Apartment

Panama City has many contrasting neighborhoods. From the uber-wealthy Punta Paitilla with its numerous sky-scraping condos dotting the shoreline to the many dilapidated huddled shanties, Panama has it all.

My apartment fortunately falls somewhere in between. I live close to school, right off Sauce Street. It’s definitely a change from my one-bedroom/kitchen shoebox in Orlando. The place is actually pretty nice for Latin American standards – we’ve got cable, internet and constant running water and electricity. When I interned in the Dominican Republic, we’d have rolling blackouts for 12 hours at times.

The only thing I don’t like is our stove. It's a gas burner, and our grill lighter is out of juice. So you have to turn on the gas and then click the lighter until the spark catches. Seriously, I don’t have any hair left on my knuckles – it’s all singed off!