It beginning to smell alot like Christmas

In the tropics, Christmas Spirit (as I have grown up to know it as: the frost, the snow, the chilling wind, and that tingling feeling in your hands when you come in from the cold, et al) is kind of non existent in the tropics. It is kind of wierd walking around and hearing jingle bells and sleigh ride when I am thinking about walking around the city at night in just my t shirt. Santa sure has rosy cheecks here, but they are rosy becuase he suffers from heat stroke having that beard and wool suit in the hiegth of summer. And there are not chesnuts roasting, rather my skin scorching in the tropic sun. We are passing into summer, so it is getting hotter and dryer. At least there is a breeze to blow away some of the humidity. And the kids all out of school for summer vacation. Add that to the already crazy adult "muchedumbre" running around the un-airconditioned malls, the persipration rate has gone up quite a bit here in Panama. Its beginning to smell alot like Christmas. Ahh, Christmas Musk.

It doesnt look like Christmas, the decorations just seem a little out of place. But walk past any grocery store and there is another smelll of Christmas...Pine Trees. And since they are cheap, I was tempted to buy on to get my apartment to smell nice and Christmas-y.

They say that smell is your stongest sense, and it actually makes up 90% of your sense of taste, and that smells are the easiest memories we make: a smell with stick with us for years. I even tried in college to smell my cologne while I was studying, hoping that I would somehow magically recall all the information I crammed into my brian by simply smelling my cologne during the test.
The smell of trees make me feel like it actually is Christmas when my sweat glands are doubting it. The "Christmas Air" Floor disenfectant makes me almost feel that I am little kid again waiting anxiously at the base of the tree to open presents and eat cherry mash and brownies. And the smell of fresh plastic from all the bags just sitting around holding treasures and gifts make me remember bundling up in my sweaters and wrapping presents.

Its beginning to smell like Christmas. Thank God I have a functioning nose...I would go holiday-less without it.

Evangelical Bull

So, there seems to be a theme emerging here: Chris hears bad sermon, Chris angst-fully rages on blog.

Maybe I am oversensitive to whole word "service" since it was abused and grained into my brain in Seward (Explanation for non Concordians in three, two, one: On Concordia's mission to "serve the church and world", all the students are forced to take pointless, curriculum-less class that give people like Julie Johnson a job, and force them to beleive that "servant leadership" is the only proper way to serve, and that, at Concordia, the only way to serve the church and world is serving the church. Maybe not blatently stated, but the fact that those in the education program are looked down upon for choosing the public school certification).

Anyways, I heard a sermon that made the cliam that it is a Christian's "obligation" to serve the poor. I dont know why this seemed so offensive to me. I mean, I was a missionary, I did serve in the church, and mostly to people of lower classes. My youthful ideas were to live in voluntary poverty, serve and help people less fortunate than me. Have I given up my ideals? Why did this little statement offend me so much?

I guess it just was the word "obligation" that got me. I am tired of Evangelicals forcing their interpretation of what a good Christian should be or should do down my throat. And the fact that "service" is so abused. Does the baker not serve all his clients that need to eat? Does the janitor not serve the people in the building who dont clean up after themselves? No, the only way to serve is to give money to the church's minsitry programs and only then are you being a good Christian.

I am sick of being obligated to do something, when everything that I already do is not valued as God possibly working through me. I think God is bigger than our "obligations" and our intrepretations and our hypocritical money-mongering.

Thanks Action Day in Pictures

So yesterday was THANKS ACTION DAY in Panama! We pulled off a pretty good feast with everything that was thrown our way. Here are some things that I am sure Martha Stewart never had to deal with:

1. Thanks Action Day being moved and changed around. Thats right. We usually celebrate Thanks Action Day on Nov 28 here in Panama, since it is independence day and everyone has the day off. (Dont worry...our Panamanian friends didnt mind giving up Independence day For our "gringo" celebration, becuase it is one of three independence days that are celebrated within the month of November.) This year, since the 28th was a Wednesday, however, the government wanted to change INDEPENDENCE DAY, so that it was on the weekend. How can you just change a national holiday? And even more so, how can you change a national holiday when I am planning Thanks Action Day? We changed plans accordingly, only to find out that the goverment decided to recind on the whole holiday-changing plan. Change of Plans, again! AGHH!

