Bunker Hill by Nathanial Philbrick

 Hi Blog! Every few years I pop on here and see people read this thing and leave comments. Crazy!

After watching Hamilton on Disney like the rest of America, I've been on a US History kick. It's long been my first love, and I taught social studies for 10 years.

Just finished Bunker Hill by Nathanial Philbrick. He's a great author. His book Mayflower is a must read, same with Essex, which is the true story behind Moby Dick. 

It's always fun to learn you knew nothing about something you thought you knew. So it was with me and Bunker Hill. A few highlights:

•  Joseph Warren. My god, that man might have been the George Washington if he hadn't foolishly died.    I did not know he was the de facto leader of the Revolution. Even John Adams and others played second fiddle to him. 
  
  
• I've known for awhile the grievances behind the Revolution were a bit... 'moneyed.' I did not know the extent to which Sam Adams and crew controlled and twisted the narrative. 
  
  
• The play-by-play of Lexington and Concord, and Bunker Hill, is utterly fascinating. Did you know the rebels were not supposed to build a fort on Bunker Hill, but on the much more defensible Breeds Hill? I did not.
  
  
• George Washington was kind of a dick apparently. Didn't like the New England rebels he was charged with leading. Didn't like the plan that ultimately drove the British from Boston (and that he got credit for).  But his redeeming quality was his willingness to learn and adapt. 

All in all it was a great read. Couldn't put it down at times. 

When Panama Gives You Lemons

Living overseas can be rough, but one learns to adapt.

We heard about a new stand up paddle board club not far from the city. It was a near a place called Playa Bonita, a beach distinguished by the immense amount of plastic wrappers and beer cans found on the shore. While the irony of a beach so named permanently resembling the aftermath of a frat party once struck me as profound, really it's a sad analog for much of Panama. A beautiful country drowning in trash.

Today was a fortuitous day though. There was nice breeze blowing, but the seas were calm. Only a few beer cans could be seen, and the ocean was nearly plastic of trash. My fiancé and I paddled happily around the bay, sometimes with our Panamanian puppy on the back of the board.

A few hours later, we loaded up to head home. Almost immediately I heard the thump thump thump. Flat tire. My car has been the bane of my existence here. I paid too much for it, it has no airbags, it breaks down constantly. It's an evil blue avatar of everything difficult in Panama, the embodiment of the tropical struggle.

The side of the road where I pulled off was slanted, the ground uneven and grassy. I jacked the car up as far as I could, while drivers roared by honking as they're oft wont to do. Then the jack slipped on the uneven surface and lodged itself like Excalibur between my car and the ground. As I threw my hands up in frustration, I saw my lovely finance had taken out a beach chair, and was sitting on the side of the road as if she were on the white sands of the Caribbean.

So I joined her. If you can't change the way things are, you might as well be comfortable.

A nice sunny day.

We sat, drivers honking, as the nice breeze blew over us and kept the mosquitos at bay. I called our road side assistance, and a nice lady assured me someone would be out in five minutes. An hour later a car rolled up, and two men eagerly helped me tighten the last lug nuts. Once I figured they won't coming any time soon I had freed the jack with a number of ferocious kicks.

When Panama gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Panama So Far

A year and a half in and Panama still manages to bemuse, frustrate, confound and entertain me.

We started year two by moving to Casco Viejo, the one historic neighborhood left in the city that is gentrifying at light speed. We got a beautiful old colonial apartment building a stone's throw from the president's palace.

In Casco you find Porches and poverty in equal measure. Next to remodeled colonial buildings that charge $3,000 in rent, you find old tenements filled with squatters. Restaurants serving $10 cocktails are adjacent to families selling Panamanian staples for $3.50. It pretty much exemplifies Panama. All the recent money and investment paints a first world sheen over a still developing country.

Case in point, in our beautiful colonial apartment (not remodeled and not paying $3,000 a month), the water stopped working, sometimes for days at a time. If I showed you pictures of the place, the interior pillars and french doors, you'd be jealous. If I showed you pictures of the day I had to speak to audience of hundreds without showering, you'd probably laugh.

We moved out in a hurry, and have since used Airbnb to stay in two of Panama City's nicer neighborhoods. The juxtapositions are odd. Porches swerve to miss enormous pot holes and missing man covers. Immaculately manicured lawns lay next to the ubiquitous Panamanian litter.

This morning I saw a woman, decked out in fancy biking gear, riding a thousand dollar mountain bike, doing figure 8's in a park, weaving around styrofoam containers. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

No doubt this country is booming. Venezuelans and Cubans are flocking here in droves, while Americans and Canadians keep heading south. Construction is everywhere, malls are everywhere, glittering skyscrapers dot the landscape and mar the Pacific coastline for miles 60 plus miles to west. 

I just don't know that it's that good for Panama. Rent in the city is skyrocketing. Every inch of beach is being developed and bought up by foreigners. Huge infrastructure problems with water and waste collection still exist. Panama Bay literally smells like a sewer. But still, towers go up, developers get rich, and foreigners come in droves.

