going to bed early tonight

Hi! 

Today was a very long day. This morning everyone rode the bus together so that we could get used to using our Metro Card and getting off on the right stop (to get from our homestay to UTP in the coming week). It was hilarious watching all 26 of us get onto a tiny city bus and hear the bus driver make fun of us in Spanish. The roads here are treacherous because every kind of drives by their own rules and honking is used to convey every emotion possible. The buses also don't run by a schedule and simply arrive at the stop swhen they arrive at the stops. 

After visiting UTP where we'll have our Spanish classes (it was a BEAUTIFUL campus literally in the middle of the jungle), we went to a nearby mall (the first mall in Panama) so a lot of people could get SIM cards. I happened to have an international plan, so I didn't need a SIM card. A few of us with plans walked around the mall and it was funny to see classic American stores. 

(maybe lost in translation??) 

We left the mall to go to the Cuidad de Saber (City of Knowledge) which is a government funded city that aims to be a sustainable as possible and has some of the best schools in Panama. We ate lunch in the open air food court area and saw a cute cat. 

Then in the same place we had our first class of the whole program and it was just learning how to set up camera traps. Tomorrow we're going to mangroves two hours away to set up all the camera traps so that we can go through the footage in two months. Hopefully we'll be able to catch some big animals like jaguars and tapirs. After the class some of us went to this HUGE department store in the city where we got muck boots for tomorrow (since a lot of us couldn't fit boots in our backpacks on the way here). 

The bus leaves at 7am tomorrow, so I need to go to bed.