One Year in Panama

What a year. One year without:
• Riding on an airplane or a train
• Driving a car
• Eating sushi
• Baking cookies or cupcakes (although I have glanced at Joy the Baker a few times)
• Opening the program Matlab (to my fellow BMEs)
• Going to the gym
• Touching snow
• Fall or Spring
• Cutting my hair (gone hippie!)

But it has been one year with:
• Rice
• Learning a language I had never heard of, and one I had
• Living with four host families over the course of almost six months
• Organizing and constructing a palm thatched house
• Adopting 2 dogs and a cat
• Teaching English as a second language
• Surveying and measuring a potential aqueduct
• Talking a lot with adults and children about the dangers of human excrement
• Relaxing in a way that is barely possible in the US of A
• Eating whatever is in season, all of the time (currently oranges and pifa)

It's been a good year. Hopefully the next one is even better!