I went to a beach last weekend, passed the gated communities, the giant piles of trash those same communities dump on the side of the road, passed the mansions and the villas, before arriving at a nice little beach where a Panamanian woman charged me $5 to park. I pay that gladly. That's her slice of the action. The rest of it seems to be going to everyone else. 

What I Aspire To

When I lived in Oregon, my big material ambition was to own a farm. I wanted some land so I could live off it. A huge garden, a few animals for meat, milk and cheese. More and more I've come to value the idea that where the food come from matters. I thought it would be awesome to live that out.

I was after a lifestyle.

Now I live in Panama City, in what is best described as a suburb of mansions (I live in the basement of one). My job places me in an extremely rich subset of what is otherwise a relatively poor country. I've seen more Porches and Ferrari's than I ever have in my life. Audi's are as ubiquitous as Honda Civics back home. And suddenly I found myself wanting an Audi. If everyone else had one, why couldn't I? 

I was after a status symbol. 

That reoccurring desire to drive those 4 interlinked circles led me to diagnose a very odd stage in my life. Discontent. I am making more money than I ever had, but am surrounded by people who make a whole lot more.

All my life I've read about wealthy people who weren't satisfied, and thought, "that'd never be me." One article in particular stood out, it chronicled the travails of Wall Street employees trying to get by on only $1-3 million a year, which isn't enough apparently when you're renting a fancy Manhattan apartment, send their kids to private school, have a beach house and do all that other stuff rich people on the East Coast do (I'm not entirely sure what they do).

It became apparent to me that never being satisfied is a danger inherent in the human condition. Alexander the Great conquered the whole world he knew, but still wanted to conquer India before his troops refused to go any further. Millionaires look up to multimillionaires who look up to billionaires who look up to Bill Gates. There is always someone with more. 

It surprised me to find I'd been doing that too in my own little microcosm.

Part of it no doubt is my setting and the people I'm surrounded by. Also, by and large my life is missing the small moments of bliss that I had every day in Oregon. Playing fetch with dog in the field, driving to work past vineyards, watching eagles pull fish out of the lake just five minutes from my house. I miss that. 

Without some diligence, the rat race is a very easy thing to fall into. Maybe it's more like a hamster wheel, you just spin and spin and spin chasing something that you'll never obtain, unless you're Bill Gates. And even the Bill Gateses of the world figured that whatever they had isn't worth keeping so they're giving it all away. 

The best things are life in priceless, I've always believed. Hopefully by refocusing on creating and recognizing those little moments of bliss, I'll find some better object for my aspirations,    

7 Benefits of Finally Learning to Cook for Myself (at 31)

My life has reached a tipping point.

I officially like the food I cook more than I like eating out, almost anywhere.

Today, in about 15 minutes, my girlfriend and I whipped up some rice bowls. We added lentils, sauteed veggies, crunched up tortilla chips, and some homemade habanero sauce. To not make it too healthy, we piled lots of cheddar cheese on top. 

Delicious. Cheap. Healthy. 

I like my food in that order. Delicious. Cheap. Healthy.

I don't want to get too preachy about food. I'm not a vegetarian, and though I dabbled in the Portland foodie scene a little, the Junior Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy's remains my favorite meal of all time. I'm just happy I can cook edible food. It wasn't that long ago that all I really knew how to do was make spaghetti or overcook a steak. 

So what are the benefits of finally being to cook well? They are many:

1. I'm eating better tasting food.
   I'm kicking myself for all the times I've paid $8 for some reheated chicken wings, or a quesadilla. Even at the fancier places I'm not blown away. It's rare I don't walk away thinking, "I could have done better."
   We pay a lot of money for inferior, reheated, really-not-that-good food. I guess they do our dishes too, so that's nice. But you can do better. Just saute some peppers and onions and through them on anything, rice, a burger... you name it. And it will be better than what you get at 90% of restaurants.
2. I'm saving a ton of money.
   Here in Panama, if we sit down, its going to cost my girlfriend and I at least $30. Then I feel stupid because that bowl I mentioned above probably cost $2.00 total (veggies in particular are very cheap here), and tastes 10x better. We are saving hundreds a month by eating out less.
3. I'm eating way healthier.
   More cooking means less fast food. On top of that, I find I'm eating less meat and way more veggies not because of some diet, but because I like the taste.
4. I have way more energy. 
   Since I started cooking more, I find I'm drinking way less coffee. Even on days I don't get a lot of rest or don't exercise in the morning, my usual energizers, I'm not dragging. I guess what we put in our bodies really does matter.
5. It's a great way to score boyfriend points. 
   Nothing earns more me love and respect from my girlfriend than cooking for her, unless I do the dishes too.
6. I learned that yogurt is everything.
   Seriously. Yogurt. Did you know that natural yogurt is pretty much sour cream? I love sour cream. Want to make an awesome sauce? Take "x" ingredient, and blend it with yogurt. Bam. Now you are winning Chopped.
7. I watch a lot of the Food Network.
   Guy Feiri haunts my dreams. I love Chopped in particular though, what those people whip up in 30 minutes blows my mind. Some day. 

Those dishes are the downside, especially since we don't have a dishwasher here. But that's it. It took me 31 years, but I finally learned how to cook! 

