Panama Update #4
July 15, 2008
I decided to skip the long morning walk up Ancon Hill today since my calves were still sore from taking that walk the previous two days. Instead I wanted to devote the morning to my big task- taking a taxi to the mall by myself. I picked a near-by mall from the map of the city that I had, made a list of what I wanted to buy there and ordered the taxi. It came in 5 minutes and when I got in the cab said, “Albrook Mall.” As we were driving we had a conversation in Spanish. He asked, “Which side of the mall?” I replied that I had a lot of things to buy. He tried again, “Which store in the mall.” I told him I just wanted to look around. He said, “Bien.” We were there in a few minutes since it was going away from downtown, mostly highway, and not a lot of traffic. When I saw the mall I understood why he wanted to know which side and I yelled in surprise, “Mucho Grande!” He laughed and asked if I understood now why he wanted to know which store. It was a big indoor mall. Not as big as the Mall of America, but at least as big as someplace like Southdale. As the taxi drove away he shouted, “Suerte,” or good luck and started to laugh.
I ventured inside and tried to keep track of which entrance but it was no use. I figured whichever door I exited from there would be a taxi around. There were stores of the same type you would find in a standard mall from luggage to sporting goods to furniture to everything under a dollar to cell phones to all sorts of clothing. The clothing stores varied in quality but a lot of them looked like they were trying to appeal to teenagers, like The Gap. The food court was full of franchises such as KFC, Quizno’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.
My first task was to find a cell phone store that could help me figure out how to listen to messages on the new phone I bought 3 days before. The written instructions it came with were in Spanish but they were definitely not correct. A nice clerk helped me (in Spanish), gave me the code to dial for messages and a code to retrieve the messages. There was some misunderstanding. Three times she handed me the phone and told me to say my name (nombre), but for some reason I thought she wanted me to say my telephone # (numero) into the phone. She was very patient and we finally got it figured out. I did have 3 messages on the phone from Nikki from a couple of days ago. By trial and error I figured out how to delete the messages after I left the store.
Finally I found a discount style store that had a small inexpensive radio and reading lamp (lampara). In total they cost about $15, which I estimate is about half of what I would pay in the US at Target or Walmart.
The taxi ride home was fine. He got me to the general area and since I am starting to remember some landmarks I was able to direct him to the drop off. We didn’t have a screw driver but I was desperate to assemble the lamp so I used a scissors for the screws and came through it with only some minor paper-type cuts.
Tonight I came to Nikki’s office to work on the blog while she was doing some work. Her office is part of the Smithsonian and is just a 5 minute walk from our apartment. The night guard at the door was watching the all-star game. The TV was showing the game as we would listen at home, in English, but there was simultaneous Spanish translation in the background. He knew all about Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau and the Minnesota Twins. Baseball is big here because of all the Latin players in the Major Leagues. They must have games here in Panama, but I haven’t figured that out. Wasn’t Rod Carew from Panama?
