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.