Comparing Homes: Panama vs. the United States

My recent trip back to Oregon for Christmas got me thinking again about life in Panama versus life in the United States.

We did Christmas shopping in both places, and one thing really stuck out: customer service in America is amazing. Wherever I went, Marshalls, Wendy's, small mom and pop stores, the sales associates smiled and were happy to help with whatever.

In Panama, that ethos hasn't been created yet. Take my recent visit to Multicentro, one of Panama City's ubiquitous malls to catch a movie and a bite to eat.

We decided we would try the much ballyhooed VIP movie theater, where for $12 you get to sit in a giant leather chair that reclines all the way down. Arriving inside the VIP area, we decided to order some food. It was a picture of modern commerce: I, the consumer, in front of the register with wallet in hand. He, the young sales associate, behind the register ready to take my order. We were ready to do business. Except, he was on his phone. And he stayed on his phone (while my girlfriend and I smiled knowing at each other) for about a minute until some supervisor saw him and told him to take our order. And of course the food wasn't delivered so I had to leave the movie an hour later to remind them.

After the movie, we visited the Quiznos in the same mall. The mall was nearly empty, and we were the only ones at the Quiznos. I ordered a sandwich. My girlfriend ordered soup and a drink. Inspiration struck, and we realized that we could combine those into a combo and save a dollar. Yet, the woman working the register refused to change the order.

"It's done!" She said.

"It's simple, just make it a combo" I repeated.

"No," she said.

"Can I speak to your manager?"

"I am the manager." I doubted this, but didn't challenge her on it.

"Ok, if you won't do this simple thing for us, I'm not buying the food."

"Ok," she said. And away we walked.

Yes, it was only a dollar. But like hell was I going to give any money to anyone who wouldn't accommodate a simple request.

What's missing is the simple idea that the customer is why I'm here. No customers, no business, no job. To be fair, I think America has gone through something of a customer service revolution in recent years. I read a business book awhile back called Give Em the Pickle!, which starts with an anecdote about a customer who won't return to a restaurant because the waitress wouldn't give him an extra pickle.

Whatever the reason, its time for Panama to give em the pickle.

Mailing a Post Card in Panama

I promised about 100 kids that I would write them a post card from Panama. I wasn't expecting 100 of my students to put their addresses down. More like 10. I've offered before to write post cards whenever I took some trip overseas during the summer, and usually about 5 kids took me up on it. Since I was leaving for two years I expected a few more. But not 100.

So I bought 10 post cards and wrote the first batch to my 8th graders who graduated last year. These are kids who I had taught for 4 years, and who moved on from Butte Creek the same time I did. I felt a closer bond with than I had any other class, it felt right that they should receive the first of my 100 post card salvo from Panama. 

Then I came to discover that Panama has no national post office. There are no mail boxes, no mail men, nothing. Private businesses fill that void a bit, like Fed Ex for example, but they mostly cater towards businesses. After asking around in my neighborhood, a number of kindly strangers who could put up with my bad Spanish directed me to a store called "Mail Boxes."  Perfect.

Arriving at Mail Boxes yesterday, I pulled out a post card and asked how much it would cost to send one to the west coast. I was hoping for under a dollar, would have been OK with $1.50, and really hoped it wasn't more than $2.00 a post card.

The lady looked at it, smiled, and grabbed some laminated chart and a calculator and began pounding away furiously. For over a minute she was calculating, chk chk chk on the calculator, before pertly popping her head up and proclaiming "$46.47." I of course asked her to repeat it, and after confirming a second time, I did some calculating myself, and decided I sadly will not be mailing 100 post cards at the cost of $4,647 dollars.

Panama is like that. It seems so similar to home at times with its skyscrapers and glittering malls and ubiquitous American chain stores, but try to mail a post card and bam! Panama-ed.

A Trip to the Barber in Panama

I haven't been to the barber for approximately three years. Until today.

During that time, I've cut my own hair. It works fine, apart from the occasional really long random hair I miss that sprouts from my head like an antenna. I really don't care how it looks to be honest. It just needs to look OK.

But my clippers didn't make the trip to Panama. And my first attempt to cut my own hair here with a beard styler ended so badly my girlfriend had to spend hours fixing it, while she alternated between amused and horrified at the large chunks I took out of the back of my head.

This time I went to a salon.

My Spanish is still improving, so all I could say is "I want it shorter" and "I want to look like a man of business." In Panama this was understood as "Make me look like Vanilla Ice." While he trimmed the sides nicely, he kept the top much longer than any farm boy from Eastern Oregon would want.

A number of other odd things occurred. While not positive if these experiences are consistent with all salon visits or just here in Panama, I found the following noteworthy.

• After rinsing my hair, the stylist vigorously dried my ears using his fingers and a towel. That felt slightly forward.
• An equally vigorous head rub with the towel was used to dry my hair.
• He shaved my cheeks with clippers.
• He spent about 5 minutes blow drying my bangs so they would stand straight up.
• He then liberally applied gel and mousse until my hair was stiff enough you could iron a shirt on it. 

He then sent me out into the mall looking like this:

Please help! My hair won't come down.

Even as I write, its still sticking straight up in the air.

