Life at School

So I know that for the most part I’ve been posting about my travels, so I thought I’d make a post about some things that are going on at school and some differences there are between high school here and high school in the U.S.  Since I’m teaching at an Instituto, which is basically a high school I’ve noticed a couple differences that are neither good, nor bad, just differences.  Some I could live with, other’s I’d much rather live without.

1.) RECESS

Yup, kids get recess, no matter how old you are, these kids get recess, here’s it’s called recreo.  But it is a bit different.  It’s 30 solid minutes where the kids are set up loose on the playground, basketball, fenced in area.  They are all allowed to be outside and eat a snack, what they call breakfast, and just chat and hang out.  In theory it’s great, and then you realized that they aren’t allowed inside during this time, and if it’s cold they have to stay out there…that sucks. 

Also, the teachers get recess! Yup, we get recess.  They set the whole school of kids outside and then the teachers leave.  Yup, they leave.  haha, it’s actually encouraged that you get out of the building, go grab some desayuno at the closest bar and chat with your fellow teachers.  It’s totally cultural here, you go out, grab a seat at your daily bar, get some toast, coffee, tea or any other preference of a drink and chat away.  And the best part is, it’s mostly not school gossip, they are friends and they just talk about their lives, what they did on the weekend or pick up the weekly magazine and talk about the styles are are in the magazine, and who looks good with what outfits.  It’s actually quite fun, and it’s considered strange if you don’t go out for something to build your relationships with the other teachers.  Because we don’t have a cafeteria at school the teachers have to go out, or some bring a small sandwich to school, but going out is better and way more fun.

2.) CUBBIES

I taught my coordinator this word the other day when I told her she can grab my materials from the cubby if she wanted to use them.  She looked at me kind of strange and ask what I just said and I told her I called my little boxed locker a cubby, and that’s what I called them in school when I was younger, and we still call them cubbies.  Anyways, teaches have cubbies and the students stay in their classroom.  So the teachers have to keep all their stuff in a tiny cubby with their name on it and run back and forth between the staff room and their classroom every period.  The teachers move.  This is something I could do without, because I like the idea of having my own classroom.  It also saves a lot of time if you’re not always switching classrooms and having to bring up anything you want to bring up on the computer.

But for now, this is how things are, and I’m getting accustomed to having a cubby.  And I got to put my name one it.  Mostly I did it so big because everyone still calls me Jenny, even though that’s clearly not my name.  The last auxiliary was named Jenny and apparently my name is just too close to that and my name is too hard for some Spainards. :/

 

 

3. ) IF YOU’RE WRONG, YOU’RE WRONG, NO SUGAR COATING IT

At first I was very unnerved when the teachers would tell the students “no, that’s bad/wrong” and then move on.  Or when they yelled at them multiple times and said “pay attention you lazy boy, stop fooling around, do you even care?”  All of these things said in front of the whole class while the student just looked at them.  The teacher would stand there and yell at a whole class saying “why don’t you get it?” “listen to me!” or “no, that’s wrong, you need to try harder”.  If a teacher said these words to a student, much less in front of the whole class, in the U.S. we’d be yelled at by the parents for humiliating their child in front of the whole class and making them feel bad.  Here, it’s the opposite.  If the student is wrong they are wrong, and they don’t sugar coat it.  And the students don’t even blink.  This is just the way it is and they take it and say “okay, I’ll change my answer” or “okay” and start paying attention.  There’s none of this stupid feel good nonsense here in Spain.  This is something I could get used to. haha

4.) I HAVE NO MORE CLASSES TO TEACH TODAY, SEE YA!

And it works the other way around too!  If you don’t have class or anything to do until 10:30, you don’t have to show up until before then!  Yup, so the teachers just come and go all day long, some come in later, some leave earlier, and it’s just all together very strange.  For example, on Thursday’s I have a prep class with one of my teachers that I work with, but it’s not until 10:15, and she doesn’t have anything before that, so she literally just shows up about 5 min before 10:15, or sometimes even 15 later, because she can!  And other days I don’t ever see my coordinator because she comes in after I leave, or leaves before I finish my day.  It’s so strange, but I’m not hating it.