2. The non-working oven scare. So, as the festivities were held at my house, this was major test time for my rather cheap kitchen equipment. As I was in charge of the desserts, I decided as always to make my famous pumpkin cheesecake. But, alas, my springform pan was no where to be found. I bought a new one. As I cooked the cheesecake, my stove just starts smoking (and we are talking death black smoke). After a big scare that my oven was going to blow or not work (which would be horrible, since he trukey was going to be cooked at my house, see below), I found out that my spring form pan was leaking butter, thus the big fire. Then my big fear was that my house would be all nasty and smoke smelling. But it worked out once I figured out how to get my springform pan to stop leaking! Tin foil to the rescue.

2. The oven/turkey fire. So Becky was in charge of the turkey, as she has been the last two years. She let that big ass bird marinate for like three whole days in wine and butter (heaven!). But, since there was a parade in front of her and Noriel's apartment, and the would be trapped all day there, we decided that the bird could be cooked at my house, where the festivities were to be held. The bird is cooking and everything is great. We check the temp, and it looks done. Yeah! We pull the bird out and start picking at it, great and everything. But we decide we want it to go back in and get a little more golden crispy. I stoop down with the whole 50 pound pand and put it back in the oven. Not realizing that the oven shelf had been pulled out, I throw my back into it and the pans falls into the back of the stove, pouring a large cuantity of alcholic bird juice into the flames of my gas stove. My co hosts were there, blinding by the smoke and paralyzed with the lack of hot-mits, while I contemplating sacrificing the hair on my arms to pull our turkey from the fiery abyss. We saved it...most of the marinade still in tact, and no burnt turkey. Once again, my fears of my apartment smelling like an ashtry surface.

4. No Gas. After all the shananigans of almost catching my kitchen (and body) on fire, we settle down and get back into the cooking business. Then, the stove just stops. Thats right. We ran out of gas. So for the rest of the thanksgiving meal, it was Thanks Action Day by microwave. Becky even made Microwave gravy.

5. This is a good one: Toto asked Stephanie to marry him at thanksgiving! It was so nice! She said yes, of course, and we all joined in celebrating their engagement! Congrats Stephanie and Toto!

And, of course there was plenty of food. But, pictures can sum up the holiday better than my ostentatious words. Take a look at the photo album Becky made clikcing on the link below or check out the link "Panama 2007" under "Photo Archive" at the left had side of this page to see some great Thanks Action Day Pictures.

Later!

http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d5459304f5451784d6e77784f444d7a4d6a457a0d0a&sb=1

Thanks Action Day Checklist

Thats right, Thanks Action Day will be celebrated here in Panama in t minus 2 days. We are definately excited. The feast (or fête I have so frenchly been calling it) will be at my apartment, which is kind of stressful, but I am not in charge of the bird (thank you, Becky) but still, the June Cleaver urge to make my first thanks action day feast worthy of Martha Stewart's praise and maybe even be comparable to mom's feast is so much stronger when its one of the few claims to gringo culture I and some expectant Americans (and Panamanians) will experience this year.

