My new host family has no internet.
I've never lived without internet. How is it possible?
Thus, I must be brief. Rome was awesome. I have about 500 pictures, no joke, no exaggeration, and frankly, I'm too lazy to sort through them and find the ones that are worthy of precious borrowed or paid for bandwidth, so I don't have any for you just now. Anyway, the highlight was probably seeing the pope. That was pretty sweet. Anyway, a bunch of the kids were foolish and went out drinking, so some or all of the foolish kiddies might be going home. It's not a pretty sight. The biggest bummer, though, was probably that, upon our arrival at Bratislava airport, Haley found that she hadn't brought her passport. While the rest of us were boarding the plane, she was working her long, sad way back to Banska Bystrica.
In later news, packing was a nightmare. I managed to fit almost everything in the original suitcases... and my big Ikea laundry bag... and my little backpack... and my big orange purse. In my own defence, let me just say that the Ikea laundry bag was full of stuff that I'll be passing on to other folks before I leave. My new host family just moved to their current house last week, so while they were showing me around, they kept saying stuff like, "Here's the dishwasher. We never had a dishwasher before, so we're still figuring out how to work it." or "This is the living room. The TV antenna isn't up yet, so there's not very good signal, and we don't really have a couch yet." Largely due to the lack of seating upstairs, I spent the last two days hanging out in my room listening to the audiobook of the Lord of the Rings which showed up on my zune when it came and crocheting. Yesterday, I made a beret for Christina, since she said she'd pay me for it. Oh, and Peter, my new host brother, took me rock climbing. I'm so weak it's not even funny. He's pretty cool. He'd fit right in in Eugene-- long hair, vegetarian, brown corderoys, recycling, even tie-dye, man. How cool is that? I'll have a 15-year old host sister, too, but she's in Belgium right now for some inadequetely explained reason. In any event, I'll be leaving for ski week on Sunday, and Athens the weekend thereafter, I think. I'll have to check my handy-dandy color-coded calendar when I get back. Another random thought: I really ought to get a wall charger for my zune. Now that I can watch movies on it, the only reason I've booted up the ol' lappy the past week or so is to charge it up again. Anyway. That's all I have to say just now. I'd better get back to squeezing every bit of internet I can from my limited span here.
I lied. I really really am unhappy with the quality of the dancing here. Almost every week, I have a big melt down in ballet, a) because my personal level of ability has sunk to roughly that of a sea cucumber, crushing my hopes of auditioning for the role of the White Witch and/or college-level modern classes at the U of O next year, and b) their choreography sucks. With a capital Sucks. The choreographer for the pointe piece has never even studied ballet, and they're actually choreographing in bad technique. This last week, I ran off to cry in the bathroom (not the nearest bathroom, since I knew they'd look for me there, so I went upstairs to some other bathroom. They found me anyway), and for the first time this year, I found myself saying "I can't stay here. I have to go home. I can't do this. I've played along for seven months and I can't do it anymore. I have to go home. Rotary lied to me. Everything was supposed to get better after Christmas, but it's just gotten worse. I have to go home. I'll already be packing everything up. I've got to go home" Not to say that I'd never had most of those sentiments before, but it was the first time I actually wanted to get on a plane and leave early.
Well, I hate to end on such a depressing note, so here's something that made me laugh to cheer you all up. I know that most of you aren't as lame as me, so you might not laugh quite as hard. Still, gotta give me credit for trying.
