Back to You (old school John Mayer)

so, i realize that it's been a ridiculously long time since i posted anything, BUT it's because my computer cord finally bit the dust. i was having to borrow my roommates computers to check emails, and felt bad about uploading pictures to their computers and taking up their computer time by writing a blog. BUT thanks to a wonderful lady, who brought back a new cord from america for me, i'm all hooked up again. and i gotta say, it feels good :]

i'm not going to bore you with the mundane details of what happened over the last month, BUT you can know that 1) school's gotten underway very well and i'm really happy that i decided to continue teaching 2) daily life has been interrupted by the month of fasting, but it's over now (humdulillah-praise god) so we can walk about after dark as usual again, and 3) most recently we had to leave the country for a weekend to renew our tourist visas until we get our residency cards. we had a LOT of fun in spain, and can't wait to go back. here are some pics from the weekend.
This is Carrie and Mel waiting for our connecting train to come. Katie fell asleep like this for about five minutes. It was hysterical.
This is Laura. She teaches first and second grade. We were roommates this weekend (Cheri, she's the one who reminds me of you).

These are most of the girl teachers on the trip. Much salsa dancing ensued after this :]



THE RETURN FROM THE BORDER:
the border between the two countries is one that you can walk or drive across. we were walking back across to our neck of the woods when mel and i were detained by the border guard, who was checking us through. he told us that we would be considered illegal after october 27th when our 90 day tourist visas were expired (all of this in broken english with the random spanish and arabic word thrown in for good measure). this wasn't good news since the whole point of leaving the country was to get another passport stamp so we could have another 90 day tourist visa while our residency card applications were getting under way. we were a bit freaked out, but it ended up being a good thing because it forced ed to jump on helping us to get the residency application process started. we've been working on the paperwork this week, and will be most of the way through it by the end of this week, insha'allah (god willing).

mel and i have been waiting to hear from some friends, who live in paris, about spending christmas with them. they emailed us back, and told us we could absolutely spend christmas with them. it should be MUCH more fun than staying around here for the holidays. we've heard that it's a bit depressing. being with our friends will be closer to being with our families. after christmas we're going to do some traveling around france and spain. we're encouraged by our bosses to take planned vacations so that we don't get burned out from living here. we'll be doing it all on a shoe-string, and it'll be so much fun! i'm excited to get to see some great works of art in some of the most famous museums in the world.

VONAGE UPDATE:
so, as some of you know, our vonage phone died one week after it started working. we came home from school on friday, and it had died. i finally called the vonage peeps yesterday, and they are replacing our phone for free. katie (our third roommate) is going home next weekend for a wedding so she's going to bring the NEW phone back with her. the number will be the same. we'll "hope" that this one doesn't die. we should have it in approximately two weeks.

thanks as alway for reading! i love you guys and miss you!!!