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For the past two years I’ve been getting my internet connection via an USB connection (it’s that white thing sticking out of the computer on the right side) from a wireless phone company here called Claro.

It’s been okay and was a suitable solution while I was living in the old house. Two years ago when I moved in there weren’t any companies around that would hard wire the house at a reasonable price so I went with Claro. It costs $40.80/month for sucky connection speed (300-500kps). The downside of that is trying to watch any video streams. Almost impossible. Shortly after I moved here to Boquerón I tried to download a rental movie. It took 14 hours! Needless to say, I didn’t try doing it a second time.

Last week the company Cable Onda swept through the neighborhood offering to hook everyone up with a special two-month deal. You could get cable t.v., 5mbs internet service and home phone service for just $29.24/month after which the price would go up to $41.95/month. Pretty much all of my neighbors signed up, but I hesitated, wanting to check the company out. Through my research it seems they provide good service in the area, so I called their rep up and signed on.

Now, it’s been two years since I’ve had television access. Can’t say I’ve missed it much, but since I could get the t.v. and the internet all in a small bundle for what I’ve been paying Claro for their slow service, I signed up for the t.v., too. Tuesday I went into town and bought a 24″ LED t.v. set. I figure if most of the programming is in Spanish, perhaps I’ll learn more by osmosis. Who knows? They just finished up installing my service a few minutes ago. This is my t.v.

Thumbed through the channels and was surprised a lot of the programming was in English.

But it’s the internet connection I really wanted. Going to some YouTube vids they streamed seamlessly, so I’ll probably be renting a lot of movies in the future. I bought a router so now I can download books to my tablet without having to go to the InfoPlaza or the bus terminal to access their wifi.

In the last couple of years two of my neighbors have made trips up to the States.

The first to go were Amelia and her brother Eduardo. Amelia was married to a gringo, lived in the States for many years and has three kids that live there still. Amelia and Eduardo went up to attend the graduation, at Penn State, of her oldest son. They intended to visit Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., New York City and Connecticut. When they went they flew into the worst snow storm the northeast had had in half a century. Eduardo’s telling of their adventure was hilarious, though I could only understand a little more than half of it, since it was in Spanish, of course, but his pantomiming of sitting in his hotel room with a blanket around him didn’t need much translation.

The one thing that amazed him even more than his first encounter with the white stuff falling from the sky, was how early it got dark up there. Down here eight degrees above the equator the difference of when the sun rises and sets over the course of a year varies like about 45 minutes or so. Sun rises around 6 a.m. and sets about 12 hours later. Panamanians can’t believe that the sun sets before 5 p.m. up there.

My next door neighbor, Oscar, his wife and son, recently visited the States. They went to Orlando and Tampa just in time to be engulfed by the dreaded ‘Polar Vortex.’ When I talked to him a few days ago and asked him what his first impressions of the U.S. were, he didn’t talk about Disney, Universal or Busch Gardens. What impressed Oscar was the quality of the Interstate roads. One of his friends was there while we were talking and Oscar stressed at how well-maintained the roads were, how CLEAN AND TIDY the roadsides were, and how (you’re not going to believe this, gringos) polite the drivers were. If you haven’t driven in Panama then you have no idea what his perspective is on all that. Here’s an example, from Panama City, that’s typical…

I’ve been having some disturbing dreams recently. No, not THOSE kinds of dreams where people or monsters are chasing me, stuff like that. No, I’ve been dreaming a lot in SPANISH lately.

Dreaming in another language isn’t new to me. I remember the first time I had a dream in French. It woke me up! You know when you start dreaming in another language that it has become a part of you. It’s in your subconscious.

Those dreams in French were always appropriate, though. What I mean is that when I was speaking French it was always to French people who only spoke French. Naturally, even in my dreams, I’d have to talk to them in French or they wouldn’t be able to understand me, right?

Well, the thing with the Spanish dreams is that while they started in the same way, talking to my neighbors when they showed up in the dreams it had to be in Spanish so we’d understand each other. But the last few nights I’ve had dreams in Spanish where Spanish-speaking people I knew weren’t a part of the somniferous movie. Now THAT’S disturbing! I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been totally immersed for nearly four years in another language.

Back in 1991 when we moved Jolie Aire, the boat I was running, from France to Spain we moved from one culture to another. It’s a fact that the French are different from a lot of other countries, but I won’t get into the nuts and bolts of that here. But in Spain we ran into a lot of people who would go out of their way to help each other, and strangers, too. One of my French girlfriend’s favorite expressions when someone would help us with a problems was, “This wouldn’t happen in France.” My stock response was, “You’re right. This is the real world out here. People do things like this.”

One of the big complaints one hears from the expat community here is that customer service is non-existent in Panama. There’s a little bit of truth in that, though it’s not as pervasive as many would like you to think it is. Take this morning, for example. . .

I needed to go into David to pay my insurance bill at Hospital Chiriguí. I was 75 yards of so away from the bus stop when a bus passed my street. No big deal. I always leave the house with my iPod and rather enjoy sitting at the bus shelter listening to a book and watching the passing scene. There’d be another bus along in 20 minutes or so.

But then, at the edge of the tree line, the back of the bus appeared. The driver had spotted me as he passed. (They all know me now after two and a half years living here.) Not only did he back up the main road he then proceeded to turn, backwards, into my little street and back to where I was so I could catch a ride into town. I could hear Florence say, “This wouldn’t happen in France.” I replied, “I know, Florence, it wouldn’t happen in the States, either.” And the amazing thing is, folks, the driver did this for a 60 cent fare. No, it wouldn’t happen anywhere else I’ve ever lived but its happened to me several times here and I’ve seen it done for others, too, over the time I’ve been here. It’s what customer service is all about. It’s what Panama’s about.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas here in Boquerón. I haven’t been up to the park at the town hall this year to see if they’ve decorated things. It was pretty scanty last year but there were lots of decorations the previous two years.

Some of the houses here in the barrio have put up their Christmas lights…

Saturday night a group of youngsters from one of the local churches gathered at a neighbor’s house to sing Christmas Carols. You might recognize the song.