Friday's Exchangie Trip to Casco Viejo

Casco Viejo!

We went on a tour of La Presidencia, basically the White House of Panama. It was awesome. I took way more pictures than this, don't worry. :) The random egret (garza in Spanish) is sort of a symbol of the presidency and so there are a bunch of them running around this first floor of the building.

Second floor.

I am being strangled and Marthe is being squished. Thanks, Jingi. Everyone else has a good representation of their usual expression. :) lol. Good times.

Pictures I could have taken and uploaded 4 months ago but didn't

The Gamboa Post Office. I've never been inside because it's never open when I wander by.

A tug boat or something, on the Canal.

Here you have the Panama Canal and a fence and the Panama Railroad. Yay!

This is the only way to get into Gamboa: A one-way bridge shared with the railroad. Whenever you want to enter or leave Gamboa you have to wait for the light to turn, and often people disobey the lights and somebody has to back all the way off the bridge again. The bridge crosses where the Chagres River meets the Panama Canal.

The Railroad and the Canal and the jungle and a big metal thingy that I assume has something to do with the railroad. Idk. The other side has some lights on it.

I know what you're thinking: 'Wow! An exotic, unknown fruit!' but actually I bet you've eaten it a lot: It's a cashew! In Spanish, the fruit is called 'marañon' and the nut part is called the 'pepitos'.

Mango trees are everywhere here, all ridiculously full. And delicious.

A woodpecker: 'carpintero'.

Fast Approaching

I've been in Panama for a few weeks over four months, and I leave in 32 days. That's just four more weekends before I'm back in Mac. Crazy! And it's difficult to say how I feel about that. I love it here in Panama, and I definitely plan on coming back, hopefully repeatedly and for more extended periods of time. I want to master Spanish. And I have made friends here, who I will miss terribly when I get home, just as much as I am right now missing my friends back in Oregon. I have changed a bit since February. Definitely. Like, my hair is way longer and I'm ridiculously tan. I also have at least one foot standing in another language, I can fry plantain bananas, I have seen crazy wild bugs, woken up to the sound of howler monkeys, bought strange fruit from street vendors, chatted for hours on MSN Messenger in Spanish, lived within walking distance of a big-deal landmark (Panama Canal), worn a ridiculous school uniform, learned to salsa dance, seen a lot of stray dogs, caught an enormous toad in a plastic bag, been fascinated by ant highways, discovered that cashew nuts come from a tree called 'marañon', pulled mangoes right off the tree with a long pole, picked up crazy shells off the beach, explored a centuries-old fort and been freaked out by a tailless whip scorpion, and, um, lots of other exciting stuff! Holy cow! And I still have another month. :) I wouldn't trade this experience for anything.

I will be happy to be home next month, though. I miss you guys!

Gripe Porcina!

Swine Flu: If you were wondering, yes, people do freak out about it here. They have been since about the middle of May, when people starting showing up in surgical masks to walk around Albrook Mall. This picture is of a poster that my class made, about the symptoms and stuff of A H1N1. I colored all the little pictures that my friend Max drew.

Another school project was this video of making an electroscope for physics class a week or two ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nMjGwC9C3c

And some more random photos:

GIANT freaking spider in the jail cells under the fort at Portobelo.
The common black vulture, chillin at the fort.An Indian fishing boat out at Portobelo.
A pretty moth that was actually quite small, hanging out on the refrigerator one evening.Not a Golden Frog, but a frog nonetheless.

Whoa!

Hey! I just thought I should let people know that I am, in fact, alive, though I might be murdered my mosquitoes any moment as I am sitting outside, stealing Wi-Fi from a neighbor's house by sitting on the sidewalk with my laptop. Eating walnuts. Yup.

Iguana of the Day

That's right: when I do my homework I can see iguanas out one window and baby birds out another, and I heard lots of ridiculously loud thunder.

Three Days Old

They're still pretty floppy and strange, and today they are squirmier.

OK, here are the baby birds!

The internet finally woke up and here are the baby birds. I think there are three of them... there were three tiny speckled blue eggs in there just yesterday. I didn't look very closely because the mother bird was, understandably, freaking out and I didn't want to hang around more than necessary to snap a picture, which explains the total lack of framing. :) They're pretty cute for being so ugly, right?

April twenty-seventh: dogs and flowers.

Casco Viejo

The Square or whatever. Lots of beautiful buildings, lots of crumbly buildings with trees growing out of the walls. Lots of balconies that we declined to walk under due to iffy support beams or complete lack thereof.

My brother's friend, overlooking the Bahia (tide out) from the top of an old building being restored.

An obelisk... with a rooster... I have no idea what that is supposed to represent.

Wikipedia sez: "The city was founded on August 15, 1519. Within years of its founding, the city became a launching point for the exploration and conquest of Peru and a transit point for gold and silver headed towards Spain. In 1671, the Welsh pirate Henry Morgan, with the help of a band of 1400 men, attacked and looted the city, which was subsequently destroyed by fire. The ruins of the old city still remain and are a popular tourist attraction known as Panamá la Vieja (Old Panama). It was rebuilt in 1673 in a new location approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of the orignal city. This location is now known as the Casco Viejo (Old Quarter) of the city."

Since the public school I was going to start at this week is on strike (apparently this is a common problem around here) I've had this week off, entirely to myself as pretty much everyone else in the house is off at work or their own functioning school. Yesterday I took the bus into the city on my own and met up with one of my brother's friends who happens to live in Panama, a botanist; http://anthrome.wordpress.com/ and we wandered around the old quarter of Panama City for a couple of hours, including going to the Museo del Canal Interoceanico de Panama (Panama Canal Museum). It was very hot and humid, and I think I've made up for the lack of sunlight I may have suffered from growing up in Oregon.