Reading, Reading, and, Oh Hey, Even More Reading

We have just completed Week 2 of our semester, and the major theme of this week has been a massive amount of reading material. From a nightly chapter in Born In Blood and Fire, to the entire book: Open Veins of Latin America, to the 5 JINS articles (each of which is at least 10 pages long), I do not find myself in short supply of reading material (as I'm still in the midst of reading most of these). The biggest issue I have faced this week would probably be my ever present mental battle with procrastination. While I love reading and learning about history politics, etc., I always find it difficult to sit down and read when I know that I have so much to go through. Its always ironic that I choose to put off things that take a lot of effort, in the end leaving only a day or two to get them done. Looks like I'll have to work on this and, for now, break out my ever faithful cramming skills... I don't know where I'd be without them!

One major obstacle that gets in the way of doing assigned readings, is the readings that I've been accumulating for my project (a topic which I find terribly fascinating). On Monday night, I spent a couple of hours browsing Mobius to see what I could find. The result of this literature adventure was me requesting over 10 books on topics which range from how to collect and preserve plants, to how to locate medicinal roots, to the medical use of hallucinogenic plants, etc. Its been an issue that I'm more likely to sit down and read these books for hours on end, while Born In Blood and Fire sits cold on the table next to me...

Overall, I feel like our research project is coming along nicely. We are quickly accumulating a lot of information on our topic, and have gotten a sense for exactly what our game-plan is going to be when we arrive in Panama, and get a chance to talk to the Shaman. Our major plan this upcoming week is to visit the Missouri Botanical Gardens, home of one of the greatest Panamanian plant collections in the world. We hope to get to search the Garden's facilities, from the library to the research lab, meeting every expert we can find, and taking in all the information we encounter. I am currently in the midst of trying to speak with someone at this location before we travel down Thursday night to stay at my house (a plan that I have yet to let my mom in on... But, hey, I'm allowed to have 3 unannounced house guests right!?). So far the Botanical Gardens has only met me with operators and answering machines, but I have not given up hope that I will eventually contact someone that would be willing to help us when we arrive Friday morning.

Other than all that I'm just continuing to collect everything that I'll need for the trip. A major thing that still need to be acquired are various shots/pills. I keep putting this off for some reason, most likely a result of concerns about their necessity/cost.

Ah well... 3 weeks til Panama!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Random Tidbits Of The Week:
~According to Chad, the most important holiday to those who practice Satanism is one's own birthday. As a side note, this revelation led me to peruse the wiki page about Satanism, only to close it soon after due to some odd looks I was getting from the person next to me in the library.

~I ended up signing up for a free trial of a 'prime' Amazon membership to get a book cheaply delivered to me in one day. I'm realizing that a happy result of this membership is that I can order a ton of Panama stuff from Amazon and get it delivered to my house in 2 days for free. Hopefully I do not forget to cancel this membership before my three month trial ends, and I get automatically charged $79 for 'wanting to continue my valued membership for the next year'.

~I spent about 20 minutes one night trying to figure out if it was worth more to save $7 or to have a quick dry towel that's long enough to easily wrap around myself. I ended up measuring a towel I currently own for size comparison purposes and trying it out. The decision still has not been made...

~I was oddly excited about my correct use of the word 'penchant' during my discipline presentation, mostly due to the fact that I've never used this word before in any form and was not really aware that I had encountered it before. Yay for passive learning!