January Picture Dump

Nature

They call it a bullet ant, because its bite feels like a bullet. With a name like that, it had to die.

Starting a new hobby in site.

And another hobby.

What's that?

Ants. EVERYWHERE.

An ant carrying a butterfly. 

Delicious drink known as saril or Jamaican Tea. 

Found this guy hiding among my flip flops.

Cooking in site.

Went on a hike. It went from desert looking, to forest, to jungle.

Cool leaf I found along the way.

Ants. EVERYWHERE.

Path along the middle for people walking. Horses have torn it up so badly that during the rainy season it's a muddy mess here.

Watching a road being built in my friend's community from her front porch. On that day the first vehicle ever drove into the community. Pretty crazy to t

November and December Pictures

This is a collection of all the photos from most of November, Thanksgiving, December, and Christmas. Make sure to click the button at the bottom of the post to see the rest of the pictures.

Building beautiful stacks of blocks to be used in construction.

Host brother and the mason working hard.

First wall halfway done.

Right as construction was happening I left for Thanksgiving. I tried to warn them about my departure but they started construction right as I was about to leave. This is the view of my room and the following pictures are of the rest of the cabana. 

House Tour

The lock from hell. Took me almost twenty minutes and two pairs of pliers to bend the lock so it would close.

Nails are the most awesome thing ever, besides my machete. They act as bookshelf ends, spots to hang stuff on, repair stuff, build stuff, etc etc.

I use a this little setup to keep my mosquito net up during the day.

Cord management. I've realized if you have a spot for everything, there's never a mess. 

Made this glass. Now, it's got my markers. 

Saw off one of the sides of a clothes pin, nail the other side in the wall, and you've got a place to hang stuff.

I have cell service in my house. I have to leave my phone exactly here though.

My bookshelf. A lot of my books are on my Kindle.

Probably my favorite contraption so far. I have a second mosquito net for guests and I've set it up so you can keep it stored away, suspended from the ceiling. Just untie one string, undo the clip, and the mosquito net is ready to go.

My door. Made this with my host dad, took like 4 hours.

Another day I made four windows with my host dad. This took about six hours.

Decided to suck it up and I'm paying my host dad to use his gas generator which runs from 6pm to 9pm.

Assembled this all with my host dad.

Added mosquito netting to the windows. This is only useful for bugs that try to fly in at night to the light. Otherwise the cockroaches, grasshoppers, spiders, etc, can just climb through the gaps in the wall. 

Latrine 

Shower to the left, toilet to the right

Waterline I installed to my house.

Composting Pit I built

The beginning of my garden.

Enjoy the Little Things

Some time back, I was talking with my mother and the topic of finding new things came up. When I first moved to Shanghai, everything was new and everyday was an adventure. Then I moved into my apartment, started working, and fell into a routine. New became old, exciting became usual, and the honeymoon phase wore off. I commented on this to my mother and she told me about the book The Forest Unseen about a man named David George Haskell who set out to explore the same small plot of land in the forest for an entire year. Every time he found something new to enjoy and this intrigued me. I decided to tweak it a bit and apply it to what would become my “old” and “usual” life in Panama. I would start to observe all the amazing things that occur within it that I barely give second notice to on a regular basis. These are my observations so far. I hope that you too can find beauty in your old and usual life as well.

·         I believe humming birds to have one of the most, if not the most, interesting wing sounds of any animal out there. Every time the humming bird stops to visit the flowers in front of my house, which has become a regular occurrence for the past week or two, I can distinguish its wings which sound as if a tiny little mechanical flying machine is going about.

·         Continuing with the humming bird, when I first spotted the bird, I set out to photograph it. Every day it would stop for just a few moments before flying off quickly to the next spot. With each passing day I grew frustrated until I realized that some things are better to enjoy in the moment then wasting that moment trying to photograph it.

·         There isn’t much variance in the food that I receive for meals but I stopped to think the other night about each of the individual parts of the meal and where they came from and who worked on that part and it made me appreciate my meal that much more.

·         The spot where I usually go is absolutely amazing and I usually get lost in conversation or my screen looking at text messages and never really stop to enjoy the scenery. I realized that other day that the rocks on the ground make rather interesting designs. As rain falls it eats away at the sand around each rock but not the sand underneath, after some time, what remains is many rocks elevated on little plateaus.

