How To Make A Good Day Better

Lebanese food picnic at the beach!

{Fattoush salad, falafel (+ yummy assortment of other things) wrapped in the good Lebanese bread and a pull tab Coke}

I even remembered a little Arabic to throw at the waiters this time. Perfect ending to the day. 

David, Panama!

{The ambitious agenda for today is: to do laundry. Don't ask me why after 2 months of hand-washing and hanging my clothes to dry everyday I am so unmotivated to do laundry when I have access to a washer and dryer. But such are the mysteries of life. To compensate I am sitting around in my Strongbad hoodie hugging my mug of tea (its COLD outside!) and listening to hands down the best pandora station I have ever made. I figured instead of staring into space I could at least keep going through some pictures and catch yall up a bit more. So here we go!}

After my brief stay at Farallon, aka the beach with no normal place to stay, I hitched a ride (yeah, yeah, I know, but his name wasn't Stu) to Penonome, Panama. Penonome, besides being a trabalengua (tongue twister), means--the chief is dead (one of the many things I learned from my talkative driver). From there I grabbed a bus to David, Panama. Originally I was just going to stay the night so that I could wake up early and get a bus out to Boquete, but after getting there and getting settled I knew I was not going to be ready to hop on yet another bus the next day. Even though it was sweltering (David is well known as the hottest city in Panama) and turned out to have zero tourist sights, it was still a nice place to get my city fix, relax and read for a little while. Unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of David--I didn't feel like whipping out my camera in most places. Here's a few though:

Looking down one of the streets. I will say I actually really enjoyed peeking into all of the old tailor shops. 

The city's one museum, which is housed in an original colonial home, ended up being under renovation. The architect did let me into the courtyard to snoop around a bit though.  

Still the museum/house

In the few days I have been home I have gotten lots of questions on how I budget/saved/afford to travel long term. Although I did have a nice dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in David (I saw the restaurant in the Lonely Planet guidebook and it might or might not have been one of the main reasons I chose to stay in David...) this is an example of how make my money stretch--a 25 cent meal of (nostalgically delicious) roman noodles.

On a related note: I also bought a small packet of curry powder to take my noodles from 25 cent average to 50 cent gourmet (saute some onions, add the curry powder then stir in the drained noodles--you won't be disappointed!)  but lazied out and just ate them straight out of the microwave. Ever the penny pincher when traveling I tucked the unopened curry packet into my backpack for the next stop. Unfortunately, for about a week every single piece of clothing in my bag (yes, all 7 of them) faintly smelled like curry. Oops.

And finally, this picture was taken in the courtyard of my hostel in David--The Purple House, which I would recommend. Everything in the hostel is purple, but they have binders full of tourist information/guest recommendations, artisan crafts for sale (the profits of which go straight to the artists), volunteer opportunities, drinkable tap water, and an former Peace Corp volunteer owner (who on the phone mistook me for a Spaniard! Granted it was a short conversation, but until I gave her my name on my credit card she thought I was "bien espanola." (For some reason my Spain accent is much stronger on the phone than in person. Don't ask why...) But after the disaster in Farallon, it was a small victories.)    

Also, at the entrance of their courtyard they had Hebrews 13:2 painted on the wall which was a happy reminder.

OK, that about wraps up David. Next up is Boquete!

{And seriously. This is the best Pandora station ever. It was perhaps a stroke of luck, but I feel like a genius.)

Moussaka Bi Zeit

So while the last week has not been full of triumphal moments, I did have a strong showing in at least one area. As I attempted to get in touch with my Southern roots and cook up some casseroles, I decided to branch out a bit. Janee has a good Lebanese/Syrian cookbook and I found a recipe for Moussaka that I wanted to try. (As an aside, Lebanese and Syrian food is almost exactly the same. Hary says that even if the people are Syrian, they market the food as Lebanese because Lebanese food is more well known.)

Lebanese Moussaka is not the same as its Greek incarnation--there's no cheese or potatoes. Hary does tell me that there are different kinds of Moussaka. Moussaka Bi Zeit, or Moussaka with oil, is what I made and it is a vegetarian variety. Making it is pretty straight forward: you peel, slice and fry a few eggplants, add a layer of chickpeas, then top it with a mixture of sautéed onions, garlic and tomatoes which have been simmered together. To finish it off you top it with a layer of sliced up tomatoes, and then bake it. It can be eaten cold, but we ate it hot with rice.

I hadn't realize that Hary was coming back to the house the day I made it, but he was really excited when I told him what I had made. I was a bit worried for him to try it because it was my first go at moussaka, and I hadn't even tried it myself, but I am happy to say he liked it. Now honestly this isn't saying much because I have been around long enough to know that Hary will eat just about anything. Yet as the days went by and he kept eating it, meal after meal, I started to believe him. And the highest praise of all? He said it tasted just like an Arab woman made it.

Triumph indeed.