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
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