Haven´t written in a while so this is long....

Over these last few days, it’s become very apparent that my alcohol tolerance is dangerously low and needs to be worked on. As they say, practice makes perfect and I hope I will be practicing a lot now that I have a new friend. He has red hair and looks like Henry Waxman (though not nearly as good looking), but other than that, I have no complaints. Maybe I will make even more friends soon!!!

In other news, I am very excited to report that Adriana and Cassandra -- my two favorite girl cousins on my mother’s side who hail from Manassas -- are visiting at the end of July. I am thinking that if it resembles Colombia 2004/2005, there will be much dancing and merrymaking, for in three years of college, ten years of international travels and nearly 1.5 years of living in Latin America, I have never met anyone who embraces the art of partying more than Adriana. No one even comes close. It is truly a gift from the good Lord himself. I am very excited for their visit!

In yet more news, my blackberry and I will be taking a much needed break/separation during my time in Colombia. It’s not easy and I will miss it, but I guess I need to prove to myself that I can live without it after all those months together. It allowed me to G-chat with my U.S. friends and family and change my Facebook status with great frequency and flexibility. It was a great companion when I was stuck in the rain and couldn’t get to my computer. On those days when my new house still had no internet, it was my portal to the world. It refined my texting skills and made me look very busy and important. Anyway, over the last three months, the blackberry and I became inseparable; you wouldn’t catch one of us without the other. However, I think this forced separation is for the best. In fact, you can see how very sick this relationship is by the fact that I wrote more about it than I did about my new friend or my cousins’ visit. A little bit shameful. But I completely understand why President Obama didn’t want to get rid of his.

Arriving in Colombia is always very exciting and emotional. I always feel like I’m coming home even though I wasn’t born here and didn’t grow up here. But sometimes I think, I could have grown up in America or Europe or Asia, but no matter where I grew up, my connection to Colombia would always be there. I think it’s the smell that gets me: Old lady perfume, wonderful scent of something frying, diesel and the occasional whiff of garbage and urine. But all very subdued because it´s too cold for the smell to get too pungent.

Bogota is pretty much as opposite of Panama City as it gets. It’s a very somber, gray city framed by dark pine forest mountains. Very melancholy in a way. The people wear a lot of dark colors and scarves and shawls and are extremely polite and formal, almost archaically so. In Panama City, you hardly ever see someone wearing a suit; in Colombia, almost everyone does. All these old men with their white hair, big umbrella eyebrows, always wearing navy blue suits and berets sit around drinking coffee at the Juan Valdez stand in Unicentro. There are dozens of amazing cafes, a rundown but historically and culturally rich Spanish quarter, dozens of first rate museums and an excellent dining scene. The architecture is kind of futuristic and a bit chaotic, but the city blocks are organized and manageable, even for someone with a sense of direction of a five year old. It’s exciting landing almost 10,000 feet in the middle of the Andes, despite the terrain-induced turbulence.

I guess if Panama City was Miami, Bogota would be New York. In a city of nine million inhabitants, I’d say at least one million live in extreme poverty. In Panama City you don’t see the little boys picking up glass and plastic bottles in decrepit old carts pulled by decrepit old horses for a few dollars a day or the street children – gaminos -- who sniff glue all day because they’re hungry and bored and don’t have anything else to do. Panama City has ghettos, but nothing like the massive, sprawling mountainside ghettos of Colombia that could be huge cities of their own. Panama’s are small and contained. But then again, I think poverty is all the more striking in a cold, cloudy, rainy, mountainous city. It´s strange that people in most Spanish speaking countries think Colombians are so horrible and crooked because you don´t really see it when you´re here around the people. Maybe it´s the politeness that makes it hard to see.
I wanted to go to the internet café last night to check my e-mail, but my grandmother wouldn’t let me go alone because she said I might get mugged or get my hand cut off or some other terrible atrocity. Despite being nearly 80 years old, she said she’d go with me to make sure none of these terrible things happened. The Internet café is about ten feet from the apartment door. When I come here, I think that because all of them are so much older, they think I am like five years old. I try to remember that they´re old and scared, but sometimes I just want to go out on my own…

