The Good, Bad and it bugs me

People are wonderfully kind to invite us into their lives.  This is the little sister of one of our students.  They live with their grandmother in Puerto Armuelles.  After she showed us the birds, the girl took them outside and put them in a bush.  I asked if they had clipped wings.  The grandmother said only one does, the others stay with it.

 Rod tries for a laugh (which he got, of course)

 These flowers are just along the roadsides here.  We didn't have them in Aguadulce.  I always think of hummingbirds getting trapped in them.  Rod says not to worry.  If they did it very often it would take them out of the gene pool.

 We had two students cancel in Volcan last week.  One called in advance, but the other just wasn't home (actually she told me today she was there but just didn't hear us).  Next time, I told her, I'll pound.

 

 We took the time to drive up to Cerro Punta. It was wonderful.  It is the area that grows much of the produce for all of Panama.  They are utilizing hillsides amazingly.  [Rod: It's hard to get the perspective of how steep they are, they would be hard to walk up.]  I can't believe they don't have horrible erosion, but we only saw one bad case.  It's much cooler, so they grow broccoli, cabbage, carrots, onions, peppers, and even strawberries.  I paid $2 for a 12 ounce Styrofoam cup of them and then realized I didn't dare eat them without washing them in Clorox, so they had to sit in the car.  They definitely weren't worth it by the time we got to eat them.  We also tried candied figs there.  The girl said they were higados (I think) and were a medicinal fruit, but they didn't taste like medicine.  She gave me 2 to try in a spoon for a dime apiece.  That was sufficient.

 This young lady in blue is as excited a student as we've had.  She exudes enthusiasm.  It makes our work very nice.  The young man in white has a piano, but has had no teacher, so he's excited to learn. We teach them to direct music as well as play the piano.

 When I went out to wash clothes today, I found this lizard who'd fallen into my bucket.  He was glad to be liberated after we shared him with the neighbors.  Our landlord says he can walk on water, but I didn't see him do it. (the lizard, not the landlord)

[Rod:] Our car was already licensed in Panama city when we bought it and now we needed to license it this month for the next year .  We were told several times we had to go to Panama City -- 8 hours away -- to license it.  In a foreign country, the regulations don't appear to make sense and it is hard to figure out how to manage things.  At town hall, an American, who appears to live here and was changing the ownership of a vehicle, heard our plight and told us where to go to get it inspected and said then you just pay $20 and they license it for another year.  [Without his help, we wouldn't have made it through the first step]. Turns out it was close to where we live.  Then we went back and they said "Oh No that won't work as you have to go to Panama City where it was issued before".  But a man at city hall took us outside and whispered go back and talk to Lourdes about it.  Lourdes (in New York or Italy, it might have been Luigi the fixer) took us outside her place of work and said you need to get a bill from the electric, house phone or water company, so you can show residence.  The church just pays the bill for the Landlord -- however, he was nice enough to go with us to 2 places and let us change the billing for the house to our name -- now we are responsible.  We went back to the fixer and she said she would do it for $90, but ended up charging $95.  [The story I'm telling myself is that $45 is extortion for foreigners, but the alternative would be worse]  She said, "Now, I'll fix it all up for you and get your plates back before the end of the month".  We got nervous and called her after about 10 days and she then called her contact in the city.  It always seems to take a call to keep things moving here.  Turns out somewhere (probably Panama City as they shipped everything off) they made new plates with the same number, but with a new expiration, instead of just a new sticker.  The picture above is the old plate -- they had to use a grinding wheel to get the pop rivets out of our plastic bumper without destroying it.  What a hassle.  The end of the story, however, is that the mechanic spent 20 minutes, fit us in towards the end of his day, and then didn't charge--us to the consternation of the other mechanic.  It wasn't the money, but it is nice when someone is kind (the American also was kind) -- I would do well to remember that.

Execution Summary:  Well over $120, much hassle and two Pass-a-long cards later we got our car licensed.

Interesting aside:  All of the senior couples eventually purchase a car.  In our case, we feel we are easily 3 times as effective.  I did send off an email to the area authority, asking why the Central American Area didn't have cars for the senior couples to rent like many other foreign missions.  However, I guess my pay grade (0) isn't high enough to rate a response.  We expect this one to be a buy high sell low and make up for it on the volume of blessings.  We're going to come out all right.