The Final Month

Today marks the first day of my final month here in Panama on my Fulbright Scholarship while my friend and colleague in Panama City, Libby, finished up her grant and flew home yesterday.  Sad to think that this experience is coming to an end so rapidly.  But, as is the case with a job, vacation, or sometimes life, when there is a known end date, it gives you a unique opportunity to really seize each day and appreciate every experience.  That is why I am more excited than sad...excited to have a great month in which I will take advantage of every opportunity and enjoy the time left with the great friends I have made here.
November is also the favorite month of most Panamanians as it is a month marked with many holidays throughout.  Today, tomorrow and Friday are vacation days for almost everyone as Panama celebrates its separation from Columbia tomorrow and its Flag Day on Friday.  Parades and festivities will fill the air and streets of Panama tomorrow from early morning until evening time.  I will hopefully get some good pictures of it all and capture some of the holiday spirit that has already filtered into the people and city here in David.  Next week, November 10th is a holiday celebrating the "Anniversary of the First Call for Independence from Spain" which is awesome, because why only celebrate a country's Independence Day when you can also celebrate the "first call" for that Independence Day?  The actual Independence Day is on November 28th.  My theory is that November is loaded with holidays in order to try to offset the drag of the constant rain during probably the wettest month of the rainy season.
Last Tuesday, UNACHI hosted students from the English Department at La Universidad de Panama from the Coclé region (who were gracious hosts to us a few weeks before).  We began with tours of our campus as well as presentations by students from universities.  While it was difficult at times to hear the students performing (the stage in the gym is kind of a black hole for sound), it was still clear from the dramas, speeches, and the reciting of various English poems by Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allan Poe that these students put in a lot of hard work and are extremely impressive English speakers.

After the presentations, we all piled into a couple of buses and headed to the beautiful highlands of Boquete.  Unfortunately for some professors, however, they decided to pile into one of their own cars and showed up about an hour and a half late after getting pulled over and terribly lost (ouch).  Anyway, the rain thankfully held off for us and we were able to walk through some nice gardens there and sightsee in the downtown area.

And, of course, a trip to the highlands is never complete without a fresh strawberry pit stop.

This is really encouraging for the two schools to be forming such a close relationship and is hopefully just the beginning as it provides both groups of students with an opportunity to get together, share their experiences as well as practice speaking English with one another in an informal setting.
On another note, while children generally don't go door to door trick-or-treating in Panama, I did spot one superhero going grocery shopping.  I think this young man's mission was to spread the Halloween fever as he was very concerned that nobody seemed to understand it was Halloween since he was the only one doing his shopping in a full body Spider-Man costume.  Overheard him saying: "Mama! Nadie sabe que es Halloween!" (Nobody knows it's Halloween!)

That's it from me for now, but hopefully in the next blog I can provide you all with some pictures from the celebrations, parades and festivities from here in the heart of Panama! Tomalo con calma everyone, love you all.