Missing Home

Sometimes it rains when I wake up and I think I'm back home. Then I realize the curtains are bright green, my dog isn't anywhere to be found and there's a gecko looking at me.

I'm not sure I should be missing home. Panama meets my expectations in every way. When I left Silverton for two years, I pictured myself working in a new and challenging school and traveling to tropical beaches on the weekends.

Check and check.

I love school. They demand so much more from than I'm used to, but give me ample time and resources to implement what they want. I feel in over my head, and insecure about my job performance for the first time in half a decade. Yet I can tell I'm growing. I've even had teachers come in three different times and say "I heard you're doing (teacher thing) really well, can you show me what you're doing?" What? Really? Ok.

The weekends blow my mind. This Saturday my girlfriend and I decided we'd go to the beach. Flipping through Lonely Planet, we settled on Kuna Yala, a semi-independent archipelago on the eastern end of Panama's Caribbean coast. We loaded up, and 2 hours later we crossed the continent arriving on the Carribbean shore.

Kuna Yala has over 400 islands ranging from the luxurious to deserted. Being late in the day, we didn't have many options, we joined a group of Panamanians and Colombians heading to Isla Ukuptupu. Why not?

30 minutes later our motorboat pulled into port. Ukuptupu was about the size of a football field with traditional thatch roofed lodgings. Quaintness aside, Cabanas Ukuptuku would not be categorized as luxurious. No fan, no mosquito net, and the toilets flush right into the ocean. I quietly renamed it Isla IckyPooPoo. That night I fell asleep sweating dreadfully, and awoke thinking a bat was attacking me.

Still, our hosts were incredibly kind. The Kuna speak their own language, have their own dress, and even make their own laws. Our host John, an elderly man of 77, spoke English and told me the story of how he learned my language while working on a US Army base in the canal zone. For dinner they served us freshly caught fish, and there was a litter of 6 new born puppies to make my girlfriend happy.

We didn't swim off of Isla Icky Ukuptupu, for obvious reasons. But each day they took us by boat to waters a little less fecal. The first evening we snorkeled off a little coconut studded atoll that held a single thatched hut and family. For the first time in my life I saw that thing I've always dreaded on the beach. The sting ray. This small animal has the world's most painful sting, I heard once.
They blend right into the sand, so they can be easily squished by careless ocean goers. One even swam towards us passive aggressively, no doubt wanting to get stepped on so he could sting us.

"I'm not your doormat!"

The next day we went to a busier island, quite a few boats dropped people off. The snorkeling wasn't as great, but Kuna fishermen did row by about every 15 minutes with live lobster, crab, red snapper and barracuda that you could buy and have cooked for you right there. Rebekka and I had two lobsters for $10.

Kuna Yala was amazing, thrilling, scenic and a little uncomfortable. Sadly, like all of Panama, garbage lay everywhere. I never want to buy a plastic bottle or bag again. It's one thing to read about giant trash islands in the middle of the Pacific, but another to swim with Diet Coke and Frito Lays.

With all the excitement, its hard to explain exactly what's missing. Or maybe not. My family. My dog. My house. My kids I've taught the last 7 years. That's all not here. But I've traveled before and loved it. I think. Maybe I'm forgetting all the times I felt homesick before.

More likely, Oregon has molded me over the last 7 years. I've become a part of it. My clock ticks to its seasons. Fall is for football and Oktoberfest, not tropical beaches. My fridge back home was full of blueberries from a kid I taught. And now its mangoes and pineapples. I had Oregon figured out, I knew its secrets. Why should I be surprised to wake up somewhere else day after day and feel like something's not right?

No doubt Panama will leave its mark. Will it ever become home, if only for two years? I hope so, but it has big shoes to fill 

Eating Local in Panama

Panama has enormous crabs.

Eating local has always been something I've aspired too. The connection between people and the earth is ancient, delicious, and increasingly disappearing. Globalization has brought Idahoan dried potatoes and Rogue Brewery beer all the way to Panama. In supermarkets here you're more likely to find foreign produce than local.

Still, Rebekka and I have found two places that are as local as it gets. The first is the Mercado de Mariscos, or simply, the "Fish Market." A nondescript building holds about 40 stalls selling the day's catch. It smells like hell, and couldn't be fresher.

Most everything you can imagine is here. Squid, little octopus, clams and all kinds of fish. Our first visit we played it safe and snagged some blue fin tuna. You pay by the pound and they'll fillet it for you right then and there. It cost $16 and we ended up with enough tuna for eight meals.

Ebenezer proudly posed for our pictures.

The crab stall.

Our next visit we opted for red snapper and the most enormous crab I've ever seen. This crab proved to be a mistake, shelling these guys is nothing like shelling a Dungeness from Oregon. He was armored like a tank, and it took me about an hour to get all the meat out.

Rebekka leading the crab in some stretches.

Last weekend we also visited the local farmers market, known as the Mercado de Abastos. It's located in a weird warehouse in the middle of the city. And it smells like death. A giant garbage dump filled with rotting vegetables and who-knows-what else greeted us at the entrance.

