Welcome to Panama City (june 9)

Unfortunately I arrived into Panama at night and was therefore unable to fully take in the country’s landscape. Nonetheless, Junior drove me around for about 1.5 hours showing me some sights, taking me through downtown, pointing out some discotecas (clubs), movie theaters, restaurants, and other points of interest. I found the Hotel Intercontinental so if I decide to go work while I’m here for the summer I know where it is, and actually it is right down the street from my worksite. Back to the tour… though it was dark he pointed out the ocean, the former US bases that are now vacant since the troops’ departure and the Panama Canal. Soo, Panama City is not that much different from your regular US metropolis. It has plenty of skyscrapers, many banking institutions (in fact Panama City is known for being a very important/large banking center), downtown condos, construction, traffic, etc. The streets are narrower than most US cities but for the most part, a seemingly nice downtown. Now, let me not fool you lol, there were some dirty/dingy areas that I probably will not frequent alone or at night, but every city/town has areas such as those. What was funny though, Junior kept pointing out all these bars and talking about going out and drinking and I’m like dude…what kind of impression are you trying to make?! Later in the conversation it became apparent why he was doing that. In one of my previous emails to the HR rep I inquired about having a mentor or someone available to show us around the city and to some of the tourist areas to fully capture the city/country. From that question they took it to mean I was a party animal (never me ;-) and that’s all I would want to do. I quickly explained to Junior that was not the intent of my question but I was still happy to locate the city’s hot spots. Eventually we made it to the house where Yolanda (my roommate) and I will be staying. It is VERY NICE and I would not mind having a house like this of my own. There will be a future post with more information about the house along with pictures of it. After dropping off my luggage at the house we went back out (yes by now it’s about 11:30 p.m.) to the supermarket so I could buy a few items. Again the benefits of working at the Post allowed me to not pay taxes on my groceries and so my total was only like $35. Oh by the way, the currency here is US dollars so that is a huge benefit and that means my US bank account is open for transfers in case you wanted to donate funds to my experience down here lol. j/k. Anyways, I picked up some essentials and came back to the house. Dropped them off in the kitchen, led Junior to the door and then had the house to myself. Surprisingly I was not that tired even though I had been awake since 4 a.m. (after only 3.5 hours of sleep and not much sleep on the plane) so I roamed around the house exploring each room. However by like 1:15 I started to feel sleepy so I climbed into bed and was soon fast asleep.