In honor of our belated Thanks Action Day Celebration, here is a vertiable checklist of what we need for our wonderful feast and their status as of publication of this entry:

1. Turkey ala Becky (Check)
2. Candied Yams (Check)
3. Mashed Pototates (Check)
4. Cranberries (Check)
5. Bread (Check)
6. Wine (Check)
7. Alcohol-Free Cider (Becky's pregnant! YEAH) (Check)
8. Pumpkin Cheescake (Check)
9. Pumpkin Pie (Check)
10. Rum Apple Crisp (Check)
11. Peach/Cranberry Pie (Check)
12. Stuffing (from a box) (Check)
13. Harvest Decorations (Check)
14. Thanks Action Day Music.... (no Check)

WTF???? No music. Come on: without, there would be no musical ambiance, and without musical ambience, it wouldn't be Thanks Action Day. And since there are seven people at my party and you can't make an asthectically pleasing symetrical table setting arangement with an odd number of people, music must be good enough to make up for lack of visual symmetery (okay, a little exagerrated, I admit. ) But there is a serious lack of Thanks Action music on the Market. What's a insecure-about-co-hosting-his-first-Thanks Action man supposed to do?

Well, with my great musical tastes (a little on the eclectic side, I admit), I decided to make my own Thanks Action Day mix. So with out furthur adeau, here is Volume One of "The AMERECANA CD COLLECTION": Thanks Action Day. Its all smooth, kind of jazzy, with some big band twists and bluegrassy twang, but all around it has a highly American just-want-to-sit-around-the-fireplace kind of feel to it. Enjoy!

1. Peanuts Thanksgiving Theme by Vince Guaraldi
2. At Ease by Amos Lee
3. Songbird by Eva Cassidy
4. Going Be Some Changes Made by Bruce Hornsberry
5. Take Five by Dave Brubeck
6. The Best is Yet to Come by Frank Sinatra
7. Moondance by Van Morrison
8. Down to the River by Alison Krause
9. Autumn Leaves by Eva Cassidy
10. All at Sea by Jaime Cullum
11. When You Come Back Down by Nickel Creek
12. Those Sweet Words by Norah Jones
13. Hang on Little Tomato by Pink Martini
14. Where I Come From by Rye Hallow
15. Autumn Leaves by Miles Davis
16. Out of the Woods by Nickle Creek

Thanks Action Day

So literally, translated, yesterday was Day of Thanks Action. (In an executive decision made by the adminstrators of this blog, Thanksgiving with hitherforth be called Thanks Action Day.) All my students asked me if I was eating chicken, and I had to correct them and say "actually, its turkey" and whimsical talk of cold crisp days seen through chilled windows while the family sits down to cider and yams was lost on their tropical holidayers mind-set as much as talking about pilgrams and religious freedom was perplexing for them.

And did you know that the first Thanks Action Day celebration in the Americas was actually done by the Spanish Explorer Vazquez de Coronado in the early 1500s? Although it was not a feast, but rather a communion service, it is one of the first recorded public gathering in America centered on the act of giving thanks.

And while we arent celebrating Thanks Action Day quite yet (that is in the works for next Wednesday and yes I, the diabetic, am in charge of all the desserts), its still easy to be thankful for my family, friends and all the things that I have to be thankful for. And I am also thankful for the ability to be thankful in a thanks-action-day sort of way and be planning to go to the beach this weekend.

Yet, among all the benefits of living in the tropics and that my tan that is becoming more grecian every minute, it is still hard not to feel a pang of loneliness and a little homesickness this time of year. And even though we have our own little celebration, there just a part of me that wishes I could be states-side for Thanks Action Day. I hope that your Thanks Action Day was full of family, friends and tangible reminders of what Thanks Action Day is is all about (and as my Dad and I agreed yesterday, football and bloated-ness are included on that list.)

A Sterile Existence

So, a little over a year ago, when I was looking for an apartment, I found this old building with a free apartment. Besides the fact that it was on a bus route (meaning load, old, out-of-shape school buses plowing past at all hours), I really liked it. I think I liked it becuase it had a lot of character, some charm: bookshelves built into the walls, arches with ionic columns for the doors, an old, decrepit looking metalic chandalier, a little windowed-in porch with french doors whose windows have paint marks on and a few cracks that give the doors the appearance of just being frosted by condensation. Charming. And not so much charming in the sense of Frank Lloyd Wright chraming with stained glass intricacies, but more just kind of charming broken-window-yet-not-dangerous charming. I have always wanted to have a historic, charming abode, so you can imagine my dissapointment when I found out that the apartment was rented to someone else.

