Audrey, Armadillo and Alumnos -- Whew!

 Our visit to Aguadulce was wonderful.  It was good to see students still playing and enjoying learning more.  Esther works at her uncle's electronics store and sold us our telephone.  Eventually she became a student and was a great one.  She learned piano and studied English.  She is special to us.

 We visited the Smith's with Audrey.  They have a tiny 'pingpong' table and have a method for a quick tournament.  Audrey won.  It was one of the highlights for us all.

 Lignily Smith with her baby.  He has health problems and we weren't sure he would still be alive, but he just had his first birthday.

 Leydis is still playing.  She also directed, but I should have taught her that better.  We're learning as we go.



Hermana Chevita is dancing with Jaime Borbon, grandad of Leydis and Eric.  We stayed with her overnight.  She made all the food for our party there.  She is single and loves to serve.  The Borbon family is one of our favorites.  They have MANY challenges and manage to live through them.


Eric Borbon is learning to follow in his Grandad's footsteps of dance.  He is willing to try about anything.  He is still playing, maybe more than anyone else in the branch.  He's only 10 or 11.  He didn't qualify as a student, but his sister taught him and then Rod started to teach him while I taught Leydis.  I think they were our first pair.


Jaime was the man of the night.  When he was through he was really breathing hard even though it doesn't look very aerobic.  Every time he did one of those little dips my knees hurt for him.  I don't know if his did.

Carlos Quintero, our guide to Bocas del Toro, told us that it was possible to get armadillo to eat.  We had seen a live one in Penonome.  When we told Sister Chevita that we were interested, she called her daughter who sent HER daughter, Dacia, from Santiago (an hour away) with an armadillo that a friend had frozen.  We had armadillo for breakfast.  Audrey picked at hers and later said she just couldn't face armadillo rib cage that early in the morning.  I ate hers as well.  It was fine, not wonderful.  When we told our landlord that we'd eaten it his eyes got wide and he said "They have leprosy".  When we told Deryk, he said the same thing.  (I couldn't see his eyes).  Rod looked on line and couldn't find that we needed to worry a lot, so we are choosing not to, in addition leprosy is caused by a bacterium and we ate it cooked.  The unknown mighty hunter is the one that needs to worry (we hope)

We tried to find our future missionary students in Penonome.  We called Jose Angel's number and talked with him.  He said he'd be home from work in about a half hour.  We arrived and his mom said he wasn't home.  She tried to call him.  We left and returned, still not home.  (He called us the next morning saying he got off work at 1:00 and I hadn't talked with him.  Someone must be wondering what is going on.)  We went to Jaan's house when we couldn't reach him by phone, but we didn't find him, only chiggers as we later realized.  His family contacted him and we met up with him later.  He was out with the missionaries.  Perfect excuse!

Milly cut my hair in Aguadulce.  I did it because I knew she would be too busy with Mother's day business to stop to visit.  Unfortunately, it backfired, because she wouldn't let me pay.  Go figure.  Anyway, while we were in the bus to Panama City I went to sleep on Rod's lap.  When I woke up, his black pants were covered with short gray hairs.  When I pointed it out to him he said, "Some pets are worth keeping even if they shed". 

We've discovered that we are happier when we are busy.  This week end with a day off was a bit long, even with our new books on the Kindle.  We are going to enjoy the Kindle.  I'm most interested in older books, and they are cheap.  Rod is disappointed that his Fortune subscription doesn't include the graphs he enjoys.

Audrey is back in the states.  She sent a letter telling us thank you and how much she enjoyed Panama.  It really did work out well.