Hannah's take on Wednesday

Hello, this is Hannah Pollins blogging for you today! We started off in the morning by going to the school and doing our normal VBS routine. Of course there was some major confusion, but I think we handled it just fine. The kids here don’t mind the confusion though. They actually really appreciate everything that we do. I think they all just want to feel loved. So when a “gringo” comes to their school it is a big deal. Normally white people don’t go to Santa Fe, so they love for us to be there. They listen to everything we have to say, and they patiently wait for us to hand out supplies for arts and crafts. When we get done with each class, they crowd around you and ask you for your autograph. It’s the least we can do for them. Not only have they learned something from us (hopefully), but also they have taught us stuff that we possibly would have never learned in the United States.

For the second part of the day we changed up our schedule a little bit. We went to lunch at Allbrook Mall, which is the biggest mall in Panama because the national bus station is there. We ate lunch with a couple of power outages, which really is not a big deal here. It happens all the time. I got a free milkshake out of it, so I’m not complaining. When we got done with the gigantic mall, we headed over to the Panama Canal, which was opened for business August 15, 1914. We watched a video on the canal (in English), and we also walked through the museum. The exciting thing about the canal was we got to see some boats go through it, and I’m here to tell you, it is a long process. After the canal, we went souvenir shopping at a local market, and got a lot of Panamanian gifts. Now we are all sitting around the mission house having a good time playing games, and laughing together. Overall, it was a great day and we all had a great time!