6 months!

I'm horrible at posting on this thing, I know. You're all just dying for another riveting post right? Well, I suppose I'll make it easier for me by arranging an update of my life in the form of a tenlist.

1. I need heat in my room. Or warmer socks/microfleece. Without a heater, the temperature is consistently below dew point (whatever that is in farenheit or celsius) in my room, which means I see my breath at all points of the day. Morning, night, all the time. And yet I still run around my house in little booty shorts and tank tops partly because it scandalizes my host family, partly because I'm not necessarily *that* cold yet.

2. It's been 6 months since I left home. Officially. Wow, it's the longest I've been away from my family. This week was weird. I did feel the whole disconnect from my life at home, it made me want to hide in my room with a book and wish for hot chocolate or hot apple cider.

3. School is ok. I mean, it's going well but I'm a bit dubious in regards to my job satisfaction. It's not so much the job but the education methodology is a bit counterintuitive to me at times. I'll try to reconcile that by introducing new methods to test knowledge to my counterparts. First experiment has been successful, the students and my counterparts liked it.

4. We have our first AZ5 in-service training (IST) beginning on christmas day as our travel day. should be fun filled between "enthralling" training sessions. But I do anticipate some refreshing insight to new strategies as a community development worker, not just mere PCV teacher.

5. I may start learning how to play piano in January.

6. Crossword puzzles make my sitemate Will and I very happy. We're getting pretty darn good too.

7. Will got his care package from Ohio, my mommy sent mine from Seattle 2 days after, I'm strongly hoping it'll be waiting for me on Tuesday in Baku. It has a down jacket I've been eagerly waiting for. More importantly, it should have a new charger cable for my pink Nintendo DS Lite that I haven't been able to turn on since July. Playing video games makes me feel mushy inside.

8. I miss home, a lot. Strangely though I'm already making plans to leave it once I do finish service. Got more dreams to chase.

9. I'm slightly OCD when it comes to making packing lists and organizing my iTunes, it kills time at site. This also applies to a book review I wrote that I'll be submitting to the volunteer newsletter. Even though it's not a huge thing to get published, it's still been awhile since my avid journalism days pre-college. I'm a bit nervous about others reading my writing. I satired some satire, hoping it goes down well.

10. It's been strange to be in a country that isn't big into Christmas. I mean it's here as much as you'd anticipate a secularly Muslim country influenced by Western pop culture. But there is school next week. Nothing by way of gratuitous amounts of false holiday cheerfulness. I'm actually enjoying that quite a bit. My brother and I are a bit Grinch-like when it comes to the holidays. Not really because of some shared childhood home drama but more because we're jaded cynical types that love overcast skies and gloomy weather. In spite of the excessive amounts of mud around site, I do love the cold weather I'm living in now.

That's it for now folks, more updates to come, I promise!