Semester Break!

Well I have some time to kill mostly because I'm now on semester break from now until February 10th. Two blissful weeks of no school! This is the only really long vacation the school gives, so hopefully it will be enjoyable. So I figured I should catch you all up on what I've been doing.
First of all, last week I got two amazing packages. One from my parents, and one from one of my best friends: Caitlin Silk. My parents had some stuff for my family in it and a few things for me too. Caitlin's box had a bunch of amazing candies: candy canes, chocolate, chips and also a copy of the most recent town paper. Oh also she sent me a pair of fuzzy slippers so I have a very comfortable pair of house shoes (which I think makes my host mom happy because I wear them).

Caitlin's box

My parent's box

My host mom and sister with their presents

My parents sent this little furry creature. His name is Rousseau, Russ for short, to go with the Voltaire named cat at home.  

I am also moving host families during this break. I am moving on Monday the 4th of February to a house that's about 40 minutes away by metro. Actually I'm moving from one end of the metro to the other. I'll be taking the metro to school every morning so no more lazy sleeping in for me. I've met my second family several times and I really like them. They are really nice, but I'm going to be forced to step up my Turkish (not that that's a bad thing). Speaking of my Turkish, I have reached that happy point where I understand almost everything people say to me. I just need to improve my speaking ability, but I can definitely speak enough to get around really easily. I was able to point someone in the street towards their hotel the other day :D

I got a chance to meet some other exchange students yesterday! The group from the Istanbul district is going on a tour of a bunch of places around Turkey and yesterday they were in Izmir. So we all met up and formed this huge group of foreign people. We were about 33 or so people which is a crazy amount of people to do things with. There were 7 other Americans, lots of Mexicans and Brazilians, and a few people from Taiwan, Colombia and then the Turkish Rotex kids. We just crashed at a cafe and got to know each other. I already knew a few people from when our group went to Istanbul, but it was nice to meet the others. Annie is also here for the weekend because today is her birthday and we're also on break, so she's staying in Manisa with Shannon. It's nice to have her here because we haven't seen her in over a month!

I've got to go now, but I'll keep you all updated

Monica