mastatal

well sorry its been so long. i wrote an entry a couple days ago but for some reason it didn´t post. anyways a bit has changed since the last successful one. For starters i graduated from spanish class with flying freakin colors. it seems kind of strange to me that i learned basically all of the spanish grammar that there is to know in a month. i asked marcos what he would teach me if i wanted to keep taking classes, and he said he didn´t know what else there was to teach me. so now its just practice practice practice. Since my clases ended, i had to make a decision whether to leave or to stay as a volunteer. I still haven´t quite finalized what my next step is, though its in the works, and i figured i might as well stay until i worked it out. so ive officially been a volunteer for three days, in which i managed to fall on a leaf of a spiny palm and get somewhat sick. the spine count in my leg from the palm borders on ninety. my entire calf just looks like i have a really bad rash. so that was unlucky, but aside from making my leg feel stiff hasn´t caused me too much pain. last night i felt like i had a fever and didn´t feel too good working today but i think its passed. as for the work, the past two days we were clearing an area in preparation for a future vegetable farm. and today we went to the river to collect rocks for the walls of a new house that they are going to build. its mostly just really humid but the work hasnt been too hard. also, there are two new people with us. one is the fiancee, whos alright but nothing special. the other is another girl from california here for the classes and she´s nice and all. its mostly just a relief to have anyone else at all to be able to hang out with. So yeah, hopefully in the next couple of days ill be leaving to go volunteer in the national parks. i requested cabo blanco but haven´t found out if i got it yet. and after that im still playing around with the idea of going to ecuador to travel around with my friend, but haven´t decided if i want to fly or bus yet. theres apparently rumor of danger in columbia, which id have to go through, but it seems like kind of a shame to fly there. not much adventure in it. as for wildlife i can´t think of much aside from a scorpion in my room and a sloth in a tree. the sloth was just this white blob hanging absolutely still, whch kind of diminished my initial excitement when we noticed it. things are going well with the family, we´re all having a lot of fun together. i guess thats all for now. ill write again soon.

gus (or gustavito, another nickname to add to the list)