The last day and a half were what I thought what was going to be the longest days ever. But the 22 hours of travel went by surprisingly fast. On the first flight, I sat by a rather odd couple. Couldn’t really figure them out. I talked to the girl for a bit, while taking a break from geography essay questions, and she explained to me that she was in Hawaii doing research on the island. A case study for her PhD. Wow. How neat! And I had just got done griping about my geography class over the summer. Silly me. No more complaining. I’m grateful for this class and that I am able to take it. So the first flight went by rather quickly. One flight down, 4 more to go. I flew into Seattle. Boy did I miss it. I wanted to leave the airport and go back to school, but instead I just had to pass on through. After layover 1, I got back on the plane, this time to sit next to 2 very sweet old ladies. Lady number 1’s daughter and lady number 2’s son got married. Kinda like Mom and Tina. I talked with them for awhile. It was her birthday and they had just gotten off of a cruise. Thought it was weird that these 2 old ladies were shooting vodka, while I was talking about missions in Panama. Then we arrive in San Francisco. Oh San Francisco. I go down to get my luggage and it takes FOREVER. The carousel got stuck quite a few times. I finally got my bag and it was broken. It now doesn’t stand up straight unless I’m holding on to it. But I was very very thankful that it wasn’t a wheel that fell off. That would have been much worse. I had no idea where to go from here. I had to get my luggage and recheck back in because they couldn’t transfer my bag over 5 flights. I knew I had to get to a check in counter but I didn’t quite no how to get there. Without the help of this wonderful lady, I don’t know if I would have made it on time or at all. I hoped on the AirTrain, a part of the BART and rode all the way around the loop to terminal 3 where American Airlines was located. Creepy train ride, but what could I do right? So I finally get to the check in counter after getting lost a couple more times. Finally when I got to a kiosk, I couldn’t figure out how to scan my passport, later to find out it was right there in front of my face like a big idiot. Since I didn’t find it, I had to check in with an attendant. I look up and the lady says, “Ask him! I’m going on my break.” At this point, I was so exhausted from all the hours of flying and being confused and having a broken bag, that my emotions piled up, but I knew it would be over soon. The lady that ended up checking me in was such a sweetheart. I asked her if she was a mom because she sure knew what to say to help. I finally get through and my plane was delayed 20 minutes which was actually a blessing. It gave me time to regroup. Next flight to Dallas I sat next to 2 sisters my age. It was nice. Good short conversation and then I was off to sleep. Then it was to Miami and finally through to Panama. I often tried to read the Spanish magazines that were on the plane. I did pretty well but hope to be better at the language some day. The first lady to test my Spanish was a lady that was accidentally sitting in my seat on the plane. She spoke no English so it was a good foreshadow as to what teaching will be like tomorrow. I knew how to say 35 and 34 en espanol, so we eventually figured it out and it was exciting! I like Spanish. Finally I made it to Panama. I went through customs and everything was great. Couldn’t understand much of anything that anyone was telling me to do. Its not like Europe where most people speak some English. No one knew any English. So signing and small Spanish words got me out the doors and in the hands of my team. From there we went sight seeing. Surprisingly I wasn’t tired AT ALL from the flying. I wasn’t achy or anything. I am very proud of myself for how I took care of myself today to make sure that I was ready for tomorrow’s teaching day. I ate bananas, did homework, and made sure to get plenty of comfortable rest. Its important to do that and I’m glad I did. Anyway, we went sight seeing. We got to go on the cosway?... spelling… which is something that others normally on this trip aren’t able to do but because we were with the right people, we were able to go. Man if I could write this fast on my term papers, life would be so much easier. Anyway, we saw the Panama Canal and I believe on Friday we get to go watch the locks or something like that. We drove over the bridge that connects central and south America. Everything here is so beautiful. Its HOT AND HUMID. Wowee. Kazowee. We bought 2 fans for our room HALLELUJAH! Cuz I honestly may have passed out in my sleep. I’ve blurred out a couple times from the heat already. Yikes. While sight seeing, I saw poverty and wealth at its extremes. Saddest thing. There were run down buildings stories and stories high, like sky scrapers, packed with people. There was a place that Taylor said was way too dangerous to even go near because of the crime. This was poverty to an extreme. Clothes hanging out the window. Did you know that out of the 3 million people in Panama, 2 million of them live in Panama City. You drive by one block and its shooting high with amazing things like New York. And then just a block down is places like you see in the poverty commercials on tv. It was hard to see these extremes. Anyway, next we needed to kill more time, so we went to the mall. Its pretty much the only free time we’ll have because we work 10 hour days. Our schedule is so full because SO many people signed up. No doubt God wants us here. We went to the mall and I held back and didn’t buy a thing. Feels good. I officially met Dolores here at the mall because it’s the first time she got out of the van. Dolores is Walter’s wife who we are staying with. Sarah tells me she’s slow like a turtle. As the day went on I really found this to be true, but it helps me to see that maybe I need to slow my life down a bit sometimes. Then we went grocery shopping for the week. This is where we all started to get tired. We got sandwiches and breakfast foods and such. We couldn’t buy much because there isn’t much storage for food at Delores’ house. We can’t keep sweets out, even cereal, because the ants are crazy here. They will jump on that stuff as soon as they can. But the ants here are different. There are teeny tiny like little gnats. So we put the cereal in the fridge. Silly I know J We then met Gabriel who is Delores’ son. He stopped by to give us a key to the house. Delores was thankful because she was going to have to get up every morning to unlock the door for us. Doors here in Panama use a key to lock from the inside and outside. I also met Deborah today, which is Delores’ daughter and she is awesome. Taylor and Terry are awesome. Sarah is awesome. This is the best team and God is going to work. I’m so thankful for my team and so thankful for the opportunity to be here. Over and out.
