Carnival Expo

There was an exhibit on Carnival at the convention center downtown. It was pretty neat! A little more risque than Mardi Gras and no one was throwing beads and moon pies. I think I prefer moon pies. But the costumes  are incomparable. 

Este es La Tipica,  a type of Panamanian Folkdance

Me and new friends at La Tinaja's waiting for dinner and a show of traditional Panamanian dancing

... Like the buses!

This is some artwork from a museum we went to. Everything is so colorful!

Jus' Monkey-ing around

Look! It's a monkey! This was about a minute before he hopped on the boat in search of food.

Here's a group pic of all the IPs that I lifted off of facebook. Now that I have a label, I'm kind of rethinking labeling all my FI friends "Internationals" 

The Mira Flores Locks

This is a close-up of one of the Mira Flores Locks.

That's definitely a ship passing through in the background.

These islands and banks are all mountain tops because the Canal was made by building dams and flooding a deep channel over the terrain. How cool is that?

Today we took a boat up the Canal. Here's a ship in the channel.

Day 1

The skyline is beautiful!

Day 2

This is the City of Knowledge. It used to be a military base and is now a kalaideskope of housing, offices and schools. It was amusing to find out that while the map we were given before arrival showed the main building marked on the campus, it neglected to point out that there is only one map on campus.


The third picture is yet to come of the wonderful Salamanca family that welcomed me into their house on my  first day here. It humbled me because I know that sometimes internationals in Tallahassee aren't welcomed into a family home for a long time. I really like this part of Panamanian culture and thank God for wonderful people like the Salamancas and Dalila, a woman from my plane that waited with me in the Tocumen airport to make sure I got picked up.