Now that I'm more or less back...

Here, we have a custom.  Weekly I will pull a chair out from my kitchen to the street in front of my house to sit in a clump with my neighbors and talk.  On the way home from school I will stop at a lady’s house and wind up sitting for hours on her front porch.  As I pass by a friends house on the way to play volleyball, I stop for a few minutes (which usually turns into at least twenty) and chat.  Echar cuento, as it is known in Panamanian Spanish, literally translated is to throw out a story.  I love this translation, as I think it embodies the essence of just what you should do when hanging out is at its best.  Tell stories.  Funny ones.  Sad ones.  Scary ones.  Ones you’ve told over, and over and over again.  Perhaps we do this at home, but in English I would posit that we have failed to come up with a term that so accurately expresses the right way to do it.

So, readers, that’s just what I’m going to do.  I’m going to throw stories at you.  There may be long descriptions or analytical, introspective-type blogs now and then.  But mostly, I want you to get a sense of what stands out to me in daily life.  I promise to tell you what I tell my neighbors at the end of the day, and possibly share some of what they tell me.

So pull up a lawn chair and sit somewhere you shouldn’t.  It’s going to be a nice evening.