Bienvenidos a mi blog!

Hola gringos. Yes, I’m totally fluent in Spanish in just 2 days! Seriously though I have learned more Spanish in the last 2 days than I would have watching hours of cheesy shows on telemundo. We’ve been here for about 48 hours and I have to say, so far so good. We totally revamped our little dorm so it looks not only tolerable, but actually warm and inviting. I can’t completely obliterate the bugs, but each day I awake with renewed determination to kill as many as I can. Our place is totally livable now and we’re all settled in. Justin, the intern that has been here for 3 months, has been a huge help. He cooked us dinner the first night and has been very patient with our relentless questions. We’ve met a lot of really nice people who have also been very patient with our lack of Spanish.

Even though I’ve driven through Wyoming several times, this island is definitely the most primitive place I’ve ever been. There are no roads, no telephone poles, no stores, no hospitals, no nothin’. The indigenous people aren’t naked, but they don’t wear shoes, which might not sound like a big deal, but if you could see the size of the ants here you’d wonder how anyone would dare expose an inch of skin let alone walk barefoot on army ant territory. Their feet look like human flippers, wide and flat.

I’ve seen the craziest bugs and animals here; I almost ran into the web of a spider the size of a kid’s hand, two hummingbirds have died from flying into our window so we got to see them up close, I saw a red frog on my first day (it was really little, see pic), and there are feral dogs everywhere. I have to be careful not to feel bad for them or they will follow me home and soon I’ll have a dog rescue center on my front porch. I have yet to see a sloth, but I’ve been assured they are everywhere. Last night we saw the coolest lightning storm. If you haven’t spoken to me in awhile you wont know of my latest obsession, but I’ve discovered that I am totally fascinated by lightning and last night provided a serious fix for my new addiction.

Yesterday we met with one of the main guys who showed us our first project, the beach club. Right now the “beach club” looks more like a decrepit old islander gang hideout than a place you’d like to order a smoothie and enjoy the view of the ocean, but that’s why we’re here; to fix it up and make it look awesome. We freely admit we have no experience doing anything like this, but we’ll figure it out. The real test will be to see if Jameson and I can work together without one of us running into the jungle for refuge. It’s actually been really fun to do this together. We’re finding out not only what we’re made individually (I’m a lot tougher than I thought by the way), but also what we’re made of together. We’re discovering we can handle just about anything as long as we’ve got each other.

So we’ve got plenty of work to do on our little island here in Bocas del Toro, actually it’s huge, but yesterday they told us they are sending us to do “research” of some of the tours they offer on neighboring islands so this weekend we’re going out to sea on a catamaran. If you don’t know what a catamaran is, look it up and then tell me! Love you all!