Santa Clara

Here's the beach we went to a few weeks ago at Santa Clara. As I mentioned we stayed at a place called Las Sirenas for a night and spent the day at the beach. Although in this shot the beach looks fairly undeveloped, in the other direction there are lots of beach houses - some more like mansions - that wealthy Panamanians use on the weekends and/or during verano.

We've been trying to keep Connor from getting sunburned which means sitting in the shade. He didn't seem to mind too much. It does mean taking turns going into the water for the most part.

We introduced Connor to the Pacific Ocean - he wasn't too sure about it at first but seemed to have a good time.
We had some ceviche in a nearby restaurant and met three current Peace Corps volunteers - two were leaving within a few weeks, one coincidentally going back home to Seattle. Just to show how time flies (and/or how long I was in grad school), she started college while I was a graduate student, graduated, worked for a year, and did half her Peace Corps service, all before I finished.

It was fun to hear a little bit about their experiences. We invited the volunteer that's still in-country to stay with us in Gamboa if she has to come in to the Peace Corps office. When we were volunteers we had several people with whom we could stay, so it would be nice to fulfill the same function now that we have the extra bedroom.

Hello again

If anyone out there has been looking for new posts, sorry to disappoint. I keep meaning to download more pictures to my laptop to upload here, but I decided to break the logjam by just saying hello. I've been busy doing field work (getting up at 5:15 a.m., capturing birds in the forest and radiotracking them) most days, while Kirsten and Connor are at home. But we've made a couple of trips this month which we'll tell you more about soon. One was to Playa Santa Clara, a beach about 90 minutes from Panama City, where we stayed one night at Las Sirenas. The other was to Kirsten's Peace Corps site.

Here's a picture just to keep everyone interested - hope everyone's having a good summer (if you're in the temperate zone).


-John

Driving Lessons

We bought a used car on Monday, so far so good. It's a 2002 Nissan Sentra, I don't have a picture yet but just your basic silver sedan.

I'm in the process of getting it insured, and on Tuesday took a new route away from the Smithsonian to try to get our rent paid at a bank nearby. I turned onto an empty street and ran into the very beginning of a student protest.

LESSON NUMBER ONE: it's probably best to just stop and turn around if you see a group of 20+ muchachos covering their faces with rags and holding rocks.

LA PRENSA/Ana Rentería

Anyway, I got close enough for them to surround the car, sit on the hood, and open the doors. LESSON NUMBER TWO: if you have forgotten LESSON NUMBER ONE (see above), you could try to lock your doors. At that point I looked around and realized my wallet and cell phone were sitting on the passenger seat, so I stuffed them between my legs and put the car in reverse. All I remember were the boys saying ¿Qué pasó, qué pasó? (what's up?). Then one of them on the driver's side started saying 'cierre la puerta, cierre la puerta' (close the door), perhaps realizing that I had no idea what the heck was going on. I also speculate that they hadn't gotten rev'd up yet (it was about 3:00 p.m.) or it might have looked like this:

LA PRENSA

But they didn't throw rocks, or taking anything from the car (my backpack was sitting in the back seat), so I will just count my blessings and consider them lessons learned.