Panama Update #19
August 2, 2008
Today (Saturday) I went for an early morning walk to the top of the hill that we live on. Besides having great views on the way up and at the top, it is great exercise. The air is so clean and it is such good aerobic exercise because it is so steep. I am also learning to enjoy the early morning humidity. I sweat a lot but for some reason it feels great. I try to do the walk each morning, but because of some early morning appointments last week I had to shorten it to 30 minutes instead of the full one hour walk to the top and back. The rest of the day was dedicated to catching up on some sleep with a long nap.
At 5:00 I took a taxi with some others from the dorm to a barbecue. It was located in a neighborhood here that is called "El Diablo". We may end up moving her eventually if we can't find anything closer to where Nikki works. It is a fairly short taxi drive and a nice neighborhood with reasonable prices. The barbecue was on the patio of an apartment. I looked inside the apartment and it was pretty nice. It was a good size for a 2 bedroom, nothing fancy, but in pretty decent condition. It is in a fourplex with wood floors and a lot of windows. There is a space for cars on the street level, under the aparments. I didn't see an air conditioner so I am not sure how they do it. Most of the apartments come unfurnished, so they just had mattresses on the floor. Three of them live there. Most of the students here are living on a lower budget.
They barbecued a lot of meat and served it with salad and potatoes. I brought veggie burgers and shared with another vegetarian there. Most of the people there work in the same building as Nikki but not directly with her. They are college and graduate school age and come to work at the blank to assist with research and to gain experience. All of the people there are from Colombia except for two from Costa Rica and one from Argentina. Everybody was speaking Spanish so I got a lot of practice. All of them describe Colombia as very diverse, beautiful, and for the most part cooler than Panama, especially in the mountains.
