New life, new look

So my apartment is starting to feel more like a home. Since I am not woring 23 hours a day this week, I have been able to spend more time there. It also helps that I now have some essentials, like pots and pans and oh yeah gas for cooking. Beleive me, you can only get so creative with a crockpot, and after a while, you just want to eat instead of planning for the next meal of your life. And a word to the wise...hard-boiling an egg in a crock is just not very entertaining. Unless you are a fan of salmonilla.

I just need to add some of the touches...like piant in some thing other than monotonus white, and give some areas a really good scrubbing. Pictures to come soon...I just havn´t bought batteries for my camara.

Oh yeah, also still missing a bed. There was something cool, remisnicent of my childhoos camping trips about sleeping on an air matress, but now it is just getting old! I have a bed ready for deleivery in a couple days. I am so excited to no longer sleep on the same floor I am realizing needs alot of scrubbing...

Classes are good and I am keeping really busy. I am getting into the swing of working everyday...something that rarely happens at the mission. I am also having alot of time to do some reading, and I just finished My Antonía by Willa Cather...a book so beautiful that I actually, get this, missed Nebraska when I read it. Yeah thats scary.

One of the things in the book is that the Best days are the ones that die first..optima dies prima fuget (from Virgel)..the latin equivalent of "time flys when you are having fun", a phrase I have had to teach many times in my Berlitz Experience (we teach it in level 2, 3, and 6!), and one that I am learning about every day. While the latin phrase is more melancholy, and Cather's characters says about those best days that "I wish I could be a little boy again, and that my way could end there", I dont see it as so melancholy. This week marks a year that I have been in Panama. And I cant help to think that these days have each passed away quickly, leaving not much more than photos on my computers and hazy memories of places, peoples, and things that have changed my life. And I cant help but to think of all the other hazy memories I have from other best days. I am fortunate to have had a very blessed life, full of experiences, and full of blessings from God, who has been the provider of my best days. ANd I am not melancholy, wishing for some distant memorie of the past to be my reality, but look forward to more of the best days that are in store. Carpe Diem.

I have a new theme for my blog...

until later

A new dose of culture shock

So, I am an emotional wreck right now. I am up and down and up and down more than Paris Hilton's skirt. (By the way, what kind of crap is here new song! I heard that she has great musical gifts...of cousre she does, she can take singing lessons from whoever the hell she wants, she can finance her own freaking record label, not to mention her own crappy CD, so who the hell is going to stop that crap like that is recorded, reproduced and forced unwillingly into the ears of unpected listeners? Wheres the accountability here? Oh thats right, skanks like that only answer to money! What the hell is the musical world coming too when she makes it into the top Ten that isnt the top ten shitiest songs in the world. PS, this is no longer Chris the missionary talking, obviously).

Anyways, leaving the mission has been good, but I am realizing what Panamanian life is like. Dont take this wrong, I love it. Its just different. It's taking a little of adjustment. I am learning alot, and at the end of each day I am mentally worn out! I just get depressed and homesick for the American life that I had in Balboa, and then the next minute I am off the wall excited about my little Panamanian adventures. Its has been a great last weeks, I just feel like I am a women starting on the pill...dont mess with these emotions!

Anyways, life goes on! keep adjusting! Pictures to come soon!

The Other end of the spectrum

So, I have made it through my first week in Panama as a non-missionary! I am realyl excited. My job is great. But I am realizing all the things I took for granted, and am learning a new side of Panama. In some ways, I am understanding more about the lives of the people I worked side by side with in the church. In other ways, I am learning about a whole new part of the population I have never even had contact with in Panama.

Berlitz teaches mostly classes to businesses who need to learn English. And beleive you me, these course are not cheap. Its comes to something like $1.35 a minute to take a class. We have a center that serves as a adminstrative base as well as a teaching center, but most of the classes that I teach are outside of the center, in the conference rooms of said business. Put two and two together and it doesn't take long to figure out that these are multi-million dollar companies, and they usually only often pay for their top executives to take English classes. So, imagine the kind of people I have as my students. Imagine more, the type of people we have as students who are paying the classes out of their own pockets. We are talking rich. It is the complete opposite end of the spectrum, since my students in the church were taking adtvantage of the course we offered for $5.

For example, I teach in the National Brewrey, and my students there are the directors of logisitics and human resources. I teach a class to the middle-management for Sanofi Aventis, the pharmeceticaul company that makes Allegra. And one of my students in the international director for Sales for Nission in Latin America.

It has been interesting. While I have been entering penthouses and apartments in the most exclusive part of town, and learning my way around the corporate and banking districts of downtown, I feel in some way I am learning more about the lives of my former students-people who depended on buses, cram into said busses like sardines, and then walk twenty or thrity minutes to get where you actually need to go. I have learned so much about the city, and was surprised today when I was walking around to my busstop. I looked a house, that was rather dilapitated, and thought, if I were in the states, this would be a horrible part of town, and I would be gripping my wallet whiteknuckledly, staring down at the ground and just praying to get through. But this is Panama, and this is normal. This is actually a better area of the city. And I walk around this area feeling safe.

The simple life is something that I thought I lead. But as I left the mission, I realized how much simplier my life was going to get. I like that. For now, I am enjoying it, I am working really hard, and looking forward to living simply and saving some money for when I have to go back to the overpriced, materialistic attitude of the States.

keep learning...