Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Holla at your girl

My dad once said that if you never write it down you will forget the experience. So here goes. I got evacuated out of my site due to an earthquake, a hurracane, landslides and flooding. On Monday night a couple of weeks ago Panama and Costa Rica was hit with an earthquake. To be honest, I slept through it and thought my Ngobes were playing a practical joke on me. (Which they love to do). The earthquake made some ground settle...ya, ya, ya. And then the tail end of a hurracane hit. Normally where I live we get 4 days of crappy weather and then it clears up. But after 2 weeks of torential downpoar it tends to effect the land and the ocean. We got up to 10 feet waves and no one could leave the island. To make it even harder the port town where we get our supplies was hit with flooding and collapsed bridges. And to make it even more extreme, the road from the city to the port town was hit with landslides and almost 50 kilometers of road was wiped out.

ANd I do what I normally do in stressful situations, I cook and eat. And it's probably a good thing that I like to cook cause I was stuck in a house with Joanna (my partner in crime), Judy (another partner in crime), a stranded tourist and guide. We rotated cooking shifts and I had some of my latino professors cook. I know, latino men normally don't cook, but my friend JC can COOK.

My friends and I ended up buying a live rooster for a thanksgiving bird. But my cocinero peaced out on the earliest boat (and I have no idea how to kill a rooster, let alone the courage). So for turkey day, we celebrated vegetarian style with mashed potatoes, carrots, gravey, rolls and cookie pie.

Um eventually we all went a little crazy and slightly cracked. We ended up getting off the island through a police boat. (3 girls, 10 police men with machine guns, one messed up ocean and 200 hp boat = good times) arrived on Bocas Island and flew out to Panama City.

I know random and there are more stories to come.