So those are the main things that are different in the schools here.  None of which are big problems, and some of them I could live with.  Like not showing up at least 30 min early at 7AM and staying until schools out, and being encouraged to leave school in the middle of the day for coffee.  But there are things I definitely like better about school life at home.  All in all, every day introduces new challenges and gives me insight into the different lives that people lead here, that I guess I lead here now….

Until next post, love you all. <3

Granada, returning home!

I finally returned to Granada! Yup, about 1 year and a half ago I studied in Granada and left a little piece of my heart there when I left.  The city had me in love with Spain in just a few shorts weeks of me being there.  And when I left I told myself I would go back one day, and I looked for a way back for a long time.  It took me two summers and living in a different city, but I did it!  And you can bet that when I returned it was the most glorious moment ever and I was grinning from ear to ear like a little child.  We arrived Thursday evening after about 4 hours on the bus from Sevilla and found our wonderful hostel (handpicked my me) which was located right in the heart of the city. And since we were hungry and weren’t quite sure where to go my friends decided to trust me and I took them to a place I remembered for having good tapas and a good atmosphere.  It was a little bit strange being back in the restaurant because I actually spent my last night in Spain at that restaurant and to spend my first night back in Granada there was a little like I never left.  It was a very strange and surreal feeling to be sitting in the bar at a table I sat at often, but over a year later, with different people, in different circumstances and only for a weekend.  It was all strange.  But the food was just as good as I remembered, if not better since I actually tried most of it, I’ve gotten more adventurous since the fist time I was in Granada.  :)  Later that night we went to a teteria (tea house) since they are the best in Granada with all the Arab influence.  We hung out late until late into the night and decided to head back by 1 to get ready for our day full of adventures!  We had a whole weekend and needed to fill it with everything there is to do!

So after out first night out we decided to hit the hay and get rested up for our “free” tour of the Albayzin on Friday!  We met up with Camille and then met the guy who gives the tours.  Hostels do great things where they give “free” tours to it’s guests and then at the end you give a good tip/pay them after the tour is over.  Our tour guide was quite funny and told stories about how the Alhambra got into the hands of the Catholic Kinds and the history of the city using people in our tour.  He had some people being the king of one country or another and then one was a queen or someone.  He told stories and acted things out and showed us cool things, like how the design of La Alhambra looks like the word written out.  It’s really brilliant and cool, and I didn’t even know that the whole time I lived there!  The guy took us around the Albyzin and told us about how it’s actually losing a lot of it’s residents because the amount of money it costs to live there is astronomical.  Apparently it’s under preservation because it’s a historical area of Granada, and because it brings so many tourists there are requirements to keep the outside of your house looking fresh and clean.  But if you don’t have the money to keep it looking like that, they you can actually lose your house.  Also, there’s no stores or anything up there because they don’t really give building permits, so you have to either walk all the way to the city center to get your groceries and other things, or you have to pay someone (if you’re older) to go out and get the things for you and deliver them to your house.  And not a lot of cars can fit through the roads, and you can only drive on certain roads.  Basically, living there is a mess, and while it’s sounds great, in reality it’s not so great.  The views are nice, but the living conditions and expenses aren’t so nice.  So it’s kind of a shame to walk through and see how some houses have been abandoned by owners because they can’t afford to live there and keep their house looking nice for the tourists.

Anyways, we walked through the Albyzin, and saw some incredible views, and then ended up at the Miradaor de San Nicolas which is the famous view point that all tourists visit.  And from there our tour guide dropped us off without even telling us how to get out…..thanks.  Luckily it’s not that hard, you honestly just find a route and walk down, since the Albyzin is up on a hill, just walk down and eventually you’ll get out.  It’s a long walk, but it’s worth it, and you get to see a different part of the Albyzin while you walk out.  The mirador was crowded as usual, and the sun was really bright so it was hard to get good pictures of the Alhambra, plus it was cloudy so you couldn’t see the beautiful mountains.  But all in all it was well worth the time we spent there taking pictures and adoring the wonderful piece of undisturbed history. There was never a war or battle fought in Granada, that’s the only reason that the Alhambra is still standing….also it’s not a world wonder (even though it should be) because the people who decide these things said that when one of the kinds built a huge palace in the middle it ruined the rest of the view.  Now it’s true, it doesn’t match the rest of the fortress, but seriously!?  That’s like saying the Pyramids aren’t a world wonder because some idiot built a tower next to it hundreds of years ago…. dumb.

