Living Conditions

We arrived at the Panama airport and it was nothing what I expected it to look like. There were skyscrapers everywhere, it felt like I was in Chicago. As soon as we found our group and did the awkward first introductions we were quickly shipped from this metropolitan city three hours east to one of the poorest parts of the country. We arrived at our "hotel" and I knew that in for a long 10 days ahead of me. (I took these photos at night the last day before we left so they are a little dark).



A picture from the back of the building which was completely open up the rain forest behind us. You can see us playing with one of the balloons that we handled out to the kids during the clinic days.



The stairs up to our bedroom on the right.



This was our "bedroom." It was just concrete walls with bug nets around the windows and doors which were definitely needed since we were basically in the middle of the rain forest. My bunk was the one in front on the left. Becca (the other student from SLU and also my good friend) was nice enough to let me have the one on top. That didn't really stop numerous bugs from crawling up to say hi to me though.



Our friends at night... from the left Christine (Creighton), Julia (Loyola), Ginny (Loyola), and Dr. Michelfelder (Loyola) who did acupuncture to us at night so we could fall asleep better (it actually really helped!



Bathroom sink. You couldn't drink the water so if you wanted to brush your teeth you had to use a water bottle filled up with bottled water from downstairs. We also had to be resourceful with flushing the toilets if you can figure out what that means. There was no hot water in the shower and you could only turn on the water after you had soaped up and were ready to rinse off, which actually wasn't a problem because it was sooooo cold anyway!



Kitchen where they cooked us traditional Panamanian food... lots of mangos and pineapple and coconut which was really fresh.