Well, it's been a week.

   A week ago today, I was frantically trying to be sure that I remembered everything that I wanted or needed to bring to Panama.  Now, I know that I brought too much...but honestly, I don't know what I would cut out, that would really decrease the amount.  I certainly haven't needed my fleece, but as soon as I moved that out, I'd probably get assigned to a site somewhere on a mountaintop.  Now, I'm living with my host family for our 3 month training in a town about an hour's drive from Panama City.
    We have gotten so. much. information.  En espanol, en Ingles (I'm trying to make my thoughts more Spanish than English.  It's hard, as I know relatively few words, but making progress!)  We have a relatively regular schedule now, where for some days of the week, most Mondays - Wednesdays, we have 4 hours of Spanish in the morning, and about 5 hours of 'technical training' in the afternoons.  My host family is very happy to help me with my Spanish (and they know my schedule better than I do- I'm definitely not their first volunteer).
    Some weekends, we'll be going back to the city for training at the PC main offices, sometimes we'll be doing site visits and eventually, site visits to our own sites!  We find those out in about 5 weeks.  In the meantime, every day my head feels full by about 10:30, and we have classes until about 5.  I'm trying to stay awake until 9 every day, but it's hard when I'm ready to sleep by about 7.  But, being up at 6:30 ish every morning helps as well.
   The weather is, as promised, hot and humid, though honestly, not unlike a Cincinnati summer.  Also, they have a lovely breeze here which is missing in Cincinnati so often.  And in addition, it even cools down after sunset!  So, I'd say they have better weather here than in Cincinnati, but there isn't air conditioning, so... perhaps Cincinnati is still preferable for weather.
   I have a big host family- bigger still counting the in-laws.  8 people live in my house, more nearby, and yet more in other parts of the town.  Not that the town is very big, about 2000 people, by a host brother's estimate.  There are 32 TE volunteers, and so far it seems that our families are all more or less related.  Everyone my host sister and I passed when we were walking around on Sunday seems be a cousin.
Our day in Miami was full of orientation information from about noon -7PM, and that was an accurate introduction to our future life.  Every day I can think of since then, other than last weekend, has been a set of meetings and presentations with the occasional interview from 7AM-6PM or so.
    On Saturday, though, we got a field trip to a local volunteer's site, east of Panama City, in a community of about 6000, where she works with 6 teachers at the local school.  On Sunday, we came here, to our training community, where we'll be living, or at least leaving our belongings, for the next 9 weeks.  Last night (Sunday), my host sister and I went to Mass, which makes the second Mass I've been to in my life- the other being in Quebec (service being in Quebecois and Latin).
     As I was saying earlier, we have loads of classes morning and afternoon, but also a lot of field trips.  Sometimes it seems like our host families are more an easy way for PC to feed and occasionally house us, than an actual cultural experience.  But at the same time, we've only been with our host families for less than 2 full days, and will only have been in Panama for a week on Wednesday.  Time flies in strange, incomprehensible circles.
I'll get pictures up soon, with luck, but in the meantime, I want to give the internet back to my host brother.  It's magically stored in a USB drive!  But apparently, I might be one of a very few people who have access at all here.  Woohoo!  Buenas noches <3