The place is huge. People drive through, stopping at stalls that interest them. Most of the vendors are there to sell to restaurants or even grocery stories. Enormous bundles of bannanas, pallets of pineapple and cartons of coconuts are for sale, cheap. But you can purchase in smaller quantities. We bought:

• One pineapple for 75 cents
• Four potatoes for 60 cents
• A bundle of celery for $2.00
• Four coconuts for $2.00
• Two mangoes for $1.00
• A pound of tamarillos for 85 cents
• 15 mamon chinos (lychees) for 50 cents

A bundle of produce for $7.70. And I'm pretty sure we overpaid for all of it.

You would never guess there is something delicious hiding in here.

It's all been delicious, healthy, and as about as cheap as you can get in this relatively cheap country. 

Underdressed Llamas

Few #firstworldproblems are worse than being under- or over-dressed. But imagine being responsible for a whole group of people being under-dressed? Horror upon horror.

Today saw my new middle school hold its spirit assembly. Each homeroom had to create a name and go present a little skit. Standard school stuff. Doing things in front of people always makes me uncomfortable, but in controlable situations like these I'm able to keep my anxiety manageable.

My homeroom proudly named ourselves "Lamoreau's Llamas." A few girls taught us a song they learned from summer camp with funny hand motions. We would sing it, then teach the group. We dressed up a boy as a llama, and he looked quite funny. I thought we were good to go.

Then the assembly happened. As kids poured into the halls I saw coordinated outfits, banners, signs, and more. One group of students was all dressed like clowns. Another had Angry Bird beanies. Some wore panda masks. Others all carried jars of Nutella. 

It looked something like this.

In the noisy gym, my kids looked at me like a puppy does when you accidentally step on its toes. Why did you do this to us? Why don't we have costumes? The fear of ridicule that all middle schoolers face racheted itself up a level or two.

To make things worse, I was over dressed. Not realizing the festiveness of the day, I wore my usually slacks and dress shirt. The rest of the staff costumed in some way, or at least had jeans and a t-shirt on.

Sucks to be "that" guy.

"Don't worry." I assured them. "Just do your song really, really well and everyone will like it."

Luckily, our group went towards the end. My whole group relaxed palpably as a few group's presentations were really awkward. Its impossible to have 200 middle schoolers in the room and not have awkward. One girl said excitedly, "maybe we won't be the worst group!" Not the nicest sentiment, but one we've all felt at sometime.

"Substance beats style" I told them, "Just sing the song really well and you'll do great."

Finally our turn came. Our llama, wrapped in butcher paper and if not for the llama ears looking indistinguishable from a burrito, hopped his way on stage. We sang our song. Kids said their lines a little hurriedly. The song didn't come out quite right. And the llama suit ripped. The audience clapped, not once, but 4 times, because they didn't know we were going to keep singing the song.

And when it was all over, a few teachers told me "Wow! Great job!" But mostly I suspect they were being nice. Teachers are usually really good at that. Either way, the moment passed. The kids did good, most of the audience sang along.

The thing that went unrealized by my students, as I often forget it too, is that in those situations everyone else is just as nervous as you. Even if everything goes wrong, unless it goes epically-Youtube-viral-video wrong, everyone will forget it in about 30 seconds when the next group goes up. We are never as big of a deal as we are to ourselves. Most people just don't care.

Really, there's not many times you get to go up in front of 200 people all staring at you intently. Instead of being afraid of it, why not live it up? In the end, they're only people. Just like you, just like me.

Monsters and Me

All humans are solar processors.

It's one of the more interesting ideas that I teach. Any plant life we eat obviously grew with help from the sun. Any animals we eat sustained itself off of those sun-grown plants, or other animals that did. So one way or another we are processing solar energy.

In studying latitude we learn that the amount of sunlight a place receives directly correlates to how much life it can sustain. Pole to Pole by Planet Earth explains it best (and in a British accent).

For example, you don't see trees above the Arctic or below the Antarctic Circle because there isn't enough light for them to grow. The closer to the Equator you get the more light you get. So first you get pine trees, then broad leaf trees, and finally you get to the tropics where there is direct sunlight year round.

Here we find jungles and rain forests, like where 50% of the world's biodiversity is found in rain forests even though they only cover 3% of the Earth's surface. There is so much light, so much plant matter, so many bugs and animals. And there is also me.

Living in a tropical environment means 1.) It's never cold. 2.) The sun sets around the same time all year. 3.) Your home will be invaded by weird and awful bugs.

To wit: in the week since I moved into my ground level apartment I have found inside my dwelling both a monster centipede and an unbelievably fast lizard.

I excitedly hurried off to tell my girlfriend about both of them, but when we returned they were gone. The lizard hasn't been seen since. We named him Gummy and presumably he is living comfortably in our spare bedroom eating bugs. The centipede reappeared and was smashed by my girlfriend's shoe. It sounded like the crunch of 1,000 potato chips. Haunting.

"I just wanted to cuddle."
Photo from thepanamanews.com

Though my school is miles away from the ocean, blue crabs wonder the halls on occasion, and I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg for weird bugs.

All new things I've experienced here fit into two categories: awesome or terrifying. Socially acceptable to honk my horn whenever I want? Awesome. Stepping on  hundred-legged Darth Vader clones while going to take a pee? Terrifying.

