The Long Trip was revived in 1996 by Fern Khan, then Dean of Continuing Education, and Carol Hillman, a Bank Street alumna and former Board of Trustees member. Attendees to these "new" Long Trips include students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends of Bank Street. The fourteenth of these trips took participants to Panama City, Panama in 2013.
Visit the 2013 image gallery to see pictures from the trip.
Their first activity was a tour of the Bio-Diversity Museum by a retired NYC doctor now living in Panama. Designed by Frank Gehry, the museum has cascading roofs with bright Caribbean colors; it has also successfully combined technology and innovation. The city tour revealed a thriving city with numerous gleaming skyscrapers and evident wealth juxtaposed with older, cramped, decaying buildings; “two different transformation realities!” Nearby was the West Indian Museum of Panama located in a former church, representing the cultures of the Caribbean men who worked on the Canal and women who taught the children. At the Panama Canal, an engineering feat now totally operated by Panama, they watched in awe as the locks opened to enable the passage of ships to the Atlantic or Pacific oceans! Another memorable experience was riding in canoes steered by Embera men, on the unpredictable Chagres River to visit and lunch with the Embera people upriver. They also visited Portobelo, and Colon which ‘hosts’ the profitable Duty Free Zone, but appeared forgotten and neglected by the government, resulting in devastating and relentless poverty.
To view a timeline and map of the newer Long Trips, visit the Bank Street Continuing Professional Studies site.
