After a few hours of sleep, our group got ready for breakfast. Everyone called home! The Student Travel Journals were given to each student, this will help them as a guide of what will be happening each day. Mental Warm Ups are found in this journal as well as background information related to our guest speakers, partner organizations, etc. 

Once we all had some breakfast, we checked out from Hostal Gemar in Panama City. Around 20 minutes later, we were in Casco Viejo, also known as Old Panama. We walked around in a tour led by our PCs, they took us to most important places within Casco Viejo. We got some time to do some shopping and buy some souvenirs from local artisans. 

For lunch, we went to Niko’s Cafe, and we all got to pick our lunch. We spent around an hour at the place. 

Our next destination was the City of Chitré, it took us a bit more than four hours. We all took a nap and had conversations with our peers. 

In Chitré, we checked in at Hotel Bali, which will be our home for the next 14 days. We walked around the main plazas (squares) to get to know the city a bit better. 

Back in the hotel, we had our first seminar, which was Welcome and Accommodation Seminar. This helped us to understand better and learn more about Chitré, our hotel, and about what to expect for the remaining days of this trip. Dinner was served. Next thing we did was a reflection session, where all of us used our Student Travel Journals and wrote about the day for 10 minutes and then got the opportunity to share our thoughts with our small groups. 

The last thing we did was our Nightly Meeting, where I passed the torch to Sam (our Leadership Coach), who is going to be our LDD (Leader of the Day) for tomorrow. The passing the torch ceremony is a symbolic thing we do during the nightly meeting, where the next day’s LDD has to earn the torch by demonstrating a talent to the rest of the group. Sam did a magic trick using a deck of cards and we were all amazed by it! Snaps for Sam!!

Lights out tonight (time to go to bed) is at 10:30 PM, Panama time. Tomorrow is an exciting day, so stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog. We hope that by reading the upcoming blog posts, you also get to experience Panama with us! 

Thank you and goodnight to you all! 

Larry