Off we go on another adventure!

It’s that time again!  Yesterday a group of 19 of us flew into Panama City, Panama (not Florida).  We’ll be here for 10 days and then 7 of us head to Costa Rica to meet up with another team but for the next week and a half we are in the capitol city of Panama.  It’s my first time in Panama and just from the first full day here it looks like there is a little of the best in the world and a little of the worst.  The city has some awesome skyscrapers.  It resembles Atlanta much more than San Jose or Tegucigalpa.  The architecture is incredible like this one building that twists all the way up.  Hopefully I’ll get a picture of it soon but it is pretty wild.   There's a massive island that they are building just off shore, something like Dubai is doing.  The casinos seem to be on every street corner but between the tall buildings and huge apartment complexes, between Donald Trumps tower and the Hard Rock café are the places that remind you that you are in Central America.  The tiny little block and wooden houses, dirt streets, and the garbage lining those streets are all a reminder of the poverty that exists even in Panama City. 

This week we have a few members of the Freed-Hardeman baseball team with us.  They will be spending their mornings working out/scrimmaging players from a local baseball academy.  Panama has produced quite a few good ballplayers over the years.  They have this guy whose thrown a few good innings.....ok maybe a lot of great  innings for the Yankees, Mariano River.  While the players are playing baseball the rest of us will be working at a local preaching school and children’s home doing various things and also with some government officials doing a few projects for them. 

Today,  we were up at 6:30, ate and left to drop off the players at 8.  Then it was off to the Bible school where we were able to see the place and a few things we were going to be doing.  We didn’t really do anything there because most of the people in charge weren’t there but it’s all worked out.  We have 2 people who have been planning this trip for us.  Minor Perez has been in contact with the Bible school and had set up work for us to do there all week.  A former baseball player named Roberto from Panama has been talking to the government officials and told them that we’d be working with them all week.   Minor currently doesn’t hasn’t renewed his visa to leave the U.S so he wasn’t able to come.  Roberto was playing baseball for a Panama team and was signed to a play in the minor leagues in the states so he isn’t here either.  So basically we have no idea what we are doing….at all.  So we were at the Bible school and the government people randomly called (not randomly for them, this was on their schedule but not ours) because they had scheduled us some things to do which worked out perfectly since we couldn’t do anything at the Bible school.  So we like painted some benches in a park and some slides, swings and seesaws, you know the kind of stuff you write home about...well really it's all we did that I can write about…. But it was fine, we had fun doing it and a little paint may have been thrown, not saying I did it but some people may have gotten more paint on them than they wanted J. 

Just in case you haven’t been to Panama I thought I’d tell you IT’S HOT!!!  Choluteca hasn’t got anything on this place.  It’s like mid August hot plus some and sooo humid.  We were watching this little grasshopper hopping under the bushes and as soon as he hopped out of the shade BAM! he just exploded.  It’s that hot.  Buuut… I’m not complaining, just trying to paint you a picture that says it's hot and that’s how I like it.  It’s much nicer than if it were cold.

The hotel we are staying in is sketchy at best.  Go Google Hotel Caribe, Panama City and read the reviews.  You would think if your room number starts with a 2 then you’re on the second floor, but not here.  It’s actually the 4^th floor.  So when Riley, another intern, and I go looking for our room we make it to the second floor and are wondering around until we come to this nearly pitch black hallway with doors hanging off the hinges all the way to the end of the hall, honestly we couldn’t see the end because it was so dark.  The only way I know how to describe it is to reference the movie Taken.  You know the scene when Liam Neeson breaks into the place where they are holding the girls hostage and he finds that one girl who has his daughters jacket….?  Yea, I’m pretty sure the hallway I walked halfway down last night was the set for that scene except there were doors hanging instead of curtains.  Thankfully only a couple of floors up the rooms were a lot better but it’s still sketch and I’m pretty sure we aren’t in a very good part of town.  So thank you Minor, you’re getting blamed for this just fyi, for this wonderful hotel that you are actually not going to have the pleasure of staying at.  But the best stories aren’t made at the Hilton, they’re made at Hotel Caribe and we all love to be in a good story…if we survive haha.

But it is bedtime and I'm still a little tired from our plane whose departure time was pushed back an hour and then after boarding sat on the runway for another hour and a half...which means we didn't land till after 11 last night and didn't get to the hotel 'til 1.  I just want to give a shout out to Lebron, good job tonight in putting away the pacers.  Keep giving those haters a little more to hate.

The wifi here is kind of spotty but I'll keep you up to date with what we are doing as best I can.  Patience IS a virtue and it will be tested by this wifi.