The Weekend pics (July 27-29)

The Weekend (July 27-29)

This weekend had its highs and lows but overall it was a good weekend. It began right after work as Yolanda and I went to the closing reception for the art exhibit that's been on display for the past month. (Frame of reference: the exhibit is in the same place as my weekly jazz night and I met the artist and went out to dinner w/ her and her husband last week) The reception actually was like an open mic jam session. The topic was "Love: What is it" and so each person, or those who wanted to, gave their definition of love and shared a story or anecdote or nugget of wisdom. Afterwards, Yolanda and I went out to dinner with the other student I met last week at jazz (UNC-Chapel Hill). The food was tasty even though I paid $7.00 for a cup of soup. Needless to say, I was expecting a large bowl for the price and was unpleasantly surprised at what they brought out to me.
Saturday we went to Portobelo for what we hoped to be a day of fun. The day was supposed to begin with zip lining. However upon our arrival there was no one at the location. We sat and waited for a few minutes, honking our horn, calling out...but still no one came. HUGELY disappointed we left and went in search of Portobelo. Portobelo is on the Atlantic Coast and is a sleepy town now, but used to be a major commercial shipping port. Its history stretches back to the 1700s and was attacked multiple times, including by Sir Francis Drake, before it became a forgotten port with the advent of the Panama Canal. For more information about the city and its rich history, visit: http://panamaliving.com/portobello.html. While in Portobelo we did visit the Cristo Negro or Black Christ. It's a statue of Jesus made out of dark wood so it's referred to as the Black Christ. It was interesting to see. Continuing on we went to Isla Grande. Isla Grande is an island in the middle of the ocean that took about 10 minutes to reach by boat. There we had lunch (fresh fish!) and walked along the beautiful white sand beach. On our return trip, we stopped in Portobelo to view more of the ruins. One was a fort that still had the cannons lined up ready to shoot. You'll see in the pictures. The trip ended on a sour note as the taxi driver tried to get more money out of us than we'd expected to pay. I ended up paying him $15 more and Yolanda paid $25 more. Story too long to detail here. We relaxed the rest of the evening (got home around 6p) and just chilled. We were supposed to go out but I was tired and didn't really want to.
Sunday we were supposed to go to a water park but the lady with whom we were going to go overslept and by the time she awoke it was too late to get out there and have a good day's worth of fun. Instead...Yolanda and I went to the Intercontinental for brunch. Food was appetizing but overpriced but it's the Intercontinental so what do you expect. After brunch we went shopping for a little bit then came back home. It was too beautiful of a day and I wanted to get in the water so I went to our building's pool and swam for about 2 hours. Then I laid out in the sun to "work on my tan" and take a nap. I met 3 children who also live in my building and had fun talking to them. I came back in the house around 6p kinda disappointed it wasn't later in the day and worked on my fraternity's website. If you'd like to view it, the site is www.akpsi-omegaxi.com. I made one of my favorite meals for dinner: tuna fish!!!

That was my weekend :-S

All that for only ONE DOLLAR (june 25)

This was a great day. It started off on a sour note because I woke up in a sour mood. I went for my normal morning run and took a longer route hoping it would help clear my mind some more. All it did was help my legs hurt some more, lol. The work day dragged by and it seemed COB would never come. By the time we left the office at 5:46 p.m. I was more than ready to be home. However, we had a full night ahead of us so I knew I wouldn't have time to "do me" for long. Yolanda was sick so she didn't accompany during my adventures tonight. The first stop was my coworker Diane's apartment (5 floors above us). She is going out of the country for the next 2 weeks and needed to clean out her refridgerator so she invited 3 folks over to help out. Clearly I had no problem doing that. We ate bruschetta, fajitas (chkn for them, veggies for me), pecan pie & ice cream topped off with delicious coffee. I hadn't had coffee in quite some time so this was an excellent way to end the evening. The conversation flowed very well in una mexcla de English & Spanish and I learned quite a bit about Embassy affairs and intergovernmental relationships. After dinner, I went to our weekly jazz night in Casco Viejo. There I met up with two of the ladies we'd met at Salsa lessons last week and who we went out to dinner with on Tuesday night. I also was introduced to a junior from UNC-Chapel Hill and a married couple. The wife was actually the artist whose work was on display at the gallery so that was a pleasant encounter. Her website is www.poetryandart.org if you'd like to see her work and hear her story. All of artwork is based on self-love and hope because she was raped and abused as a young woman and this is her way of expressing her feelings. A very interesting story and there's more details on the website. Anyways...After the extended jazz set (ended around 920 instead of 9) we all (6 of us) piled into the couple's Yaris (see picture below) and headed out to dinner. I didn't eat because I was still full from my dinner. Again, the conversation flowed very well and we learned about how the couple met and got married in 10 days and are happily living together still. After dinner (around 1115p), the couple dropped us off at a club on Calle Uruguay called Sahara. There was going to be a band playing live reggae starting at midnight. Pleasantly surprised, 5 of my coworkers were there already so we joined them and waited for the band to begin. They didn't take the stage until around 12:40a but the wait was well worth it. The majority of the songs were Bob Marley so I knew all of them and was really jamming!! Around 2:25 we left the club and the van dropped each of us at our respective locations. Reeking of smoke, I took a quick shower then fell quickly asleep. The only thing I paid the whole night was for my taxi from the apartment to the jazz- $1. I am truly going to miss this economy and being "the intern." :-)

Museum Day (july 14)

These are pictures from my museum day. We visited an Afro-Caribbean Museum, an Emerald Museum and the Panama Canal Museum. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the Afro-Caribbean Museum so all you see from that site is the sign. The museum was less than I expected. It only housed a few artifacts and relics displaying the rich history and struggle of the West Indies people. Nearly all of them came here during the construction of the Canal with the hopes of getting paid much and then returning home to care for their family. Unfortunately, most did not make it back home and either died here or created a new settlement. The black Panamanian presence is still very large today. The second stop of the day was the large cathedral you see below. I do not remember all of the history around it however it is located in Cathedral Square in Casco Viejo and is very well known and important. The pics below show a grave (yes they had multiple headstones in the cathedral floor which indicates there are graves beneath the surface), a row of priests' pictures, a tile from the original building, and the original stone face of the cathedral. The third stop on our tour was an Emerald Museum. Panama does not actually have emeralds on its land but it served as part of the route surveyors traveled when carrying the precious jewels. The lizard looking piece is a replica of an ornate emerald item discovered in some old city. The last pictures are of Yolanda and I in the plaza near the water enjoying the intense sun.