Legal Immigrants

Friday we traveled to Panama to visit The Republic of Panama Departmento de Migracion. We have been granted our declration of permanent residency status as "Pensionados". The very best part of that is that Friday was the last foreseen visit to the immigration office. We were hoping for better photos on the cards, at least ones by which someone could identify us but no such luck...they use the same weird little camera as for the temporary cards. The strange thing is that throughout the process we were asked to send multiple copies of passport type photos that weren't too bad, but these are not used for the cards. I just hope we don't have to show them too often. We look somewhat like zombies, no wait... I'm thinking of our Ontario drivers licence photos!

Recently, we went to a social evening at Coronado and met some nice people, from Canada, of course. Karl, his daughter and son in law are from Wasaga Beach, where we spent some very happy summer vacations with our son Jonathan. The resort town of Wasaga, Ontario is on Lake Huron and a really jumping place in summer. The permanent population is growing too as the town has become a retirement locale in recent years. Karl has a summer resort in Wasaga but plans to move at some point to his condo at Playa Blanca so and his wife will be neighbours here. His daughter Julia and son in law Matt are investigating opportunities for organic farming here in Panama. Vegetables here are less than ideal so it would be a boon for veggie lovers to have more fresh organically grown produce. I always try to buy from the little stands here and there because they either grow it themselves or buy from local growers and their produce is great. For the regular groceries we shop at El Rey and it's pretty good for carrying decent known brands of staples, even "Two Oceans" shiraz. I was never a great fan of pineapple but the ones here are wonderful and cost $1.00-$1.50 depending on the size. Roma tomates are the preferred type, plentiful and really good. The small round watermelons are juicy and low in seeds and now mangos are in season, my favorite.

A couple of funny things happened when we were in Panama this week. We were waiting at the Do It Centre in El Dorado to meet up with our lawyer to go to the immigration office. Standing outside we watched as peope parked and entered the store, which is like Home Depot. A bird was perched in the forecourt and swooped down on unsuspecting shoppers. The third victim screamed pretty loud and the avian avenger took off across the street. We don't know what he wanted, whether he was trying to get hair from them or just liked to upset people with vigorou pecks to the noggin. It was an ordinary looking bird and I would like to know what it is. If any of you have an idea I would be interested.

We had the garden hose out yesterday and the spray of water attracted a bunch of birds....some beautiful azure blue ones and some gold ones. I guess they miss the rains too. Right now we are experiencing "abril" in Panama, a very humid, hot month with scanty breeze. After dark the breeze comes up and it's nice to sit out on the bohio. We were doing just that and talking with Jon via Skype and he took a picture of Bob from the webcam, with only the flashlight for illumination. It's at the end. Almost as scary as those ID card photos. Our neighbour Justin is pressure washing the bohio right now or I would be sitting out there writing this.

We have written a bit about our experiences on public transit and on Friday we added a chapter to our "autobus" story. Just out of the city, I started to notice a burning rubber smell as did other passengers and the bus was creating interesting if not very healthy sounds. Gradually the bus slowed and finally ground to a halt. The driver got out and found that the axle had broken and one of the rear wheels was aslant. Another bus came along and took 6 passengers,which filled their bus to capacity. All I could envision was several hours, cooking at the side of the road, but the driver called headquarters and a bus was dispatched for us pretty quickly. What a relief. We had been up at 6 a.m. and were pooped after all the doings of the day, which included plodding around Albrook Mall, shopping for various items. It was good to see Fifi and his taxi waiting at the corner, when we got off the bus.

Bob's laptop is toast so I have no pictures from the camera,just the wonderful webshot of Bob. I will install the camera software on this computer soon so I can add some of our recent pics to this post. I'm thankful I got this netbook at Christmas time or we would be computerless right now, eeek!!!!!!!!!!!! We'll have a replacement soon and will also be going out to buy a car. More trips to Panama City. WooHoo.