Work and such

Liife in Panama has been anti-climactic this week compared to last (which is good!). I have been really bad about taking pictures and have nothing new visually for you to look at so just my words :p

Monday was an ordinary work day. Not much happened. When we got home I went to the DUNKIN DONUTS that I discovered almost NEXT DOOR!!! I got a large iced coffee and was blissful in my addiction but it made me miss home! Keith made spaghetti and meatballs for dinner which was yummy.

Tuesday was just another work day as well. Nothing to report. We asked our driver to stop at the grocery store on the way home from work. As I had told my parents before I left, we were told that traffic in Panama is pretty bad. According to google, we live 6 kilometers from our office and it should take 10 minutes to get there. Last week, our average was about 20 minutes to get to work and probably 45 minutes to get home. TODAY, it took us half an hour to get to work and wait for it... an hour and a half to get to the grocery store (which is right near our house... we have gone before after work and it usually takes 3 minutes by car...) so yea... we didn't get to the grocery store until 5:45. Splitting into two groups, the four of us are pro-shoppers and got everything on our grocery list and then some (like some extra beer for the beach, some fancy cheese and some wine!). We probably spent about 20 minutes actually shopping. Then we got a lovely taste of the good old Latin American culture which relies heavily on the term "manana", which literally translated means tomorrow but is used to mean later. Who wants to hazard a guess as to when we left the grocery store (arrival at 5:45, shopping for approximately 20 minutes). Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Well we finally walked out to the parking lot at about 6:30... yea... we stood in line longer than we shopped. It was a BALL! you should have been there :p The boys took about an extra 5 minutes with their cart because the lady in front of them paid with 4 $100 bills... and in Panama they need to ID you (preferably a passport), write down the serial number of each bill and have it authenticated by a manager and then collect your signature for any bill over a $20. So that was fun... We all got in the car and gave our driver an extra tip for stopping at the grocery store with us and we proceeded home. Remember how I said that its about a 3 minute car drive to the grocery store? And that is when you miss the lights. Its roughly half a mile from our apartment. Anyone wanna guess what time we got home? Sometime around 7:15... yea... so we kind of really really REALLY hate the Panamanian traffic... When we got home Cindy and I made Sloppy Joes and we watched the Celts vs The Heat game.

Wednesday was a slightly different day at work which was nice. We did our first of several field visits for our projects. Wednesday morning we went to Balboa (an area of Panama city) and got to see the chilled water plant that is used to provided chilled water to area buildings to run their air conditioning units. We saw the three water chillers that are at the plant and we got to see these cool units outside that are part of the process. It was pretty interesting but I forgot my camera that day... Sorry guys!!! I think Mario took some pictures (it was a site visit for his project after all) so when he posts them on Facebook I will hijack them and put them here for you all to enjoy. We had a pretty regular day at work after that. Our drive home from work was MISERABLEEEEEEEEEEE. After being in the car for an hour and a half we literally just told our driver to stop (which was challenging because we were in stop-and-stop traffic) and we got out and walked home. The entire last 3 km of our drive we can see our apartment. so once we were fairly close we decided we couldn't take it anymore and dared walking through the traffic across 9 lanes and walked the final quarter mile home. Mario made terriyaki chicken and fried rice for dinner which was FABULOUS and we all had several glasses of wine to drown our sorrows of traffic :p

On Thursday we had a quiet morning in the office. At 10 am Panamanian time, we had a conference call with our advisor from WPI, Professor El-Korchi, and with our sponsor Urho. We discussed our project scopes and how we were to move forward... It was a pretty short meeting, only about 30 minutes but it was productive. After that, we worked for another hour and then we got to leave work early! We then got dropped off at Hotel Riu Panama Plaza to have lunch with Fernando Motta, who is a WPI alumni. He also is a wine and spirits distributor throughout Panama. We went to a fancy lunch buffet. HOLY FOOD! I had cervice (is that how you even spell it???) and felt so fancy eating it on crackers! I had coconut crusted haddock fillet, a steak filet medallion, yuca fries, a delicious alfredo chicken pasta thing that was the most creamy yet not heavy alfredo sauce EVER. We didn't even have room for dessert. Then we had delicious coffee and he recommended places for us to go in Panama. From there, we walked home to our apartment. Then we went to the mall and bought some kinesiology tape, FINALLY found the grocery store that is there and got some snacks. Now I am writing to you and writing the background of my paper. We are going out tonight so I will write again tomorrow!

Caio for now!