Starting life in another area is all about the little wins. You start out with almost no wins, and you work up from there. Every day, you try to get just another win or two among all of your failures. Things like getting a pin set up on your ATM card can be monumental tasks with no car and a language barrier, so any seemingly small success feels so good.
Our first days in Panama have been dictated by this need for wins. What are we doing today? Getting a Sim card. That’s it. Stuff like that.
Some of our huge wins included things like:
Going to the grocery store and stocking our fridge for the first time
Getting a PriceSmart (Panama’s version of Costco) membership
Figuring out how to transfer money from the US (this took three days minimum)
Receiving our dogs from shipping (a post of its own)
Finding a fruit stand for breakfast tomorrow
Sometimes breathing
These tasks were all things I would have taken for granted in the States. What kind of person celebrates grocery shopping? But, man, it felt great. On our first full day living here, I ventured about an hour away into the city of La Chorrera to buy a beautiful 2019 Suzuki Jimny with a manual transmission and manual windows. It was Grey. To get there, I had to find a driver. Someone working at the apartment knew a guy named Juan Carlos (he and I have since become friends), and he said he could take me in the morning. For $50.
We left at 9:00 am (actually about 9:25 (it’s Panama)) and went to the dealership. I was so excited. They didn’t sell me the car. I was very disappointed. We ended up heading to Price Smart, and he helped me fill out my application. Did I mention that no one here speaks English?
Juan Carlos ended up pushing my cart for me in the store while I made lemonade of my lemons, and I bought him a hotdog meal. As I stated, PriceSmart is just like Costco. Like exactly. They even have Kirkland-brand items. There was one difference, though. The hotdog meal was a little more expensive, but it came with papas fritas (fries) as well as the Coke. The fries were great. I bought a meal for Juan Carlos as well, and he liked the fries. He told me about his grandson and granddaughter in Bolivia. His grandson was on the baseball team, and they were actually playing in the championships that very day. He was so proud.
When we were driving home, he put Johnny Cash on the radio and we listened to it together. “Hurt” played.
If I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
the eventually home 