Time will no doubt round down both those edges. Maybe one day I'll wake up in Panama and smile at the lizard in peering down at me.

Ferguson, Facebook, Friends and Fakers

I let the internet outrage me occasionally.

At the moment, it's Ferguson, Missouri where an unarmed black boy was shot to death by a cop. The resulting outrage gained international notoriety when the police responded by rolling out armored personal carriers, troops equipped more for Iraq than main street, and started arresting reporters for reporting.

I post political musings pretty regularly on Facebook. A few of my friends are strong Republicans, who think Obama is a dictator (if not the anti-Christ) and Obamacare signals the fiscal and moral decay of our nation. I feel like I'm all over the board on issues, I try to support the best idea over political parties. I am strongly for Obamacare, for example. And I'm also very argumentative at times. So at times I get into epic back-and-forths.

I think it's great I have Facebook friends I absolutely disagree with. If I didn't, I'd be inside a dangerous echo chamber just reinforcing my own beliefs with lots and lots of likes.

One group I've had a love-hate relationship with is the Tea Party. I think many of their ideas are ruinous and downright horrible. I think their passion and commitment to the Constitution is admirable. Indeed, my second favorite politician is a Tea Party congressmen from Michigan, Representative Justin Amash.

The death of Mike Brown is horrible, and the police response unfathomable in America. You would think the segment of America who thinks that Obamacare is tyranny, and fiercely pushes back on any attempt to restrict any type of gun in America after another horrible shooting would be up in arms about a military style crack down on protesters and media.

But no. With few exceptions, the Right side of the spectrum has been silent. I would say "you don't get to pick and choose who the Constitution applies to" but the sad thing is, for a lot of our history we did. The rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution only applied to whites. One would hope that era was over, but a quick scan of any of the comments on any Ferguson news story will show you its not.

The crackdown on the first amendment in Ferguson separates the wheat from the chaff. If you only get all sentimental about the Constitution when talking about Obamacare or the Bundy ranch, but aren't when journalists get arrested and tear-gassed, you aren't really the Constitutionalist you think you are. The thing those self-proclaimed patriots miss is that when you don't stand up for other people's rights, you are only eroding your own. A classic poem explains it well.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Leaving Your Comfort Zone is Uncomfortable

There is a lizard loose in my apartment.

I left a fulfilling job, a comfy house and even my beloved puppy to come here to Panama.

Now I have a job that is really, really hard. I live in a small apartment with no dog. There is a small lizard that somehow got in through my bedroom window, and then scampered off to who-knows-where before I could take him back outside.

Back home I did have the occasional wild intruder. Mostly gigantic spiders nearly my hand-span in width. They were incredibly fast, and incredibly scary. One time a guy came to my door and told me they were hobo spiders. He then offered to exterminate them for a few hundred dollars, but I declined since my shoe worked just as good as any poison.

On the balance sheet of life, I suppose trading lizards for spiders is a plus. Trading a lizard for my puppy is a minus. Sometimes I play this accounting game to see if I came out a head or behind on my move to Panama. It's too early to tell.

I do know I left a very comfortable situation. 

I had life figured out where I was. 

Now I do not. 

That's part of the reason I wanted to move, to get out of my comfort zone and into the challenge zone where I'd be forced to learn, grow and adapt. That sounds awesome. And probably will be. But I forget that "leaving your comfort zone" also means "becoming uncomfortable."

So that is where I find myself at this moment. Work is hard. Very hard. I feel uncertainties as an educator that I haven't felt since I first started. 

Living in Panama is hard. It's much more than the driving I wrote about yesterday. My girlfriend and I are isolated from all the friends, family and community that give us a sense of identity. We left a small town where I could walk to the Saturday Market and have most people know the name of me and my dog. Panama City is a giant Latin metropolis where I'll never see the same person twice.

I do feel growth. And each day is usually better than the last. But I don't want this to be some motivational post about how "it was all worth it." There are a million of those.

I think it will be all worth it. I think I'll be very happy here. I sure hope it all works out. But maybe it just needs to be acknowledged that change is hard. If you really want to get out of your comfort zone, you'll be uncomfortable.

Driving in Panama

Panama City is a noisy, busy place. Traffic, construction, and music blaring out of cars at ear-splitting decibel levels. Cars and drivers here deserve particular note.

• Cars merge in a way that is almost sensual, like Latin lovers dancing salsa. There is NO space between cars. Where the American driver sees clearly that there is no space to merge, the Panamanian just sticks his nose out in front of you, forcing you to stop, and in he goes.
  
  If you try to be courteous and stop to let someone into traffic, you will often cause more harm than good. The driver you are trying to help, confused by your behavior and possibly sensing a trap, will not budge until you've both stared at each other for awhile. He will then rapidly enter traffic once you give up in frustration and try to move on.
  
  
• This, and all other driving, is accomplished with much honking. You honk when you pass. You honk when you see someone on the side of the road. You honk if you are in traffic so bad the street is a parking lot.
  
  Two honks seems to be the standard greeting. One long, unbroken honk generally signals frustration. I've taken gladly to this habit, and try to greet every honk I hear with two friendly honks of my own.
  
