Ave, Sam...!
And Welcome to our little Roman Entity. I have been here for some time, and I have found it uniformly enjoyable--scholarly yet friendly, like one of those places where all you have to do to get your car fixed is park it, raise the hood, and wait for the neighborhood mechanics to congregate. Post a question or comment here about almost anything Roman or otherwise ancient, and you will generally attract at least two or three replies, possibly some long ones. Even my lame jokes generally elicit a squawk or two!
I like your handle. Not many people your age know that the Battle of Zama, in which Hannibal's army discovered that Payback's a Bitch, was fought in 202BC. Didja know that Scipio's Legions for that one were partly composed of the survivors of Cannae...? I can see a whole lotta post-traumatic stress being worked-off, right there... Talk about having an axe to grind!
Having been raised and gone to college in California, I can attest to the sorry state of Classical education on the Pacific Coast. This surprises me. I would have thought you could find anything there. But not all of the U.S. is in such a sorry state; I have lived a total of twelve years in Texas, which has a very lively Junior Classical League with "Certamines" (Latin tournaments), conventions, bulletins/newsletters, and Web sites...even T-shirts! In Texas high schools, Latin is usually offered, and satisfies the foreign-language requirement. And as I was a Roman reenactor, turning up in Legionary armor anywhere anyone thought they could use me, I got invited to a lot of events.
So hang in there...Romanitas only gets more interesting from here!
In amicitia,