Boquete is a sleepy town in the mountains of western Panama, full of coffee farms, stray dogs and the occasional gringo, come for a cheap place to retire in an idyllic climate. It also has a great Spanish school where I have studied for the last couple of weeks.
I get a kick out of being able to speak some Spanish. After exchanging a few sentences with someone at a bus terminal and finding out how to get where I am going, I realise ´that was all in Spanish, sweet!´. My classmates, a 19 year old learning her 5th language and a professional translator also learning her 5th language (Europeans!) remind me that I´m not good at learning languages, but none the less I am enjoying it.
My homestay family (organised by the Spanish school) did not turn out to be onion farmers as I had hoped. Rather, they own an onion farm jointly with their extended family - and also work on other projects as a family, currently a small housing estate to sell to the Gringo retirees.
My host family is very welcoming and friendly. The father of the family who goes by the nickname ´Poncho´ was fascinated to hear about Australia and would enthusiastically call to his wife Rita in the next room, who would at first pretend not to hear. Poncho would persist to relate my interesting fact to Rita, such as ´right now it is 3am in Australia´.
People in Panama are generally amazed that people can afford to travel across the world for fun. Even people who are lawyers and property developers ask questions about it.
One evening Poncho called me out to the living room to meet some of his family who were visiting. I have met some of their family before, but this time I was soon told the 3 chicas amongst them were all single and did not have any children. Even though I had mentioned my girlfriend earlier in the conversation, I was asked a few times if I wanted a girlfriend in Panama and which of the girls I preferred. I would only say they were all very pretty, much to the disappointment of the parents and aunts and uncles. Poncho came over to beside my seat to ensure that I was not misunderstanding his Spanish and instead of pointing he spun me on my chair (which happened to be near the centre of the group and happened to be on of those comical giant-hand-shaped chairs) so I was pointing at each of the chicas in turn as he asked who I preferred. I think they found it a little comical, but only on account of the spinning chair.
