:)

Krisanna and Jess arrived. :)
I can't really tell you how incredibly amazing it is to have people from HOME come and stay for an extended period of time. It's such a huge blessing... one that I know I don't deserve--but one for which I am incredibly grateful (awkward sentence wording... but I was reminded today not to end a sentence with the word "for"... so I figured I should at least try).
The night before they arrived I could barely sleep...It felt like the night before Christmas... :)
I love having them here.

I've begun pouring my energy (and by "energy" I mean exorbitant amount of extra time that I'm not sure why I have so much of here...) into creating a book study guide for my class. I'm so excited about teaching it. It's one of my favorite books regarding the Holocaust. So...home-made deodorant is going to have to wait for some time...I'm only nine chapters into twenty-seven. :) (Did I just hear a collective sigh of relief?)

Language is going well... for the most part. I still can't say that I fully understand why God has wired me to LOVE it so much. It's like this key to a door that holds a whole new world... and right now... I'm still trying to get the key to turn. I feel like I should be so much further than where I really am. I so desperately wish I could just converse with people... people outside of my "world" of school and home. Hopefully someday...

I do finally feel like I have my own place here. I don't know if I can adequately describe it... but I just feel like I'm finding where I fit for however long God has me here. And more than once I've caught myself feeling very much at home.

On a random side note...
I shocked myself yesterday when I opened a package my mom had sent with Krisanna. It was a zip-lock bag with four shirts that I had left and wanted. I opened them and threw the bag and shirts on the bed when suddenly I smelled it. I quickly snatched up the shirts and buried my face into them to see if it was really it. Sure enough... they smelled like home. It was odd. I sniffed the shirts for about five minutes and then ripped open the other bag of shirts to see if they smelled just as familiar. It was weird.... how smells can be so intimately connected and intertwined with memories of places and people. While I love being here... it was so nice to smell there for just a few minutes.