  
• If you see someone with their hazard lights on, they are telling you they are about to do something crazy. Like pass on the shoulder or weave in and out of traffic.
  
  
• Windows here are tinted to a crazy degree. Like many cars here, my CRV came with near black windows. I do not exaggerate in saying I can barely make out headlights from the driver and passenger window at night time. As a result, I drive at night with my windows down.
  
  The scary thing is, I'm the only person I've seen driving with my windows down at night, and some windows are even more tinted than mine.

Despite all this, I've managed to manage. I even drove across the continent to the Caribbean side this Saturday (takes about an hour) without incident. Still, driving here is intense.

Swimming

Nothing is worse than finding out you are terrible at something you thought you were decent at.

The first suspicions crept into my mind when I saw my girlfriend looking at me oddly as I struggled in a reservoir earlier this summer. "Why you are you doing that?" she asked. 

"Doing what?"

"Why are you swimming like that?"

"Like what?! I'm just swimming."

I usually consider myself an athletic guy. I'm decent at most sports I play. Yet, somehow my girlfriend raced past me like a torpedo in the hotel swimming pool this evening.

Apparently, it's funny to watch me swim. In water I'm gangly and uncoordinated, just like I was in middle school when I tried to dance to any song that wasn't slow. Like a shark sensing blood, my girlfriend spent the next 20 minutes in the pool chasing me making the Jaws sound, and I flailed in vain trying to get away.

Worst of all, it makes you wonder "What else am I doing that people are laughing at?" Maybe just watching me walk is funny.

Panama, So Far

I had to squeeze this in before I reached a whole month without blogging.

To be fair, I moved some 3500 miles and have been living out of a hotel (albeit a very nice one) for the last 3 weeks. All while starting a new job. In fact, our first day of school was today.

Panama City is surprisingly modern. I can't imagine a foreign city more like America. The skyline is modern, the old colonial area disappointingly small.  Nearly everything we have, they have. Most everyone speaks some English, and the taxi drivers hardly try to rip me off.

Still the city has some charms. In the morning and night the climate is amazingly comfortable. Jungles, beaches, and Panama Canal are all an hour or less away. There is a stunning array of tropical fruits, and I saw a sloth.

Being completely honest, the transition from America to here has been difficult. A quick catalog of problems I've run into:

• Shipping my puppy down turned out to be much, much harder logistically than I imagined. Due to his size and the heat of summer, he's really limited on the type of planes he can fly on. He is happily summering at my parents.
  
• Used cars are super expensive here. I found a 2006 CRV online, had a mechanic check it out while I was at work. Got the A-OK. Paid $9,000 for it, only to find it has no airbags. There is a flap cut into the steering wheel so big I can stick my fist into it.
  Apparently this isn't a big deal in Panama, so the mechanic either didn't notice it or just overlooked it. Fortunately the school is helping me resell this death trap.
  
• The in-service week was the hardest week I've professionally as a teacher. At one point, 9 of the last 10 hours spent there had been in meetings. It was so refreshing to actually teach today.

It's been challenging, especially for my patience, but I think that's a good thing. When we are challenged, we grow. Without a doubt, I will return to the states a much better teacher. My school is amazing in a lot of ways. The campus is beautiful, my classroom has amazing technology, and the president of the country sends his kids here (he was at our morning assembly). Plus, they hired my girlfriend as a pre-school aide, answering that thorny question of what exactly she was going to do while here.

Most of all though, it is incredibly demanding of its teachers. Expectations of planning, communication, and collaboration are higher than I've ever heard of in the states. But they keep class sizes low (22 max) and give you ample planning time, so they make it manageable. I'm excited to see what I'll learn, and what I can accomplish here.

I'm tired. I'm weary. But I'm really, really glad I'm here.

 

I Have No Skills

I am amazed at the lack of skills I have. To illustrate that point, let me tell you a story about a shirt.

Last September, I bought a new shirt from Marshalls. It was stylish, yet cheap. A week later I wore that stylish shirt to the Mt. Angel Oktoberfest, a small-town, beer-soaked and sausage-laden good time. When a slightly intoxicated female flung her arms around randomly, catching my shirt with her hand, to both our surprise a button popped off right in the middle.

I clutched my bosom protectively, made it home unmolested and took the shirt off. 

I didn't know how to sew a button on. So I didn't wear the shirt. For 9 months. Same goes for a nice pair of brown cargo shorts I bought. I didn't even know the manufacturers of these items sewed that extra button on in case this very thing happened! I thought it was just decorative.

Yesterday my mom taught me to sew on a button. It was surprisingly easy. Threading the needle, tying the knots, and sewing that button on way better than the manufacturer did gave me immense satisfaction. 

Maybe I'm an extreme case, but I doubt it. We don't make the things we use anymore, and as a result we don't know to fix them. When they break, we throw them away. A few weeks back a buddy of mine crashed on an air mattress, that happened to leak. "Throw it away" he said. Neither of us thought of patching it.

Part of the issue no doubt is that things are made so cheaply now. A $15 dollar shirt loses a button? Oh well, buy another. 