But it got me thinking about charm. And not like fairly tale, overly exagerant charm, but that slightly-worn-down-yet-still-strong kind of charm. I think that is why I like old houses. They have proven themselves, they have stood the storm, as it were. New houses just seem so sterile. In old houses you don't know what history that comes along with the dust in the corner, nor do you know the books that have sat on those shelves, the work put into polishing the floors, or some indoor wild kid's play that resulted in the chipped paint. It leaves more room for imagination (we would always look for treasure in my grandmothers house, something that we never did in the new houses of our neighbors that had been constructed under our incospicuious eyes) and adventure and simple possibility.

Living in Panama has a certain charm to it. ALthough I might complain, today while I was on the bus, I couldnt help to smile and feel the charm of cramming onto an old bus, smiling and saluding all those who crossed my path (a typical Latin thing...saying hello to everyone.) I couldn't help but feel the charm of my small apartment with all my nick-nacks and the charm of the simple life I lead. I couldnt help but applaud the charm of a family walking down the street, a father chasing his daughter and laughing at the top of their lungs even thous her school uniform was getting completly sweaty and not harldy as well pressed as mother would have liked. The charm of seeing the homeless man talk to the newspaper vendor. The "chichero" riding his bike down the middle of the street, selling his juices to walkers and drivers standing in line to make their purchases.

Its that kind of worn down, not quite perfect charm that has got me hooked. Its not the best, what they have, but they make it work, and they smile about it. Its not new and shiny, but it works in their reality. Some would call is quiant. I call it charming. Maybe this is one reason I dont want to go back to the United States. There are few "charming" things. We push our homeless people into shelters vying for their health, but really we just don't want to see them in our streets. We cant be too excited, that would be a call for Rittalin. Too sad, Prozac. We have to have the shinest, the newest iPhone, the most expensive car, the coolest clothes, the highest credit card debt. There is no adventure: the buses are luxiorious, the sidewalks repaved every year, the cracks covered with asphalt, the traffic lights calibrated every month, a whole sterile existence of predictability, extravagentness and consumerism. Every sign of life is pushed away, covered up, played down into some mediocre daily grind, where having feelings outside of familial and brotherly love are discouraged.

I find Panama charming...sometimes unefficient, sometimes brute, sometimes uneducated, and other times impatient. But thats where its charm comes from. It is not perfect. Its rough around the edges. But at least it has proof that there is some sort of living. Life is not covered up with our polishes, fixed with our medicinal creams and tightened up with our botox. We lose the charm that shows that they have survived the storm, that it is not perfect.

We dont have to be perfect. We need to preserve for the charm that our culture is losing.

A little anger here...

So, this is a little angry bitch session. Be forewarned.

What every happened to genuine Christians? Where have they gone, where were they lost? I know that there are many bible scholars out there that know alot more about this than I do, and I cant say that the bible claims to talk about genuine-ness, but it seems like it would go along with the Christian message: love, honor, integrity, etc.

So why are Christians most often the fakest people around? (Answer to this question in t minues three minutes.)

Heres what set all this off: I received an email from someone I have not heard from in almost a year. This person was a good friend of mine, but when I moved to Panama, communication from their part of the relationship just kind of dropped off. Not to say I didnt try. I wrote for the good whole first year that I was in Panama and got tired of receiving short, disspondent answers, if I got any replies at all. So, me and my "loyalty-ridden" self, just decided that it wasnt worth it. If there is one thing I can't handle its when people aren't loyal to themselves, their friends, their beleifs...etc. So, we havent talked in a while.

