So instead, I give you, a houseplant....

This is where I should be posting about poverty in Panama. Instead, I will present our newest house plant.

Over the weekend we spent a bit more time downtown, running errands, getting lost...you know, the usual. It was a grey day, icky really. Perfect for errands. But the poverty around Panama City really hit me. So I started to take some pictures and they, sort of, conveyed the scope of some of the poverty down here. But not quite. Because you really have to see it with your eyes to grasp the scale of it. I had planned to put them up here. And I will. But we've lost our memory card from the camera- it's off hidden in a pile of the flotsam and jetsam that litters our house. Sorry about that. But I promise I'll get around to it.

But just in case you're checking in and hoping for the newest James Family installment, you'll want something interesting to read, I'm sure. So (drumroll please) let me present our newest houseplant. Ta da!

I jest, but really it is quite an interesting houseplant. It's a bromeliad. There are over 2400 species of bromeliads, (god only knows what this one is) and the most interesting part of the bromeliad is that it doesn't require soil. It will happily grow on the branch of tree, on a trunk or a random rock. All it needs is moisture and sunlight. We bought this particular one at a roadside stand last week for $3 and it now sits on our bedroom balcony. You would think that such a sturdy plant would be hard to kill. Let's hope so. I'll keep you updated.