Confessions of a Shoe Whore.....

I have to confess that since we've retired to Panama I have become a "shoe whore."  A few weeks ago I bought two pair of shoes while shopping at the grocery store.  Yes they have a large selection of shoes with groceries here and I think I splurged $2.00 a pair on those. Then after a trip to the beach Clyde and I both decided that we needed rubber shoes for the water so we bought some at the same grocery store.  Today we went to the mall and while rummaging through the shoes the "tightwad" in me thought "how many shoes do you really need?"  And then I realized that each of the four pairs of shoes I was holding was ticketed $1.49 each, so why not take them all. And then I went crazy and paid $4.99 each for two pair of Fila flop flops.  So children of ours......here I am spending your inheritance on six pairs of shoes today for about $16.00.  So in the month that we've lived in Panama I acquired a total of ten new pair of shoes for about $20.00.  I wonder if there's a chapter of shoe-a-holics anonymous here? Although since I just confessed it here I guess it wouldn't be anonymous.

Yesterday Clyde received his drivers license finally.  If you remember he renewed his Texas license a month before we left the US and was driving with a temporary license. Then he was told that a temporary license is NOT valid here in Panama so I have been doing all the driving.  Texas seemed to lose his first license and he had to apply online for a new one which took even longer.  So now after a mere 2 months he can legally drive again.  Our next step is to get a Panama drivers license which of course will be yet another adventure.  We can wait another 2 months legally before we have to get one.

Today in Spanish school we took a little test to see if we knew enough of "basic 1" to go onto "basic 2."  "Basic 1" was supposed to continue for four weeks but since we all started with some knowledge of Spanish we've progressed faster than expected.  Our classmate Kaitlyn seems to be bored and has considered going into private lessons so she can advance even faster which is fine with us.  We felt like she was further along than us and she needs to do what's right for her.  Some of the students at this school have been there for 3 or 4 months or longer. But then everyone has different reasons for learning Spanish. Some people need to learn it well enough to get a job here. For us we just want to be able to make friends with the locals and know enough to feel comfortable here.

We took another salsa lesson but since it was the same as last week I was bored and we left after an hour or so.  The way they do the lessons is that a student has to complete 4-5 basic lessons before they can go on to intermediate. We'll have to look around to see if we can find some salsa lessons closer to home once that do things differently.

After a night swim in the hotel pool to cool off we're just kicking back in the room.  Tomorrow we head back to our home in Capira for the weekend.  The air conditioner installer is supposed to come tomorrow just like he was supposed to come last Friday and never showed up.  Apparently last week they had car trouble and saw no reason why they needed to call to inform us.  I guess they assumed that we already knew.  But that is the way things work here in Panama.  Everything moves slow and there's no reason why anything needs to be done today when there's always manana....along the gringo trail.