I took spanish in High School and one year in College. I find that when I spend a week or more in a spanish speaking country it all comes flying back to me and I can carry on pretty well. Good luck with it! What will you potentially be doing in Panama? I have a cousin living there.
Like I said to Cortez below, Spanish is the second language of the people that live there, so we will see how much it helps my Spanish, but I'm looking forward to it either way. We're working on getting clean water to rural communities there. We will be building and showing people there how to build simple water filters.
We will be building and showing people there how to build simple water filters.
That sounds like a worthwhile endeavor, best of luck with it. ... I mean, muchas suerte