Carnaval!

Once again, Carnaval was AWESOME! This year we went down to the town of Las Tablas, which is supposed to be the biggest Carnaval party in the country. It was indeed quite large. Lots and lots of people. But seriously, I just love Carnaval. It's one big street party, all day and night (with a couple hours in the afternoon off to recoup). Everybody's happy and dancing and drinking and just having a good time. Everyone's in a good mood (granted there are the random theives in the crowd, but they're easy enough to avoid). I stayed at my friend's house, who lives just a quick chiva ride out from Las Tablas, and we started the party on Friday night for the crowning of the queens. We then proceeded to go every morning to the culecos (remember culecos?!) and then every night to the street party. It. Was. Fantastic. Can't wait for next year! :)

In other news, the Panamanian government decided to push the start of school back a month. So instead of starting March 9th (which would be this Monday...) they are not having the first day of school until April 13th! Why, you ask? Well because you see they try to do school remodeling and general fixer-uping during the summer season, naturally. Fixing bathrooms, redoing the zinc roofs, building new classrooms, that kind of thing. Well there are approximately 30 schools throughout the country that they just didn't get to in time and are in kind of a shabby state. So, in order to give those 30 schools enough time to get in line, they pushed back the entire country a whole month. *sigh* Oh, and the last day of school was pushed back 2 weeks. 2 weeks to make up for a month. So now they get out December 23rd. Craziness.

But that does mean that while my friends are here visiting (SO EXCITED!) they don't have to sit around while I go teach some classes! Yay for visitors! :)