Preparation Day

We began today with a delicious breakfast laid out by the hotel.  Empanadas, fresh fruit, and eggs amongst other things were graciously made available to us.  After we ate, we were reunited with Xenia Alvarado, the executive director of Operation Smile Panama.  We were then driven a couple of miles down the road to the children’s hospital that our U-Lead conference will be held in.  After being given a quick tour of the auditoriums that are being donated for our use, we now have a much better idea of how to organize our break out sessions and group get togethers.  Our new friends Roberto, Ana, and Maria were also able to meet up with us (they were ditching school…shhh don’t tell) and we all drove together to the Operation Smile Panama headquarters.  This was really exciting for all of us and a lot of picture taking in front of the OS Panama sign ensued.  Xenia gave us the official tour of headquarters, which actually has an uncanny semblance to the Norfolk headquarters.  After re-working our schedule due to a small misunderstanding, Xenia brought us to the mall to buy supplies for posters, the service project, and the scavenger hunt.  More details on the scavenger hunt are soon to follow, but basically it will allow students to go through the “mission” process.  Anyways…back to the mall.  This mall is INSANE.  It actually happens to be the biggest mall in all of Central America.  No big deal or anything.  We had an authentic Panamanian lunch which was composed of juices (jugas) of many different flavors and a pile of food with four different types of meat, plantains, French fries, and many other things. It was certainly a fun introduction to Panamanian culture.

            After lunch we began the real goal of the day: get prepared for the mission. We found a store in the massive mall that had everything we needed—poserboard, tape, construction paper, paint, markers—you name it, we bought it. While Panama uses the US Dollar, this shopping trip really proved how we could get a bang for our buck, getting a lot of supplies while staying within the budget. We returned to the Panama HQ to work on preparation for the conference. We had to make posers to show participants where the auditorium was inside the hospital we visited. We also made sure to work on the kinks of our scavenger hunt. Megan Llyod has been in change of putting particular attention to developing a fun scavenger hunt that would challenge students to deal with the difficulties of a mission experience, mimicking the steps from finding the location of the site to understanding the foreign language of the doctors to dealing with the shame of having a facial deformity.

After a long day of work, we were graciously welcomed into Xenia Alvarado’s beautiful home in downtown Panama City. Her charming urban apartment had an amazing view of the skyline and coastline. Our student helpers, Roberto, Ana, and Maria and much of the Alvarado family joined us. We quickly learned the importance of family in Operation Smile Panama, as a Xenia’s mother, “Mamma Xenia,” treated us to a homemade authentic, delicious dinner of rice and chicken, cinnamon plantains, and beet infused potato salad with bread pudding for dessert. The Operation Smile Panama team of students, staff, and family really showed their colors today—proving to be immensely generous and passionate members of the Op Smile community. We felt like we were having dinner with lifelong friends after a long day of preparation for the conference.

With that out of the way, tomorrow we are excited to have a “free day” in Panama where we have been promised a little extra fun. We’re going to be on a radio show, see the Panama Canal, and have lunch at a country club as honorary guests. Keep following! Our story has only just begun.

P.S. Mama Xenia told us that she's been referring to our conference as "that Wikileaks thing." Apparently U-Lead sounds a little like U-Leak with a Spanish accent. So here's to you Julian Assange!