Orientation

I have to get up early tomorrow morning to get to the bus terminal to head back to the beach to go to my exchange program's orientation of the month. It will be for three days, and I'll update when I get back, or, if I have internet there, you may hear from me sooner. :)

Bird of the Day

This is a Blue Crowned Motmot. I took this picture earlier this afternoon, through the window. Aparrently he is a fan of bananas and just hanging out in trees. His tail is "raqueted" or something like that... i forget the term. but yeah. He's pretty. Sorry the picture is a little poor-quality. :)
More artsy pics; click on them to see them bigger, i think:

making kissy-chirpy noises

GECKO!!! I finally got a picture of one. There were two of them, but one skedaddled while I went inside to get my camera. They were making kissy-chirpy noises to each other, which I had been hearing all evening, but hadn't known the source. I'm sitting with my laptop on the back porch of the beach house right now, it's dark out but there are still people in the pool and sitting on other back porches at other beach houses here. There are still those two geckos on the wall, I can see them from here. I like geckos, and geckos that make noises are pretty awesome.

So, there you go, proof that there are animals here that I actually manage to snap pictures of before they disappear. :)

Loaderingering

I usually put up arty, photoshopped-up pictures onto my DeviantART website, but that is taking extraordinarily long to load these days, so I will just upload those pictures here, a few at a time... enjoy, and please leave comments!
This is Peter, my host sister's dog. He's pretty cute.
This is the dryer.

Again with the extreme heat

So, we're back at the beach house. It's hot. I think that Carnival started yesterday or today, there was a lot of traffic on the way here and lots of loud music playing and people wearing strange hats and spraying each other with hoses. I'll try to upload more pictures later today or something, I know blogs are boring when they're just writing. :P

mmm... liver.

Yeah, not so much. Liver tastes way too much like straightup cow.

It took forever to take the bus into the city this afternoon, so my host sister and I saw a different movie than we had intended. I was looking forward to seeing "El Curioso Caso de Benjamin Button" for the third time (no, really, I kind of love that movie) but we were late and instead went to see "Simplemente, No Te Quieres"... but then we had to leave before it ended (which I hate doing) to take a taxi to where my host mom works (the hospital, she is an obstetrician) and go home. Then we had dinner: Rice = delicious fantastic, liver = igh....

oh ticks, how i hate thee

I have the lifeless bodies of at least ten ticks on my nightstand, squished by my deadly tick-killing weapon: bottle of nail polish. it's one in the morning here. I think that my host sister's giant stuffed dog is the main nest, but she refuses to remove it from her room, even from her bed... ticks. everywhere. in my room, in my bed. WHY?????

UPDATE: I killed around 20 ticks last night, and I keep finding more, mostly on my host sister's bed. We found a bunch living inside of her blanket and giant stuffed dog, so we removed those items from the room... ugh. I hate ticks. What purpose do they serve, anyway? No one eats them in large quantities, they must be useless parasites. aaauuuugggghhhhh.This is a tick on my bed. This is not cool.

Where the wild things are

The above is a picture of what Soberania National Park looks like... this is one block from my house.
Did I mention that I went to a discotheque and learned to salsa dance? Heck yes.

Internet: I have it.

I'm currently connected to internet right here in Gamboa! I discovered it last night, and although it blips out sometimes and is a fairly weak signal, it's working alright. We shall see.
Anyway. Here are some examples of the birds I've been seeing around here; these aren't my pictures because when I see these birds they are moving way too fast/I don't have my camera with me:The above are 'lesser kiskadees'. They flit around in pairs of groups of three or four and sometimes just sit on the ground, zoned out. They're goofy.
This is a blue-gray tanager. They're all over the place, like sparrows but more colorful. :) I think I have one picture of one up on my Flickr account, but it's not a very good shot.
Obviously, this is not a bird. But they are all over the place: it's an agouti. They're cat-sized rodents and they're adorable. People don't seem to hate them or anything, I don't think they do much damage or anything. But they wander through the yard and sniff around until one of the dogs chases them away. They're extremely fast and even Bimbo, our big black lab, has never caught one. In Spanish they are called neques.
I don't know what kind of bird this is, but they fly over Panama Bay and other bodies of water all the time.
And, of course, I've been seeing and hearing these little mini-toucans.
I think we're going to go rollerblading now (even though it just poured down raining??) so I'll talk to you guys later. :)

ta-da!!!!

leafcutters at work, originally uploaded by [pickley]goodness.

this is the picture i wanted to upload! hurray for fast internet at friend's houses!