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.