Blogging

domingo, 30 de marzo de 2008

Blogging

So, I am a blogger now. For the past three months, I have been sharing experiences with my family, fun things about Ariana´s development and personality or crazy things about our Panama experiences. Everyone keeps telling me to write it in a journal for her, and I still haven´t. I have now forgotten most the things I found so enchanting. And since we are out of country and phone calls are expensive, only some people hear what´s going on.

It is a little weird thinking just anyone can pop in and read my blog, but I guess the only ones that would are the ones that are actually interested in how we are doing, and then for the other half of my mailing list, they don´t have to bother reading through my big group email.

I have to throw in a disclaimer though, my entire life right now is in Spanish. There may be some words or phrases that don´t sound right in English, so bear with me.

Ariana laughed for the first time yesterday. She has been smiling and squealing for a couple weeks, but no real laugh. But yesterday she finally figured it out. It was so cute! Mostly it was a body laugh, where I felt her tummy contract, but she got some sound out too.

We moved to a new home in the “country” yesterday. It is called the interior. Anything outside of the capitol city is called the interior. The capitol of Panama is Panama City. It is definitely not third world. It is the crossroads of the world, both through physical transportation of goods through the canal and through banking. It is not that big, but it is SO crowded. It is noisy and busy and noisy, it takes a half hour to drive a mile and accidents are routine (I was in a not-serious head-on collision a few days ago, but no major damage). So, we decided to move to the interior. The problem with that is that the interior is not first world like the city. Some areas are definitely third world. I think I live in the second world, I have a telephone and Internet but no running water. Lol.

In this area the water comes and goes pretty regularly. Usually goes in the morning and comes in the evening. So every evening we fill up a bunch of buckets and soda bottles to get us through the next morning. But even when there is water, the water pressure is terrible. But I really like the house. It is very open, airy and cheap. So it is worth a few sacrifices.

It is a bit of an adjustment for Ariana (and Isaac and I) because in Isaac´s mom´s house, where we were living before, we had air conditioning in our room and hot water in the kitchen and shower. Hot water is not very common here since the climate is so hot anyway, but when Ariana was born Isaac´s brother, Roberto, installed a water heater and new plumbing. It was very nice to have.

Ari struggles to nap because she is sweaty all the time. We bought a fan, but it´s not the same as air conditioning. And she hates cold baths. I warmed up half of the water in the microwave, but it was still a little cold. The first bucket bath we took was a shocker for both of us. I didn´t realize the water would get so cold sitting in a bucket all night, but it was like ice. It´s not as bad coming straight out of the shower head. But, of course, I didn´t test it first, just through the first bucket of water over the top of us. We both screamed. Oh well, I´m sure we´ll both get used to it.

I kind of felt like we were camping last night, because instead of hearing traffic all night we hear all kinds of insects and birds. It was pretty noisy too (because we can´t close the windows – see When Cinder blocks Feel Like Glass), but a noise I prefer over traffic. And at 5am, Isaac doesn´t have to use the alarm because there is a cacophony of roosters that sounds like there is a stadium of people cheering next door. It makes me laugh, after I am done cursing, every morning.