Catching up

Okay, it's been a few days now that we have been here. 1 week to be exact this evening. We are still looking for an apartment, The school has supplied us with a real estate agent but there are only two of them for about 30 incoming teachers. They were totally overwhelmed and were showing people all the same places, even if we specifically asked about other buildings. So Kate and I decided we would be better off searching on our own. Which we thought would be easy. You just get on Craig's list, find the one you like and go see it.  That's not quite how it works here. There is a Craig's list or at least the Panamanian version called encuentra24. The way it works is this, you find a place that looks interesting, we email the add, they call you back in either Spanish or English. No telling before hand which language it will be. Now, we will talk to one of three people; the real estate agent, the building manager or the owner of the apartment. If it's the agent we talk to they will only show us that one apartment even if the building is completely empty and they have multiple listing. They will still just show us that one place. If we get the building manager then we might be able to see multiple appt. in the same building, but there is no guarantee of that either. And of course the owner of the unit can only show you that unit. So what has ended up happening is we have contacted about 20 different people to see maybe 10 different places even though panama has open listings, which means any agent should be able to access any place listed for rent.  In any case we think we are at the end of the rabbit hole and should have a apartment by the end of the weekend. Update to come later if we get it.

The group of new teachers are all great and we have gone out for drinks pretty much every other night. As well as poolside meetings after school (with beer of course). A group of about 20 or so met for the United States vs Panama game for the coppa gold cup.  And what better place for a bunch of gringos to meet to watch soccer could there be in Panama? How about TGIF, yep the American classic Fridays.  Which, was full of Panamanians cheering on their national team, and I mean cheering, for everything. Any time a Panamanian player touched the ball they were cheering. When the U.S. kicked the ball out of bounds they cheered. For every missed goal and attempt, anything. It was actually kind of cool to see the people so stoked about their team. I almost felt bad when we won. Almost. Any way, there was this sweet statue in the restaurant...

Any body remember a 32 on the Bulls?





Last Night the School took all the new hires and the spouses to dinner at the Miraflores Locks on the Panama canal. It was awesome, the restaurant had balcony seating looking right over the locks. we saw several ships come through the locks and were given information and a little history lesson about the locks as well. Apparently only about 45-50 ships go through the canal on any given day. The canal operates 24hrs a day every day of the year. An average sized tanker will pay anywhere from $80-120,000 while the real big guys and cruise ships can pay up to $500,000. And, they all pay in cash, nobody comes through the canal until they pay, no credit allowed. That's Crazy......any way here a some pics of the locks......

You can see in the last two here the ship going down as the water level goes down.

This is a pic of a "Mule" these are the machines that pull the ships through the Locks

It was a pretty amazing experience. Hopefully one of many more to come. They said if we go to Colon, which is the city on the Atlantic side of the canal, that we can take a tour of the new expansion project. Looking forward to that.