Endless Shells

Turitellas

Today, for the first time this week, we made a journey out to the field! And let me tell you, it was hot as hell. We left early to avoid working into the late afternoon, when things really become sweltering, but even by 9:00 am I could feel the sun beating down on the back of my neck. We revisited the sites that we had struggled to find last week, to discover that we had been SO CLOSE! In most cases just a block or two off from the road that would take us to the outcrops. These sites, all of which belong to the Gatun Formation (late Miocene, maybe 10 million years old), were chucky-jam-full of these snail shells called Turitellas. Chucky-jam-full is a professional term (I swear, it's used in research papers!) that boils down to: we couldn't look at the rock without seeing these things. However, we were interested in vertebrate remains, which were much harder to come by. After scouring three sites for a total of nearly six hours, though, we did manage to find: shark teeth, otoliths (fish ear bones), ray combs (feeding parts), fish vertebrae, turtle carapace, and an entire auguti skeleton (extant, of course). So it was a pretty successful day, really, and it actually felt good to be out digging and sweating under the relentless Panamanian sun.

Fossilized plant material

Lab Week

Thus far, the week has been fairly uneventful so I was able to combine everything into a single post. Early in the week I worked on picking microfossils (as described earlier) until the light source for my microscope unexpectedly shut off. The coil in the bulb looked to be intact, but just to be certain I replaced it anyway, naturally to no avail. Something must have happened to the wiring, but I'm a bit afraid to open everything up since the unit is so expensive. Maybe I'll give it a shot next week, but for now my fossil picking is over. I tried using a variety of incandescent lamps as a temporary replacement, but the heat output of the bulbs bright enough to do the trick is just too great and will probably damage the microscope if I leave them on. So, I went back to the hunk of sandstone on my desk and once again started "hunting" for snails and mussels.

I also learned early in the week that the STRI work badge I finally received is not enough to get me onto the canal land. It looks like we're still waiting on separate badges from ACP (Autoridad de Canal Panama), which have been the real source of the hold-up as far as field work goes. Every time we get word that things should be going through shortly, we suddenly experience a complete breakdown in contact with ACP. Based on what I've heard from every last person I've talked to here, both inside and outside our department, this is just the way things are, so I'm just staying patient and keeping busy with lab work. They'd better come through soon though! As hot and miserable as it's likely to be, there are supposedly just tons of fossils to be found. I want to see!

Mid-week brought some interest interest to my life, though. First and foremost, at volleyball practice on Wednesday, I found out that I made the starting squad for Friday's games. I think we have a double header (the whole tournament system isn't really clear to me) and I'm surprised at how excited I am for it! I never really took much interest in volleyball, but it's turning out to be a lot of fun. I'm far from spectacular, but I'm tall, I can serve, and at the very least I can hit the ball up into the air (is that called setting?) for someone else to take care of. Plus, the STRI rules allow you to use your feet, which is second nature to me and works out well.

Then, at this week's Tupper Talk, I ran into someone I had met at the Geological Society Annual Meeting back in November. It was mind-shattering to realize that someone I knew (however little) was also down in Panama. Cassie is a grad student who studies grass pollen and so was interested in the goings-on of Stromberg Lab and came to some of our talks and dinners and such. Looking back on it, I do remember her saying she would be going to Panama as well, but until I saw her it had completely slipped my mind. She's living with four or five other students in some STRI apartments, so now I've basically doubled my number of potential Panama friends. Pretty sweet!

To top it all off, I discovered that Ehssan, a guy I've been going to school with since Madrona, is touring Costa Rica as the drummer for his band Incus. They're here through March, and at the very end of their tour they'll be performing at a huge music festival on the Costa Rica side of the Panama-Costa Rica border. I looked into my travel options, which boil down to renting a car or catching a charter, and I think I should be able to make the trip. I'll have no clue what I'm doing, since all I know is a small corner of Panama City, so I'm really hoping I can convince one of my roommates to come with me. It seems like way to crazy of a coincidence to pass up!