For me, Colombia is five old ladies drinking hot chocolate with queso fresco and eating pastries while discussing the news. It’s my grandmother, her sister Lorenza, a couple neighbors and friends and maybe a distant aunt. They sit in one of their respective living rooms, all decorated in an antiquated, victorianesque way, and talk about this politician or that, how Bogota gets more and more violent every day, and how people just aren’t good they way they used to be. None of them have husbands because they left, they died or they just didn’t marry. They’re always impeccably dressed, their hair hairsprayed into a perfectly stiff, tall bob, a requisite of all Latin American women of a certain social class. I just kind of sit there watching them. They ask me questions about my life and give me advice, which always includes not getting married until I’m over thirty (if at all) and the importance of eating iron and yogurt. And despite being surrounded by half a dozen old ladies, I always enjoy it and it’s one of the principal memories of my life. There are only like five or six of those that stand out more prominently than the others.

I am so happy to be here even though it’s impossible to get warm at night.

Song

I am obsessed with this song now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk9pG53zul8&translated=1

This morning on the way to work, the cab driver was listening to love ballads of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and it made me very nostalgic for when Tati and I shared a room and slept on the red IKEA bunk bed and listened to 97.1 Greatest Love Songs with Glenn Hollis before we went to sleep. We used to love the dedications and declarations of love when people called in. Glenn had such a soothing voice. Hard to believe more than 15 years have gone by since those days.

I was g-chatting with Katherine (AKA Polish Creep) a few days ago and she informed me about a few things. Apparently, chocolate is not good for cats and I should be put in jail for animal abuse. This is unfortunate news for the cat, who, I’ve discovered, is a fan of Nutella as well as NesQuick. Poor little cat has tasted heaven only to have it ripped away from within its grasp. It will now forever follow me around hoping for another taste of deliciousness and will always be left disappointed. But disappointed is better than dead, and Katherine made me feel a little guilty about being a potential cat murderer. Being the cruel person that I am, I’ve taken to spinning around with that cat in my arms and then putting it down and watching it walk around like it’s drunk. Does this make me a really horrible person that I delight in the cat’s dizziness? It just looks so cute stumbling around. If it was really scared or hated me, I think it would run away every time I approached, but it still follows me around. Maybe it enjoys being spun around.

In other Panama City observations, there are these police officers who go around on bikes. They wear these little shorts and have very voluptuous booties, probably because they spend a lot of time in front of the empanada shop where I used to get breakfast back when I used to live by the Marriott. I guess empanadas are to Panamanian cops what donuts are to American cops. Sometimes I get very strong impulses to just reach out and give one of them a friendly squeeze, kind of like I used to have an urge to pull the fire alarm at school every time I passed it. But then I think to myself, what would I do afterwards? That would be kind of awkward and a very embarrassing thing to go to jail for if the cop found it offensive. When Tati was here, we tried ssssing back to a security guard, but then I think he liked it and followed us for a little bit so that taught me that lesson. Sometimes you just get annoyed with all the sssing, but then again, if no one ssssed me, I would be very sad and would think I was very ugly or something.

I think the time has come to start being friendly and making friends, for real this time though. Also, I think the time has come to volunteer somewhere because that is the right thing to do and my life right now is composed of mostly neutral actions, so I think volunteering would add a little goodness and make be a better person…

More mundane updates

For those of you wondering the outcome of the bed saga, I have good news. I’ve decided to use the wood from my bed to 1.) Make a bookshelf and 2.) Make a birdhouse, perhaps decorated with happy rainforest scenes. It will have to be a very big birdhouse as I have a lot of wood and not that many books -- maybe birdhouse for elusive harpie eagle who will decide to nest in my birdhouse, making me world famous birdhouse builder, thus surging demand for Perilla-made birdhouses to unprecedented levels. This will result in massive wealth which I will generously share with all those who paved my path to success, those who I like or those deserving of my generosity. Also with sales lady and cashier lady who sold me poor quality child’s bed. So all is not lost. One must think positive in these less than ideal situations. I have decided to go with the bohemian “mattress on the floor” look for my room and even found a foam mattress so now I’m about 14 inches of the ground which is better than 8. I also covered a red camping chair with a blue blanket and throw pillow to use as a lounge chair for my future guests, though only one can sit in the chair at a time. I am very proud of this achievement. I also bought some goblet style wine glasses for future house parties. I bought six but three broke by the time I got home. While disappointed, I wasn’t too surprised. But now I can only have three-wine drinking guests at a time. But it’s OK because I bought 6 shot glasses and none of those broke. OK, enough about my purchases…I seem very superficial if I keep going this way.

