Panama Update #93
December 3, 2008
We are focusing more on our upcoming trip back to the States. On December 15 we leave for San Francisco and Nikki's AGU meeting. Many of the people who we know that work with Nikki will also be leaving town during that time. When we return on the December 27, it will still be pretty quiet around here, and we don't know yet how we will celebrate the New Year here.
We talked to our landlord last night. He lives in the apartment across the hall and seems like a genuine caring person. Nikki was looking for a taxi driver who could pick her up at 5:30 AM this morning to take her to the Auyurvedic appointment shehad. He gave us the name of a driver he knows and he was here on time. He also gave us a giant Papaya from the tree in his backyard which he said will be ripe in about 3 days. He talked a lot about how much he loves Papayas. He does not know English, but I am able to understand a lot of what he says and we can have a conversation in Spanish. We are also big fans of Papayas and eat them often. We have also started to drink a lot of Agua de Pipa (coconut water). They sell it in plastic bottles in the supermarkets and it is 100% natural. It is so tastey and so refreshing. There are many nutritional qualities of it that we did not know and they can be found on the web if anyone is curious.
I tried to find a taxi driver to take me downtown this afternoon, but no one likes to do it since the traffic is so bad. Someone finally stopped. It took about an hour to get to the bank. I had to withdraw money for this month's rent, which we pay in cash. I didn't want to keep the money in our apartment so I paid the landlord right away.
