This country really is so colorful.  It’s so green!  But it’s more than that.  When you look at the countryside, it’s a mosaic of different shades of greens, shapes of leaves, patterns of branches.  This country is rich in diversity and at a closer glance, it’s obvious in how many different plants there are.  Plants with big wide leaves, leaves arranged in a palmate pattern, small round leaves, palm leaves, long leaves.  The summer, or the dry season, is also the time when there are the most flowers, and they come in all shapes, colors and sizes.  I saw one plant that instead of leaves was covered in purple flowers.  Everywhere you look there are different colors.  The houses are no exception.  Instead of brick the homes are painted in a variety of colors.  My host family’s house is a light tangerine.  My neighbor’s house is cucumber with pink.  Other houses are bubble gum, sky blue, lavender, periwinkle or sea foam.  The people are colorful, too.  Skin tones here vary from black to white, but all of them are considered Panamanians.  Sometimes even the air is full of color, like the filter they use for CSI: Miami.  The countryside is so full of life, and living here I understand why all the latino music I know is so upbeat and energetic and happy.

The other evening I was hanging out in the “square” when a fellow trainee and friend passed with her family and invited me to go with them to the cemetery to light candles on all the graves.  The cemetery is beautiful, white and colorful.  All the tombs have white crosses and are crammed in together in a small plot on the side of a hill.  The graves are surrounded by white concrete or covered in white tile, and in front of each white cross is a bouquet of brightly-colored artificial flowers.  Most of the graves also have a miniature house where people put candles to light in memory of the deceased.  My friend’s family brought several boxes of long white candles so that we could put two or three in front of each grave and light as the sun set.  They started with my friend’s host mom’s father, and slowly but surely began placing candles on each of the graves and lighting them.  We had to fight the wind, which insisted on blowing out all the candles that were unsheltered, and the interior of one little concrete house caught on fire and we had to put out the blaze with a bucket of water, but eventually we lit candles in front of every grave.  As the sky turned pink and purple and the sun set, gradually the yellow glow of the candles illuminated the hillside.  It was beautiful.