During her holiday break, Michelle Wileczek spent three days on the kitchen floor of her Panamanian home -- dodging crackling gunfire.

Wileczek, a University senior, arrived at her family's house one day before the United States began its military invasion of that country in an effort to capture dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega.

"I went to Panama for Christmas vacation because I was raised there. It's my home," said Wileczek (general arts and sciences), who considers herself a Panamanian-born American citizen.

Following the murder of a U.S. Marine lieutenant by Noriega's Panamanian Defense Force and American retaliation by American soldiers prior to her arrival, Wileczek said she expected military action soon.

"It was a very tense situation," she said, noting PDF members also reportedly pulled Americans out of their homes and shot them because of their U.S. citizenship.

American military imposed a curfew on American citizens living in Panama after the failed October coup against Noriega. All Americans were asked to stay inside their homes after 11 p.m.

However on her first day back, Wileczek said she broke curfew to visit neighborhood friends she had not seen since summer.

"It was documented that U.S. troops began their invasion at midnight on December 19th. But the American troops began moving around 11 p.m.," Wileczek said, recalling the night's events.

American soldiers were trying to break down Noriega's PDF by confiscating weapons and blowing up all of the group's headquarters, she said. But some of the PDF refused to give up and began firing on American troops.

Wileczek said American soldiers were clearing the streets as she arrived home at 11:45 p.m. But one of her neighbors did not make it home that night.

"My friend's mother was just driving into the neighborhood when a man in the PDF opened fire on her car," she recalled. "An American soldier shot at the man in the PDF and my friend's mother died in the crossfire."

When one of the PDF headquarters was blown up, an entire neighborhood ignited and about 1,000 Panamanians were killed, she added.

"When the American troops blew up a PDF headquarters, the explosion burned down all the wooden houses of a Panamanian slum," Wileczek said. "My high school became a medical center and the football stadium became a shelter for the homeless. Many people did not have Christmas," she said.

Another consequence of the U.S. invasion, she said, was the looting of stores and private homes by Panamanian citizens in the absence of the PDF, making the streets a hotbed of unrest.

"I could not move out of my home until Friday (Dec. 22)," the University student recalled. "Then we were able to go across the street to Albrook Air Force Base for food."

Because many innocent lives were taken in the crossfire, Wileczek said she believes the U.S. invasion broke international laws and was not the right thing to do.

"(The losses) were not worth it just for (Noriega) to be brought to justice. The invasion was a rape of the country. Noriega should have been surgically removed," Wileczek said.

David J. Myers, associate professor of political science, said he believes it is too early to tell if the United States' invasion was the right move to make.

Yet Myers added that the removal of Noriega was a promising result for the Panamanian people.

"The President (Guillermo Endara) said he did not want to have Noriega there right now because he could stage a comeback," Myers said.

When she began to have bad nightmares about the invasion, Wileczek said she decided to take a Military Airlift Command flight back to the U.S. on Dec. 26 to spend the rest of her vacation with friends.

Her family, however, remained in Panama because her father works for the Panama Canal Commission.

"It was too depressing to stay. I had to get out," she said.

Although the morale of the country is low, Wileczek said she believes the Panamanians will work twice as hard to make a more democratic system possible.

"I hope that Endara makes it work," Wileczek added.