8 hours of classes...

Six days a week has a quick way of draining a person. :-p Things are still good down here. The last couple days it actually hasn´t rained near as much, which is a mixed blessing. Whenever it rains it´s a super hard rain that pretty much forces everyone to stay inside, silently because the rain is too loud on the tin roofs to be able to carry a conversation. However, it also relieves the humidity and cools down the land, so it´s nice. I actually kind of like the rain. Unlike Seattle, it´s a real rain, with big fat drops. And it only rains in the afternoon or at night. And it´s always accompanied with thunder and lightening, which is cool. :)
Classes are going alright, it´s just exhausting. There is really only so much lecturing one can take before they start to lose it. Especially when over half of that lecturing is in a language they don´t fully understand yet. My Spanish is getting better, definitely. And I can listen and understand alright - most of what people say in the general relm of things. But I´m still pretty slow about responding and pulling the right words out of my own head. But my host family is wonderful and super helpful and patient. The 3-year old has become an important part of my daily Spanish lessons at home. :) And so far, the only real bug in the house I have to contend with is the giant cockroaches. I did put up my mosquito net after waking up one night to one said roach crawling up my arm. They may not bite, but that was just too much for me. I like all the little house geckos that run around the house and eat the other bugs. They´re cool.
This weekend everyone is going on a solo volunteer visit. So we were all assigned a site in the country and we have to get there on our own and we´ll stay with the current volunteer at that site for three nights - leave Friday morning and return Monday evening. So I´m going to visit a volunteer in Los Santos, which is the peninsula on the Pacific side of Panama. The site isn´t right on the coast, but I´m still looking forward to going down there. It´ll be nice to get out of Santa Clara and to have a relief from classes for a few days.
Um, yea. So things are good. Life right now simply revolves around training classes. I´m going to try to send out some postcards soon. Calling is difficult - there´s only one phone in the entire town of SC and it´s adjacent to the police station so if the police need to use it, they get priority. :-p So there´s always a line for the phone, and it´s just not reliable. We´ll see what it´s like at my actual site, which I will find out in two weeks. Meanwhile, just know that while I may be hot, sweaty and stressed, I really am doing wonderfully and am so glad to be here. :)
P.S. - another mail tip from some current volunteers: should anyone wish to send packages or padded envelope stuff, another good way to get it so the customs people don´t open it is to wrap it furiously in duct tape, then put the address over that. Apparently that makes it too difficult to open and not worth the effort. :)
Oh, also, I was just on MySpace looking at some people´s updates and I was going to send little notes, but unfortunetely this computer is just way too slow and it was taking forever for each new page. So just please know that I love you all and I miss you tons. :) Hope all is well!
Ok, another Oh Yea - sorry there haven´t been any pictures yet. I just keep forgetting to bring my camera with the cord anytime I´m going to be near internet. So hopefully next Friday when we go into town again I shall remember. Note to self.