A small frog I found on the stairs leading to the labs

Musicalion

The set-up

This weekend was all about Musicalion, an arts, music, and dance festival in Panama City's version of Central Park, called Omar Torrijos Recreational Park. Best of all, it was completely free! On Saturday, I drove out with some of the roommates at around 6:00 pm for a night of Panamanian folk music and dancing. We parked at the edge of the park, at right around dusk, which made for an insanely cool entrance to the event. We had to walk quite a way to get to the amphitheater where everything was going on. Omar Torrijos is virtually unlit, and so we were weaving between empty gazebos and parks buildings, following the growing sounds of music and feeling the rumble of the speakers stronger and stronger on our feet. It felt like I was in a movie or something, heading to some underground party. Then, upon cresting a hill, the illuminated stage burst into view. Quite the sight to behold.


There had to have been at least a thousand people there. All arranged in concentric arcs, spreading out onto the increasingly steepening hillside surrounding the stage. We found a spot in the grass off to one side, but fairly close up. The performances went on for a couple of hours, most of them involving women in long, flowing dresses with huge skirts and men dressed like sailors. I most enjoyed the dances with only one or two performers; I had a hard time following what everyone was doing in the larger groups. For the most part the music was pre-recorded, but towards the end of the night, two extremely talented kids, maybe 12 years old, sang to live guitar and blew me away. The vocal range each of them had for the song was unbelievable! Easily my favorite performance of the night. Short video included, of course.

Sunday night, the closing night of the festival, was the main event and there were easily twice as many people in the audience as there had been the night before. The headliner of the night was Ricardo Velasquez, who, coincidentally, is our neighbor from across the street. Pretty much every evening we can hear him practicing. The first few times I heard his voice I assumed someone had a stereo going! He's that good. Ricardo is an up-and-coming baritone and actually pretty famous here in Panama. The audience was going nuts for him - screaming and hooting and everything! This time, only Carson (one of the grad students) and I wanted to go, but we also picked up one of her friends from STRI. Oh, and we brought Tosca too, Ricardo's pet Jack Russell (appropriately named after an opera). Carson had offered to dog-sit for the day since Ricardo would be out preparing for the event. It was a very weird experience seeing so many people go crazy for this singer and having his dog sitting in my lap for half the night. Felt like we would get overrun if the crowd found out!

Tosca taking a nap in the middle of the performance!
I guess she gets to hear it all the time

I was more in to the performances on Sunday than those on Saturday, mostly because of the shift towards more live music. In addition to Ricardo, there was a Mariachi, a small orchestra, and Ricardo's uncle (he also seemed to be somewhat famous). Everyone was spot-on and even though none of it was any style of music that I really listen to, I was very impressed and thoroughly enjoyed myself. My only regret for the weekend was not bringing any food or drink to the festival. What was I thinking?! Supposedly there were vendors selling snacks and beers but somehow they managed to evade me.

This is my first time trying out the videos here, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll work!

Caribbean Beaches

What a day! Early in the morning we met with Carlos at STRI, hopped in a Smithsonian truck, and headed for the Caribbean side of Panama. I knew that today we would be working at a beachfront site, but I never would have guessed just how jaw-dropping of an experience it would prove to be. The drive was long: through one of Panama's national forests, up a big stretch of highway, across the Gatun locks, through the gorgeous towns of Achiote and Pina, then down onto the waterfront.

Literally working in the ocean!

Even before the water came into sight, the views were spectacular. The houses there (and probably throughout much of Panama) are built entirely of cinder blocks, occasionally with rebar, then plastered over and painted fantastic colors. Vibrant reds, greens, yellows, pinks, and every other bright color imaginable line the streets and stand out against the hillsides. Add to that some towering palms, endless ocean, and gently rolling waves and you have one hell of a place to spend the day working. And we were not merely working next to this beautiful scene - we were on the front lines. What makes this locality so interesting, is that continuous wave action and large tidal swings slowly eat away at the solid rock along the shore, exposing numerous impressive fossils and then receding back far enough to allow us to extract them. Carlos actually visits this place every few months and is constantly finding newly exposed fossils. So from about 11:00 am to 4:00 pm we were out in ankle-deep water with rock hammers, chisels, and a pickaxe, pulling out anything we could find. Words seriously aren't enough. It was the one of the most incredible things I've ever done as a geologist.

