A Day in the Life
So I’ve realized that every post I’ve done so far have been about the extraordinary events of my trip in Panama. I was thinking the other day and decided maybe doing a day in the life kind of thing about my everyday life here in Panama.
Well here goes nothing…
♫♫♫♫♫ Wake up, get out of bed, drag a comb across my head ♫♫♫♫♫
Heehee. But really....
Everyone generally starts waking up at around 6:30, because they’re crazy and we go to be super early (around 10 or so). I personally usually refuse to actually get out of bed until 7:15, 7:30 if I can. I get up, brush my hair, change, then walk around the building to our outside living room/dining room/classroom/ hangout room. By the time I’m up most people are awake and breakfast has been brought in. Breakfast usually consists of some kind of cereal, milk (which comes in boxes, is highly pasteurized, warm, and either whole milk of skim, neither of which are my personal chose, but what can you do), and something from the bakery, like the sweet bread (essentially super sweet cornbread) or some kind of cookie. If we’re lucky we get fried things, like empanadas, tortillas (which are my favorite, they’re not like Mexican tortillas, they’re thick and crispy), or some kind of fried dough that’s like a doughnut without sugar. Lately we’ve been getting eggs, either hard boiled or uncooked so we can make them how ever we’d like on out little propane powered stove. Mmmm breakfast. For awhile we weren’t getting enough food, so if you weren’t up by 7 you wouldn’t get anything to eat, thus everyone getting up super early, but that problems been resolved now :D
After breakfast people generally start to break off and do whatever they need to get done that day. Some people go into El Cope to go to the Chino mart and buy stuff; to go to Julie’s to work on their project, etc. Some people go to the park to work on their projects. There’s usually a chiva to take us up there around 8 or 8:30 depending on the day. Other people just choose to stay at LA Mica and do work there, or sit and do nothing. At the beginning of the trip I used to go to the park every day, but lately we haven’t needed to go as much during the day, so I’ve been staying at LA Mica and working on stuff here. I usually read or play on my computer, but I’ve finally run out of reading material.... Lately we’ve actually busted out lots of games, like Bananagrams and various card games. I’m not sure why it’s taken us so long to get them out to play, since it was within the last few weeks that it’s happened, but I’m glad we’ve finally gotten them out cause it’s a lot of fun to play! Between 12 and 1 lunch comes, varying from Panamanian soup with plantains, yucca, and some kind of meat, to grilled cheese sandwiches. So we eat then continue doing whatever we were doing before. Days at LA Mica are generally boring and nothing super exciting happens.
Let’s say it’s a day we chose to go to the park instead of stay at LA Mica. This means we leave LA Mica about 15 minutes before the chiva is supposed to be here, since it takes about that long to walk the trail out. We get there, hop on the chiva, then ride it the super bumpy, jerky, steep 45 minute ride up to the park, nonchalantly holding on for dear life. Once there we decide on a time for lunch (which is PB&J sandwiches, sometimes chips, and usually cookies of some kind), then head out to our various projects. Me and Leslie go to our transects then slowly walk them looking for frogs. It usually takes us about 2 or 3 hours to do one of our transects, so then it’s time for lunch. Sometimes after lunch we go home, especially when it’s raining and we’re soaked and freezing. Sometimes we stay and walk our other transect, which we generally have less luck with because the day time frogs like the morning hours, not the afternoon…. Eventually we head back to LA Mica where we hang out for a bit until dinner, then usually head back out to the park after dinner for more research. We then do the same thing we did during the day, only it’s dark and we can’t see. We also have to watch out for snakes and various other biting venomous things that we might step on or touch, cause that would be bad. The park at night is fun though, besides the fact that I’m terrified of what could be out behind me in the dark ;D
We usually end up back at LA Mica a bit after midnight, then have to quietly get ready for bed without waking up all the sleeping people, since they went to bed several hours ago. It’s good times. I like it. We then go to bed and do it all over again the next day!
So yeah… That’s just a general overview of my day to day life in Panama!
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