afs david in boquete

Saturday and Sunday I was in Boquete with all the of exchange students in David. We drove up Saturday afternoon and spent the night inside the house. We ate tacos, french fries, and meat with bbq sauce and then watched 3 movies in a row. I didn't go to bed until 4:30 am and I'm still EXHUASTED :)

On Sunday we woke up early and ate a breakfast of maíz, hojaldra (which is fried bread), corn flakes, papaya and pineapple. We then drove through the mountains of Boquete. I can't even explain how beautiful it was. Boquete is has a chillier climate, and it was raining so we got completely soaked. It didn't even matter though, if anything it made our trip more fun. I rode in the back of a truck with Celene, Maike and Luca and we couldn't believe how beautiful everything was. Pictures can't even show how tropical everything is. It actually is a tropical rainforest, and I couldn't stop thinking this is so different from Massachusetts.

I was actually terrified standing on this bridge. It was pretty rackety, although it's made to hold cars.

We passed by so many different waterfalls

The sign for the Volcano in Panamá

This wall was so impressive. It was so incredibly large that I couldn't fit it into the whole picture but that little dot standing there is me. If you click on the picture it gets larger.

A really gross waterslide

Luca from Austria, Celine and Maike from Germany, and Nan from Thailand.

Nan from Thailand studying spanish. Haha we're always studying here! Such nerds.

Luca from Austria...I caught him off guard

Karen from Iceland and Twilight in Icelandic

Saori from Japan (who doesn't speak a word of english so we only talk in spanish), and Katia who's a volunteer from Panamá

smoking

I've posted three posts in one day but I have a lot to say. This one's short but I've noticed that everyone here smokes cigarettes. It's funny how in the United States I know very few people who smoke, and most of these people are older. Here almost every single kid does it. It's pretty much cancer central up here...or it will be in 10 years. Lucky for me I have asthma so whenever someone asks if I want a cigarette, I just tell them I have asthma. I don't want anything to do with those nasty smelling cancer sticks. I sometimes my nerdyness comes in handy :)

Parties

I went to my first party last Tuesday (haha thats right... it was on a school night). It was a birthday party that was beach themed. There was a fog machine and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I thought it made a cool picture.

A friend of my sister and me

My sisters friend, her boyfriend and me

My sister and me

And here are more pictures from my host dad's birthday party

My sister and my other sister's boyfriend dancing

my sister and my host dad, and my cousins boyfriend and my mom dancing

my host parents

my sister and me dancing

train coming through the house

and my mom and me dancing

Let me just warn you....I CANNOT DANCE, but I'm trying to learn. Haha que pena :)

update

I’m starting to really get accustomed to Panama. My spanish is coming slowly. I don’t speak it too much in school because so many people speak english but it is coming. I’ve started to use the subjuntive a lot. I still make 10293480239840293 mistakes daily, but I think it’s exciting that I’m starting to speak in the subjunctive without thinking too hard. I still need to ask people to speak slowly, but now they can speak to me at a slow but steady pase, instead of word by word snail pase.

Last week there was a thing called Expo at my school. Everyone had been preparing for a really long time. I was so

impressed by what everyone did. The people in the buisness classes built little stands and sold all kinds of different things. Silly bands, jewlery, candy, hamburgers, soda, nachos, smoothies and ice cream are just a few of the things that were sold. They actually built these like almost professional looking stands and a bunch of schools came and bought stuff. There was an english science room (which I mostly hung out in) that had all these posters and projects on the enviornment and global warming and a bunch of other rooms with other projects. People were dressed up in costumes and there was face painting and everyone seemed to have worked and worked and worked too pull this huge activity off. It lasted all week, so I didn’t h

ave classes and just came and mostly hung out (lucky me).

It was my dads birthday last sunday so we had a big party for him. My host mom cooked all kinds of AMAZING foods and I had the most delicious cake I’ve ever tasted in my life.

Amigas

A picture taken right before gym class. You can't see it but I haven't bought the gym uniform yet so I stand out. hahaha

a quick little story

Let me just say I am terrified of cockroaches. Honestly, who in the world isn't? Yesterday in school we were in the lab and not doing much (what else is new?) and my cousin who's in my class found a dead cockroach on the floor. He picked it up WITH HIS BARE HANDS and started chasing people around the classroom with it. All of the girls of course squealed and ran away, but I was clearly HORRIFIED by the nasty little insect. My cousin thought this was funny and kept on hiding and popping out with it in his hands and threatened to touch me with it. He was just kidding around, but I did not find it amusing. Supposedly there are deadly snakes, tarantulas and scorpions here. I've only seen the dead cockroach, and I'm praying I won't see anything else. Yuck yuck yuck.

Gorgona Beach

I completely forgot to take pictures at the beach. I was either in the water, playing soccer, or talking in a group with other exchange students and some volunteers about the program. We spent a LOT of time going over the rules (again) and talking about problems and how to deal with different situations. It got pretty boring at times, but then after we got to swim at the beach and in the pool. The waves were absolutely ENORMOUS and the first day I wouldn't even get in because I was that scared. I NEVER refuse swimming at the beach...so that shows you just how scary those waves were. On Tuesday I was a little more confident and jumped in :) The pictures below are ones I stole from other exchange students. The resort had a lot of palm trees, so a few friends and I collected some coconuts. We ran into a guy with a machete and asked him to chop them open and we drank coconut milk. Machetes are $3.50 in the supermarkets. Haha gotta love Panama...

Trip coming to Panama

One of my friends from the United States who's living here in Panama has a video blog. He pretty much had his camcorder attached to his hip while we were traveling from Miami to Panama and he put together a video. I just saw it yesterday and it made me crack up because I had forgotten that day and it felt like I was reliving it :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTaIDg_Tm3g&feature=autofb