Note the start of a trench being dug out around the fin

The rock we were extracting from is known as the Cucaracha Formation and dates to the Miocene (~3-23 million years old), but I don't know the exact age it spans. There were more than enough fossils to go around; by the end of the day we had collected several whale and dolphin teeth, a few vertebrae from a large fish, a wonderfully preserved dorsal fin, and a skull. Other than the teeth, most specimens were not fully removed from the encasing rock and we had to carry large slabs back to the truck. This was done so as not to damage the fossils and lose material - it's much easier and safer to remove the fossil back in the lab. Since they were left in the rock, it was difficult to precisely identify what animals were represented by these fossils, but even so Aaron and Carlos were able to throw out some pretty quick and confident guesses. We were lucky in that there was plenty of drift material, including an old pallet  on the beach that we could use to help us get everything back to the truck. The driftwood also made great levers for hoisting the slabs out of the ground. It was an incredibly productive trip and by the end of it I hardly had the energy to use my rock hammer and chisel - I thought my arm was going to fall off!

To my dismay (only initially), when we got back to STRI, Aaron told all of us that we had 30 minutes until our volleyball game started. Apparently, STRI does a tournament every semester, with every department having a team, and we were on the Paleontology/Geology team. So I ran to the apartment, rinsed out my salty and sandy field clothes, and headed back to the main STRI campus, Tupper, with Aaron and Sam for our game. (Fun side story: The Tupper center is named for the man who invented Tupperware. He donated a large sum of money for its construction and his family visits regularly. How bizarre.) The games are played on the parking lot blacktop , which was overflowing with people when we arrived. I'm not sure how many total teams there are, but judging from the number of different jerseys I saw, I would guess maybe 6-8. Off to the side was a truck that sells beers and sodas for a buck and grilled meat-on-a-stick for half that. Almost immediately it was clear that this was as much a social event as a sporting event. We spotted our team in one corner of the lot and they informed us that this was a bye week for us, so we were only going to be practicing once the games were over. Thank God. From the 30 seconds of play I had seen, I could already tell I was in over my head. These guys were good. All of them. And no one held back with the trash talk. During our PRACTICE game against one of the other teams, our coach (yes, we have a coach for this "informal" tournament) mocked Aaron for faulting his first serve. It was intense. Sam and I were lucky enough to be two of the taller players on our team, which seemed to give us default credibility. Once we got into the groove of the game, it became more fun and layed back and I actually ended up having a lot of fun. But we got destroyed. Three games, all lost by a dozen points or more. Hopefully some magic will happen for next week's game.

Maiden Voyage

Today was the first day in the field! Sadly, it ended up being cut short by our inability to find one of the sites and a road block prohibiting us from getting to another. Still, we got to spend some time at one site picking through a rubble pile of broken-up Cucaracha Formation...and basically found nothing. There were endless invertebrate remains, but those have already been so thoroughly described that we had no interest in collecting any more. As far as vertebrates go, plenty of shattered turtle carapace was found, as well as some partial dugong ribs, but nothing was complete enough or could be pieced together to give us something diagnostic. Okay, maybe it wasn't the most auspicious of introductions to the field, but I'm hopeful that future trips will go better.

My new favorite Mini-Mart

Coolest pool hall in existence, but must have been ahead of its time

Lazy iguana sleeping outside STRI

I didn't think to take any pictures while we were out (the site was basically just an abandoned construction zone) so instead here are some from earlier in the trip!

Paper Mache

Yesterday, in perhaps one of my most shameful moments as a geologist, my art & crafty side got the best of me. I regret nothing and refuse to look back. We began the day by helping one of the STRI employees, Carlos, prepare to flip over three huge slabs of rock to help in the extraction of a near-complete sailfish. The process, as I learned, involves filling any grooves/holes in the exposed fossil surface with tissue paper and padding everything with more tissue paper, covering the entire surface with plastic wrap, topping it with a layer of cotton padding and felt, and applying liberal amounts of plaster. Each rock slab got a base coat of pure plaster and was then wrapped in five to seven layers of plaster bandages, depending on the size of the slab. We had just begun the plastering part of this endeavor when Aaron announced that we had to go to the field immediately  because a particular construction site had exposed a very good contact between rock formations and they were not going to wait long before wiping it out and paving over it. We had the choice to stay behind at STRI if we wanted, and after seeing the downtrodden look on Carlos' face at loosing all of his laborers, I decided I couldn't abandon him! Plus the plaster work was a TON of fun! It ended up being a pretty good decision, really, since it turned into a great opportunity to work on my Spanish. Two student volunteers from the University of Panama, Eduardo and Sara, showed up later in the day to help out, so between the three Panamanians present I had plenty of opportunities to listen and talk. Staying behind also enabled me to go to the weekly seminar in our building, a talk on using fossil reef systems to determine what is likely to happen to modern reefs in the face of global climate change and human pressures. Prospects aren't great.