I have a cat now. I don’t know its name, so I just call it Cat. The cat actually belongs to Austrian lady, but as she is going to be in Austria all summer, it’s like it is mine. Cats being so quiet and making their presence hardly known, I forgot to feed it or give it water for two days…I felt so bad I made it warm Nesquick chocolate milk and lentils for breakfast yesterday and it was really pleased and ate everything. But now the cat follows me around everywhere and if I leave a cup out and unsupervised, it sticks its paw in and feeds itself. It’s actually pretty cute but I feel somewhat responsible for Cat’s bad manners.

Cats in general are not very fun pets, though, because they don’t pay me much attention and don’t let themselves be smothered. I am not a smotherer, but it’s nice to have the option once in a while. However, this particular cat has grown on me a little, so maybe one day, love will develop. It’s hard to say at these early stages of the relationship. It’s weird to think that anyone who loves me is at least an hour’s plane ride away. You take for granted those things, being near your family and friends and having people who care about you always nearby. But being I try to keep things trivial here, so enough of that.

In other news, I am going to try to start giving children’s arts and crafts classes. I am thinking of charging $15 per class. I’m not sure what a good price in Panama would be; yoga costs about $10 per class, but I’d have to buy materials and I think the neighborhood I’m living in is pretty well off. It would be nice if I could charge $20-$25, but I don’t know if that’s feasible. If I can get a few students, that could be my spending money and I think I’d also enjoy it. Maybe I can do private English tutoring too. I need to start earning a little more money and also figure out how to pay my taxes…

It rained crazy hard on Saturday. Almost all the streets were flooded at least 18 inches and most cars couldn’t even get by. I had to stand under a restaurant awning for almost two hours because the street was too flooded to cross without risking losing my flip flops. Also, water was pretty nasty looking and I was wearing a white dress which was a very bad idea and did not want to parade around in that state. Panamanians, like Colombians, have an almost irrational fear of getting a cold, as if a cold was Ebola or other always fatal disease. To me a cold is nothing, but they all look at you like you’re crazy to be walking around in even a drizzle. With yellow fever, malaria and typhoid, why worry so much about a cold?

I was sitting on the patio of the Duran Coffee Store in Clayton and was pleasantly surprised to discover the inside was very dark and café like. The patio stares onto a parking lot, but you can’t have it all. I kept seeing all these people with kayaks on their cars and that made me wish I was outdoorsy kayaking type because it’s good exercise and very romantic and I could purchase cool looking outdoor gear, but then I reminded myself to stop wishing for everything. Overall though, I am pretty happy with how things are in my life. I hope I am able to keep my job here and stay for at least two years. It would be nice if I was living the reclusive yet satisfying life of a children’s book author and dedicating my days to thinking of new ideas, drawing and writing, rather than working 9-5 job, but I have to do something in the meanwhile before I get there. Also, I am very nervous about getting there because what do you do after you’ve accomplished your life’s goal? It’s like growing up in rich in New York City. No matter what else you see in life, how can it ever compare if you’ve already seen the best of the best? Having something new and better to look forward to is half the fun in life, at least for me.

Dear Readers,

I have a most sorrowful tale to tell.
As you may or may not know, yesterday was a big day for me. I bought a bed. It was between a bike and a bed, and I decided the latter was the more essential purchase.
It was a large purchase by my standards: $150. Not exactly a luxury bed, but after a week of sleeping on a mattress on the floor, I decided I wanted to wake up in a higher place. The time had come for an upgrade, and off I went to Albrook -- haven of budget stores and shopaholic tourists -- for my bed.

