Home Sweet Casa - Volcan Panama

26 June 2010

Our Home in Panama

So we finally managed to get to the house in Volcan. The brother who picked us up offered to take us out to dinner or the store, but we were so tired we just wanted to unpack and rest for a while. It was about 4:30 and we had been traveling since 7:30 that morning so we just needed a break. He pointed out that we were also right across the street from a little corner market if we wanted to go there.

As he was leaving another car pulled up, it was another brother and his family, his wife and three children. They also offered to take us to the store if we needed it. He helped me get my cell phone set to English and gave me his number so we could call later if we needed it. About 20 minutes later one of the Elders called us on our cell phone and said that he just heard we were in town and if we needed anything to let him know and now we had his number. We have not even been in town an hour and already we are starting to feel at home.

We are staying in one half of a duplex, the brother just finished having the side we are staying in remodeled. The other side is being remodeled currently so we don't have anyone living next to us right now. The exterior is an orange color, we have found that people do unique things to their homes because there are no addresses here so you need to be different for people to know where you live.

We have a nice fence all around the house with a large orange gate that a car can drive through or a smaller door size one inside it that a person can enter through. We also have steel bars on our windows and door, these are painted red. We will talk more about it later but all security features are out there for everyone to see. In the States we kind of hide all of the security measures but here they want everyone to see how secure things are so they don't even try. (Example: There is a security guard up near the checkout lines of the supper market, he just stands there watching you walk around and shop. Very weird the first time you see that.) So it kind of looks like a bad neighborhood at first but even the best areas are like that here.

Michelle and I walk around town all the time and feel totally safe. There has only been once that we felt kind of nervous but we were out later than we probably should have been. The scariest person I have encountered so far was an American, he just looked bad and mean.

Anyway our house is really nice, it was fully furnished and we even have one of the rarest things in Panama...a clothes dryer. Almost no one has a dryer here, the few that you see are all gas dryers. We have a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom place.

Enjoy the pictures of our new place.