Everything is coming down to queso.

Hola, buenos tardes! This is Sarah and Cade in Panama City. We are part of the "city" group and we are helping the team prepare the art gallery for the town hall meeting on thursday. Today was our first day working on the project. We went to Novey, the home depot of Panama, to buy potting soil, gravel, and cleaning supplies to get the gallery ready for thursday. We were excited to see the light installed in the gallery - something we spent a lot of time working on last time. It had already been painted and the lighting was one of the final stops for finishing the renovations.

We had pizza for lunch. Cade had combinacion and I had margarita, Christian has weird pizza with weird cheese. Clearly the circle of cheese was discussed at lunch.

After lunch Gatsby and Chelsea went to shop for some remaining supplies (m.i.a. lightbulbs, curtains to cover the very public toliet located in our gallery, and sangria pitchers). Christian, Andre, and us went to pass out flyers and talking to people about the town hall style meeting. We could contribute nothing. It was awkward for us because neither of us speak Spanish fluently/at all, so we stood in the corner and avoided the conversation completely. (If anything is misspelled this is german computer, which is weird, and causes spelling problems). Claire, a local business owner, confronted us about our non-spanish speaking ways, so we smiled, waved, and said gracis and adios, which are the only words we know how to articulate.

Then we crashed the townhall meeting. Our spring break is going of two town hall meetings in Panama? We went to talk to the local welder, who happened to be on his way to a NGO meeting for local artisans. We followed them to the meeting, where Christian and Andre presented the materials to the locals. We again sat in the corner, hoping people would not call on us to converstate with them. Both of us so badly wanted to enter into conversation, but it was not an option. However we were able to gather how the locals reacted to the material by their nonvocal body language, their excited faces, and anticipation of the flyers.

After this we soon realized we would have to get more cheese for the opening. The circle continues. Every decision we have made thus far on the trip has involved cheese in some way. We are still debating how much cheese to get for the opening - suggestions welcomed.

Currently, we are having a round table discussion on where to eat tonight. Casa Blanca or Coca Cantina? Decision made!!!! Because we have been sweating allllll day, we are going to Casa Blanca so we can enjoy the nice breeze coming off the Panama Bay.

This trip has been awesome so far and we are so blessed to be involved in such a project. We want to give a shout out the the jungle team, who is braving the jungle without toilet paper (they left it in the gallery this morning).

That is all for now, hasta la vista.......Baby!