By Elle Rottman
For Spring Break this year, I had the opportunity to take the Panama for the Comparative Studies in Panamanian and U.S. Agricultural Practices course. When we landed in Panama City, I was very surprised by the level of urbanization in the city. I went to Belize last summer and was expecting the city to be very similar to that; however, even from the plane it was clear that there was much more to Panama than I expected. Our tour guide referred to is as “the 51st state.”
Our first day in Panama, we were able to visit an organic poultry farm, as well as a pineapple plantation. Having never been to a poultry farm, I didn’t know what to expect; however, I was impressed with the owner’s level of knowledge and his use of his resources. Even with very limited resources, it was clear that he loved his chickens and his work. In addition to the poultry and pineapple farm, we were also able to visit a coffee farm, a beef cattle production, two different dairies, and a horse farm.
Aside from the farm tours, we were able to take a boat tour of the Panama Canal. It was amazing to see the seemingly simple mechanization behind such an important part of the global economy. While going through the locks, we had a huge car carrier ship come through with us! The workers at the canal try to make the most efficient use of the locks. What took us a few minutes to get positioned in our place in the lock took that ship almost 40 minutes. Once all the boats were in the lock, we could feel our boat getting lower and lower as the water level on the other side of the gate rose. It only took 8 minutes for almost 52 million gallons of water to fill up the locks! Just watching the gates open was a once in a life time experience.
Out of all the amazing things we did in Panama, my favorite thing was the service-learning project we did with a local public school’s kindergarten class. We brought them fruit trees from a local organic farm for them to take home and painted their classroom wall with them. One of the little boys that I painted with was named Roman. He was so excited we were there and kept asking me about all the things he could paint. He told me that the flowers he was painting were the same ones his mom plants outside their house. It was a great experience to be able to make their day just a little bit brighter.
For anyone thinking about studying abroad, I highly recommend this trip. For such a small amount of time, the number of places we were able to visit made every minute valuable.