Here’s some pictures from the way up to the mirador and when we got there.

 

All of us together up at the top of the Mirador.  That’s the Alhambra behind us, and you can almost see them Sierra Nevada if you look in the background near the sky

Me at the mirador!

 Inside a beautiful private garden in the Albyzin. 

Inside an old Arabic bath house

After we walked up to the mirador, I went to lunch with my host mom from about a year ago!  You know how you build things up in your mind, then they’re not as awesome because you build them up….yea, that happened.  She was just as I remembered, and everything was the same, but two different strange girls were sleeping in my bed and I remembered how much time I spent there.  Then the food wasn’t as great because I built it up in my head, but it was still really good, don’t get me wrong.  Also, for some reason Julia kept calling me Jenny…..  Julia told me that one time before another girl returned to do the same thing I’m doing, and I think her name was Jenny.  So I think she just had that name in her head, and I just let it go and let her call me Jenny, it was close enough.  But it was sad because I kept thinking it was going to be this great moment, but it was and it wasn’t.  lol.  It was really nice to see her again, but I think I’ll pass the next time I’m in Granada. 

Then I was able to meet up with my friends from Granada, my intercambio friends who I met with once a week when I lived there!  They were in Granada for the weekend as well so I brought all my friends along and we met up and went out for some tapas.  It was awesome and I was so excited to meet with them, especially since I had plans to go down to see them in Malaga the following weekend.  It was a preamptive meet up and we got all out giggles and screams of joy out. :) So that’s me and Maria and Manolo, Manolo makes really weird faces when he smiles, haha.  He’s like Chandler in friends, he just can’t do it for a picture.  But it was a really fun night, they took us to a nice place for tapas and they met all my friends. :)

The rest of the weekend flew by.  On Saturday I went with Camille, and her friends from Italy that she made last year, to the Parque de las Ciencias.  Jess and Sarah went to the Alhambra, and since I had already been, and Camille and I couldn’t get tickets, we decided to spent the day, or at least part of the day, at the Science park.  yes it’s a park, there’s a lot to do and it’s awesome.  I didn’t stay the whole day though, only until Sarah and Jessica got out of the Alhambra tour, so after that I headed out to lunch with them where I spent an astronomical amount on lunch because we ate so much.  And then we went exploring did some shopping and over all rested for the rest of the evening.  We were exhausted from the past two days of running around and site seeing, so we ended up being lame, and just went out for Kebaps for dinner and then went back to the room for an early night.  But Sunday we woke up early to check out and go explore the graffiti that’s all over Granada and in the Jewish Quarter, and to see the coffins of the Catholic Kings and their family.  It was awesome, I’d seen them once before but like a long time ago and didn’t really remember.  So we went during the hours when it’s free and it was awesome!  Also, the graffiti is really cool, it’s not like gang graffiti back home, it is just beautiful art that happens to be on the street walls.  Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the chapel where the Catholic Kings are, because it’s disrespectful to them and all, but I have pictures of the graffitti.

Oh yea, we went into the Cathedral on Friday to see the gorgeous and huge Cathedral.

Outside the Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

So that was my weekend in Granada.  I took a lot of pictures, did a lot of things and smiled a lot.  I can’t wait to go back with my parents in April.  :) 

Next post, Malaga!  Where I spent the weekend with two wonderful Spainards who were so accommodating and nice to me, and showed me the beautiful city that they live in now.  Until next post, love you!

A day out with Spainards!

I finally got some time to go out and explore the towns outside of Huelva, in the province.  Some of these towns aren’t too easy to get to without a car because the bus schedule is terrible, with having only one bus out in the morning, or having a few buses but with times tables that only give you about 2-3 hours in the town.  While granted, you don’t really need that much time in the small towns, it’s still nice to have a little bit more time to explore and not having to rush right now.  So, I was blessed with the invitation from my coordinator Belén, to come out with her one Saturday and go explore some stuff with her and her friend Rafa.  So, a couple Saturday’s ago me and my friend Camille got ready to head out “early” at 11 to go see some cool local things with Belen and Rafa.  Yea…leaving to go out for the day at 11 is apparently early for Spainards.  When we were leaving the Dolmen de Soto I commented about how many people were there now, at around 1:30 and Belen goes “yea, well Spainards don’t like to get up early, we left early”.  hahahaha okay, if you say so. 

