Ok, so, Christian left for Peru and south from there. He left me with a wok which I now have no idea how I lived without. It was super fun having my friend here from SF.
I was left without a roommate and paying full rent for my place on the coffee farm, a difficult financial strain...I started looking for someone to move in. On the fifth day of September, I was at a local coffee shop buying a cup of tea (I know, I live on a coffee farm, frequent a coffee shop, but buy green tea instead) when a young woman commented on my UW Badgers hat. We started talking and Brooke and her boyfriend Josh explained how they would like to stay in Boquete for a month or so to learn about coffee production. The next day, I met them in town and we walked to the farm so they could look around. That same day, they couldn't believe their luck and decided to rent my extra room for the month. Having a couple of Wisconsinites in the house during probably the best sports year was awesome! Brooke is a gourmet chef so we had several amazing meals, often while watching the Packers, Badgers, and Brewers win.
We hooked up with my buddy Stephen for a day planting coffee trees at his farm up the road from me. Brooke and Josh also spent a couple of days working on our farm. Brooke is a fluent Spanish speaker, so I got to hear some good stories about the indigenous living and working on the farm through her.
Brooke and Josh left a few days ago to continue their journey North, ending in El Salvador/Honduras.
View from Stephen's farm.
New bamboo coffee-drying racks in my backyard.
Josh, me, and Brooke on coffee planting day.
Brooke and Josh planting coffee seedlings.
Jessica has been very busy with children's classes and riding lessons on her farm. I still help out when I can, cutting grass for horses with a machete, cleaning stalls, putting horses out and taking them in.
Ellie on Doodlebug during Jess's Pony Pals class...Notice DB's fashionable "unicorn" spike.
A moth on my back porch, notice the size difference compared to a quarter.
Work-wise, I recently closed on another property, and had one fall out. It's been slow, but I'm staying afloat.
My car has been a huge stress recently. It's been in the shop now for almost a month. I was having a shifting issue so I took it to a recommended mechanic in town. He drove it putting the peddle to the metal, and stressed it enough to blow the head gasket. The cost of the gasket was $8 and labor was $200. In the US, a gasket repair would have been close to $1000 to repair, so the Panama discount is nice. What I learned, however, is that getting your car back takes A LOT of time. I found that in order to get the mechanic to work on it, I had to sit there in the shop and insist he not take any more clients until he finished work on mine. This is nearly impossible to do because I am busy with other things, so I just had to go with it. I finally got the car back, drove it to Jess's, started it the next day, and it made a terrible noise followed by the engine breaking down. The mechanic came over to inspect, then Jess's Dad towed me to the shop by rope. It appears that the rocker arm over the valve was over-tightened, causing it to break. So, it is still in the shop being repaired again. I am told I should have it back tomorrow (manana) as usual, so we'll see. In the end of all of this, I hope to have a fantastic car. Hope.
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