mas buenas de panama!

now i am home back in the "real world"... and am craving the simple travel, surival lifestyle i barely got to re-taste over the last week. ah. america with its routines, schedules, commitments and expectations. what a few hour plane flight can do for your brain is amazing. but back to reminising on panama...

so i was on day 2... at the house visit in cintre.. megan and I, or mostly megan was conversing with the lady who received the wheelchair. megan did a great job asking questions as i understood those and the responses for the most part. so this lady had a bad hip.. the cane was no bueno..and the the walker wasnt workin out.. and she was waitin around for seven?ish? years for a wheelchair. One of her daughters later came out to hang... she too needed a wheelchair because she had gotten some disease which caused to her lose all feelin in her right leg and left arm. completely. on top of that.. the reallly young daughter, or maybe she was the granddaughter who just called the grandma mama, she was in a leg cast from falling off a bed. jumping from cama a cama es no bueno tambien. so really.. this family could have used 3 chairs. but we brought them one.. and they were soo happy and gave us some nanci (nan-sae) juice to take with us. we didnt understand what a  nanci was.. so the brother got in his car and drove to pick us a branch too. ha. people in panama are so nice and genuine. we headed back to the center of cintre for another thanksgiving and presentation. the mayor was there. everyone who was anyone relatively important was there. thennn we went to a quaint little restaurant on the coast of the pacific for an amazing fish dinner with traditional panamanian dancing. there were lots of fried sea creatures for appetizers and so we began to figure out that the 3 food groups of panama are: awesome fried fish, plantanes (look like dried bananas but taste like potatoes) and yuuka (another fake potato), and damn good pineapple. there is also sancocho which is delicious chicken -lack of noodle- soup. dont worry.. theres some yuuka in there to make up for it :) and cervice is usually corvina (white fish) "cooked" with citrus. not a bad combo of food really at all. so we enjoyed the night and our foundation pro intergracion community as we watched the sunset and enjoyed a shot dip in the ocean post dinner ceremonies. it felt like 1 am by the time we were done.. and it was only 8. ha. bunch of old ladies. so we took a swim in the pool at the hotel to stretch out the time some more... 

day 3: lots of ridin in the bus back to where we came from. we stopped at a maternity ward along the way and the childrens hospital wing to share our donations we brought with us. the kids loveddd their little cars and stuffed animals. they were all so cute and so excited. we also saw pepe's rehab project which was a really cool building for kids mostly, but adults as well having to do rehab because of various injuries. it was a public donation building for lack of a better description. this was also michelles last night... we enjoyed a nice dinner and went to tear up calle uruguay. we were pretty much the only thing happening out at 10 pm on a wednesday night.. but we rocked out to the latin tunes and occasional justin beiber. liz got into this debate with the cab driver on the way home about her mom worshipping the devil because she prays to the saints and mary. this story has nothing to do with anythign.. i wasnt even there. i just had to hear about it for 2 more days because she was so drunk and worked up about it. i navigated half the troops home on foot. good job ashley. they were so proud of me. haha.

day 4: roughhhh getting up. our first tour. we went to portobello. no theres not portabella mushrooms. but there is the buried sir francis drake. apparently he was a bad guy. pirate? well this little old town was pretty cool and the home of the black christ. theres different stories of how he turned black.. but anyway people pilgrimage here to see it..adn i missed it because i was attempting to barter for monoas.. pieces of colorful fabric. they dont really barter well in panama. we learned a lot about the camino real.. which carried jewels, gems and riches across panama so they could be shipped back to spain. they would come into this area from peru, colombia, etc..adn all the pirates would hide out in the jungle and jump them! so they built an alternate route that took advantage of a river a little further out. this little jaunt across panama from the pacific to the atlantic has been going on for decadeeesss.. much longer than the canal has been around.  next highlight of day 4 is stopping for fried fish and plantanes on teh caribbean/atlantic ocean. sounds all good. lunch was good. i even got some coconut rice instead. and a delicious balboa (a beer.. but yes its the name of hte currency that is =to a USD) and hence may have started my life disaster i will start to explain. its about time nature caught up with me. sooo i went for a piss in the ocean.. so did everyone else. apparently this attracks jellyfish. yea i got stung. and so did danica. not tooo bad considering how paranoid i was the entirety of my life in aus. so i warn everyone once i figure out waht it was.. adn am heading to shore.. i stop to chat with ariana, our professor lynns little girl who isnt really that little. that detail will become important in 10 secs. but what a trooper of a seven year old. were chattin and are interrupted by her stepping on something.. like a rock.. i have her pick up her foot and see there is a crab dangling from her toe. oops! in an urge to not let her see.. i go to swipe it off.. and it pinched me or had some gnarly spikes on it back or something... cuz it left my finger gushing with blood. and ariana is screaming cuz she sees the crab i didnt really get off her toe, and now im bleeding. great. so i wabble out of hte ocean with her in arms and get her to shore to calm her down and get my finger undercontrol. i am kinda over the ocean at this point, so i go to my towel on the log and wrap it around me. well that was a bad idea. cuz my towel was infested with fire ants that welted up my entire stomach. and partly on my gorgeous sunburn i was still sporting from teh weekend in SLO now a good 5 days ago. owwww. i got over it. and so did everyone else. so we headed out to colon.. which is a sketch cool old town i wouldve loved to explore.. but we were locked on the bus due to safety. adn we all slept through the driving tour for the most part. colon is a big port htat has free trade areas for ships so they can trade and do whatever since there are looser taxing laws in panama than most other countries. its also where there are lots of slums and government housing is. lots of black carribean people who were once slaves on the canal all settled here because the climate is what they are used to.. humid and hot as hell. colon is the end/beginning of the first trans-continental railway in the world. americans on teh east coast in teh gold rush would hike on down to panama, catch the train across to panama city, and then a boat up to california before there was a transcontinetal railway in the states. crazy huh?! theres not too many stops on this train as it just hauls ass through the jungle along the canal for the most part. its pretty much a tourist attraction now.. but really cool. the man-made lake that is the essense of the canal is cool as there are all these dead petrified trees just hangin out in the water. and well.. the tropical rainforest is always so cool too!

more cool observations of panama

instead of cheese, they say whiskey

Buenas buenas!