So what did I do with my day!?  First, we went to the Dolmen de Soto which is in a little town called Triago (I think?).  Apparently there are 200 Dolmen’s in the province of Huelva. And they are essentially underground burial chambers that have been found.  They are under a little hump of ground, kind of looks like a small hill, but it’s circular and clearly very calculated.  Usually when they find the, they find bodies, and drawings all over the stones to depict what’s inside of them.  It was really cool, and in this one, they found a woman and 2 children’s bodies, and the drawings on the rocks depicted women, and stars and other cool stuff. They are pretty small, and not very deep, but there’s rocks that form the chamber, so it’s really interesting to think about how they got these really big rocks standing up and how they form a ceiling and everything.  It’s kind of like Stonehenge, but not really, and it’s underground.  The big rocks are arranged in a way that it forms a small hallway that leads to a “large” (relative to the rest of the space) area where the bodies were found curled up in the fetal position. 

So the first picture is the entrance, the second is the “hallway” sort of thing that we walked through, the third is the large main chamber area and the last picture is of one of the drawings that was on the rocks.  I think it’s supposed to be the symbol for a woman, but I’m not quite sure.

Oh, also, when we went to this tour of the Dolmen de Soto (which was free and amazing) we saw our dear friend who gave us the haunted tour!  It was really funny, because Camille and I were just standing around waiting for the tour to start, and all of a sudden some guy walked up really close to Camille and said “do you remember me?!”  It took both of us a minute to process what he said, becuase of course it was in pretty fast Spanish, then we stared at him and went “OOOOOOHHHH” to which he laughed and said “yea, I don’t have face paint on so I look different”.  Then he proceeded to explain to the group of people who were now staring at us why how he knew us and laughed about how he saw us the other night as well.  It was really a fun experience and we realized that he works for this company that held the two events we went to.  We wanted to get a picture with our new friend after the tour, but he was in middle of his own tour when we finished, so we couldn’t get a picture.  Hopefully next time we go to an event sponsored by this company we’ll see him again and become excellent friends! haha

Next stop, El Rocio!  Now, this city is gorgeous and very different from any other place I’ve been to in Spain.  El Rocio is actually very famous in Huelva Province, and pretty famous in all of Andalucia because of the uniquness of their town and the feria that they have on Pentecost Sunday.  El Rocio is a very small town with very few residents and a lot of visitors.  They are mostly famous for the wild horses that they have, because there are very big wet lands.  When we went we could actually see the horses, which is rare because if there’s not a lot of water they are out further.  But it’s been a pretty wet fall so there was enough water to see the horses from a far.  It was really cool!  El Rocio is also famous for the feria they have on Pentecost Sunday, when they carry La Virgin del Rocio through the streets.  The Cathedral there is absolutely gorgeous, and when we went inside La Virgin del Rocio also happened to be there!  Apparently she doesn’t live in Rocio, she lives in Almonte, so she’s not always in El Rocio.  That explains why there were so many people visiting the Cathedral that day, and why it’s such a big deal.  Let me tell you, it is a gorgeous statue!  It’s pure white, and there’s not words to express how pretty it is.  The figures around the statue are obviously part of the church itself and the statue is on a platform that sticks out.  Also, apparently it’s really well guarded because one day someone stole it to start the procession early or something like that.  I was explained all of this in Spanish so I might have misunderstood some things, but I’m also positive that she’s well guarded for that reason.  It wasn’t a malicious robbery, just something that shouldn’t have happened. 

Oh yea, and did I mention that Pope John Paul II celebrated mass here one time! Yup, JPII celebrated a mass, and seeing as I love JPII, I was psyched when I found out.  They have a plaque on the inside of the church that explains when he came to El Rocio, in 1993, and they also have a plaque on the outside of the church, that depicts him kneeling in prayer, on the balcony where he celebrated mass.  It was so cool!  They also have a bust of his head on the boardwalk type area where you can see the wild horses.  Basically I was really excited.  The church was gorgeous and La Imagen de Nuestra Señora del Rocío is so beautiful that I could have spent so much more time in that church than I did.  I’ll put pictures in a photo album so you can see more of them.  There’s too many photos I want to share of this adorable pueblo than I can fit on here. 

