It's December already?

Time has definitely flown. According to my calendar, I have one week until my vacation starts (the first part involves taking the GRE, so not quite the relaxing experience), a week and a half until I head down south to KZN to the south african part of my vacation (turtles! Beach! Friends!) and a little over two weeks before I head to the USA for my three week sojourn home.

Bundu has been pretty slow these last couple weeks as schools had exams and then closed, a long with most everything else.  I have spent my way too much free time watching lots of tv shows, GRE studying and turning my room into a part time daycare. The kids in my neighborhood love every version of toy story, coloring (both on paper and using microsoft paint) and using the photobooth application on my computer. Surprisingly, they aren't big fans of the lion king.

I've also been spending most of my weekends with other volunteers. Early in the month, I went to a provincial conference in Nelspruit. While small, it was fun and educational and included a huge game of Simon Says in Siswati that involved the whole backpackers, staff included. Needless to say, I was out pretty quickly. The next weekend we had Thanksgiving.  I went to Polokwane with about 40 other volunteers and we celebrated American Style. PCVs can cook! Everything was absolutely delicious and I came out wishing I had another stomach.

Last Tuesday was my birthday! I celebrated by eating a pizza and watching Top Chef at the local internet cafe and eating the last remnants of my care package. I felt very loved as I received so many calls, emails, facebook posts, BBMs and cards from friends in the US and South Africa. Saturday, my friend Alyssa and I had a belated birthday celebration in Groblersdaal, where we got the restaurant to sing to us and give us free ice cream and balloons! Year 23 was definitely the best year of my life so far and I'm think 24 will be even better.

Right now, I'm just getting really excited for my trip to america. 20 days, five states and hopefully tons of delicious food. I'm probably most excited about celebrating my first christmas. As my family is jewish and observant we always celebrate hanukkah . I never gt the big commercial christmas that I see in movies and commercials. But this year I do! I'm even getting my own stocking!