I receive this email and think, wow..maybe something new. No. It was an email about warning people about a movie that is coming out (The Golden Compass) that is about "killing God" and even worse, was written by an atheist. OMG! Too much to handle. My faith cant take the fact that in this world there might be movies going against Christianity, and that in fact, atheists might be successful and have creative imaginations. Heaven forbid. Oh dear God in Heaven: How can you exist if there are successful muslims and even atheists. (If you cant tell, this is just dripping with sarcasm)

Thats not really why I got mad. I got mad becuase after not talking to me for almost two years about anything personal or anything that is going on our lives, you email me when something infringes upon your conservative beleifs and you are so insecure about what you believe that then you have the nerve to email me, fooling yourself into thinking that you are strong in your faith because you have stood up for a cuase.

How is this genuine at all? Is this friend really worried about me falling into the temptation of watching a movie that might go against the beleifs we have been taught? I doubt it. Why would they personally worry about something petty like what movies I watch when they haven't seemed to care about the major developments I have gone through since they decided that our friendship wasnt worth the trouble of writing a coherent email. And would they really have felt it necessary to warn me if they had been in touch and learned that, during the radio-silence of our relationship for the past year, I have become and adult and know how to think on my own? Hardly.

But like I said, its not genuine, becuase they are not really worried about the movie's affect on me. They are worried about how something like this is defiant of all the kitsch they have come to build their life upon. How this is "spit in the eye of smiling brotherhood". How their kitsch dictates to them that Christianity is about being happy and standing up together against the evil of the world, and how any crap or shit that happens in daily life must mean some sort of lack of faith or trust. This kitsch that Evangelical America has proclaimed as absloute truth in this current movement of zealotry is by no means true. By no means genuine.

What happened to genuine Christians? I know very few. Few who are not fully consumed with living thier kitsch-filled existance that they cant step out of their bubble and see the "gaggle of people who are hurting" as one friend puts it (a single divorcee who might just actually the greatest theologian of our times ;) ). In fact it is those people I know as Christians who dont seem to wear it on their sleeves that seem to be the most "genuine". But they are not genuine, because the dont fit the mold American Evangelical Kitsch has liad out for them to fall into.

When did a warning become more of a Christian message than a simple, "hello how are you, tell me what happened today". When did our theology and our beleifs become more important than the people around us who need us, hate us, love us, treat as as kings and enemies, and sometimes depend on us?

What happened to genuine Christians?

Some fears

Or maybe just one fear...

So, yesterday was a monumental moment. At 4:35 in the afternoon, I finished my grad entrance essay. I was ecstatic. Besides being elated with the fact that I wrote about 20 pages in Spanish, researched for about three months (in all my spare time!) and tied it all together with a pretty good conclusion, I was just happy to have overcome this fear.

See, it took me so long becuase the document just sat on my computer for about a month at page 9. I couldnt bring myself to write about the last two authors, and so my paper about Spanish-American lit at the turn of the 20th century just sat there, a Spanish-literature-less Spanish-American Literature paper.

I thought I was afraid of not being able to write as educated-ly about Spanish authors as I could about Central American authors. But no, that was just the tip of the iceberg. While personal experience gives me an advantage in the "American" realm of Span-Amer lit, its not like becuase it comes from the other side of the Atlantic I cant handle it.

I was really afraid of finishing the paper (not so much just finishing, because like I said, EXCITED), but finishing and then having to submit it. I can imagine some bald professor tearing through the "intellectual scruff" of my essay, laughing menaically at the intellectual peasants whose papers he has to lower himself to reading, and who are clearly inferior to his emminent wisdom. The fear of some professors' laser eyes shredding the toils of my intellectual labor to pieces still makes it hard to just put the essay in the mail and be done with it. Its not just some paper, but the paper on which your entire intellectual ability is judged.

But as my friend says, (yes, I am quoting you again) "most professors have nice smiles and children," so I guess maybe super-power-laser-beam-destroyer eyes are nullified. Or at least I hope so. And I know that this will be the first of many papers that bring to the surface my deep intellectual insecurities! Viva academia.