Oh yea, and did I mention that the whole town is covered in sand….yup.  All the streets are made up of sand, and they have posts outside of houses and stores to tie up your horse.  And during the Feria you’re not allowed to have a car, only horses and carriages are allowed on the street.  If you live in Rocio you have to have a special permit to park somewhere else during the week of Feria, and in general families are only allowed one car in the town.  Yea, it’s pretty awesome, but it makes for messy shoes when you leave, shoes full of sand. 

So our last stop was in Niebla, after having eaten the most delicious spinach croquetas ever in Almonte.  Belen and Rafa took us to Niebla for the Medieval fair that they were having, which was like 10x better than the little fair that was in Huelva.  While I wish I could have been at the fair all day rather than just a few hours, it was still so much fun.  Niebla has an actual castle that you can go and visit.  And while it’s mostly ruins, it was still really cool to see.  They had events going on inside the castle, so we paid for the entrance and walked around and on the walls of a super old castle where battles were probably fought and where noble people walked.  It was awesome.  Then, outside of the castle there were little vendors selling chachki’s and sweets and crepes and all the things I wish I could buy.  Also, there was a cute old church that was pretty much destroyed by the great Lisbon earthquake that pretty much destroyed everything in it’s vacinity.  A lot of Portugal and a lot of the region in Andalucia where I live had really big damage done to it.  So when Belen and Rafa took Camille and I to see the old church it was missing….pretty much everything, haha.  There were no walls, no ceiling, just a remnant of what once a doorway, and then the space where the alter should have been, where there was a cross and some pieces of the building left.  It was actually really cool the way they preserved it.  Niebla doesn’t have too much to offer other than the castle and the old church, but it was a cute town and I had a lot of fun.  Camille is a great photographer so we spent a lot of time just taking pictures and taking in the scenery. 

 

Overall, the day was really great, it I was so tired by the end.  I’m so happy I was able to spend some time away from Huelva and also spend some time with my coordinator.  She was so nice to offer me and Camille to go with her, and I need to find a way to repay her some day for her kindness.  Till my next post, on Granada!  Much love. <3 Besos

 

View Full Album

Full of Apologies

So now it’s time for me to say I’M SORRY WORLD! I have totally let time pass without my noticing that it’s been almost a month since I posted an update. Since my last update a number of things have happened, which included Halloween, a day trip to some surrounding towns in the Province and a trip to Granada.  Oh, also, in that time I’ve officially booked all I need for Christmas traveling. :) But I’ll give you a recap little by little, I’ll post a little bit each day to keep you in the loop until I’m caught up. 

Halloween!  Yea….that’s not so hot here in Spain, it was really disappointing.  In college I really got into the Halloween spirit because my friends and roommate got into the spirit and decorated, while we searched for the best costumes starting when we arrived in August.  Yup!  We thought about it that early, haha.  But here in Spain it was a little lot different.  For starters, no one really seems to care about Halloween until literally like 3 days before.  At the start of October I tried to look in the stores for some Halloween things and found minimal options.  So I decided to wait a bit and looked again around mid- October, when you would think it is perfectly reasonable to start putting costumes out, FALSE!  For Spainards it’s not important, actually, many of them really despise Halloween and the older generation really hates it because they think they are becoming to Americanized.  It’s viewed as a very American holiday and the older generations want nothing to do with it.  But the younger generation is starting to grow up with it and have gotten into the spirit of dressing up.  And that’s what leads me to different number 2.

Difference number 2: Dressing up for Halloween does not mean finding cute, sexy or witty costumes.  It means finding a shirt that you can rip up, finding some fake blood and smearing it all over you wherever you think it looks best.  You want to be a vampire for Halloween?  Perfect.  Zombie?  Excellent.  Person who just died?  Great!  But if you want to be Abraham Lincoln you better go find some fake blood and put that on your body somewhere!  You want to be a bride?  Great, now just smear some blood on your veil, put some red lipstick on, and you’ve got yourself a great Spainish costume.  But wearing cat ears or dressing up as a minion won’t cut it, you’ll look strange and American.  You’ve gotta have blood somewhere on your costume if you’re gonna do it the Spanish way!  Or, you can be a witch, just like all the other people who don’t know what to do.  Buy yourself a witch hat and a broom and you fit right in, and you don’t even have to buy fake blood to wear that costume!

