Finally, after 3 days of pre-departure lectures and activities, we left campus at 3:30 am this morning. We took a shuttle to T.F. Green airport with a short detour to pick up Professor Brian on the way. My bag weighed 49.5 pounds, so I’ll have to be careful packing on the way back. Our flight left at 6:00 am. The plane was a LearJet with a row that had 2 seats on the right and one on the left. I was in the single seat and so I had a window though it was too dark to see out of. I was lucky that my carry-on bag was the size it was; if the bag was too big, they had to take them and put them somewhere else since the plane was so small. The flight was very short since we were going from outside Providence, RI, to Newark, NJ. The only served us juice, the seat-belt light never went off, and almost right after they told us we could turn on approved electronic devices, we were told to turn them off because of the length of the flight.
We had to change terminals in Newark to get to the international flights. That flight was a lot longer. I was in the middle seat of what I think was a 757. The flight was about 4 hours long, though I slept through most of it. I was so tired, I almost fell asleep before we took off because we sat on the tarmac for so long. Since I had voted not to sleep last night, I was not only exhausted, but confused about the day of the week. I was lucky to be sitting next to Abbey, so she could correct all the problems on my entrance papers.
Once we arrived in Panama, we could see and feel the difference though it was hard to wrap our heads around it. The houses outside the city were set up in groups, leaving brownish-green fields in between. In the city, there were skyscrapers; some were very cool. The temperature, however, was not cool. It was in the 70s when we arrived, which was a jolt since we’d all gotten dressed in a state where it was in the 30s.
After we landed, we had to work our way through customs. The customs agent I talked to spoke so quietly, I had trouble understanding her. Customs gave us health insurance cards that are good for 30 days and free, which was interesting. Our baggage was on a different carousel that the one marked and took a long time to come out. After making our way through, we found the people that were there to pick us up. Once we’d picked the right door to exit from of course.
We were driven to our hotel in the city. There was some confusion since it seemed like they had thought there were less people than there actually were. I spent the night in a quad that consisted of 2 rooms with 2 twin beds in each. Grace and Lindsey stayed in the other room while I was in the other and would be joined by the female Panamanian student. Grace, Lindsey and I were going to walk around the city, but Brian and DT stopped us as we came down the stairs (which sorta wrapped around the building so they were covered by the stairs above though open to the city) and told us the Panamanian students would be arriving soon. We decided to wait outside on the patio for them.
They soon arrived as they had been in the building next to the hotel, waiting for us. The guy’s name is Maycol and the girl’s is Quiria. I helped her take her stuff upstairs in the rickety elevator. Her English is about as good as my Spanish, so it’s causing some problems with communication. Maycol’s English is much better and he’s doing his best to translate for us.
After a quick meeting, we had time before supper to see the city. The Panamanian students were nice and showed us where to go. Panama City (at least the part that we saw) is really interesting. The buildings are nice though the paint is faded on some. Like in Chile, you take your life into your hands going across the street. There are a few footbridges over the road which is really smart. We walked a few minutes into the city, looking into some of the shops, though not going in, before heading back to the hotel for supper.
We walked to a traditional restaurant for supper. It was yummy and really inexpensive. I had arroz con pollo for only $4! After, I took a quick shower (which was colder than I would have liked) and we went downstairs to the patio. We stayed down there for a while, though I eventually went up to bed. It had been a very long day.
View from outside hotel room
View from outside hotel room