The Honeymoon is Over - a rant

Where the blast is fall? That was the question I asked myself earlier this week as it all came crashing around me. Panama is ON MY NERVES. And I don't mean the language, the people, the culture, my house, the sloths or birds, the driving, the school, or the food. I mean EVERYTHING is just - oh, what's the word? ACGHK. Something like that.

Before you start feeling sorry for me, or worrying, relax. It is part of the normal transition experience. First is the honeymoon, when everything, including the noisy birds and the crazy driving, is just wonderful and marvelous! But one day, it hits, and suddenly everything stinks, and no matter how good it is, life is just THE PITS. And then the bats poop on your laundry and it rains all day...

I think I figured out what is really the problem - EVERY day here is the same! It's Groundhog Day, only in the tropics. You wake up, it's dark, then the sun comes up at 6:10, and it's hot. Sometimes the birds are loud, sometimes they're really loud. Sometimes there's a sloth on your porch... There's a boat in the canal, the sky is pink, with wispy clouds, and it's another day in paradise. I looked at my calendar the other day and said, "Holy COW!! It's almost NOVEMBER!!" Of course I KNEW this, but now it's in my heart and soul and I can FEEL the effect it's having on me.

Fortunately, next Thursday and Friday are vacation days. About bloody time. It's been a long haul, but we have only ONE full week of school between now and the end of the semester, and then a month at Christmas. I will survive...

Get out of the boat!

The youth retreat has come and gone, and who ever thought you could be COLD in the tropics? But Saturday was overcast and dreary, and then the rain came around 3pm. After two hours of volleyball in rain as hard and sharp as needles, youre COLD. Yes, I know I missed a punctuation mark, the keyboards at school are all configured differently, and some LOOK like English keyboards, but you get the Spanish characters when you type. I have no idea where the apostrophe is, youre lucky to have gotten a question mark. Dont judge me too harshly! Ah' - wait, there it is... OK it LOOKS like a dash, but you actually get an apostrophe. Well, that's fun!

Anyhoo, had a wonderful time. Thank you all who prayed, God was present in very real ways, and Iñ-'''''''ll(stupid apostrophe...) post pics later, with details. BUT we{{'re (!!!!!) all back, and now I think I will stop typing because this keyboard is driving me nuts... the theme of the weekend was NOT patience, so that means I don't have to be patient, right[(now where{s that question mark_= I give up... this is too much! I have to go, anyway... Ironically, to teach a grammar lesson...

The sloth that was anything but

Another week has passed, and here we are, Friday morning, bleary-eyed. It's YOUTH RETREAT weekend! So this week, as if it weren't packed enough, has had squeezed into every spare moment preparations for next week so I'm not thinking about it over the weekend.
On the plus side, I'm really pumped about the retreat. I have a great group of 9th and 10th grade guys. Pray for us, Satan has been hard at work trying to deter all sorts of people and things from going/happening. But God will prevail, of that I am convinced!
Yesterday morning, with sleep still crusted over my eyes, I stumbled out the front door to put a load of laundry in the wash. The laundry is in a maid's room on the ground level, next to the carport. The rest of the house is a second and third story. So you have to go out to get to the laundry which is underneath your house. ANYHOO, there, smack in front of me, climbing my stairs was a gigantic thingy. At least at 5am that's what I was thinking. And, of course, whatever it was, my brain was telling me it was going to kill me (hey, I live in a jungle) and I'd better LOCK MY DOOR and SHUT IT REALLY FAST! In that order. Stupid 5am brain. So I flipped the deadbolt, slammed the door shut - and the reverberations from that chunk of steel smashing into the door frame had to have woken my neighbors, I'm sure. Anyway, by the time I'd rattled the windows, I realized the tail was too long and bushy to be a nyeke (little rodenty-thing that runs amock) and it was probably - yes.... A SLOTH. They abound here. Then I eased a little, thinking, "Now who has ever been mauled to death by a sloth?" (scenes of the killer rabbit from Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail play here...). Slowly I opened my door, staring my stalker in the eyes... who would flinch first?
Surprisingly, he didn't amble up to me. He didn't even crawl. He turned tail and trotted off at a fair speed for the safety of a massive banyan tree across the way. I MIGHT have been able to catch him had I wanted to, but really, that wasn't my priority. I had laundry to do.
So once again, the talons of doom have grapsed, but not seized, and I am still safe in the land between the lands. Hope your weekend is wonderful.

Tamara, me, and the beautiful skyline of Panama City in the background. Ray's mission team all seem to be hurling into the Pacific... 

Me with a very attractive math teacher at the Miraflores locks. We especially like that the ship in the background is Korean! 

Me with Ray at the Miraflores locks. Big boat in the background. 

A Korean ship in the locks just across the way from my house! Notice the size of the man in the orange jumpsuit just above the "r" in glory. One of those "boxes" on the ship is a semi trailer-sized shipping container. This particular ship had about 18 rows of them from front to back. 

Ray Reks came to Panama on a mission trip in September. We took his group on a tour of the city. 

Tamara and Pat Caven at Hartsfield-Jackson the day I left Atlanta. 

Saturday - still tweaking this, want to be able to post pictures so everyone can continue to see what life is like down here. Weird experience yesterday! We held the funfair last night at school, and my 6th graders did balloon creations (wiener dogs, hats, flowers were the big sellers). Just before we were leaving home for the fair, this horrendous howling noise blew up just as the rain began. I went outside to look for what was causing the noise, and all I could tell was it was coming from the jungle at the end of the street - it wasn't quite natural enough for me to believe it was all natural, though, and not quite mechanical enough for me to believe it was from the canal.
I remembered reading in Pathway Between the Seas by David McCullough (the 900+ page, excellent history of the canal) that those who moved here were often shocked, frightened, and just plain freaked out by the suddennes and otherworldliness of the storms that blow up down here. So I chalked it up to that.
By the way - we made a whopping $25.25 with our balloons. That should get us a few more whiteboard markers...
Cost of gas today: $3.24 per gallon (down from $3.56 last week)

Welcome to the site!

Dear Friends and Family,
welcome to the newest venture in technology, the BLOG (short for weblog, fyi). It is my hope that this will make it easire to share not only what is going on, but pictures of life in Panama as well.
For those just joining the adventure, I, Jeff Penn, moved to Panama City, Panama, in July of 2005 to teach sixth grade at Crossroads Christian Academy (where my fiancee, Tamara Hoke, reigns as Math Queen). It's the second of my international teaching experiences (unless you count Atlanta - maybe not international, but definitely unique!), the first being Korea.
That's probably enough for now. I'll work on posting pics and more info later, once I get more comfortable with how this thing works.
Love you all,
jp