Back in the States, Part III

Here I am, sitting at Best Coffee Shop Ever (hence forth referred to as BCSE), where I should be working on lots of things.... graduate school shit, Environmental Chemistry homework... but instead I'm blogging. Just for you!

Before I finish my blogger trilogy of Panama, I'm going to discuss the awesomeness that occurred last night. As CL already documented, there was some drunkenness going on. The night started with me, CL, Charles Shaw, and Brokeback Mountain. CL and I decided to have our own personal tribute to the dearly departed Heath Ledger this weekend. We rented our high school favorite, 10 Things I Hate About You, (watched on Thursday!) and our new favorite, Brokeback Mountain. I hadn't seen it until last night, but wow. That was a beautiful movie. I think we're going to watch it again today. CL only stuck around for the first half of it anyway, then she and MW went over to Local Pub to watch and band and engage in various shenanigans... leaving me alone with a 1/2 bottle of 2-buck Chuck and Heath Ledger. Ooh la la.

After finishing the bottle, I went over to Local Pub to meet up with the crew. Fortunately, the band playing was really popular, meaning a big crowd at the pub and lots of friends and fun. Incriminating pictures posted on facebook: check!

But back to what you came for: more pictures of Panama!

So, here we go. We arrived at Bocas del Toro, and immediately fell in love with it. It's fucking beautiful!!! We stayed on Isla Colon, in the province (or state? I'm not really sure) of Bocas del Toro, which is on the Caribbean side of Panama. We stayed at the Smithsonian field station there, and they took good care of us. It's on the inland side of the island, so the water was clear and calm and all of the shorelines are covered in mangrove trees. You can kind of see that in this picture, it's taken of the dock at the Smithsonian station:


While at Bocas, we went batting with a professor from Florida. We went to La Gruta, a bat cave and also a grotto to Mary (interesting combination, I know). The story goes that a woman was washing her clothes in the stream that comes out of the cave and saw an image of Mary. I say that it is pretty nasty to be washing clothes in a stream full of bat shit, but whatever. Anyway, the area there is absolutely beautiful, too.


And while we were there we saw some really awesome bugs! Stink bugs? Maybe? If anyone knows, speak up!


On the grounds of the station there's this little pond. In the pond lives a few caymans. Here's one of them! They're so cute. Aww.


Back to Gamboa... here's a shot of the rain forest from the back of our truck. Riding in the trucks through the rain forest felt a little bit too much like Jurassic Park... but it was really cool.


Then we went over to Barro Colorado Island. It's a whole island owned by the Smithsonian and used for research. So... it's pretty cool. We went on a hike through the rain forest there, and it was amazing. Even the ferry ride over was cool. We had to get there at some ungodly hour of the morning, but (bonus!) we got to see the sunrise over the Panama Canal. And that, my friends, is fucking awesome.


I had about a million and a half pictures of things I saw on the hike through Barro Colorado. Here's my favorite. That's a big spider!


So, that's all the awesome biology-licious photos I'm going to post. Then we saw the locks at the Panama Canal. Sure, it was cool, but whatever. Not as cool as huge-ass spiders and monkeys. Seriously. But here she is, in all her glory:


And that wraps up my Panama story. If you want anymore info, go on and e-mail me. Bottom line: it was amazing. Yes, you should go. No, you should not wait. Go on, get up and go! Before even more of the rain forest is cut down (cattle-ranching bastards).

love, allie

Good Day

Today was a good day.

To begin with, I dropped my most awful class: Physics. It's not really the physics that I had the problem with in this class... it was the professor. If he would just teach physics in the way physics was meant to be taught (with equations and numbers and whatnot) I would have no problem. However, he chose to teach it in the most convoluted way possible, all conceptual, no numbers, wtf. But it's ok now, I don't have to deal with that anymore. Unfortunately, my poor bf does. He was in that class with me... well, he is still in that class, I am not. Yay for me.

Then, to make my day even better, my dear daddy sent me flowers!


It was so funny, because he had them sent to my apartment, but of course I wasn't there. I never am during the day, so instead he had them sent to the coffee shop where I work... and where I am during every spare moment of my day. So of course I got them there. I walked in today and saw them on the back table, but I didn't even read the card because I had no idea they were for me. After I went back to my place, I got a call from LH, my friend who works there with me asking me why I didn't pick up my flowers when I came in. Cute.

Then, tomorrow there are no classes... so I'll have some time to get my life together a bit. I plan on working hard core on my grad school applications, something I've been slacking off on lately. In other good news, I got an email back from #1 choice school - that's encouraging!

Oh, and this weekend's shindig was a hit. Y tu mamá también was sexy, the sangria was strong, and life was good. Up for tonight: $2 pints at the pub! You should come!

love, allie

not-homework

blogging, a.k.a. not-homework, is what i will be working on for a while until i can put myself under enough stress to actually get something done. see, i tend to be pretty good at working under pressure... too good in fact. this leads to the problem of me putting myself under undue stress even to get small tasks accomplished. oh well, so goes college.

my productivity for the evening so far has been to drink a double espresso and make myself an over-optimistic to-do list. hopefully before the night is through something worthwhile gets done.

well, that's all for now, time to start thinking about maybe getting something done.

love, allie