Angela: Karen, can you give us an overview of your study abroad? Just tell us, for anybody who wants to know about study abroad programs, what your program was like and what it consisted of?

Karen:  Yeah, sure. Mine was a very unique study abroad program. It was through the [inaudible] department at my school and it was in conjunction with the University of Panama and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I went to Panama with 14 other students from Princeton. And, I lived with those 14 students and three students from the University of Panama. And our professors usually lived with us, [inaudible], much like we were in course.

I was there for three months. I took four courses three weeks long, for a total of 12 weeks. And, while there, we stayed, we lived in housing provided by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Usually housing for their researchers. Our courses were taught in English and they were mostly biology-related. And there was [inaudible] Columbian peoples and their environments.

Angela: …  Did you get to travel much in your host country or outside of your host country or were you restricted to Panama or could you travel elsewhere?

Karen:  No, we were not restricted to Panama, but really the only time we had to travel was our one week off for during spring break and for spring break I did do some [inaudible] traveling. We went my mother actually came to visit me in Panama and I spent spring break going around Panama with her but because it was such a short time we did end up staying in Panama.

We wanted to go to Costa Rica but we didn't make it. We did travel to several different cities in Panama, really gorgeous places, outside of the city and parts of the north. Yeah.

Angela:  So can you give us a little bit of details about what your travels were like? Where you went? What you did?

Karen:  OK. We went up to the north to a smaller city called Bogete which was high in the hills so it was much cooler which was nice. We stayed in a hotel there and we met a lot of people kind of just walking around the town and going to their restaurants?? and their markets. And my mom speaks fluent Spanish.

So that was good. So we met a lot of people - encountered a lot of people that way. While we were there some touristy things we did - it was the time of year where they have a cow fair essentially and they like sell baby cows and sell their sperm, awkwardly enough, so we went and checked that out which was interesting.  We went on a trip to - up into the mountains and we did zip lining.

Angela:  Oh, OK. Tell us about zip line.

Karen:  It was so much fun. We took a car way up into the mountains and we had to hike a little bit and we went across zip lines that were probably they were at the top of these large rain forest trees. So we were probably about 100 feet up, zip lining across. It was an amazing, amazing time. We were in an area that is a cloud forest. So it's high  enough that usually touching clouds. It was just really, really gorgeous.

Angela:  Do you have any photographs?

Karen:  Yes, lots.

Angela:  Oh, OK. I was going to say you got to take photographs, of course. So were you scared when you were doing the zip lining?

Karen:  Yes.

Angela:  OK. How did you overcome it?

Karen:  It was too much fun. Literally it was too much fun to get scared.

Angela:  OK.

Karen:  On the first one you were like 'this is amazing. I'm going to enjoy every minute of this.'

Angela:  And did your mom do it, too?

Karen:  Yes, she did. She was a little more scared than I was but she got over it a little bit more towards the end.

Angela:  Oh, that is so fantastic! OK, let's see. How did you handle your budget? Did you - were you able to maintain your budget pretty well - Oh, wait a minute! You didn't tell me about your other travels. OK, you went to that place. Where else did you visit?

Karen:  Then we went to - it was kind of a very touristy spot we went to next. It was a resort that's right on the beach. It took us a little while to drive there. Driving through Panama was interesting. The roads are very narrow. Even for - literally driving across the country the roads are very narrow, just a road on either side so there's a lot of passing. So it's actually kind of dangerous but we were OK.

Yeah, it took us a little while to find it. So we stayed at this resort and they had some really interesting like cultural shows where they did traditional dance with traditional music and really, really fun stuff that we kept seeing. But otherwise there we really hung out and lounged on the beach which was nice.

Then we went to Bocas Notoro which are - they're a group of islands. Was it? Why can't I think of the name of it? It's a group of islands off the coast of Panama that has a native people living there sort of maintaining their native lifestyle. So you go to these islands and there's usually not running water or electricity and sometimes you sleep in a hammock and use the bathroom in a hole.

So we went out to one of those islands and we stayed there for two days. We got to know the people really well. We got to see their traditional style of dress. We toured and saw their schools and saw the kids practicing music and playing sports. That was really cool and we also got to do a little bit of snorkeling.

They have amazing - that's why it's still so much touristy because it's very, very good snorkeling in the area. So we did that. I think that was the end of our travels during that time for spring break.

Otherwise for the actual courses we traveled through a lot of different places in Panama. We stayed in the cit for the most part in Gamboro, which is about an hour outside Panama City. We also visited an island, [inaudible] Island, which is an island that was created when the Canal was flooded.

We did a lot of our research there. We traveled to Bocas Notoro which is on the Caribbean side so that's where all the [inaudible] people are. We were in Panama City for a while as well.

Now let's look at study abroad in Australia.