Over the years that we have been homeschooling, our kids have only spent one year at public school. That was 6 years ago, the year before Covid. All five (at the time) attended public school here in Panama to learn the language. It was kind of like torture to be on someone else's schedule and do all the homework, so sometimes I question why we decided to do it again this year for the youngest three! Ha!

Last week our homeschool group met up to learn how to make Panamanian tamales. The process of making tamales is a very long process, so if you ever receive a tamal, know that it is a labor of love! The lady helping teach us how to make them had done some prep work in the days before we met. She cooked the chicken, ground up the corn, made the seasoning, and gathered the leaves.

The other evening I noticed there was a beautiful sunset happening, so I grabbed my phone and headed outside. I knew it would fade fast, so I took a shot of the tower with the sunset in the background as I headed to the field to get a better view. The funny thing is, the colors of the sunset just kept changing and getting nicer and nicer!

This weekend, we had a great time with friends and our church. Recently someone in our community was moving back to South Africa, so they were selling off many of their items. Years ago we had eaten with some South African friends at their house and they had made us some yummy food out of their potjie. A potjie is a South African pot to cook food in (pictured above). Now, we aren't South African, but we really enjoyed this and have been looking for a potjie of our own for a while, so when they came up for sale, we bought them.

Recently I've been working on YouTube videos to share with the world about where we live in Panama. We recently were invited by friends to check out a local ecolodge called Mount Totumas. We took a few videos around the property while we hiked the trails, at at their restaurant, and just enjoyed the time we had there. We put the videos together to make a longer video about our experience there.

Yesterday I saw @pressfortruth 's post about chemtrails and it got me to thinking. You see, we live in Panama and never see them. The only time I think about them is when we visit the US and I see them all in the sky. Our skies are beautiful here. In the almost 8 years we have lived here, we've probably seen a total of 10 jets flying in the sky over our place in the mountains of Panama. I know there are passenger planes that fly over areas where there are airports here in Panama, but the closest one is an hour from us. We sometimes will see a helicopter or small plane that flies into the airstrip near our place, but those are never large planes or jets.