There are a few problems with that mindset. First and foremost, I have find I have very few skills when it comes to making or repairing things, greatly lessening my chance of surviving a zombie apocalypse. It also creates an inordinate amount of waste and junk.

So, I'm determined to learn more skills. Doing things yourself is very satisfying, and ultimately saves money. Being a homeowner on a budget has already forced me to learn a few, but I'm determined to learn more. With the DIY revolution, Pintrest and the Internet I have few excuses. The knowledge is out there. Here's what I want to learn in the next year:

1. How to sew a button
2. How to hem and tailor my clothes
3. How to make cheese
4. How to weld metal
5. How to mill my own flour
6. How to bake my own bread
7. How to brew my own kombucha

That list will grow, but it's a good start for now.

Coming Home

Crazy how time flies. 10 days without a blog?

I leave for Panama City, Panama in ten days to start a new chapter in my life. I've spent the last week back home in little La Grande, in beautiful Easter Oregon with my parents and old high school buddies.

Coming home after seven years is always nice. Though its been eight years, a lot of the people and places haven't changed. Home remains home. It's nice to have that touchstone.

Some things I love about La Grande in no particular order are:

1. The summery sage-y smell of petrichor.
   It literally is the essence of summer.
   
2. The endless bounty of food in my parent's house.
   Growing up my parents always hosted my friends, and always had a giant store of food on hand. People still just stop by and open the fridge without asking. That would annoy the hell out of me, but they seem to love. In the fridge right now there is: steak and mashed potatoes from last night, bowl of raspberries just picked, tamales and handmade donuts from Farmer's Market just to highlight the edible goodies.
   
3. Seeing random people I know.
   I really liked my high school self. High school me was extremely friendly, optimistic, and friends with everybody. While I still try to uphold those qualities, I've found sometimes in life you have to make decisions that upset people. Seemed different back then.
   
4. Nell's In-and-Out
   They make these delicious drinks out of soda, cream and who knows what else. They have names like Winnie The Pooh (my favorite) and the Skywalker. While I don't drink pop usually, Nells is my exception. 

Ultimately though, my touchstones are family and friends. I've retained a core group of high school buddies with whom things never really seem to change.

One night we played Risk until the wee hours of the morning, like we used to back in high school. The only difference was we drank wine instead of pop and juice.

The next we went up to Indian Rock which overlooks the whole valley and watched the sun set while roasting marshmallows.

Those little moments are the threads that weave together the good life. I try to savor them every chance I get.

Sometimes Nothing is Like You Expect

Even normal seeming days can hold surprises.

Yesterday promised to be a little exciting, because I had scheduled my second ever flight lesson. I did one last summer as well, putting me on pace to get my license somewhere around age 70. 

Flight lessons are prohibitively expensive. Anywhere from $150-$200 for an hour, so I have to wrestle with the side of my brain that says "Don't spend that money!" and listen to the part that says "This is why you have money!" 

Flying is also amazing, aside from take off when I am certain my little plane will wobble itself off the runway into a heap of steel. You can see everything from up there. I counted 8 Cascade peaks. The Willamette Valley suddenly looks like the Willamette Valley does on a map. We scooted over to Silverton in about 10 minutes and even flew right over my house.

Tuesdays are the nights I usually do trivia with a bunch of my co-workers (I've come a long ways in 7 years). But last night my girlfriend had an event planned with her employer's family, and I was expected to come. So off we trekked in the heat, and I was already counting down the polite hour and a half we could spend before leaving to catch the end of trivia (thoughts I now feel guilty about).

When we knocked on the door, instead of being greeted by my girlfriend's employers, it was the parents of a student I taught the last four years.

Because I am slow, I didn't quite grasp what was happening until I saw about 20 of my 8th graders stream out of their garage. A surprise party! 

It was a perfect summer evening, one that reminded me of when I was a kid. We barbecued, had a water fight (I lost), played volleyball and basketball. They even set up one of my top three all time favorite Social Studies movies that I tell them to watch when they are old enough The 300.

I wish I could bond with all my classes like I did with the 8th graders. They will be a special group to me not how well they did in class, but for the kind of people they were. They started the Random Act of Kindness Club, planted the school garden, and turned a broken down bus disaster into the world's greatest kickball game.

As I soaked it all in, I remembered something that I told myself to remember long ago, but somehow always forget. You never know what you might mean to your students. Throughout high school, I had teachers that I absolutely idolized, though they probably never knew it because I was shy and quiet. They were role models in my life, and shaped me to be who I am today. As a teacher, that's part of what you're signing up for.

Teaching every day, there is so much to deal with. Lesson plans, grading, constant emails, and ever increasing focus on state testing. While the kids shuttle in and out of your classroom all day, it's easy to forget that they are people with their own issues and lives, not simply receptacles to shove information into and keep from talking too much. You never know what a kind word or gesture can mean.

Making a difference is not just limited to teachers. We all have people in our lives that look up to us. We can all change someone's day with a smile or genuine compliment. We can all inspire others to greater things. 

That's really an amazing power, if we chose to use it. You might not know what you did mattered. You might not ever know. But it does, and you matter too.