I can’t believe he just called me that.

Slowly things are starting to come together. I am no longer bored and at school and I am meeting more and more people each week. In school I have been participating in English classes to get to know the students. The good thing about my role in the class is that I get to do all the fun stuff while the professor does the tedious work, like grammar and sentence structure. I basically play games with them and do speaking exercises. Since the high school that I work in is a vocational school, the majority of the students are boys, so I have to take that into account with the activities that I do. My favorite one so far is to have them tell me what they would say to a girl that they first met. Then I would translate it and have them try to spit game to a girl in the class using only English. All the Rico Suave looking guys jump at the opportunity to show off their skills. It’s very entertaining to watch. Besides that I have been organizing a workshop with a nonprofit organization to teach the students how to form their own business after graduation.

Usually something weird happens to me every week, but for some reason those experiences are less frequent now. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is when I was walking to school a couple of weeks ago and I guy stopped me and asked “Do you speak English”. He was tall bald guy on crutches and had excellent English. He actually sounded American. He then asked me if I would give him some money. It was a week till pay day and I only had 5 dollars in my name. There was no way in the world I was going to give him anything. I was dead broke. I told him “Naw man, I’m a volunteer here and I don’t make much money, sorry”. Then he said to me “ATLEAST YOU CAN WALK”. Normally I would feel sorry for him but I’ve been told on many occasions by other volunteers that there is a tall guy that has an American accent that says he is trapped in Panama with no money and needs to get home. He makes up this elaborate story about the embassy being closed so he can’t get in contact with his family and blah blah blah blah… He has already tricked many volunteers into giving him money. I suspect that this is the guy, because I thought I saw the same guy walking without a problem a couple of days before . Three days later I was walking home from school and saw the same guy. This time when I walked by him he mumbled something to me but I didn’t understand immediately. You know how when someone says something to you and you keep repeating it in your head until it makes sense. When I got about 10 steps away from him the words that he was mumbling began to make sense. I never thought I would hear someone call me this in Panama. He called me a “Sorry A** N***A”. That was messed up. I can’t believe he just called me that. I wanted to go back and kick his crutches from beneath him. Then I thought about the chances of someone saying that to me in a Spanish speaking country and started laughing. Luckily I haven’t crossed him again.