All wrapped up! It'll take a few days to fully dry

Getting Closer!

Micro fossil setup

Tooth in the center

Today was a fantastic day as far as paleontology goes! First, in the morning, I was introduced to one of the tasks I'll be doing throughout my time here: picking micro fossils! The process is simple enough in principal; I have a bag of sediment and a microscope, and one petri dish's worth at a time I look through the grains and pick out any of the fossil material. But wait, 99% of the time I won't be finding entire bones or teeth, I'll just be finding fragments. And since these are fossils, their color is remarkably similar to many of the rock grains also present in the mix. It felt a bit like I was starting phytolith identification all over from square one. But it turned out that there are a couple of key features to keep an eye out for that help you separate the fossils from the rocks. Mostly, it's about the texture and the way the surface reflects light. If the pieces are large enough, then shape is also an obvious indicator. Within a few hours I felt confident that I wouldn't be leaving anything behind, but it's still going to be a while before I have any clue what animals are represented by the pieces I'm pulling out.

Things got even better in the afternoon when the interns finally got our work badges that we'll be using to enter the canal area. It took a while walking around between departments with Liliana (she works in our building and handles the logistics of our work, from what I've gathered), but in the end we were photographed and IDs were handed out. Sadly, it will still be another few days before we get started on field work because Aaron is having extra issues with his badge. Apparently someone in STRI ended his fellowship status prematurely, so he has to go through a whole other set of steps to fix that before he'll be given access. We've made some tentative plans, though, for going to non-canal sites on Thursday and Friday, so regardless of what happens we'll be able to work.

Gratuitous monkey photo

Exploring the Neighborhood

Yesterday I did a ton of walking, perhaps in part to make up for sitting around so much over the weekend. At around noon (a terrible time to choose to leave the house), Nicole, Sam, and I headed out for Casco Viejo, an old part of town that juts out into a tidal flat on the west side of Panama City. We had gone through briefly once before with Pedro, but wanted to spend more time there checking out the old churches and architecture. The path from Ancon to Casco includes this wonderful street called Cinco de Mayo, which is lined with knock-off clothing stores, cellphone shops, and food counters, and filled with mobile food carts selling coconut water and shaved ice to all the poor saps caught out in the heat. I will definitely be spending more time there in the months to come looking for fake soccer jerseys.

One of many buildings in progress

Casco Viejo itself ended up being a bit of a disappointment, though. It was promising at first, as we were able to walk through La Iglesia de la Merced and a map Nicole had showed a number of plazas and parks. Unfortunately, we soon found out that there were active construction projects in virtually every part of the neighborhood, leaving only a narrow corridor through which anything could really be seen. There were a few opportune places for taking pictures without scaffolding obscuring everything, but most were skeletal buildings in wait for the next phase of construction. Which in and of itself actually turned out to be pretty cool to see. There was also a nice path around the shoreline that was still open, and from this path we saw an ambitious project underway by the Panamanian government. A huge section of tidal flats around the perimeter of Casco Viejo are being enclosed and converted into new land for condominiums and hotels. I guess when you have a near-endless supply of dirt and sand from canal expansion you find uses for it. The fact that Panama City is at risk for tidal waves doesn't seem to deter the expansion of at-or-below-sea-level land area.

The afternoon did have an incredible high point, despite the extent to which our wandering had been limited -- we went to an ice cream shop that is recognized by many (including Forbes, apparently) to be Panama's best and one of the top 50 in the world. Let me tell you, after eating there I have no doubts about the title. Their coconut flavor was one of the most incredible things I've ever eaten.