¡Hola!

well... not all too surprisingly, it took me 4? days to get my blog up. so much for a daily event! we have been soo busy with .. touristing? and seeing how the panamaian world works that there has barely been time for sleep, let alone blogging. but im here! and so here we go!

panama is pretty awesome! its a bit toasty.. adn overly humid..but nothing I havent already experienced. there is a bit of the thai/bali feel with the warm, humid air and more or less really tan people everywhere.. and you know.. the regular groupings of garbage and people and crazy highways with physco driving that works so efficiently. theres no rules for cabs.. they crammed 7 of us into 4 seats... claro (of course!)! i love the spanish and the fact that even though the us had occupied the main part of panama up til 2001? through the canal zone... english wont get you very far at all.. so my spanish is coming back again.. i wish i was fluent .. or i would settle for being able to converse. i can understand pretty well, but responding is a 15 second struggle. eh. its good for me.

so the first day we arrived around 10ish.. got to the nice fancy hotel adn had a big fat bed alll to myself. what did we even do that first day? ate at the mall.. subway... way to go group on our first hours in panama... and then we... ah yes. we went on a tour of the pro intergacion establishment that we are working with to get the wheelchairs to the people of panama. so background.. wheelchair foundation was my senior project at cal poly.. we raised 90,000+ for wheelchairs to send to oaxaca mexico... so we sent a tonnn of wheelchairs down to mexico, and had about 100 left that were sent to panama since one of our team members, michelle, was joining the peace corps down there and had connections to make 2 small distributions. so the foundation of integration.. or something like that... helped us out. Tom was our guide all around for the first few days as we worked to get the chairs to the poeple and where to go adn what to see etc. so first day we didnt do much but eat, organize gifts to distribute, and eat again by the nice pool overlooking the city scapes of panama city. so nice.

day 2: up bright and early to begin our distribution in pananome.. small little village town where people traveled far and wide and by all types of means to come get their wheelchairs. its was pretty neat. at first i was scared taking pictures of these people and thier diformities... but as we moved them into their chiars and thier eyes lit up, it felt all ok. it was so neat. the people waited patiently in teh lined up folded chairs for thier chair size and name to be called out... apparently this was the best organzied group.. in mexico the people went nuts and started grabbing the chairs and all chaos broke loose.. ha . 2 people stood up and spoke out to thank us from teh bottom of thier hearts.. thank god liz is fluent in spanish so we have a permanent translator. it was all so cool. except for the fact how hot it was. sweltering humidity. but we lived :) we took a nice little detour to a house where an older recipient of a chair from toms organization lived.. a true mud brick home amist a few mango trees and between what seemed like two "normal" houses.. the tiny brick hut barely had 2 rooms.. one for the boy and the other where the mother slept and the kitchen was.. wow.

then onto the second distribution in cintre where it was even warmer. another foundation that was so impressed with us had a little ceremony for us to thank us.. handing us all plaques and candles made by people in the community. they were so thankful for us to be there..and all the people were so sweet to us even when they couldnt say more than hello in english... actually.. halo is the way to go around here.. leave the holas in northern america. so this distribution went a little different, with another 40ish chairs to be handed out to people patiently waiting under a tent. there were a handful of special olympic competitors that came to watch and support those receiving new chairs. one of the competitors was in a wheelchair foundation chair. its easy to spot the bright red chairs almost anywhere. i wish i could upload photos.. but maybe well haveta save that for another day. i went on a house distribution with megan around the other side of town where we had to put together the chair at the house where the mother was getting the chair. from what i could tell... she once had a decent sized house, but put a wall down teh middle and two doors on teh front so her son and one of her daughters could live righttt next door. they all seemed completley comfortable with it. we tried to converse.. megan did better than me with the questions.. be we understood that this lady caught a disease? andddddddd the internet man is kicking me out.. .more to come.

Ashley's World Adventures.. Year Two

Crazy its been almost a full year since I started my around the world journey.. and my blogging. I miss both.. and thats why I will be starting up again come June 14 when I arrive in Panama! Im not going for the same type of ragged, survive at any cost style.. especially since were staying a hotel that costs 3 times as much as the average middle level backpacker daily spending.. did that make sense? its like 150 a night.. and the middle level of spending is 50 bucks a day.. in previous months I would be trying my best to beat the scrapper level of 20-25 a day.. No opportunity for that. And its only 6 days. So I will do my best to live "the high travel life" one I was sure I wouldn't be seeing anytime soon. 

Why Panama?! So soon? Nah. I've hangin in SR for 7 months now. I needddd to get out of here. I've restored my debt funds and can even make it through my week in Central America and come out on top.. i think . i hope. O and less than a  month ago i got an email from my old friends at the Cal Poly Wheelchair Foundation where I felt like I slaved my life away for a year for a great cause. Respond in the next five days if you want to deliver wheelchairs to Panama. I might've took a whole 18 hours to submit my yes. Im stoked. And I have a camera again! WHOOOO! That will be taped, stapled and bound to my body in every way possible. So hopefully I collect some cool pics and build my photography portfolio and my cultural awareness on my first offical trip to the South American continent! I plan on many many more...... and trips to Africa and Antartica and more of Asia. Europe and North America can hang for a while... I feel educated on them. See ya next weeeek! Whoop WHoop!