Sutton and Josey: Spanish Language Immersion in Panama

  Trabajando duro en la escuela Working hard at school ¡Posando en uno de los muchos miradores panorámicos! Posing at one of the many scenic lookouts Una familia de tortugas haciéndose pasar por estatuas A family of turtles acting like statues Vimos un coati! We spotted a coati! Piernas Ardiendo y Corazones Bombeando  Legs burning and hearts pumping Niñas de la naturaleza Nature girls

  El Centro Commercial Albrook Albrook Mall Con los kanguros! With the kangaroos! Nuestro langostino amigos Our lobster friends           Las Mujeres en Panama hacen historia The women in Panama make history Ceviche de Camarones Shrimp Ceviche

This morning, we went back to the regular school day routine: waking up at seven, enjoying a gourmet Josey breakfast, walking to school, and taking our four-hour spanish classes. This morning, though, instead of Josey flying solo, she was joined by her amiga mejor. Upon arriving at the school, we were given a brief tour and were introduced to our new classmate, Lisa, and new teacher, Jose Javiar (aka JJ aka Jota Jota). Lisa is from the Netherlands and was quite intimidating considering she already speaks English, Dutch, French, and Spanish quite well, but she was also very nice. JJ was also very friendly and nice, but Sutton was a little sad she never got to be blessed by Héctors presence.  To start our class we watched a short video about a wishing well to practice our basic conjugations in present tense. This was mostly review and only had a few slip ups with irregular verbs. Once we were practiced enough in present tense, we moved on to Preterito Infinitivo. We started by watchi...

  El Zoologico! The Zoo! La cena a Casa Blanca Dinner at Casa Blanca Caminando en la playa Walking on the beach Iguanas le gustan comida  Iguanas like food La lluvia en su camino The rain on its way

After a long week at school, Josey was ready for the weekend.  After an even longer week stuck in boring, passport-demanding Houston, Sutton was even more ready to begin her Spanish immersion experience.  On Saturday, we booked a trip to Isla de Monos to see the capuchin monkeys and titis (another type of monkey, to clarify). We met our tour guide, Aldo, and drove to the opposite side of Panama City. Here, we boarded a not-sketchy-at-all boat to ride around Gatun Lake, which is part of the Panama canal. It was rather intimidating to drive by three hundred foot long cargo ships, but we trusted our driver.  When we arrived at the first island, the monkeys were a little shy. Nevertheless, Aldo showed off his impressive monkey-speaking skills and coaxed them to our boat with peanuts and bananas.  After a few hours of admiring the monkeys and feeding them a nutritious breakfast, we headed to Parque Nacional Soberenía. There, we took a short hike down a trail surrounded by...

  Hablando con una vendedora Talking with a vendor La salida del sol Sunrise La vista desde la cena The view from dinner Tiempo para gelato!  Gelato Time!  Disparo de accion por un reunion muy anticipado Action shot from a very anticipated reunion

Josey:  T-8 hours I woke up early this morning to go to the Cinta Costera to watch the sunrise, something Kiki had recommended I do. Although it was a little cloudy, it was still beautiful to see the bright orange color illuminate the water and reflect on the shiny buildings of the city. After the sun had risen, I returned to the apartment to get ready to finish up my first week of classes.  T-7 hours I arrived at class and we got right to work with reviewing and continuing to practice por vs. para. Héctor had prepared many online quizzes to help us differentiate and walked us through many more examples. While it was still a little confusing to differentiate between reasons and objectives, two hours later I was feeling much more confident than I had before.  T-5 hours After we had done sufficient review, we moved on to a new topic: preterito indefinido. This is something that I have learned in the past, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to understand, I just had to rememb...