Panama

Ok another long drought without writing, but at my sister's request, I'll write an update on what's going on. My new apartment is a beautiful house in Guilford. I've lived there the past month. I like my landlord and her family a lot. The other tenant is a real sweetheart too. As usual, I have to nick pick the negative things though. Classic Christine. Ok, so the kitchen is super cluttered and there's no room in the fridge, so i haven't cooked anything substantial the whole time I was there. I'll have to wait until Chicago to really experiment again.

Three weeks ago was my Random Walk trip to Panama. What a life changing experience, and I'm not exaggerrating. I was a little nervous because of the bugs and the exercise. Well, it was that and a lot worse, but I think i'm a better person for it. When we first got to Panama, we did the classic touristy visit to the Canal and went clubbing in Panama City. The next day we flew to David, and I went whitewater rafting for the first time. I was one of two people not to fall out of the raft! But i did jump out a couple times to swim around the raft. I'm still really nervous in the water though, i need to practice swimming. Then we did our three day hike, which was horrible. The terrain was mountainous and muddy, and even after all my training, my knees weren't prepared for the stress. The first day we hiked for 11 hours, the second day was 6 hours, and the last day was 12! One of the first year girls really lost it and cried a lot. On the 3rd day, my knees were in such bad shape that the guides hired a horse for me to ride, which was fun for the first 10 minutes and then it hurt my ass. I loved the first horse I rode. Very well behaved and stepped very carefully. I petted it a lot and named it Ginfess after the horse from Belgium. The guides then decided that they wanted my horse to carry the gear because it was so well behaved, so I got on another horse. The new horse was an awful creature. I named it Chucha (pussy in Spanish) because it was very unsteady on its feet. Also, everytime we reached the river (about 50 times the last day), it was too scared to go in the water. Jose, who was guiding the horse, had to curse it and tug at the rope. The horse wouldn't budge at first, then it took a shit before finally venturing into the water. It also stopped a lot to eat the plants. I considered naming it Fatty, but I thought Chucha was more appropriate. Then to make matters worse, the horse walked me into barbed wire, which cut up my arms really badly. I definitely wouldn't have gotten through the hike without the other trip leaders, especially Josh who took really good care of me. After I got bandaged up, he came up with the story that I cut my arms wrestling with a puma. You think I had it bad, you should see the puma. Anyway, the other trip leaders kept telling me that real camping isn't like what we did, so now I really want to go real camping. A really cool thing about doing the hike was that we got to see real Panamians, people who weren't accustomed to tourists. I saw the genuine way that they lived, and they were excited to see me, the La China. I guess they don't see many asians in those parts. Anyway, after the hellish hike, we headed to Bocas del Toro, a Carribean paradise. We definitely appreciated it more after what we went through, and the group ended up being really tight. After getting back to Chicago, the 1st years have been hanging out together a lot. I think when you're that miserable, there's nothing you can do but stick together.