December

the music heres alot different, yet the same. they have the same meaning and alot of times thell borrow the same tune but there are thoes AMAZING songs. theres also there typical panamanion songs like tipico and the group sammy & sandras. theres alot of american influance and jamician influence..they listen to alot of music called passa passa which has a really cool dance so if you ever get the chance to look that up its pretty cool, theres lots of dances here, bachata, maranga, tipico, soko, soka, (one of thoes two is the electric slide but i never remember which), salsa, and more, i honestly love them all! ive learned to dance so much! when i first got here i didnt dance at all and i didnt sing in spanish but now im all over the place in love with the music!

March

Geography; Mountains and Climate

Panama is bordered by both the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, between Colombia and Costa Rica. In order to cross the border form Colombia to Panama you had to travel through an impassable jungle. So in order for the drug trade to get by Panama they either had to go around it completely or by truck, which is thoroughly inspected. Panama had full control of the Panama Canal on 2000. The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea to the North of the Pacific Ocean. Panama is a very small country. It could fit into North Carolina. Panama has 9 provinces, Bocas Del Toro, Chiriquí, Veraguas, Herrera, Los Santos, Colon, Panama (where I lived) and Darien. Darien had a huge jungle which took up over half of the province.

On one side of my house there were mountains and on the other side was Chepo, a big city. We lived in a valley you could say. All the rivers around were dammed for hydroelectricity.

During the rainy season, which is winter for us, it rained almost every day. While it was raining it would get cold enough that you would have to wear a jacket and there was a nice breeze. But when it was done raining and the sun would shine it would get insanely hot! It would be humid due to all the rain which would make you sweat a lot and feel all sticky. I’d say that was the worst time of the year. We always knew when it was going to rain or not because of the mountains. The rain would always come over the mountains so we could literally see it coming! Im not so sure what the dry seasons were like cause when I was there, there was an unusual weather change and it rained more in the dry season then it did the rainy season. There for, the dams overfilled and flooded a lot of the cities around it.