Life is Goood in .... Panama

Old and new in Casco Viejo

Musings on our time in Panama….a vacation to the city and mountains for us beach dwellers! We spent 3 days in big Panama City. We spent a whole day at the Panama Canal watching big ships come through and seeing the museum that included information not only about the building of the canal but also about the expansion that is taking place. Fascinating! To avoid rush hour, which is horrible here, we spent a couple hours at a huge American style mall eating in the food court and window shopping. Very surreal after our quiet life on Roatan! We visited the old section of PC, Casco Viejo, that is undergoing a gentrification. It is very dramatic with ramshackle buildings right next to boutique hotels. The area has an incredible view back to the skyscrapers of the city. Lucia’s favorite part of the PC was renting a 4 seater bike and riding out the Amador Causeway with the city on one side and ships exiting the canal on the other. Beautiful and a workout for the parents since we did most of the pedaling!

Off on a bus blaring Spanish language music videos for 4 hours and then a smaller bus packed to the gills, all so we could spend 3 nights in Santa Fe, Panama. We first checked in out because of the name and then realized it was the kind of place we wanted to visit. A quiet mountain town of 3000 people nestled in greenery and low clouds. We stayed at a lovely place with a friendly owners that took us on a hike to a waterfall and the National Forest. Our favorite activity in Santa Fe, other than our rainy afternoons having siestas, was floating with tubes on a beautiful river that we walked to from our hotel. We spent a glorious sunny morning floating down, hauling back up, and swimming. The water was clear and not too cold. Something we will remember for a long time. We also had a memorable meal at the local diner at the bus station where the power went out and the meal was served with a pause. A rainy walk to the hotel to play charades by flashlight.

Our trip home to Roatan was memorable for the wrong reasons! It took us 25 hours to travel 700 air miles. The airport was full of angry Central Americans all with rapid fire Spanish, free potato chips and soda, huge lines for everything even the bathroom, and 4 hours sleeping in a hotel! The upside (there is always at least one!) – we were all REALLY happy to come home to our sweet little wooden house in Sandy Bay and to miss a day of school.

our small plane leaving Roatan

Marino loved the canal

family in the city

Buildings in Casco Viejo

Lucia's first time with skyscrapers

happy girl on the 4 seater

The view from our room

cold water!

a beautiful waterfall

Maiden voyage

I can do it!

we both fit

rowing the tube

Mr and Mrs. Poppins

Lychees are our favorites.

At the PC fish market! Huge shrimp.

I think this one is still alive!

waiting and waiting at the airport...

bananas in Spanish

Marino ran out with money in hand when he heard the fruit and vegetable truck this evening. His first solo shopping in Spanish! She asked "Quieres cinco?". He said, "Si". He came home with 5 pounds of bananas, a smile, and no money left. Lots of licuados are in our future! All that fun for 40 lempiras ($2).

Scuba Diving!

happy divers with our instructor

Marino:

Diving is great. I saw a moray eel come out of it's hole, a queen angelfish 2' long, and a sea turtle. The test was hard for me, but we ended up getting certified as open water divers!!! We had to take off our masks under water and I was good at that but it hurt a lot. I wasn't scared. I was good at floating, not touching the ground or being at the surface (hovering). I didn't like having my air turned off underwater. We did four open water dives. It was fun going off the boat backwards with our gear on. It was hard putting our gear on in the water, but I did it. I look forward to more diving because I want to see more fish!

Kim:

It was mentally hard for me to not panic underwater with some of the activities we had to do. Removing our masks, swimming without them, and having our air turned off - all at 30' under. For me it was a mental and stamina challenge. The last two days were 10 hours long!

For Marino the book learning was challenging. He did not find the underwater stuff hard at all and had no fear. You have to take a final exam and test taking is his nemesis. We sort of had to drag him through that part of it.