But the private academy I work at had a cute Halloween party for the kids.  Now remember how I don’t do kids very well….yea….it went just as I expected it to.  I volunteered to help out and ending up making pasta to dig for candy through “worms” and somehow ended up in the room with the kids who wanted to play games, so I had to entertain them and think of ways to not keep them from getting bored. Luckily Sarah was in there because I was losing my brain and had no idea what to do with the children.  I had a plan, and when that plan didn’t work my brain turned off.  But Sarah came to the rescue since she works at an elementary school here and she figured out how to keep them busy for an hour or so.  Boy was I glad when that hour was over!  But we told the acadamy about wrap the mummy and they seemed really excited about letting the kids wrap each other up in toilet paper.  However, since it’s run by British people who have apparently never heard of this game, they had no concept of how much toilet paper you need for this activity.  Upon hearing that you need a lot of toilet paper I was reassured that “yea, we have plenty!” and then followed my coworker into the bathroom where she pulled out about 4-6 rolls of toilet paper and said, “that’s enough, right?” hahahaha, nope!  But seeing as you don’t seem to want to buy more, we’ll see what we can do with what we have.  Well, needless to say the kids used all the rolls up in one round because who doesn’t want to help wrap someone up in toilet paper!  While it wasn’t a complete success, it wasn’t a complete failure either.  And the kids loved playing with all the toilet paper that was left on the ground anyways.  So all in all the party was a success. We just really acted as chaparones while the kids kind of went crazy and threw the toilet paper around the room for a good 30 minutes. 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

Either way, the kids loved it, and then after my students finished their exams we were able to celebrate Halloween in the classroom.  We read a scary story that I found online from “Scary Stories to tell your friends in the dark” from when I was a kid!  They loved the story and then we did other Halloween educational activities.  It was all in all pretty good. 

Oh yea!  I went on a Haunted tour through Huelva.  Apparently there’s some houses in Huelva that are haunted, so we found this tour on a website used to find out about local events and stuff, so me and my friend Camille went and signed up.  It turned out to be really fun, despite the fact that it lasted almost 3 hours.  The guy that lead the tour was hilarious, and once we realized that we were from the U.S. got all excited and would ask us some questions while telling his stories about if we celebrate things a certain way, or how to say things in English.  It was a really funny tour, and then we saw him the next night when we were out getting tapas with a friend.  He was leading another tour group and he recognized us!  It was really funny, but it was fun to see a familiar face and start to see how familiar faces become around Huelva.  At the end of the tour we ended up at a “real” haunted house in Huelva and entered it with nothing a candle (cue scary bum bum bum music!).  I turns out that it’s the building for youth here in Huelva that I’ve been to before, so I wasn’t scared, and nothing happened.  But it was a bit of fun to be with some odd Spainards and share some scary stories on Halloween night.  If I wasn’t going to go out and be at a party all dressed up then I was at least going to spend the night doing something Halloweeny.  It was fun, but I didn’t grab any pictures, sorry guys!  It’s just in my memory. 

So that’s all for now!  Another update on my trip to Niebla, El Rocio, and the Dolmen de Soto with my coordinator to come!

Much love! <3

Oh my how time flies!

I'm so sorry that I haven't updated in a while.  I guess time just flies when you're having fun/ living a mundane life with no real updates for there to be.  But that will all change because I went to Granada this weekend and was out last weekend with my coordinator also!  There's so much to update you on, since I've traveled and I'm sorry that I haven't updated.

Anyways, in the mean time, I've been having a lot of fun.  I'm in the midst of planning Christmas, where I plan on heading to Munich with my friend Jessica from Peru.  Then I'll leave Munich and go to Salzburg for the new year and then go to Vienna and stay with Sophie until my vacation time is over!  I'm excited for that time off, and while it's certainly eating up some money, I know it'll all be worth it, but right about now I'm wishing that the junta paid me more!

In the mean time, until later this week when I have updates, I'll leave you with some pictures of what's been going on in the past month (wow, it's almost been a month since I updated!)

A bunch of us out celebrating Elena's birthday!  (Elena is Sarah's Spanish roommate)

Halloween Party at the Academy!  The kids dressed up and it was cute.

Day trip to Moguer where we saw the house of a Nobel Prize Winner!

So now I'm really sorry that I took so long to update!  I promise more updates will come this week.  :) Till now, know that I love you all very much and miss everyone (despite all the fun I'm having here :)