Mama had a harder time then Leia… let’s see this afternoon how it went… in the picture: Leia with Mrs. Lee.
First day at the nursery…
We’re officially residents in Panama!
After almost 3 hours waiting for “the” stamp at the immigration office in Panama, Leia started losing her patience… After throwing her charm to the officer controlling the line with her “hola!” (it actually sounds more like a “ala!”) followed by a big smile, he actually made us go through even though it was not our turn 😀
Leia is going to nursery school
The decision is taken: tomorrow Leia will start nursery school. We visited a couple of nursery schools in “Costa del Este” neighbourhood (where we plan to live) this afternoon. We’ll try “Ohana Kids” after meeting with the nursery’s founder, Mrs Lee. Many many different fun things to do, clean and very multi-cultural! Although the primary teaching language is english, kids learn other languages too… such as singing “twinkle twinkle little star” in english, spanish, hebrew, mandarin and… sign language!
When we visited the premises, Leia was soooo happy she just ignored us during the whole visit and started playing with everything around, giggling and applauding. She has made her choice pretty clear!
6:00am – Views from our window at the flat we’ve rented short term in order to look for a long term one.
Finally here!
After a busy 3 weeks sorting, selling or packing our stuff we finally arrived in Panama for a new chapter in our lives. The Air France flight went smoothly, thanks to 3 seats and our upgrade to Business Class after years collecting miles. It’s been a while I don’t fly Business with AF and… oh god, now I remember why I like Air France-KLM so much (and why I HATE Iberia so SO much – with whom I’ve flied business a couple of times to Mexico and Guatemala for business lately).
Priorities now are:
1. Getting all the paperwork done for our permanent Visa in Panama;
2. Finding a nursery school for Leia: at almost 13 months, she definitely needs a social life with other kids and we need freedom to search for an apartment and buy furniture;
3. Finding an apartment to rent;
4. Buying furniture (at least the essentials);
5. Analyze health insurance alternatives for our family over here. DKV, our health insurer in Spain is unable to upgrade us to expat coverage without resetting waiting periods (i.e. for maternity coverage) so I suggested them to search for high value clients down where one’s back changes its name. Such a missed opportunity DKV… you are so going to lose excellent clients with policies like those! I wish you the best (without me and whoever asks me to recommend an insurer…)