More Dichotomy

So, I walk home from the office every night. Our offices are located in the middle of the city, and I love on the outskirts of the city, about as far as you can go but still be considered the city. I live by the ocean (dont get too jealous, sewage is pumped into the ocean so its sometime more of a problem than a pleasure). It takes about 45 minutes to walk home, which is plenty of time just to me and myself and the noise of buses plowing by, and cars honking away.


One of the things that always seems to occur to me is the whole dichotomy of life. We are never really taught about dichotomy (except in AP Bio when we had to memorize dichotomous keys), but we learn about it from day one. Everyone understands the whole stop/go, fast/slow, caniverous/herbevoire, confierous/deciduous, white/black, modernista/generacion de 98, developed/third world complex and can identify many dichotomous feelings without being taught about them. Our state of movement is not perpetaul, dichotomy tells us that it is rather moments of stop and go. However, there are those moments when dichotomy seems to suspend in some sick give-and-take of polar oppisites: that wierd feeling when we are traveling (flying especially) and it feels like we are moving, yet our emotions tell us that we are never go arrive are when the ends of your life's dichotmous key seem to be taking place.

Exhibit A: Wanting to go back to the States, yet not wanting to leave Panama. Wanting to have a family yet not wanting to give up the promise that a bachelor's life contains. Not feeling like an American yet not exactly Panamanian. I have come to accept that I wont always feel like I am in end of my dichotomous key, but in that eternal limbo: I would say this is really accepting the veracity of dichotomy, that I would be living in both ends, in limbo, instead of just choosing one branch of my dichotomous key (as if living life were as easy as identifying a species). I mean, whats the point of dichotomy if I chose monotony (even if the simplicity of monotony can in itself be comforting).

It was in talking with a friend yesterday that I made the statement that, in reference to the whole liberal/conservative debate, "dichotomy here is reaffirmed only for didactical purposes, not necesarily becuase it is true." That made me think about dichotomy in general: is it something we use to categorize our life and our experience, or it is something actually true? Is it simply the construct we use to figure out our somewhat paradoxic existence (what better way to solve a paradox than polarizing both ends of the spectrum?), or is it just simply the way the world works?


Like I said before: Dichotomy is life. Just wondering if simply life in itself dichotomous or do we make it that way? And the chicken/egg debate continues...

Road Trip in Pictures

Happy November! November in Panama is "Mes de la Patria" (Month of the "Mother Country" as it were), becuase all the National Holidays fall in November. That means plenty of time to do nothing and an excuse to do nothing even when you are supposed to be doing something (aka, blogging at work.) So here is a wrap up of our weekend on the road, celebrating Memorial Day (November 2), Independence Day (November 3), Flag Day (November 4) and Independence Celebration in Colon Day (November 5). Also this weekend we have, thats right, Independence Day Celebration in Los Santos (November 10) and then we have Independence from Columbia Day (November 28). Panama does have two independence days (one from Spain and one from Columbia) but they celebrate the first one like 7 times (hence all the free days.) Unfortunately, this year, all the holidays land on a Saturday, so we dont really get any extra days off. But anyways, heres a picture story of my weekend.

Me enjoying the parade...and all the food that came with it. I am pointing to "meat on a stick", bbq sausage! YUM!

On Saturday afternoon, we went to Boquete, a small mountain town that is one of my favorite places in Panama. This is the view from the city's lookout point.

The lookout was complete with a shrine to Mary and all. I dont want to know if I offended anyone with this picture.

One of the places most visited in Boquete is the public gardens, that are replete with statues, tacky figurines and overgrown vegetation. Katie decided to milk one of the cows. We were kind of thirsty.

I couldn't resist. You know how those metal figurines just turn me on.

Golf lessons.

Diego, Noriel's nephew was all decked out in his montuno (traditional Panamanian outfit) and his sombrero pintado for the parade. ¡El Chiricanito!

This is me and my pipa. Its like a coconut but bigger and with water instead of milk. And it is so refreshing that it is about the only thing that will take your mind of the heat and humidty of David, Chiriquí.