Annalisa en Panamá

 Forecast:  88°/76° with 59% chance of rain;  Humidity :  89% Sunrise  6:09 am.,  Sunset  6:28 p.m. The local U.S. Embassy asks all Fulbrighters to send monthly updates of what we've done in country, I guess so they can document some of the good things the Fulbright program does.  Over the course of my career, I've pulled together lots of annual reports -- and unlike many of my colleagues, I actually look forward to doing these.   Since there's so much going on here, it makes a lot of sense to do these updates more frequently than I've done them in the past, and I figured I might as well include a version of these updates into the blog.   But even though my first report is only for two weeks and not a whole year, I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to lay my hands on all the information for what I've done!  I certainly haven't gotten into a routine yet, and I guess I've got to figure out how better to keep track of my comings and goings in the future. 

 On our shortcut path through the woods, we pass a river.  The water is very clear lately, and we saw a crocodile! Hard to see in this photo, so let's get closer . . .  . . . and closer.  Can you see it to the right of the  patch of reflected light?   Let's get closer.  The head is in a patch of leaves on the river. Crocodile!!! In Spanish, the name moves the 'r' toward the tail of the word:   cocodrilo . It's probably safer for the 'r' toward that end of the animal.

A wildlife photographer I'm not, but I do try to capture a bit of what I see.  I try, and usually I fail.  But there's so, so much new-to-me wildlife to see here that I do have a couple of cool photos to share. Bugs One adorable little creature is this bug, called a "cempies" (centipede), that we sometimes see crossing the road.

By the time we'd been almost a week in Panama, my guy and I were getting our feet underneath us more and more. We'd been learning our way around; he'd bought a bike and I'd gotten a bus pass; I'd set up my office in the Ciudad del Saber and found a church; he'd tracked down grocery stores and several hills to cycle on. With so much of our arrangements coming together so nicely, when my host let me know she'd be out-of-town on other business, we decided to have a little bit of a date together last Wednesday morning.  

The map  Joke :  What do the "0" say to the "8"?  Answer :  Ooh, nice belt! Before I visited Panama, I pictured the geography in my head as though North and South America -- one directly above the other -- were connected with a little vertical strip.  In my head, it was kind of like the number 8 with a very thin, very tall belt.  In fact, Panama doesn't go north-south (like the letter "I"); it goes east-west.  It looks a lot like the tilde to the left of the "1" on your keyboard, except upside down.  

How much did I bring with me to Panama?  I think the question of "what they carried" is always fascinating, no less so for a nine-month trip to a foreign country. Despite being a kind of DIY person who likes to have the right tool to do all the things, I did NOT bring a bunch of stuff I consider essential to my home life in Lancaster.  For example, I left behind . . . 

 Forecast:  91°/77° with 87% chance of thundershowers;  Humidity :  90% Sunrise  6:10 am.,  Sunset  6:33 p.m. The first few weeks in an unfamiliar place are full of new experiences and surprises, and days 2-5 of our Panama trip are full of examples of this general rule.  So much new stuff to do! Some of what we've done Bought a bike We arrived in Panama on Thursday, and the first thing we did Friday morning was walk together about 3k to a bike shop called "Re-cycle".  This shop was actually basically a huge room in the back of someone's home, in a beautiful residential neighborhood.  The shop (house, really) had no signs on it at all, but we google-navigated our way there, and the owner, Andres, found my husband a nifty pre-owned ("de segundo") bike in excellent condition.  

 Forecast: 86°/78° with possible   definite afternoon thundershowers;  Sunrise 6:10 am., Sunset 6:34 p.m. Our Airbnb is in a gated community just outside of the main part of Panama City, not too far from the Mira Flores locks, and also not too far from the Ciudad del Saber and Fundapromat (Foundation for the Promotion of Mathematics in Panama). Jeanette, my host, was delighted with the place when she dropped me off here, and agreed that it was nice that I was so close. And then she and her cousin drove me from my Airbnb to her offices, a meandering drive along crowded roads that took about 10 minutes. "Close" is a relative term. 

We woke this morning in time to leave the house just before 4 a.m., and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  The gate attendants checked our tickets and our passports, and then started worrying that we didn't have visas, but we (successfully) convinced them we don't need them, which is correct -- after all, here Neil and I are, just outside of Panama City, in our AirBnB, with no visas at all.

I've been living out of my suitcase in my own home for the past few days, which is an odd experience. I mostly packed for Panama two weeks ago, before I went on my math conference trips.  Once I got back from those trips, I did some reorganization, but tried not to spread out too much, both so I wouldn't lose things, and also to make sure our home caretaker has empty spaces to move into. My husband and I will be taking one carry-on each. I will have a suitcase which is really a suitcase/duffelbag combo, which I think is super clever.

Traveling by bus is not everyone's cup of tea.  My husband, Neil, detests it. All of the people Ximena (my traveling companion) told about our post-MathFest plans to return to Lancaster from Indianapolis via Greyhound bus were kind of horrified.  (They all responded, "Oh, I'm so sorry!  Not about Annalisa, but about Greyhound.")  If you hate traveling by bus, the description of our trip will confirm Every. Single. One. Of. Your. Beliefs. Our bus (eventually) And yet, we kind of had a blast by doing this all together.

 As I write this, I'm on the bus back from my second pre-Panama stop, the awesome annual summer meeting called "MathFest".  The name itself says how much fun this event is; it has 1600-ish mathematicians gathering for 3 days of reunions and talks and such.   These big math meetings are kind of like high school or college reunions, except that they're even more fun than that, because I remember the mathematicians better than my high school mates, and we have a lot more in common.  Plus, of course, there are cool math talks! Here were my three big activities plus one little one.

My first stop on my pre-trip to Panama is the Bridges Math and Art conference, which is just barely over as I write this now. This is a five-day conference that drew 437 people from 31 different countries to share their approaches, discoveries, and delight in pulling together mathematical art. In addition to lectures, there were poetry readings, music nights, a play (in which I got to play both a spy disguised as a Catholic priest, and also a man in drag!), and excursions to the nearby Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, University of Virginia campus, and Monticello. What does this have to do with my journey to Panama? Well, for one thing . . .