View from the hill

With hardly a minute's hesitation after returning from Casco (a 3 or 4 hour excursion), we met up with Pedro and Aaron to go for a walk up to the top of Ancon Hill, one of the highest points in the city at a whopping six-or-seven hundred-something feet. It's also a nature preserve and gives an incredible view of the city below. There's probably more to see if you head up early in the morning, but all that crossed our path were a few geckos, some agoutis, and a toucan from REALLY far away. Oh, and the vultures. So so many vultures! As we were climbing up, I could see them circling ominously overhead in huge groups. There were easily a hundred of them! And on the way back down they had settled down into the trees and stared at us equally ominously as we passed by. Fortunately, all of us made it back home by sundown without being torn apart by scavengers.

First Weekend

The weekend was very relaxed and I spent most of it at and around the apartment. Saturday morning, I went with Nicole and Sam to Panama Viejo, one of the earliest European settlements in Panama, and apparently also one of the colonial cities sacked by none other than Captain Morgan and his pirates. What is left of the town stretches across a two-mile corridor along the Pacific Ocean. There are a few low-lying structures that still stand how they were originally set, but most of the buildings have been reconstructed and reinforced over the past few decades. It was cool to see the old architecture and building styles, but after the walking through an old monastery at about the halfway point, it began to feel pretty repetitive. It don't think it helped that we went during the hottest part of the day - it had to have reached at least 95 F. Despite my half-assed efforts to reapply sunscreen, I also managed to burn a decent proportion of my body, though it isn't turning out to be too awful. One of the most enjoyable parts of the trip, really, was flagging down taxis for the ride there and back, negotiating prices, giving directions, and doing my best to hold a conversation. I'm still at the point where my brain doesn't seem ready to understand Spanish the first time I hear it, but once I fall into the rhythm I can do a decent job keeping up with everything.

The big event Sunday was cleaning up the apartment, which gets insanely dirty in no time flat. As I mentioned a few days back, there are construction projects going on all over the place and they stir up a ton of dust. On top of that, diesel engines go roaring through this neighborhood at all hours and in the few days that I've been here I've seen at least have a dozen trash fires. All of the resulting debris in the air comes right in through our window screens (our windows are ALWAYS open) and settles down on everything. In fact, looking from the dining table to my room, I can already see my footprints in the fine dust on our floor that Pedro just mopped yesterday. If we were to skip one of our weekly cleanings, this place would probably look like no one had lived in it for a year.

Other than a quick trip to the nearest Mini Super, I did my best to spend the day in the shade to give my sunburn a break. I'm really hoping that by the time we get going with field work it'll be mostly cleared up!

Tools of the trade

I promise that geology/paleontology posts will be coming eventually so stay tuned! Rumor has it the work permits will come through midweek, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for earlier! I can tell you that we've seen some cool specimens in the lab basement, so there's a chance I'll be finding neat stuff once we finally get out to the canal. Possibilities include sailfish (they have an incredible looking complete one) and dugongs (basically a manatee - they have a decent number of ribs and vertebrae). I've also had the chance to work on extraction of gastropods and mollusks from a football-sized chunk of sandstone. It's hard, painfully slow work! Using an illuminated magnifying glass and a small pick, I chip away at the rock (sometimes grain by grain) and far too frequently the shell will crack in the process. I started by practicing with shells that were already clearly in bad shape, and have since moved on and extracted a few without too much damage. There's one good looking mussel that's been staring at me in defiance, but at this point I'm still too intimidated to challenge it!

Animals Galore

I've been all over the place since since Thursday, so there is plenty for me to write about. On Friday we did a half-day in the lab and in the afternoon went to a Smithsonian nature preserve called Punta Culebra. The park is located on a small island (less than a mile square) that has been connected to the mainland and to a few other islands by a man-made causeway. The majority of the land is just forest trails with signs pointing out different wildlife that you can expect to see if you have the eye for it. I certainly did not have the eye, but fortunately everyone else was able to guide my sight in the right direction.

