Rain forest was incredible. Howler monkeys put me to sleep every night, and I never had such vivid of dreams as I did when living there.
Motivation for moving there: Just something I felt like I needed to do. I kind of developed my own alternative college course, which consisted of traveling the world a bit and learning a few salable skills along the way.
Do I regret turning down the scholarship: Long story short, no. I knew I wanted to eventually be in business for myself, and I knew the field I was interested in (programming) wasn't being adapted quickly enough by higher education. I figured I'd be much better off coding my own projects and learning from there.
Basically, I had a realization that there were two types of people in the world: those who expected the world to act a certain way, (ie going to school, getting educated == guaranteed success) and those who supposed the world was open to influence (ie create your own reality).
I decided that I would rather take responsibility for creating my own world. It was definitely a painful experience at times, but has been worth it.
Now I'm working at a company I love doing incredibly challenging work with people who are incredible. So no, I don't regret it.
Just an FYI. Panama City is a city like all other cities in any developed country. Most of the provinces are equivalent to "towns". If you do move to somewhere in Panama that does not qualify for this description, you're basically living in a real rainforest LOST style. With the amount of bugs you get in a rainforest, I'd regret not taking the scholarship if that's the case :)
