Our City Adventure- One Month In

Hello all!
We have officially been in our own site for a month. Four weeks solid of being completely immersed in the culture and lifestyle of our new town- which also means four weeks without e-mail, groceries or modern amenities like hot water. Needless to say, we have been looking forward to ¨getting out¨ for a couple days for the past few weeks now, slowly preparing our list of things to do when we get to the city; the least of which not being to take a nice hot shower! So Brandon and I have ventured into the city for the first time since our öfficial¨ Peace Corps duties began- and it has been great. We showed up on Friday and went straight to the office to use some free Internet and pick up love (aka packages and mail!). We then spent the rest of the evening taking advantage of the hot water and watching Food Network (one of the few English-without-subtitles channels (plus it is just great to see that there are people making great food out there!)
Most of Saturday was filled with grocery shopping, as we don´t have a grocery store within about 3 hours of us (not to mention the boat and bus ride), and we won´t be back out of our site most likely for another month or so. Buying groceries for a month and a half, and knowing you will have to carry them all on your back is a quite difficult task. It really makes you think about what is most important- as for me, I made sure to grab a sugary bag of chocolate cereal with marshmallows and 4 boxes of ultra-pasteurized skim milk. Our community and area and most of the country for that matter are sadly lacking in their variety of vegetables for consumption. What our community members call ¨vegetables¨ include: ñame, yucca, otoy, and platanos or bananas (of the unripe green variety). These are all basically equivalent to our nice starchy potato- from which little nutrients are found. SO, we also get to carry on our back a meager amount of fruits and vegetables to try and even out our nutrient intake (while trying not to destroy them in transit). One of our favorites so far, is Broccoli as it is about the most dense, rich, dark green thing that they sell in the supermarket, which our host mom doesn´t like in the least. We have started several seedlings so far of onions, lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, and some spices, hopefully to which we will add a bunch more and make our list of vegetables to buy in the city almost non-existent.
After all of that shopping and walking around yesterday (I´m pretty sure that we walked about 7 miles...) we decided to go out to dinner (thanks to the great folks in the Bennigans headquarters for realizing that some people want American type food everywhere, even in Panama) and then go to ¨The Dark Knight¨--The new Batman movie. We had originally decided to do this at the mall with which we are most familiar (Albrook), but we had heard of a theater where you could order food from- where else, Bennigans- and sit in a fully reclining ( and I mean fully reclining) LazyBoy of a chair (overstuffed and all). So we decided to go there, but hitting up Bennigans before going to the movie, so that we could make the most of our free time. At the restaurant, Brandon had decided to order a Burger to make up for the lacking of beef and American cheese (plus just it being a sesame seeded bun was a great piece of Americana for him), and I decided to order what I thought was a club sandwich. However, when it came out, it looked more like someone had accidentally dropped my sandwich (which was sans any type of vegetable) into a crazy Iowa State Fair deep fat fryer machine, and then they decided to, just for good measure, coat it in powdered sugar and give me some raspberry jam- just in case there wasn´t enough sugar on my ¨club sandwich¨. Needless to say- Brandon ate more of it than I did, and we brought the other part back to the hotel to eat for breakfast. The movie however - did not disappoint. It was fantastic to be able to watch a western drama (as our host sister watches Barney non-stop (literally) all day long, and very loudly might I add). The story line to the movie was fantastic, and in the words of Brandon it spoke to bigger issues than just the characters or the movie itself¨.
So that has been our city trip this time. Today we will be ¨shipping out¨ leaving quite soon to go to the bus station and catch the first of our buses to our site. We have been very happy to hear from those of you that have written e-mails to us, and are thankful that it sounds like you are all healthy and doing well. Once again- I would like to remind you that we would love to hear from everyone (fill us in on what is going on in your lives) and you can also call us!! Just find an international calling card, and give us a call. Our cell phone number is 011.507.6406.0177, we usually have reception all the time- and the call is free for us! (We would LOVE to hear from you!!!)
We love you, and will respond to all emails next month on our next city adventure.
Love,
Ashley and Brandon