Hello, and welcome to my Panama blog!
I’d like to keep friends and family updated on what I do
here during my semester abroad, so I created this simple blog for whoever is
interested. I’ll try to include photos
that I’ve taken as often as I can (I’m not promising regular photo albums – too
time consuming – but I’ll try my best to please!).
It’s my 4th evening in Panama! I'll be living in Clayton, Panama, only a short taxi away from Panama City. I’m in my room
in my homestay accommodations. I’m
living with my friend, Rose, and she shares the room with me. It is small and very green. And very hot.
Definitely the first thing that strikes me about Panama is the intense
heat coupled with the humidity. I’ve
never experienced a climate like this, and I’m still acclimating. The house I’m living in does have an air
conditioning unit but it is never turned on…so inside the house is hotter than
the temperature outside. This can make
you feel quite lethargic, dizzy, and (of course) sweaty. My room doesn’t have AC; we have a ceiling
fan and another fan that don’t quite do the job to make the living quarters entirely
comfortable. It is very common to feel
sticky at all hours of the day. Rose and
I share a small bathroom which is fine except that we don’t get any hot
water. It’s an icy shower every day,
which is not the most pleasant but I am soon warm after stepping out.
Our host family is Mama, Abuela, and Juan Pablo. Juan, who is 11, is the only one who speaks
English, and he is pretty fluent. He is
not shy at all, which is good (and also can be annoying at times). Mama has a daughter who is a few years older
than me, and she has been living in the U.S. for around three years now; I
think she’s in California. They
didn’t quite get the vegan diet, so explaining it to them was quite
amusing. I think that while I’m in
Panama I’ll probably eat some fish and seafood, but I don’t want to make it a
frequent occurrence.
The house is about a 15 minute walk from Albrook Mall, which
is easily the most immense mall I’ve ever been in. One half of it is actually a bus station (not
air conditioned) that is always very busy and still quite overwhelming. The bus system here is used by many people,
and it is currently undergoing a renovation of sorts. Traditionally, people take Diablo Rojos, Red
Devils, (which are third or fourth generation American school buses, and do not
depart until they are packed to the max – I’m talking about people standing in
the isles) but now the country is implementing a new Metrobus system. After walking to Albrook, Rose and I will
take a Metrobus to and from campus. We
are still confused about how to do this, but hopefully we will conquer
this in the next week.
Panama so far is a lovely country. My favorite area is the old part of the city,
Casco Antiguo; it’s the historic downtown district, and has good nightlife
outside of the city. I haven’t explored
the city itself yet. I’ve done a couple
very touristy things so far, which I will write about when I am more awake. For now, I’ll leave you with this
introduction and promise to write again soon!
Tomorrow we go to campus (located in La Ciudad de Saber, the
City of Knowledge) for an orientation in the morning, and classes begin in the
afternoon. I’m looking forward to an
interesting and exciting start of my semester abroad in Panama!
No comments:
Post a Comment