whims

Epoch -- Panama --

It’s flooding in! I’m getting it. It’s becoming real. I AM GOING TO PANAMA! In two weeks I will be there. It had hit me briefly a few weeks ago as I was showering with the window open and the sun pouring in. I realized then that the seasons were changing and that warm intoxicating touch of the sun would be my happy sidekick for the coming months. That feeling inevitably left me, but now, in El Mundo coffee shop with my current wonderful sidekick, Stacey, reading about dengue fever and typology of water in the Dominican Republic, I just got it again, and this time I think the realization will stay.

It’ll be strange, this trip, so different from the last. I’m going with Canadians, Americans, and one guy from Nicaragua; (what will the Panamanians think when they see him strutting down the street with the four gringas?) not by myself, with my “I’m going to integrate” attitude. I’m living in an elite area, an old US military base, full of UN and international commerce types, right on the canal; not “the city of paper”, close to the airport, a place where my well-off acquaintances in Peru furrowed their brows at the mention of. I’ll be working for an institute, doing research with university-educated people; not in a boys’ home, full of boys from the street with pasts often cited as examples in textbooks of lives we hope no one ever has. I’m going with a university style understanding of “development” and will look at the politics and gender roles in a way dictated by academics and articles; not the un-read view of the world gained from UWC, World-Ex, and my wonderful hippie parents. I’m going with the mindset of a university student doing an internship for the summer: I see the end, I’m not going to think of Panama as my home. I want to learn how to surf. It’s as if the whole situation has turned on its head and I’m checking the opposite box in every category than I did when I went to Peru. But, I’m taking my Peruvian sweater and my now-Mexican Spanish and I’ll be contacting the UWC Panamanians upon arrival. It’s certainly all connected, all contributing to the same overarching goal – even though I’m not quite certain what that is.

Two weeks and counting. Very exciting.

posted by Marielly @ 6:08 PM