On Saturday night, I was flossing and I noticed that my tonsils were very inflamed and that there were a lot of white spots in the back of my throat. I told Aly, and she told me I would have to go back to the city to make sure I didn't have an infection because if I did, then I couldn't go with everyone to the Comarca Guna Yala on Tuesday. Señor Carlos drove me back to Zuly's on Sunday night, and I've been here ever since. On Monday I went to the doctor and got antibiotics for tonsillitis and today, Aly told me that I can go to the Guna Yala on Friday. A five day stay on an island in one of the most beautiful places in Panama very quickly became a two day stay...
HOWEVER, the silver lining is that I'm not alone in the city... unfortunately, a girl named Isa also had to come back to the city because she's been having a lot of problems with her ears. So, for the past two days we've been hanging out and doing things around the city! On Monday night, after Aly told us we had to stay in the city, we were pretty upset and met in the neighborhood park to talk about it. When I was about to head back to my house, Zuly called and asked where I was and then ominously hung up. A minute later, she pulled up to the park and told us to get in. To cheer us up she took us to get pizza! Considering she feeds Kayley and I beets and squash every night, pizza was an astronomical upgrade.
I have missed the constant drone of dubbed Law and Order: SVU...I've been eating my desert and watching it with Bibi at night
On Tuesday Isa and I went to a temple at one of the highest points in the city. It was of the Baha'i' faith, which was very interesting to learn about. There's only six temples in the world, one on each continent (besides Antartica), and the faith preaches unity among people and religions. Although they have one service every Sunday, every religion is welcome to worship there. Since we walked 30 mins uphill with no shade to get to the temple, I assume we looked out of place as we rounded the corner to the beautiful gardens and huge temple. The entire area was silent and there were barely any people. Isa and I sat in the open air temple for around two hours..the silence was much needed.
Today, we went to Casco Viejo and went to a mola museum and a church museum. Molas are the patterns made by Guna women and their history is fascinating.
an extremely intricate mola depicting women making chicha (what women drink to celebrate a girl becoming a woman)
some of the molas!
an aerial view of the Baha'i' Temple
we saw a sloth walking for the first time?? someone else in the garden told us to come over and correctly assumed we were gringas so he said "monkey slow!"
Yesterday, I went to mass with Zuly and Bibi not realizing that it was going to last 3 hours. But I got to see Bibi in her element! She was the most popular person there!
I'm not sure what Isa and I are going to do tomorrow, but it's been nice having someone to spend time with that's in the same situation as me. Yet, to add insult to injury, everyone in the Comarca is about to start the talent show, an idea I had about a week ago. I even designed a flier and everything..
Portobelo was amazing. We stayed DIRECTLY on the ocean like in Bocas.
view from my room at sunset
I was in the yellow house on the second floor
Before I left, we had our fish unit with Prof Edgardo (the second Edgardo of this semester haha). The field work for this unit was somehow even LONGER than the forestry one. The first day we went out was pretty intense. We were doing field work in a plot that was far too shallow for snorkeling field work and 90% of the coral was fire coral 😬. Thankfully, no one got burned, but there were a few close calls because the current was pretty strong. We had to set up 50m transects and then conduct visual analyses down the transect. So, we had to count fish and then categorize the fish by shape. Which by they way, I need to have a talk with whoever decided the 12 basic shapes of fish. How are "Reddish/Big Eyes" and "Odd-Shaped Bottom-Dwellers" scientific ways to describe fish?? The second day, we went out twice and it was amazing! The coral was very diverse and there were some incredible fish. For our final project, instead of making a presentation we had to write a scientific paper.
my group was DYING at this picture we got of a fish staring directly at the camera
some of my group on the boat
one of the groups saw a pod of dolphins! this is the best screenshot I could find in the video haha
I'm so excited to finally make it to the Comarca Guna Yala on Friday and we'll be there in time to join the last two days of our coral reef unit! I hope everyone is doing well!!
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