Panama City Day 2

Greetings from sunny, humid Panama City. The guys and I woke up today (begrudgingly) at around 8:15am but had a little incentive since the hostels offers free pancakes and bananas for breakfast in the morning. We all lined up outside the kitchen and individually poured batter for pancakes. (Tre was quite proud of his first pancake). The bananas in Panama are incredible. I don't know if there's an "in season" for bananas in central America but we must have hit it if there is.
We met up after breakfast and headed out to see Casco Viejo, the district of Panama City that our hostel is in. It was getting hot really quickly and we wanted to go out on the town before the heat became too much. Our hostel has a great location but we still ventured out pretty far to get to the coast and get some views of a large obelisk greeting boats coming in to port. On the way we saw the Plaza Bolivar named for Simon Bolivar (excellent first name), and hopped into some churches (Danny, Simon, Fish and River are ok, don't worry).

 The statue at Plaza Bolivar

While we were out, we also saw some workers on strike and protesting in the square. We thought about helping their campaign with a rendition of "On the Turning Away" or "Help" but decided against it while they marched on. You can see them all huddled together in the center of the Gazebo. Fight the man.

We've quickly become aware of some of the safety/regional demarcations around Casco Viejo. Namely, do not go to streets or alleys behind the hostel - this is affectionately known as the "kill zone" and might play a part in some encumbrance activities in the future... but I've said too much.
We came back from our morning sightseeing and mellowed out at the hostel with some (lots) of spades. It's quickly becoming the official card game of the Virginia Gentlemen (even though I have no idea how to play). I think at one point we had three games going at the same time with 12 players. We get more guys to play spades than to some of our Darden gigs! We're thinking of lining up a spades tournament and crafting a bracket so stay tuned. Fish and Dyer also turned some heads with their ping pong games - namely because they made a habit of hitting the ball into the fan and then seeing how far it would fly and what carnage it would wreak on its path.

We then went out again for some lunch and a bunch of us went to an excellent restaurant, Cafe Aguiar, and got discounts because of our hostel bracelets (win). Now, well fed and sleepy, we're enjoying the time honored Central American tradition of Siesta. River and John are strumming some chords on borrowed guitars, other guys are still slinging the cards in spades, and the rest are either reading or hunched over drooling over their books.

 Our Three MDs

Panama has been very interesting so far. The tourism industry obviously knows English very well and our global hostel communicates in English as the primary language (signs and posters are almost exclusively in English) but very few people in the main city know English. This isn't surprising except for the fact that the primary accepted currency is actually the dollar. It goes a little farther here than in the US so we're enjoying that. Also the power outlets and voltage are the same as in the US so we're also taking advantage of these conveniences as well.

Right then, siesta time and I'm going to try and get back to Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. Check back soon for more updates.

-Simon