Well, fast forward a few hours and Carmen (the maid) and I attempted to put the bed together but realized about 45 minutes in that success was not within our reach after all. Carmen said the bed seemed a little flimsy and that when I had a boyfriend she hoped he had his own place or I could just move the mattress to the floor cause we’d end up there anyway as she had her doubts the bed could hold two people, much less in any kind of amorous state. We shared a laugh but thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward even more hours. Panchi came to my house to put together my bed because Carmen and I put screws in wrong places and caused some serious damage, though Panchi reassured me it wasn’t irreversible. The instructions were in Portuguese, so putting the bed together took four hours. Finally, after a lot of guessing messing around, our mission was accomplished at 12:45: My bed was built. Actually, more like Panchi’s cause I just passed the screws and was fired from hammering after a few unsuccessful minutes. But anyway, you can imagine my joy at finally having a real life bed to sleep in. I don’t know why, but it’s nicer to wake up three feet above the ground than on it. I haven’t been able to figure out the reason, but it is.

However – and this is when the story takes a turn for the worse -- upon placing the mattress on the frame, a terrible realization dawned upon me: My twin mattress was about three inches too big for the frame!

It turns out I had bought a child’s bed and you have to have a special child’s mattress to go with it. I should have known when I saw how thin the boards were, but my denial and desire for a bed of my own ran deep. Plus, as a nearly dwarf height person, the bed looked normal to me. My choices were to sleep on a 30 degree incline on my newly purchased bed or swallow my pride and return to the floor. Well, I tried sleeping on the bed, I really did, but sleeping on a slope like that made me feel like all my blood was rushing to one side of my body and I kept thinking how stupid I must look sleeping on an incline in a child’s bed. It’s like seeing a football player sitting in a kindergartner’s chair or something.

So this morning I woke upon on the floor again. I guess I’m only living large in some areas of my life.

My room is slowly getting furnished

Dearest Family and Friends:

Yesterday I was feeling a little down, thinking that I should be back in Virginia and spending time with the family and friends I have back there and not living in a foreign country by myself without any close friends or family members...but then when I was there, I kept thinking how I wanted to get out because I always want to go somewhere, usually wherever I'm not. I've reached almost the three month mark being away from home, and it was around this time last year too that I started getting homesick and missing everybody back home.

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Well, I'm going to Colombia in less than two weeks to visit my grandma, so I'm pretty excited about that and think I'm going to surprise her 1.) With my visiting in the first place...she doesn't know I'm coming and 2.) I think I'll take her and Robert to Villa de Leyva for a few days. But maybe it's a bad idea to surprise her, as she'll get stressed out that she hasn't bought me anything to eat or made a bed for me or prepared for my arrival, et cetera.

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Today I went shopping. The good news is I have a bed, so soon I will no longer be sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Unfortunately, I wasn't capable of putting it together, so now I am waiting for Panchi, my favorite repairman to come by and put it together. That is one of the good things about Panama; you find someone honest and kind and they will do what they can to help you out when you need it. I even got some classy fancy throw pillows and matching sheets and pillow case, as you can see from this pic. I couldn't afford a comforter, so I got blanket instead. I still need a bookcase, desk, paintings for my walls and a few more decorative items, but I guess I should wait until I have the actual money to buy these things. Might buy bike on credit...I don't know how much longer I can live without it :(.

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My new neighborhood feels a little bit like I'm on some Desperate Housewives/TV neighborhood because everything is very bright and pretty and perfect. There are all these soccer fields, tennis courts, a big pool and a bunch of other sporty things that I will probably rarely use, but knowing they are there makes me feel like I'm living large. There is also a maid who comes daily, and she told me to leave a shopping list with her so she knew what to buy me at the grocery store! Then she asked me to let her know what I wanted her to make me for dinner and did my laundry! Life with no housework...not that I ever did much house work, but at least now I don't need to worry about getting in trouble or dodging household chore responsibilities. One bad thing about the maid is she keeps squeezing my legs and saying, "haha, look how fat your legs are," as if she thinks it's very, very funny. I guess it's good training for what's to come in Colombia.

