Tim Shirack '07 - With the football game only two days away thoughts of first downs, touchdowns and defensive stands run through our head…wait, we have to play a football game on this trip? It would be a terrible misconception if I were to make you believe football is the main focus of this trip. At least not until Saturday when we have the game.

The morning sun sent the team packing their bags as we prepared to leave our hotel in Panonome, the location we had been the last two days, and venture towards the city. After everyone had loaded the bus we stopped in a small village, La Pintada, to visit a school. While gathered in the cafeteria of the school with the children Bryan Engh (junior – Indianapolis, IN) spoke to the children about the sport of futbol americana (football.) By the end of the session we had the children successfully running a quarterback bootleg for a touchdown!

After teaching them our sport they thought it necessary to teach us theirs. We headed out to the futbol (soccer) field for a challenge, or a lesson depending on your perspective. I will not mention the score of the game, I will simply say that “Wabash Always Fights.” However, everyone’s favorite moment was when Jeff Williams (Senior – Delphi, IN) made a one handed stop at the goal line while diving in the mud. Fairly impressive “hard hat D” for an offensive lineman!

After leaving the school the team once again got on the busses to head towards Panama City.  The bus dropped us off at a dock where we boarded small transporter boats which took us to a remote house boat. It was here that we met our tour guide who lives on the house boat. He was from St. Louis and appeared as though he had been lost in the jungle a few too many years, or had finished a recent stand on the television show Survivor.

Lunch was served on the house boat as the players had a small competition of their own. Dancing was the sport of choice as Richard Roomes (junior – South Bend, IN) and Thomas Bell (junior – Houston, TX) traded moves to salsa tunes. The title went to Thomas (partially because he was better and partially because he is my roommate and we worked on his dancing skills the previous night.) The final dance left us running to the small boats for a tour of the jungle.

Our tour guide took us through small channels leading to the Panama Canal. As we cruised around the massive boats traveling through the canal we pulled up to an island. While I searched for the reason the tour guide was so interested in the island he proceeded to make a few animal calls. The calls worked as six monkeys stormed through the trees and jumped onto our boats with better precision than the LAPD swat team. With the monkeys mixed between football players I wondered which species was more curious of the other, but I do know which species was more frightened, and let us just say it was not the monkeys.

Our stay with the monkeys was cut short as we were in a rush to make a press conference scheduled for tonight that would highlight our upcoming game. OK, so we missed the press conference. We were not even close to making it on time. But can you blame us?

As I sit in my hotel room on the fifth floor with a view over Panama City, which is large enough and nice enough to be mistaken for an apartment, I realize how football is not the focus of this trip. Football is merely the means. And it is only Thursday, so you will have to catch up with me when I return to hear about everything else.

PS – Hi Mom. Hi Dad.