·         On a grander scale of observing my cell spot, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly where my community is relative to the other towns and cities and eventually gave up on trying to figure it out because all the mountains look the same, until the day I decided to enjoy the scenery and realized one of the mountains looks very distinctly like a sideways face.

·         My host family’s dog had puppies a few weeks back and every so often I pass where their bed is and I’ve stopped noticing them so much. One of them barked at me the other day though and it was probably his first bark, it was amazing haha.

·         Rubber Bands. Think about all that awesome engineering. Don’t have to tie a knot, hold stuff in place, keeps stuff closed, amazing!

DIY: Cups, Shot Glasses, Etc.

I read several months back an article about turning an empty wine bottle into a cup. I was always interested by it and figured I would give it a try. So far, I’ve attempted with two bottles and I’m going to try again once I get moved into my own house since the whole process looks a little ridiculous and I don’t want to be using my host family’s stuff to do this. Once I try again I’ll update this post.

What you’ll need:

·         Sharpie marker or another marker that can mark glass

·         Rubber band

·         Sandpaper: You’ll want different quality paper. I got 150, 220, and 320.

·         Lantern or candle

·         Glass cutting tool: These can be found at a hardware store. They’re usually used for cutting glass for windows so it shouldn’t be that hard to locate one.

·         Glass bottle with smooth straight walls. Next time I plan to use empty hot sauce bottles to make shot glasses.

·         Large container: You’ll want something that you can submerge the bottle up to the line you cut into it. Avoid plastic unless you’re careful because you don’t want to destroy the container.

·         Gloves

Instructions: (Note: In my original attempt, I made a whole system to cut the glass cleanly but I believe this to be unnecessary. The next time I attempt to cut a bottle I’m going to do so without it.)

1)      Use the rubber band to mark where you’d like to draw your line. Then use the marker to mark the line and remove the rubber band.

2)      Using the glass cutting tool, Press into the bottle and begin to cut along the line. Once you’ve got a line that runs around the bottle that you can feel the indent with your finger, it’s time for fire.

3)      Hold the bottle over the flame and rotate it at roughly one rotation every twenty seconds. Keep doing this for about three minutes.

4)      Quickly submerge the entire line around the bottle in cold water and turn it while gently trying to separate it.

5)      If it doesn’t separate repeat steps 3 and 4 until it does.

6)      Once they separate it’s time to clean up the rim of the glass. If it’s not already smoothly cut, use the glass tool to mark a line. Repeat steps 3 and 4 except this time use the key shaped part of the glass cutting tool, or a pair of pliers to gently remove the jagged parts.

7)      Now it’s time to smooth the rim. Start with the grittiest sandpaper you have and go around the rim several times. Proceed to the more fine sandpaper and repeat the process until you’ve used all your types of sandpaper.

8)      At this point the glass is ready to go. Rinse it out with soap and water and you’re ready to go.

Running of the Bulls in my Front Yard

The Important Stuff That gets Lost in Translation

I remember way back when, before arriving in Panama, thinking that with just a few months in Panama, I’d be highly conversational and ready to take on the world. Ha. That was utterly wrong.

 One day my host dad and I were discussing my future house since he would be my landlord. (As a side note, I pay rent each month for a house or I can get an advance of the first few months of rent to pay for construction materials.) He said as a gift, he would build a little extra roofing or flooring onto the side of my house to extend the porch area. I nodded and thanked him and didn't think much more of it.

Several weeks later, I’m sitting on the front porch, working on my sombrero, while my host dad and another guy are off in the woods behind the house doing something. I hear a tree fall and decide this something is worth checking out. I put on my shoes and head on back and discover that they've knocked down a tree. I stand around for about twenty minutes watching them work. It appears that Panamanians have more faith in machetes than in a saw to cut wood into pieces and this is pretty fascinating to watch. Eventually I ask what the wood is for and my host dad proceeds to tell me about the rancho that he’s constructing for me. Whelp. Guess I'll need to work some more on my Spanish. 

Check out the construction so far.

Chopping down a tree to use as the four corners of the rancho. 

Preparing the wood. 

Marking the spots for the posts. 

I was away for a day and then didn't get a chance to take pictures until late in the afternoon after we'd done some work. 

Frame is done. Up next is adding the roofing.

Housing material which is known as panca