC.  I've been using it at night mostly in 3 rooms (the bedrooms) but during the day we have the fans going and I have the door open for the ocean breeze to come in...but it is still stinkin' hot!

We've also learned that the hardware stores also carry almost everything else.  Electronic cables, surge protectors, batteries and cleaning supplies.  Not much different in price either from the grocery store.

Shopping at Pricesmart is my favorite though.  Just like Costco but better food tastings.  Applying for the membership was easy.  Just fill out the form, show your passport and they take your picture and hand you a card and voila! You are a member.
Where else can you go and do wine tastings before you buy? OR taste the paella before you take the pound of cooked paella? Just take home or eat it on the way home as we did. That was stellar paella. 5*****
We bought a monitor, rugs, lotions, shampoos, and other fun and unnecessary things there.  The only problem is that Pricesmart is in Panama City.

Panama City is much different than our beach town.  One can really get lost with all the one ways and slight detours with all the construction going for the light rail.  Thank God for GPS on our iPhones.  Without it, Chris and I would be fighting a lot more about directions.  Also, Kamila got really good navigating me while we went to 3 different malls this last weekend.

We started at the El Dorado Mall after our PriceSmart experience. This is in Panamas newer Chinatown. Mall has a small casino too FYI.  Swimsuits for $15 and not bad.  Also I bought a few art supplies - which if I had more time, I would have gone Cornholio.  While we shopped, they have guys with portable car washers to wash your car for $5.  We had a clean car until the major downpour the next day.

Next day, we went to super Bellevue Mall type mall called Multiplaza Pacifico located in Punta Pacifica district.  Yes they had the Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Michael Kors and other stores, but we ended up at kids stores and Hello Kitty - much to Kami's delight.

We then went to another mall, Multicentro Mall located in the Punta Paitilla district, which is one the wealthiest areas in Panama City.  This is the largest shopping mall in Central America and has a movie theater, casino, arcade (which I narrowly avoided with the kids), a lovely bookstore and many more shops and boutiques. Just so happens to be connected to a Raddison hotel too for ultra convenience.  However, my favorite part of the mall?  The Hard Rock Cafe. And pretty soon, a Hard Rock Cafe Hotel! That is one opening in December...hmmm. Maybe by my birthday I'll be back. :)

-Lita

First Week of School

While the kids were excited to get to know new friends and meet their school teachers, I got busy to get into a routine.   During the week I will be dropping kids off at 8 AM to school and pick up at 3 PM.
I will also be picking up two more neighborhood boys (José and Efrain) to the school.  Both their moms work full time.  One of them a cleans homes and yes...I ended up hiring her. Twice a week for $30 sounds reasonable to me.

So between dropping the kids off and picking them up from school, I find myself all week doing the following:  Laundry, organizing rooms and picking up post breakfast, Zumba on XBox, making coffee or tea from the tea kettle, currently working on finding a new exercise routine - (walking on the dirt road or beach depending on the tide), grocery shopping for lunches (no school lunch backup plan here), finding a café (Subway worked as a quick and close one), and getting to know other mamasitas. On my down time I've read a few books and have downloaded and organized my pictures so I may choose what my next project is for painting.  Also I will be managing inquiries and bookings for a new boat charter biz that Chris and Nate are working on called "Yacht Latina".  YL  will do trips between the San Blas Islands and Cartagena, Columbia.  Fun, fun. We may have to test that trip ourselves soon.

Wednesday we had the parents meet and greet the teachers and other parents from the school. We brought over my Mexican rice (which disappeared) and my homemade guacamole and chips.  Everyone else brought other delicious meals too.  Classic Panamanian, Peruvian, Cuban to chips and dip. YUM!! Can't wait for the next Potluck. We also had beer at the school...not something we can do in the states, but that was fun.  Must repeat.

Then came Thursday.  Just happens to be Art Appreciation Thursdays and I'll be helping the Art teacher as her sideshow Bob when she needs me. It was fun this last Thursday.  We worked on "20 heads" paintings.

That wrapped up the first week of school really quick.  We had a great weekend as well....

Friday there was no school, so Lincoln and Kamila had their first playdates scheduled.  Unfortunately, we had Lincoln at home because he was sick.  Kamila spent her afternoon with Lara.

Saturday our first PCIS friends had us over for dinner (Robert, Barbara and Lara + their friend Marcy and her daughter Ryan). On the menu: German sausage, chicken, salad and great wine!

Sunday was another get-together with (Tom and Lee) another PCIS family and Lincolns friend Gavin. Chris and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary that afternoon at Cholos Comida Mexicana - my favorite of all the eats to choose here in the beach cities. Kamila ended up shopping with us to get some cool tables made from trees by the locals.  We wrapped up the evening at Picassos in Coronado.  Pizza and beer.  I also noticed they had an NFL sports fun dates scheduled...you know where I'll be on Sundays.

-Lita

Shopping for Fresh Seafood

Fishing Village in Gorgona Panama

Locals buying fish

There is a small fishing village just a walk down the beach from our house.  We've ventured out there a couple times to buy fresh seafood.  Local fishermen stay out all night in their pangas, working hard on bringing in the fresh catch for morning customers, who are mostly local panamanians.  You can see many of them walking to and from the market, returning with their daily ingredients.

Boats on shore - gorgona fishing village

The fishing village is setup as a co-op and seems to be co-sponsored by the taiwanese government (not sure what the deal is there but suspect that taiwan needs to be friendly with panama if they expect to continue to fish the waters here) 

Restaurant Menu

There are also several rustic mini restaurants adjacent to the co-op where during lunchtime you can try your luck with one of the local favorites such as panamanian fish soup, lobster, and fish tacos.  Anyway - for about $2 you can get a whole corvina or dorado (mahimahi), or they will filet it on-site for an extra buck.  The local cat's love it!

Fisherman filet-ing the a corvina

Is somebody missing a cat?

Walking to the village w friends

Panga takes a run at the beach

International Learning at PCIS

First day of class at PCIS

Kami and Lincoln are digging their new school.  It's a small international school located near the beach in Gorgona Panama.  The school was started by Kathy Kress, a US expat from Colorado with a deep love for children and education.  The school has a full range curriculum for all students ranging from K to 12th grade.  School here runs monday thru thursday which the kids love because they get 3 day weekends every week...Although this may take some adjusting for the parents!

39 kids are attending the PCIS this year which will be the school's biggest attendance yet (in 4 the years since it opened).  We had a school family potluck on wed night, featuring an impressive spread of food since the families come from all over the world.  Only about 30% of kids are from US - the rest are German, Panamanian, Argentinian, Peruvian, Cuban, Canadian... Classes are taught in english and all children receive spanish instruction.  Kami says she needs to brush up on her spanish because the spanish spoken here has a slightly different dialect that the US version taught at Puesta Del Sol.  I've been impressed with the quality of the staff, the depth of the curriculum, and the strong parental involvement. 

Introduction of families

In talking with some of the other parents I noticed that many of them are also here for the adventure, testing the waters, living in paradise, etc.  It was the first 'at-school' event that I've been to that featured cold beer and live music.  I love Panama!  

PCIS staff combo featuring the music instructor and PE teacher 

Kami was selected to read a poem she wrote in front of the families