The whole process took 4 days, but we had a great instructor who completed his first diver training with us! We are looking forward to some amazing dives. If you want to get certified to dive, Roatan is a great place to do it. Beautiful reef and cheaper classes than many places. Yesterday we did 3 dives to complete the training and the last one was to a depth of 60 feet. We saw a moray eel freely swimming, sea turtles, unbelievable coral formations, huge fish and lots more. My favorite was the bioluminescent coral tubes that look like they glow in the dark. When Marino got stung by a jellyfish, he said it turned iridescent blue afterwards.  It is an incredible world down there. I love it.

Independence Day in Honduras

Lucia:  My tooth is growing in! I miss you a lot. How is school going for you? School is great for me. Yesterday are school went marching for independence day which is when the Honduras became free from the British who had made them their servants. We get to march we all are carrying big and little flags and posters too. The roads are closed because of marching. each school has different clothes that you have to wear. At our school we have to wear blue jeans and we all ordered shirts that said sbas on the front of the shirts which stands for Sandy bay Alternative School. At our school we have the pre-k and kinder pom-pom girls that carry pom-poms and go in front of everyone in line. We also have little boys and girls that show jobs of and they go in the front too. We have miss roatan and four other places that became free from the British too. We have miss independence and mr. independence too. They both stand in the front also. We have the older kids that hold the flags. We also have a band that goes after the flags. One of the flags is our flag! Yesterday after the march we did not have school and now we have five days off of school because we had the marching day and then Saturday then Sunday then on Monday we do not have school because it is independence day and then we do not have school because it is teachers day. The next two days we have school and then on Friday my class is going on a field trip to see the dolphin show. After we did the marching we had a water fight with icy cold water. What we did was we got the bottles that had the water in them but we drank all of the water and filled them full of water and then dumped icy cold water on people. I kept dumping water on marinos friend named Sebastion and he kept dumping cold water on me. By the end we were all soaked, especially  me. We all had a lot of fun. Again, I miss you a lot.

Love,

Lucia   

P.S I hope that you have a good time. It is hot and rainy which means there are a lot of bugs and I have a lot of bug bites all over me. Good-bye
(This is a letter that Lucia sent to Helen an Phoebe, but she said I could post it as a blog entry too!)

Pictures to follow.
me and my friend Camila.

    

marino and friends.

 

special people above and the smallest and cutest pom-pom girl.

 above is all of the teachers and below is my teacher ms. Laura.

 me holding a Honduran flag.

Comments

Hi friends

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Gracias, Kim

Island SLP

We love riding in the back of trucks!

before haircut

after haircut

School at Wild Cane

Kim: Oh the days are just passing by since school started! The kids and Dan are gone

during the days and it has taken me awhile to get my projects up and running. It is still in

progress - constantly evolving I had a couple of lonely long weeks while my family was

off at school!

As I was walking home along the beach back home from an outdoor "private" speech

therapy session (one I am paid for) with a sweet 8 year old boy yesterday, I was struck

by how lovely it was to be able to work and be outside so much and to have the calming

and beautiful expanse of the sea so close by. I was able to walk home 15 minutes along

the beach and not be in a car or in traffic! The ocean continues to take my breath away

at how clear and picturesque it is. The shades of blue are incredible and always

changing slightly (helped along by my sunglasses no doubt). The bountiful beauty of the

sea is in sharp contrast to the poverty, living conditions, and trash that are all around.

The houses can appear so lovely up on stilts on the bay with wide wooden doors in

place of windows and chickens pecking in the dirt, but on closer inspection you realize

how little so many people have here.

Back to an update about my "work" here. I am volunteering at a number of different

places around the island and take taxis and buses to get to them. Over in French

Harbor about 30 minutes away, I am at a rehabilitation center (RBC) for people with

developmental disabilities I am working with concerns like articulation, developing

vocabulary and utterance length, and non-verbal children with a variety of disabilities

such as cerebral palsy, anoxia, and unlabeled etiologies. This is all in Spanish which

has been challenging for me on many levels, but particularly because the mothers,

siblings and therapists are all in one room together chatting the entire time! It is a

friendly welcoming environment and the cultural and language differences leave me

exhausted when I leave.

