Panama 2015.06.18

Hello! Things have been exciting and new but largely steady here on Barro Colorado Island, thus daily entries have not been very necessary. I've started working in my lab. I'm learning quite a lot, and it's a lot of fun. I'm working with seeds, so while the work is interesting, it is also pretty repetitive, since the average size of an experiment is a few thousand seeds. So I've been working in lab everyday and listening to a bunch of podcasts. Work has fallen into an easy rhythm. I get up at 6:30, have breakfast in the cafeteria, work till noon, eat, work till 6:30, eat dinner, then work till 8 or so. Then I spend time in the lounge where there is wifi and good company until bed. Meal time are delicious and enjoyable. The company on the island is hella awesome. About 80% of the residents are women scientists in their twenties and the remainder are men scientists in their twenties. Everyone is so smart and interesting to talk to. There are a lot of students from Europe or Central America here and everyone is doing really fascinating research. Every night a group gathers on a balcony overlooking the bay and drinks beer and talks and listens to the bats and geckos. Its quite a lot of fun.

I've had two days off so far. Saturday I took basically a half day off where I spent the morning reading and applying to jobs and spent the afternoon over a microscope. Then on Sunday a group of us went to the Albrook Mall, which is something like the 13th largest mall in the world. It's huuuuge! The place is so big we never made it to the end of it. A lot of stores repeat and there were huge animal statues everywhere. I went in hoping to buy hiking socks and guitar strings for the guitar in the lounge. I found several stores named "planetarium", two religious book stores, a store that sold cameo and guns, tons and tons of "circuit city" stores, a grocery store, a store that sold cellos and marching glockenspiels, to name a few. I did find socks, but they were expensive so I bought cool marvel socks. And I bought a bunch of candy and a sandwich from whichwich. It was a bundle of fun.

Overall, I've mostly been on the island. I went into the city to watch a lecture on Tuesday about petrified wood and then went out to dinner at a really cool place called "The Fish Market" which was a restaurant on picnic tables within the hollowed out shell of an old reclaimed building. I had excellent key lime pie and fish tacos. That's mostly what's been happening here. I'll post again next time things change up a bit

Panama 2016.06.10

Hello from Barro Colorado Island!
When we last left off we were about to take a tour of the city. That tour kind of happened, it ended up being more of an expoloration of the historic district. That portion of the city is very pretty but the gentrification of the area makes me a little sad. We wandered the area, had lunch, I got sepearted from the group but found them eventually and all was well. When we returned to Gamboa it was pouring rain, but warm. The group played a few games then we decided to walk to the small corner store in town to pick up some supplies for dinner. We got thoroughly lost, and were soaked by the time we found the store. Its this cute little place behind some houses with only the bare essentials. We returned home and made rice and beans for dinner and everything was delicious.

The next day (Monday) we were taken to Tupper in the city for an orientation of the REU in general and about saftey and security. Turns out STRI has a system in place where one can log whatever trip their going on and if they don't sign back in when they are set to return the saftey team will got on the hunt to figure out where they are. So thats a nice feature. We were given a tour of Naos, a research facility in the city, and then we returned to Gamboa and had a nice group dinner again.

Yesterday was my first day on Barro Colorado Island, where I will be staying for the rest of the trip. The island is so cool. The only buildings on it are STRI research buildings or housing for STRI employees. other than that it is all wild and forests. I will be doing research on seed pathogens here. My mentor showed me around the lab space and told me all about the project. An intern in the lab and I hunted for seed pods and then I was tasked with separating the seeds from the pods with tweezers.
Every tuesday there is a talk back in the city. This week was about Mantis Shimps Occular Systems and it was hella cool. So around 2pm I took a boat back to land and then a bus back to the city. We listened to the talk and there is a small reception with food and drinks afterwards and everyone mingles about. All the scientists know one another and its feels like such a close community here. Then I tagged along with some of the butterfly researchers and we went and got all you can eat chicken wings at Hooters of all places. So that was bizzare. I've never been to a hooters before. The wings were meh but the company was great. Then I took a taxi back to the bus pickup site, met more people who live on BCI, and we bussed then boated back to the island where I quickly went to bed and fell asleep

Greetings from Panama!

Hello All! Greetings from Gamboa, Panama. I arrived yesterday on a 7am flight from Chicago to Miami, and a quick flight from Miami to Panama City. Interesting things from the flight, on my flight from chicago to Miami, the middle seats were blocked off. No neighbors elbows! On the flight to Panama, while people were boarding a metal concerts worth of mist flooded the plane. It was very rave like. I suspect it was water vapor to rise the humidity of the airplane, but I was sitting there the entire time like "If this was a movie, this would be a neurotoxin mist and we're all just sitting here calmly accepting our fate." The flights were uneventful, the best kind of flights. We landed a little early, and I got through security, immigration, baggage and customs smoothly. I worried that my bags would get lost or unnecessarily searched through, the worry of all travelers. The customs agent exclaimed about my 70 day stay. It would be pretty long if I was just a tourist going around the country. After leaving customs I found the shuttle driver quickly (The big "Smithsonian" sign helped quite a bit) and he showed me to two other students who had already arrived. There are 10 of us total, from all across the country. There will be one other girl from Harvard on Barro Colorado Island with me, and the other 8 students will be staying in other locations in the country. For the next few days I will be staying at a small town called Gamboa with the other students and then on Tuesday we will be moved to BCI for the duration of our trip. We've been told that our accommodations on BCI will have fans, but no AC. On BCI we will be given 3 meals a day prepared by a kitchen staff, to be eaten communally which is a pretty freaking sweet deal. The shuttle driver took us to a grocery store for supplies for the next few days Gamboa. I stocked up on tuna, PB and J and fruit.  I can easily eat PB&J for every meal, so it's always my goto. We drove to Ancon to drop of two students who will be staying there and then headed to Gamboa. It's so lovely here. There is a large fancy hotel up on the hill with a spacious and tropical lobby and an elaborate pool system. The hotel overlooks misty mountains and a lake. We took a walk through the grounds and so many parrots and water birds. The grounds has a lovely little orchard nursery and a tropical frog habitat. Next to the hotel are streets full of identical, brightly colored stilted houses. For the next few days we will be staying in one of them. There are 4 appartments in each house, and they are lovely, all airy space and wicker furniture and tree top views. We are sharing the place with another undergrad student who is a intern with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, not an REU student. She's been here for 3 weeks already and when she saw that we arrived she baked us cookies! We had a potluck style dinner after our walk, where all the students in our building brought ingredients and we cooked rice and beans with cookies and fruit for dessert. The surrounding area is full of mango trees that you can pick off the ground and eat at your leisure. After dinner we sat around and talked until it became hard to keep eyes open.

Today, we awoke early, since we went to bed at 9:30 the previous night. I had breakfast and took a walk around the grounds and finally took an extremely cold and refreshing shower. At this moment I am waiting for the shuttle to arrive and give us a tour of panama city! It should be an exciting day.