Casa de Los Andes

On day 9 of living in Panama, we moved into our house! Yay!

In Panama, we live in Panama City in San Miguelito in Los Andes. I don’t know how to explain what exactly these names mean except to be able to say that this is where we live. And if you take the Metro from Albrook, where the central station is, to the end of line (as of yet) where there’s a lot of metro construction going on, the Los Andes station is the area we live in. Which is convenient, actually. We have a metro station near us! And a huge shopping mall place. You have to use the metro walkway to be able to cross the street to get to the shopping center. 

It’s great to be able to walk to a lot of stores, though they’re technically still building part of the mall area. But hey, once it’s finished, that thing is going to be freakin gigantic. There’s also a fruit stand in the neighbourhood, which is there every day, and a farmer’s market on Saturdays. Plus little stores where we can buy bread or eggs or cards of money for our phone (or other things, but that’s really the only reasons we use it).

Besides the stores, there’s two other places that have direct impacts on our life in la casa de los andes. One, is the police station. Every government building in Panama has free wifi (supposedly). And while our house does not yet have internet, this is the only way we can get Internet. But, InternetParaTodos is pretty slow and spotty and you have to sign in every time you connect, so it’s really frustrating to deal with. But, it’s our only way. And while almost nobody in the US using WhatsApp, EVERYBODY here using WhatsApp over calling or texting. The youth most of all. But pretty much everyone uses it. I’ve borrowed a cheap phone from the director to be able to be contacted through call/text with a Panamanian number, but my WhatsApp is on my American phone with it’s American number, so people need my US # and I need Internet for most of the interactions. So basically, my contact situation is kinda complicated, but I’d already gotten used to not being able to do anything with my phone without wifi while I was in Europe this summer, so it’s not that bad. And hey, it’s only 9 months. After I get back, I’ll be even more appreciative to have data (and only 1 phone to deal with). Anyways. Police station. A blessing and a curse.

And then there’s the other quirk of our neighbourhood. There’s a church. And rather than just praying or whatever, they serenade the world inside their church Friday and Saturday nights (and apparently Sunday too). I know I’m obsessed with music. I know I’m a bit of a snob about the quality of music. But it sounds like they’re singing karaoke. Not only is it loud, but the vocals are less than spectacular. I believe they only have a drum kit and a keyboard as accompaniment. The drummer bores me to death, though, because the beats don’t change much, and are not very exciting beats in general. A good drummer can good eons to improve music by spicing it up with a good beat, but this drummer does not do that. Disappointed in you, drummer. Nothing of note to speak of in terms of the keyboard. It’s there. Doesn’t really make the music much better or much worse. But I wonder a few things. How long has this church had this group of musicians? What do the church members think of them? What did the neighbourhood think of them when they first started out? Why hasn’t the church gotten better musicians? Does anybody actually go to this church? The musicality drives me crazy every time, as Nef knows well. But hey, that’s just what we have to deal with. Oh well.

Our house itself is pretty great. There’s a big porch that kids play on whenever we have something going on at the house, and a big sala of our own that also contains a fair amount of people for whenever anything happens. It also is the dining room for Nef and I. The kitchen is small, but hey, it’s Latin America. We don’t yet having a washer/dryer, but we should hopefully be getting a washer soon. Currently we have to wash our clothes at the temple. We live with our abuela, who has been living here already. She hand washes her clothes, so that’s why there isn’t a washer yet. All 3 of us want it, though!

The kitchen looks bigger than it actually is with this giant space in-between the two pictures, but it you connect the two pictures, that's exactly how big it is. It's small. The fridge and oven are also small. But, remember, I'm going by American standards. Isn't really too much of a problem, thankfully.

Oh, and our shower doesn’t have hot water. Cold showers yay… despite living in Florida and Arizona, both fairly hot places, I could never totally get into taking cold showers. I don’t really like cold water in general. You’d be surprised to know that I went swimming at a beach in Denmark. I still think that that is crazy. Since Panama is hot, having hot water in your shower is a bit of a luxury. They tried to install a “suicide shower” for us, but the one time it was used, it knocked out the power of 2/3s of the house. Darn. 

The Infamous "Suicide Shower"

I call it "suicide shower” because that’s what my parents called the ones like this in Costa Rica. I’ve used them in Costa Rica. The basic concept of it is that you have your regular shower head piping cold water to you for your shower. Now, they take this head that’s 3 times the size and install it over the regular head, and when the water goes though it, it warms the water. This head is connected with wires to some electrical source, so they often look slightly dangerous. But they work! Kinda! It’s your decision- do you want water pressure or heat? Because the more pressure you use, the faster it’s going through the head, and the less heat it’ll be able to gain. If you want hotter water, you gotta have less pressure. I’d chose a little bit of heat over pressure any day, but maybe it’s not to be. Not sure if I’m ever truly going to get used to the cold showers, though. My dad has written about this type of shower in CR on one of his blogs (but I think they've become greatly improved since).

Abuela has her own room, and Nef and I share a room. Thankfully, it is not a tiny room. The walls are light pink, though. Not what I’d choose, but it could be worse. It doesn’t look terrible. In fact, since both of our favorite colors is green, our curtains, our small set of drawers, and most of our sheets are green (or close to it). So, the color scheme matches. But it’s not like we tried. We just like the color green. But our room is big enough and we’ve split the closet and drawers and things so we can both have equal shares of space, and it all works out. We also have a little stereo! The stereo is so basic that you can only connects iPods or other devices to it, it doesn’t get radio. But I have a lot of music on my iPod, so we’re doing okay. I have a wide range in my musical taste, so thankfully, that means I can provide for a wide range of preferences and moods!

Oh look, we have a window.

One of my favorite things about our house is that it is almost like a community center of its own. Like I said before, our sala is beg enough for a fair amount of people to be in. And at times, a lot of people are in it! Whatever it may be for, I’m always glad to have people around. I guess because I’m not in school anymore and don’t constantly have people my age around me because of that, it’s really nice to be able to spend time with any people, but especially with people my age. We live in la Casa de Los Andes. And if something’s going on, it may just be happening right here, in our home! Or rather, everyone’s home. No need to say “make yourself at home” in this house. ;)

La sala (from one angle)

See ya

P.S. As I’m writing this, there seems to be a bit of a party going on in front of our house. All the houses are really close and the walls are thin. At night, you can hear a woman criticizing her children and a man snoring. Needless to say, you can hear the music in front of our house clearly from all the way in the back of the house. Gotta love ya, Panama.