I am also at a place called Clinica Esperanza in Sandy Bay where we are living. This is

where I thought I would be working most of the time, but it has not developed as I

thought it would. I have spent time educating the doctors and volunteers about the type

of patients I can be of help to, but they continue to refer only children with speech

problems. I am at the clinic a few afternoons a week seeing kids that are referred to me

and doing some therapy. I will also be seeing some individual children In their homes:

one from a missionary family and one from a local Spanish speaking family. There is

such a mix of people that make Roatan their home.

I also read books in English one morning a week to kids in a very small local school in a

community called Wild Cane. It has been challenging for me emotionally to be there. It

is a one room schoolhouse with about 40 kids divided into 2 age groups. It is loud and

chaotic and the kids get swatted to pay attention. The children frequently wander home

and out to talk to kids that are not in school. Some days I say to myself that I am not

returning, but then I will show up another day and a group of kids will swarm out to hug

me and I return again. It is bare basic education that is reminiscent of many one room

schoolhouses from over 100 years ago in the US. The kids came with me one day and

love to hear my stories every week about the books I have read and the kids responses

and questions.

Finally, I am working a few mornings a week at Sandy Bay Alternative School to help

the 3/4 grade teacher (Lucia's class). I will also be helping some English language

learners Dan is teaching and a first grader with phonological awareness deficits

In spite of how busy all that sounds, life here is slower and more relaxed It is not the

island way to rush about. I walk along the ocean daily, swim frequently and lately have

been enjoying the migratory birds that are passing through. I also am realizing all the

funny little details about life here that I don't notice so much anymore but that struck me

when we first arrived 2 months ago! I will list a few of them below...

·      All the taxis are white

·      The main road has no center stripe and no speed limit signs

·      Only the driver of the car wears a seatbelt usually

·      Every scooter or motorcycle has a helmet but often they are not on the drivers head, at

·      least not correctly

·      You never can tell what language someone will speak by looking at them

·      The ocean here is silent because of the barrier reef

·      On weather.com the weather always looks the same, but it can vary quite a lot with

·      rainfall and sun even though it is always 80-90 degrees

·      A bus or vehicle is never too full or crowded to fit in more passengers!

Some of my musings about life here. We were talking about Zozobra being last night

and Marino said, "time is passing quickly." I agree.                                                              

Sandy Bay Alternative School

Dan: Sandy Bay Alternative School- Here are some pictures of Marino, Lucia, and “Mr. Dan’s” school. Two months ago it was a mostly un-occupied hotel. The move from the old school location to here started about two weeks before school started. Things were very temporary when we started. Slowly we (mostly the teachers and kids), are turning it into a school.

The type of school or educational “philosophy” ranges somewhere between an extension of a home school (which is it’s origins 8-9 years ago), to a international school where the high school kids are trying to get into U.S. or European colleges. I would say the “philosophy” depends on which classroom you walk into at what time of day- after lunch recess when the kids come it hot and sweaty there is not learning philosophy! 3 out of the 5 core teachers are new and come from different regions of the world. I am trying to find a balance between a “formal/Santa Fe Prep” education and a homeschool/ hands-on/lot’s of games/winging it education. At this point I have no idea how I am doing.

Lucia has a wonderful British teacher, Miss. Laura. She teaches all their classes including P.E. and Yoga. Lucia has two other teachers for Spanish and Estudios. Estudios is about Honduran culture.

Marino has two fantastic teachers. Miss. Joan is from Alberta, Canada and she teaches Math and Science. Mr. Dan teaches Social Studies and Language Arts and is from his very own home. Sometimes that is a good thing and he loves Mr. Dan’s class (usually when we play a geography game), other times it is “boring”, like when we do spelling or vocabulary.

Ask any of us questions about our school and we promise to respond!