Un perizoso en un arbol

We saw a whole array of different birds and at least five or six iguanas, all of which were fairly high up in the trees. There were also two sloth sightings in some of the lower branches, which was very cool. And I learned that the Spanish word for sloth is "perizoso" (translates to lazy), which I thought was really funny! Those animals definitely live up to the name. They use their claws to hang from branches, but the two we saw did so in such a way that their bodies were supported by a mat of leaves and intertwined limbs from below. It's seriously the most half-assed form of hanging I've ever seen!

At the end of the island there were a series of pools with fish, anemonies, seastars, etc., and one tiny little manta ray. It was adorable and just constantly swam around its tank in large arcs, sometimes splashing a fin out of the water. I said swim, but it looks much more like gliding - those guys can really cruise! One of the last tanks we looked in had a sea turtle, which, right when we got there, started tearing into a fish head for its lunch. For just a second it felt like I was at home feeding Guenevere!

"Noriega's Bar"

Apparently the whole island used to be some kind of military base, and at the very end there is a building that used to be an army bar which has been converted into an aquarium. But if you look behind the tanks you can still see the bar and the back room!

We rounded off the week by going to dinner at a place called La Rana Dorada, which turned out to be an Irish-style pub! The food choices left something to be desired for a vegetarian (soooo many garlic fries...) but it was very comforting to discover that micro brew exists in Panama. The beer carried by grocery stores and mini supers in this city is dominated by Hamm's and an awfully thin lager called Cerveza Panama, which Aaron assures me gets very old very fast. There's another place in town that makes their own brew, so I'm sure we'll be making a trip there before too long.

Job Description

It occurred to me that I haven't covered exactly what it is I'm doing here. In general terms, I am working as an intern for the Panama Canal Project (http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/panama-pire/) through the University of Florida and the Smithsonian. There are a number of collaborators, both American and Panamanian, who have research projects currently underway and up until I arrived here I was not entirely sure who I would be working with or how many people would be in Panama simultaneously. I have since learned that I will be acting as an assistant to Aaron Wood, the post-doc I'm living with, and that we'll be extracting fossils from both terrestrial and marine formations (rock units) that date back to the Miocene (about 23 - 5.3 million years ago). From a brief introduction to the fossil database, it looks like most of what we'll be finding are teeth and bone fragments from camels, crocodiles, turtles, and fish, along with a whole bunch of snails and bivalves. There still hasn't been a final word on our work permits, but once things get going I'll be sure to keep a running list (with photos, of course) of the different animals we find. I've been told that the odds of finding any fossil plants are low, but I'm keeping my hopes up!

Our lab workspace in STRI

Early Impressions

Downtown Panama City as seen from Casco Viejo (old town)

The last few days have basically just been spent running errands, adjusting to the move, and learning about the work we can expect to be doing in the STRI labs. There is some paperwork that has to go through multiple levels (supposedly a common theme in Panama) before we can get our work badges and permits for fossil extraction in the canal zone. So thus far things have been pretty slow and relaxing and will probably continue this way until early next week.

Yesterday involved a lot of running around and interacting with people who knew hardly a word of English, which made it painfully obvious just how rusty my Spanish is. Simple things like checking out at the grocery store proved near impossible when I was left alone and faced with the soft-spoken, s-less Panamanian accent. Adding to the difficulty were the all too common plexiglass windows between customer and cashier that, to me, seemed to block all noise. I do think (or maybe just hope) that at least some of the difficulty is a result of both my own timidity with the language and how new this experience is for me, so we'll see if there's any improvement in the coming weeks.

Our apartment building

Being out and about also drove home just how hot it is here. The dry season just started, which is supposed to be much nicer than the wet season, but it still only takes a few minutes out in the sun before I'm seriously craving a glass of water. We have a couple of ceiling fans in the apartment, along with some stand-ups, and the building is designed with tons of windows and open panels between rooms, so air circulates pretty well. Even so, it's not until about 11:00 pm that things are really cool enough for me to be comfortable. Aaron and Pedro say they actually get cold in bed at night, but I feel like I'm just barely below being to warm. It helps to take a cool shower before going to bed to drop down my temperature a bit, so it's probably for the best that we don't have any hot water in the unit to tempt me.

