Blogs from Cerro Punta, Chiriquí, Panama, Central America Caribbean - page 2

I started writing my blog yesterday and then forgot to finish. Oops. Two days ago I was in the process of setting up my phone for a new SIM card. I thought I was going to have to go all the way back to Volcan for the SIM card, but then Nadia informed me that they sell SIM cards at the grocery store down the road. I completely restored my phone and then walked down with her when she got off of work. She came in with me to give me a hand since I didn't necessarily know technical words for SIM cards and such, but when he brought the SIM card, we realized that it was too big. He said something about cutting it, but as we were looking at the size of the gold ... read more

Ok, a LOT has happened over the past few days... Let's start on Thanksgiving day. I grabbed a shower late in the morning and then started preparing my lunch. So there I am, standing in my kitchen with a towel wrapped around my head and no makeup on when suddenly someone is knocking on my window. At first I thought maybe it was someone coming to fumigate my house to get rid of the spiders, but then I looked and saw that it was a white woman. I took the towel off of my head and quickly fluffed my hair before answering the door. Apparently, some tourists made it all the way down to my house. I answered their questions and then left kind of hastily. They continued looking around down near my house and I ... read more

It rained and rained and rained some more yesterday. I got soaked just walking up from my house, but I was excited to get up to the office because Jolanis and I were going to go to Volcan for groceries and lunch. Unfortunately, Jolanis decided she didn't want to because of the rain, so instead, I worked on Spanish for most of the day. Around 3, I decided to walk down to the little corner store. That walked left my pant legs throroughly soaked, but the walk was COMPLETELY worth it. I found another salamander on my way up the driveway! It was huge. It had and SVL (snout-vent lenth, which is like the length minus the tail since they can lose and regrow tails) of 8.88cm and it was missing it's tail. It also wasn't ... read more

All I did yesterday was practice Spanish. I used duolingo for hours, I looked up different tips for learning languages online, and I bought a spanish learning/grammar ebook. When I finally went back to my house, instead of going to sleep or playing a game on my computer, I went through the first 8 lessons of said Spanish book. Since I have so much trouble sleeping anyway, I figured I might as well do something productive with my night. I worked on the book till 3am, and still couldn't fall asleep afterwards! Everything that I've read says that focus and actually trying to speak the language are the two most important things about learning a new language. I've definitely got the focus part down, but I could probably use a little bit more actual speaking time. ... read more

Hola everybody! Sorry I missed blogging yesterday. You didn't miss much. Two days ago I worked on my permits, practiced my Spanish, and looked for frogs and salamanders. After looking for amphibians I went into the kitchen and found Jolanis there eating crackers. I had some soup for supper and talked to her for a while. My Spanish still isn't very good, but it is getting better. I know A LOT more than I did! Also, it absolutely poured rain all day long. Yesterday I got Nadia to help me with the parts of the permit that I couldn't figure out with the translator. After work, I walked down to the Super Mini Guadalupe at the bottom of the hill. I left around 5:30 and got back right before it got dark at around 6:20. Now ... read more