It's been awhile...

...mainly because I took the GRES on October 27th in Tegus and was studying like crazy up until then. Since I took the written test, I won't know my score for another 6 weeks...hopefully it's good! Now I'm in the midst of grad school app craziness...I have 3 apps due on Dec. 15 and am nowhere near ready.

I've been living with my family for about a month now. The father works in Tegus (he's in the military) and is only home on weekends, so I rarely see him because I am usually in Tegus on weekends. The daughters, 6 and 7, are very cute. I've even helped them study for Spanish tests already! The mother owns 2 stores, works at a bank, and teaches on the side. She's friendly and young. The parents are bit too religious for my tastes (they're hardcore Catholics who bless each other when they leave the house...I said I didn't want to be blessed when the mother asked me) and they go to church every weekend and are really involved in a bible study group. I would like to go to church with them, just to see what it's like, but I haven't had time.

My biggest complaint is the food. Lunch is almost always good because it usually includes meat and veggies. Dinner is almost always the same: some variation of beans, scrambled eggs, tortillas, and tajadas (fried plantains...usually not sweet). Breakfast can run the gamut from pancakes to baleadas (see my earlier post for a description) to a ham and cheese sandwich on Wonder bread. Sometimes I feel like I'm on the Atkins diet here because all I eat is protein and starch. They don't eat many fruits or vegetables.

Weirdest foods I've eaten with my family:
Breakfast: french fries and koolaid
Dinner: a piece of ham rolled around a slice of melted processed american cheese, accompanied by beans and a slab of salty cheese...man, i think i'm going to be vegetarian when i return!

For Halloween, I made pumpkin shaped cookies and dyed them orange (the dye and cookie cutters can only be found in Tegus). I'll post some pictures soon. I also made the whole day Halloween-themed. In reading, we read a story about Halloween, in math did a Halloween puzzle, etc. And we also made lollipop ghosts, which are so easy and they love them! (basically you wrap a kleenex around a lollipop, tie it with string, and draw a ghost face).

That's about it for now...today is my last vacation day until Christmas...gotta love that our directors are Ba'hai and all the Ba'hai days are vacations for us...unfortunately, most of them are on weekends this year.