Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Back to the Technological World


So after leaving panama city on friday we made the journey to Sanata Catalina panama.  by way of two buses we made it to a small town of 200 people.  this is a surf town the way people dream of them.  there are no banks, no cell signal, no internet.  there is one street and about 20 gringos.  our hotel was a the very top of a hill and called sol y mar.  the view from our blaconey was spectacular.  nothing but tops of trees and the ocean.
there we stayed for four nights doing nothing but laying on a super secluded beach with only the crabs and thecoconut trees as our company.  The main mode of transportation was horseback for the locals, although the breakfast place owner was from morton grove!!!
for ms phillip's birthday the chef of sol y mar cooked up some food better than any place i've eaten the chef also serves as a manny to the owner of the hotel's daughter. 
our departure out of santa catalina was very fitting we rode on a bus with about 20 school children and were stuck in a cow jam for a couple of minutes. 
santa catalina is a slice of heaven and i am telling way too many people about it in this email.
Today we arrived in David and tomorrow were off to Bouqutte for some tree top adventures.  We did meet up with laura today at the hostel in david  we are now 8 for one night
it is raining way more cats and dogs

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Teachers take Panama


ey guys left chicago on June 23rd and flew to Panama City, Panama.  There are seven women with me.  All who teach at uplift except Gabrielle who once worked there and mel who is a pt.
we arrived in panama at 7 at night in the pitch black there is not as much light pollution as chi so we were not used to the darkness.  all the stores were closed in the area where our hostel was so we set out down the street to find food.  we ended up at the euro cafe that was the only place open in our neighborhood.  then back to our hostel which looked really shabby compared to the fancy euro diner!!! but it has air so that is sweet in fact it was cooler here than in the chi.
on wed we journeyed to the old town square where they declared independence from Columbia and we saw a church that had a massive gold alter that the priest painted black to prevent captin morgan from stealing it.  the priest then convinced cap tin Morgan that he owed him money from his pirates stealing the alter.  the priest swindled captin morgan, does that make him a sinner? 
we also visited a cafe but it turned out to be a student center it was as if a bunch of foreign chicks rolled up into the holmes student center!! 
today we saw the ruins from the town that captin morgan burned down.    our hostel is full of characters one dude who was on his third Guinness when i got up for breakfast at 8!!
well tomorrow we journey on a super colorful school bus for 5 hours to the beach town of santa catalina