An extremely rough map is starting to form in my head of the area between and around the lab and our apartments, but it's been much harder for me than it usually is since, as far as I've seen, there isn't a straight road in the entire city. Most of the streets aren't labeled (and no one knows the names of those that are, anyway) and just keep winding from one neighborhood to the next. Intersections are crazy when these roads meet and signals/stop signs are usually absent or ignored. There's also a bunch of rerouting do to reconstruction on almost every major road. I heard from Pedro that Panama City is one of the fastest growing areas in Central America and urban planning and infrastructure are struggling to keep up. Huge highways, a subway system, and more renovations than you can imagine are all underway but still incomplete. As a pedestrian I have to be wary, whether or not I'm in a crosswalk, and play a lot of frogger to get from one side of the road to the other.

Much to my excitement, there have been a couple wildlife sightings! Granted, they were city animals that locals wouldn't give a second look, but to me they were new and exotic. Pretty much everywhere you look, especially in the evenings, you can see agoutis, these medium-sized tailless rodents. They're seriously as ubiquitous as squirrels in the U.S. And there are all kinds of birds, though I don't stand a chance of identifying any but the most obvious. So far I've heard a couple parrots but haven't seen any. Toucans, monkeys, and sloths are rumored to lurk in the trees behind STRI so I'll be keeping my eyes out. Last, but not least, there are several mango trees and one papaya tree surrounding our apartments! If that's not exciting wildlife, I don't know what is! The papaya doesn't look so hot, but the mangoes are supposed to be at peak ripeness right around the beginning of May, so I can't wait for that. So many of them fall down into our yard that strangers from who knows where will take taxis up to our place in the middle of the day to fill bag after bag with fruit.

Pictures to come, but I'm still figuring out this whole blog thing (plus anew camera) so it may take some time :) [UPDATE: PICTURES ADDED!]

Day One

Hard to believe just how quickly the first day swept by. I was fortunate enough to be able to sleep during the hours of travel, which certainly helped. Some of my luck from flying to GSA carried over and on both the SMF-HOU and the HOU-PYT flights there were empty seats in my row! This was a complete game changer for the first leg of the trip, saving me from sitting in the center seat on a 6:00 am flight. And even though I had an aisle seat for my connection, it still ended up pretty close to disaster because I was in row 36 on the right-hand side -- directly to my left and right behind me were seats up against the wall with no hope of reclining. Despite the sleeping and the time change advantage, when I got to our lodging at around 10:00 pm local time, I was beat. We went over introductions and basic information briefly and as soon as I had the chance, I went straight to bed.

Much more went on than just travel, though! For one, I met some exceptionally nice people who shared my luck with the empty seats. Coming into Houston I sat by a man (can't remember his name!) who was on his way to Tulsa for a week to visit his family and watch his grandson compete in some wrestling matches. After hearing about how his son had come just short of winning Nationals, I understood that this was no in-for-the-fun-of-it type event. Even though I hardly gave him a waking moment to chat me up, he was still remarkably successful at coming across as a really great guy. On the flight to Panama I sat with Gary, a U.S. citizen who has been living in Panama for a year as CEO of a start-up seafood shipping company. He had tons of information about the places I should visit when I have time and gave me his email address in case I had any questions. My sense of Panama geography is God-awful, so I hope I can actually make it out to some of those locations with only two days off at a time.

The bedroom (top bunk for me)

I also got to meet Sam and Nicole (the other new interns) during the layover in Houston, though we ended up being somewhat separated on the flight. Still, it made customs much less stressful to have some faces I knew to look at in confusion, and we all came in handy for each other when we found out that we were missing a form and had to go searching for help. The people at STRI (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institue) arranged a ride for us, along with a returning intern, Pedro, who had taken a separate flight from Los Angeles. Two cabs delivered us and our luggage to an apartment in Ancon, Panama City (yes, CITY), and to my delight this turned out to be where we will be staying for the next four months. Our supervisor, Aaron, and a graduate student, Carson, met us at the front door and took us up to our apartments on the second floor. We have three people in each two-bedroom unit, with Pedro and I sharing a bunk bed. It's unbelievably spacious, albeit with a small kitchen, and far surpassed the research station image I had formed in my head.

Bedrooms to the left, kitchen to the right

As much as anything I'm excited to see how this whole trip pans out in relation to my expectations because so far there have been surprises around every corner. Most of the information I received was pretty general and things could really go in any number of directions.