My arrival

1/11/12

My first day in Panama has been long, sad, exciting and exhausting.  I’m pretty sure my bag has gotten heavier, despite the fact that I haven’t actually added anything to it.  We flew from Miami at noon and arrived right before 3pm here in Panama City.  It was an amazing arrival – we approached the north (Atlantic coast) quickly and descended through a layer of clouds to see low mountains and forests.  In about five minutes we had flown across the isthmus and were at the Pacific Ocean, right where Panama City is located.  Out my window I saw islands to the south of the city first, dark and grey under an overcast sky, and then as we turned to face the city I saw hundreds of barges waiting to enter the Canal, as our pilot told us.  It was beautiful, and I wish I had taken a picture.  As we continued to turn, Panama City appeared – tall buildings bursting from the flat coast and came all the way up to the water was sprawled and crammed all along the coast.  It was really startling to see so many high rises, since San Jose, Costa Rica, is so much smaller.  And then, of course, as we came into landing I didn’t realize there was an airport nearby until we had practically hit the ground – it was all forest and plants and then just as we were about to land the airstrip appeared.  Despite the fact that the International Airport has maybe a dozen gates, it is still a pretty important international hub.

Immigration and customs was smooth and short, and we all loaded our bus and headed to our “retreat location” an hour after landing.  The retreat location is called Ciudad del Saber (City of Knowledge) and is actually an old military barracks that now serves as offices for the Peace Corps, the UN, and other international organizations, as well as providing rooms for people visiting with these organizations and perhaps some study abroad programs?  I plan to investigate further tomorrow.  It is a really nice location – it reminds me of a tropical Fort Hood without all the military personnel.  Plus, it has a great view of the Miraflores locks in the Panama Canal, even though we only see the passing ships over a field and behind the buildings surrounding the lock.  It's pretty cool.  My training class (or the group of people I will train with for the next ten weeks) consists of volunteers who will teach English and volunteers who are working with Community Environment Conservation (CEC).  The English teachers get to stay at the Villas, as the barracks are called (though they are, in fact, pretty nice) and my group (CEC) gets to stay at a hotel downtown due to limited space.  Tomorrow we actually start training – I think tonight everyone is going to crash early.

The climate is warm and humid, and the sun is bright – I discovered I left my sunglasses at home on the bus ride.  I love recognizing all the tropical plants from Costa Rica.  It’s at a much lower elevation than San Jose, so it’s warm and humid all the time, not just during the day, and there aren’t as many mountains around.  The city is also much more cosmopolitan.  There were a lot of tall commercial buildings and high-rise apartments crammed in together.  But then on closer inspection a lot of the buildings didn’t look in very good condition, perhaps because of the proximity to the ocean.  There were also other pockets in the city that consisted of concrete huts on stilts with colorful cloth and Panamanian flags hanging in the window, even though pretty much all of the huts had Claro Satellites on the roofs.

Otherwise, it’s very familiar and comfortable.  I’m really excited to be here!  And of course all the people training with me are very friendly and nice.  It’s weird to think that eventually we will all be really close, when for now we barely know each other.  Slowly but surely…

Everyone is so nice here.  One of the things that I really like is that all of the staff who we are working with say “Welcome to my country.”  Everyone is so proud that we are here.