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Anyway, I feel very good in my new house and neighborhood. Austrian lady has left for Austria for two months so anyone thinking about visiting Panama is especially welcome in the next couple of months. After my bike, I want a 35 pound, dog that doesn't bark too much, isn't very clingy and has a long-haired coat, but I think I'll wait until September or October for that. Work is work...I need to start writing and painting again, and think I'll start that as soon as I get settled completely into new house. I wish I could go to the bookstore and buy some books to read, but after last month's fiasco I'm a little embarrassed to go back, and there's really only one good English bookstore in town. Maybe I will have to send an alternate.Well, that's about it. Sorry entry is so boring today.

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P.S. The cafe I'm sitting in right now is playing all my Chavela Vargas ranchera favorites. I LOVE IT.

I have decided...

..my old picture was a little too revealing, and not appropriate for intended blog audience (My family). I don't really like this one very much as I am taking very posed picture of myself in front of my own facebook page which makes me look very vain, but it will have to do for now.

More of My Neighborhood

Dear Readers:

I am on a high due to my new neighborhood/house. It is all so beautiful. I bet all of you are jealous of my ideal living situation.

I have a house

Dear Very Few Loyal Readers:

This is my new house and street. As you can see, I will be living a life of luxury and opulence a la J-LO/Florida Keys. Except I will be more like Maria of the Sound of Music (minus blonde hair, singing talent, nanny-title, nun status and handsome love interest) because I will be living in Austrian household and will be taking romantic bike rides through the dew-misted forests of Clayton.

I will wake up to the warmth of the magnificent Panamanian sun and the sounds of birds chirping. After a filling breakfast, I will spend my mornings painting idyllic nature scapes, channeling Vincent Van Gogh's Arles phase (sans self-mutilating tendencies and depressive episodes), and I will think about how nice a garden would look but decide to envision it rather than make it happen. However, I will vow to hire a gardener when my finances improve. My hands are too dainty and delicate for gardening.

In the evenings, I will drink inexpensive yet drinkable Chilean red wine from my cozy patio and have stimulating conversations with my plentiful, newfound 20/30 something friends who will naturally find me charming and delightful and enjoy my refined, European sensibilities. There will be Edith Piaf or Fado playing lightly in the background, and they will all compliment my musical taste and first-rate hostess skills.

Yes, at last, I will find true happiness.

The only problem is that I will have to maintain this new found happiness with $250 in disposable income a month not including transportation and food. I will have to become familiar with the lonely old rich white guy crowd -- preferably recently widowed so I don't have to be a home wrecker -- and see if any of the more generous among them are interested in late-in-life/May-December romance/companionship.

Good News and Bad News

So the lady who sells chontaduros in front of El Rey is back after a long break and three are only 25 cents! I've been getting three a day for the last few days because I have an irresistable attraction and love for them. Well, I decided today to do a little research about them because I've been eating so many...and I discovered that while nutritionally rich, they each have about 200 calories. They are smaller than a lemon!!!

I think it's time to cut back from three a day to three a week. If only they weren't so delicious.

VIP THEATER

I forgot to mention one exciting weekend discovery: The Cinepolis VIP theater. For the price of a regular price U.S. movie ticket, you get fully reclining leather seats and waiter service. So if you feel like you need popcorn half way through the movie, you just press a little button, a light comes on, and a waiter is at your seat in a couple minutes to take your order! Also, at this very fancy theater, a large popcorn is only $2.60!!! Tati and I went to see Ghosts of Girlfriends past at the VIP theater this past weekend and it was a horrible, horrible movie that leaves you wondering how something so terrible can even make it to theaters...but because we'd paid for the VIP experience, we stayed. That is when you think to yourself, "Well, at least the seats are comfortable....

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When we got in the taxi to go to the movies, we told the driver we were going to the VIP theater in Multiplaza. And he said to Tati and I, "I have an idea, how about I go with you guys and shower you with kisses, except I won't obstruct your view, don't worry." He then went on to ask us if we'd ever "done it in a theater." I need some good taxi driver responses -- I always seem to get overly forward drivers. Despite telling him that we were 14 and he was too old to be saying such things, he didn't seem disuaded. We ran out of his car as fast as possible and didn't even argue when he overcharged us. Some of the things taxi drivers say in this country -- they'd be arrested in the U.S.