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.