Panama

I´m finally in Panama. I arrived at the airport at 4 am and got through all the check points just fine. Said good b ye to my dad and off I want. I was surprisingly not very nervous considering I was about to leave the country for the first time in my life.

We were held for our flight to Miami but once the luggege got through and the plane de-iced we were set to leave. The flights were pretty boring. Once we arrived in Miami, I got to see the ocean for the first itme in life as well as the first itme I have ever been in Florida. I was there for about an Hour and we made for the flight to Panama. Also a boring fight.

Panama is amazing as we flew over. It was very different than Miami of course. Instead of buildings as far as the eye could see, there were trees. We got through the airport as fast as we could. It was the first time I has someone speak Spanish to me and of course I had no idea what they were saying, but they knew enough english to get along.

Panama is lovely to look at. The mountains are beautiful with the trees and the mist. Its quite hot here especially coming from a place with snow and we were sweating instantly. It was a three hour drive from the airport to El cope, the place where we are staying. Then there is a hike to our place of living through the trees. Its kind of difficult because the path slopes down quite a ways but luckly we had some locals to carry our bags seeing as there was no way we could. We will all be fit after these two months.

The dorm is quite small with 17 girls crammed together but we make it work. The food been good and I have yet to really have to try anything outlandish. Lots of chicken. I won´t have the internet a lot so I´ll be upating this maybe once a week. More details and pictures to come.

A few more days...

This week was the last week of classes (and when I say week we only had two days of classes). Still have a paper to write before I leave. Maybe tomorrow I'll get started working on it. I have to discuss race and ethnicity and I have no idea what I want to write on since nothing has popped into my head. Hopefully something will.

I had a busy day today. I finally got my yellow fever and typhoid shots plus I got my anti-malarial medication. Of course the doctor didn't give me the yellow fever shot card so now I have to back to Columbia (a 30 minute drive one-way)on Monday. I also shopped for some items I need and now its just going through my head everything I might be forgetting to do.

Its hard to believe I'll be leaving soon; leaving my comfort-zone to an unknown place that I really can't imagine being there. I'm most worried about sleep at the moment because its so hard for me to get to sleep, and with living with so many people, I don't know how I'll fall asleep. i'm sure I'll be so tired I will just fall asleep eventually.

Well I won't worry about all of it now. Olympic opening ceremony is coming on soon. I'm super excited!!!

Snow..What Snow?

So here is my practice at uploading pictures. It snowed all last night so I took a picture of it for my apartment window. I'm thrilled that it is Friday and I don't have to go anywhere today!!

Week 4

My week began with the Winter X-games. I missed Thurday and Friday's events but got a recap of Friday's on Saturday morning. I love watching the X-games. For those of you who don't know what it is, X stand for extreme, and in the winter, they have skiing, snowboarding, and lots of different events over a four day period. I think its amazing what the athletes are capable of and I really wish I could ski or snowboard. Maybe someday I'll get to try. But what I love most is that all the athletes (for the most part) support each other and cheer each other on. I think its wonderful that there is competition but still sportsmanship which isn't always seen in most competitive sports nowadays.

Of course, I'm also excited for the Winter Olympics. I'm not a big sports fan by any means, but I always watch the Olympics. Its exciting to see so many people from around the world come together. It's nice to pick a country and root for them (I don't always cheer on the US). I'll get to watch about 4 days worth before Panama so at least I'll get to see some of the action before I leave.

For my History class, I had a primary source document. I found a book with tons of primary source documents and, as my way doing things, I pick the first thing I read. It was a message from Prsident Hayes to congress in 1880. This date throughly confused me because I had little knowledge of the history of the canal and had to find a source that I could cite in my paper and help me put events into order. I found a timeline from the Panama Canal Museum so I hope that source is okay to cite.

For JINS, we read a book by Galeano. I had a slight panic with this situation. I ordered a week ago from Monday and was told it would arrive in a day or two. Of course it didn't and I slightly panicked a week later when it still hadn't shown up and we were to discuss it the next day. Thanks to Jackie who had another copy, I was able to read it. The book finally arrived on Wednesday. Many people seem to feel like it was very redundant but to me it seems like he's trying to tell the reader something. If the same awful events occur over and over, what can be done to stop the cycle. I also like the story telling aspect of his writing because it makes the event more "real". Instead of a dry retell of an event as just facts and forgeting the emotion involved, I think it makes history more real if you know what I mean. Its not just facts to remember but events that affected people's lives. But I do agree that I don't like his jumping around in history. I like to learn about events in order.

Finally as I have mentioned before, my bio project is working with a shaman. He unfortunatly he had a stroke a few weeks ago and treated himself. I'm hoping he's alright and we will still be able to preserve a bit of his knowledge in our research.