Happy Birthday to You!

Mel's birthday is tomorrow, but we had the day off of school today SO we celebrated her birthday last night. We ate dinner at a place called Vesuvio's and it was lovely. They have really good Italian food and EXCELLENT pizzas. We brought the party back to our place after dinner for cake, cookies, and hanging out. A grood time was had by all :]

This is Ed and Brian---or The Best-ies as we call them.

This is Soria, Najete, and Mel. Soria is the sister of a teacher at school, and Najete is a pre-k/ kindergarten aide in the Arabic classes.

Here are a bunch of the folks at the party: Hiromi, Omar, James, Carrie, and Laura.

I skipped my planning period on Monday to rush home to make Mel's cake. It was so good!!! Here's Kendra (a friend from language school) and Katie getting ready to cut the cake up. We had no candles so we put matches into the cake in the shape of a 27. It was QUITE an experience. Matches are NOT equal to candles!

This is one of my students and her brother. We went to their house for dinner a few weeks ago. They live close to where we go to language school, and their house is gorgeous.

I've been pretty homesick this past weekend. I've been here for almost four months now, and apparently this delayed culture shock/homesickness is a common happening around this period of being out of your home country. I'm missing the easiness of living in America, but I still really enjoy where I am. Thank you for caring and thinking about me this weekend. I'm so thankful for the videos (Bethany Ridge LG!!!) and emails from you guys. You've made me feel better :] Thanks for the awesomeness!

We started language classes again last week. This class we're taking is full of verbs so we'll finally be able to have whole conversations with folks. I'm trying to do better with making myself study for a minimum of 20 minutes each day, but I'd like to try for more like 45 minutes. Shwiuh-b-shwiuh (little by little) I'll work up to that. I'm still having trouble with this one sound--the "ain" sound. It's quite tricky to make, and you need it for two of the Arabic letters! Again, shwiuh-b-shwiuh I'll get there.