Monday Marked the first day in our week of remote learning at Panama City Beach in Florida, USA, or as the cool kids call it, PCB. I mean, if we’re going to be attending school online, might as well do it from somewhere fun! (Assuming you’re being safe, of course).
Monday is also my heaviest day of classes, and so I spent a majority of the day in class, and even had to give a presentation. This one scared the living daylights out of me!
Between my third and fourth class, I did have a bit of a break and so we donned our masks and walked across the street to get to the beach.
Each of the beach’s access points is numbered, making it super easy to find the closest one to wherever you’re staying, which I think is clever of the city planning department.
We didn’t bring an umbrella, or chairs, or any of that kind of stuff, but that ended up being okay because we just floated around in the Gulf for the entire two hours.
PCB is a great beach. The sand is super soft and clean, not a cigarette butt to be found here! The water is also nice, it’s green/gold and especially clear for the Gulf. Even though the coast guard’s flag warning was red today, the waves were gentle and the water was surprisingly warm for late September. Just floating around was a great way to spend a break between classes!
For the sake of social distancing, we have been eating in, and so we made pizza bagels for dinner. Afterwards, we went on a short walk around our AirBnB to check out the lagoon. The property the condo is on has a dock reaching out into the water, and so we walked to the end of it, of course, to look out over the water.
All of the sudden, a great blue heron swooped down and perched on top of one of the boats just a few feet away. The heron was between us and the land, and so we had to keep slowly past it in order to get back to the other side. It stared at us with its beady yellow eyes and squawked menacingly at us every couple of seconds. Funny how I’ve never noticed how sharp a heron’s beak is until now.
Afterwards, we all returned for the condo and drank wine, a great way to round out our first full day of remote learning in PCB.