Brigitte, my mentor, is an amazing person. She does not only give me a place to sleep. She also hooked me up with a SIM card so I have a mobile internet connection. That way I can now navigate around the city and cry for help on WhatsApp should I ever get lost. In order for me to get from A to B, she also helped me to get a card for public transport. You can charge it with money and insert it when entering the means of your choice so the cost gets withdrawn. $0.25 each ride, no matter how far you go. I wonder whether there’s one of these crackable RFID chips in this card. Of course, I will not look further into this matter without permission. 🙂
Brigitte’s mother was very supportive. She prepared really good meals and gave me a good first impression of what Panamanian food looks and tastes like. (People here deep-fry everything) – We also had some great conversations in English and Spanish. I’m slowly getting used to the language and start to recall some vocabulary from Duolingo and the university language courses. When Brigitte took me to a football match of her team and I met some of her friends, I noticed that I still have to learn a lot. The people here speak very quickly, shorten words, pronounce them differently (“The s is silent!”) and often they use words I have never come across so far. I will have to look for some Spanish courses here. After all, I also want to get to know the people here and make friends with others in their native language.
So far the weather has been amazing. But rain season is beginning. Yesterday there was a quick rain shower. The others say it wasn’t that bad, but I’m sure I’ve never seen rain this heavy before. The drops were pretty big and when they hit the metal roof of the house in the thousands, it sounded like a battery of drums. Just like the rain sound in Minecraft! With rain like this, there’s probably no use in buying an umbrella either. If it doesn’t break under the force of the rain, the drops hitting the ground will soak you from below.
plaintext 