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.

The Critters Here

This iguana was spotted outside a window in the house, moseying slowly down a tree. There are a lot of iguanas here, usually I see them sunning themselves on sidewalks in the morning.
I also see coatimundis, gatosolos in Spanish, trotting alongside the road into the city.

And, guess what! I saw a sloth! We were driving down the highway and I thought to myself, "That stick by the side of the road looks funny... oh god, it has a face." I hope it changed its mind about trying to cross the highway...

A bus ride around Panama

Pass through towns and suburbs.

All the buses are painted like this.Fruit!bottles hanging from a tree...

Aww, pericos!

Some colorful visitors to our birdfeeder one morning.

It rained. I would know.

So, as we approach a wetter season in Panama, I think I will need to start hauling my rain jacket around with me, such as to school. I got soaked today waiting for a taxi to pick us up to take us to the bus terminal, but none of 'em wanted us so we ran back across the street to the school and waited half an hour for the rain to slow to a sort of drizzly mist. Seriously, though: it rained hard. Big drops. And it's hot.

Flowers for you

just a random photo I took of some flowers in a sort of shrub that thinks it is a tree.

Apparently people DO get colds in Panama

I would know: I have a fine example of a headcold going on right now. I've been sneezy for a week, but I assumed that it was allergies, either from the flowers that are starting to appear on the trees or from the rye bread that I've been eating for lunch at school on sandwiches. I am sort of happy to know that it is not the bread, but I'm really not a fan of this sinuses-squeezing-themselves-out-my-nose feeling, or the throat inlaid with sandstone. At least I have the comfort that half of my class at school has the same symptoms and that so far none of them have died yet.

Speaking of classes, I am learning some HTML in one of 'em. I just sit behind my friend and make suggestions on what to name our webpage and stuff, I don't actually take the class officially.

Buuut I wanna try it out sometime.

Look, Ma, I'm an ad for Converse!

My host sis and I went to a music fest (which was as much a Movistar, Coca-Cola, Balboa (beer), and Converse fest as anything else) last weekend (I know, I'm slow with the updates). It was pretty fun, actually. Apparently I saw lots of big names perform, but I didn't know them... like... Aleks Syntek. Hooray!

You must slap your butt as you walk

I'm not sure what else this sign could possibly mean.

Monkey Pics from Summit Zoo & update

The white-faced capuchins expected to be fed crackers... or brains... either one.
I was a little shocked by the zoo, it definitely isn't what I'm used to seeing! Besides the jaguar and harpy eagle, the exhibits are in varying states of disrepair and have an overall old look to them, just like most of the city. It was all native animals, and basically looks like they dropped cages down around parts of the existing jungle and called it good. The grounds are mostly a walk through the jungle, with lots of beautiful trees and plants all around.
Back to the monkeys... a man started to hit his mostly empty soda bottle against the wire, freaking out the monkeys, but when ice flew out and into the exhibit they grabbed it up ad coveted it and rubbed it in their hands like it was gold.

I started school on Monday! Hurray, I have friends! :D Technically I'm just following my host sister around until my public school starts next month, I don't even have a uniform and I'm not being graded. It's a private Oxford School and most of the classes are in English, some of the teachers don't even speak Spanish (and some of them don't speak English). I am taking a Spanish-learning class with another boy who doesn't speak Spanish who moved here with his family from Florida in January. So far it's all review, and I know that my Spanish is improving, because I can actually form a sentence or two without thinking super hard, and I understand more than half of what is said in normal conversation. Yaaaay...

Summit Zoo

I went with my host sister to the Summit Zoo, which is a short drive down the road from where I live. It's definitely not the sort of zoo I'm used to; it's very rundown and sort of makeshift. There were two exhibits, however, that obviously got all the funding; those of the jaguar and the harpy eagle.what's a zoo without a good pavo real or two?


AUGH my internet is being stupid, so i'll try to upload the pictures of the monkeys and such later!

orientation of the month - photos! finally!

there were five or six stray dogs, mostly pretty cute, who were frequent visitors to our cabins because we're all suckers and gave them food.
chickens drinking water from the drainage pipe coming from the cabins we stayed in.
some fellow exchangies on the beach. represented in this picture: thailand, austria, and iceland.

sorry it took so long, guys. i got back, like... a week and a half ago. :)