Happy New Years!

This is going to be the shortest post I have ever written. We are leaving for southern Germany for New Years and we're leaving in a few minutes. I just wanted to wish you a Happy New Years! More posts and pictures will follow in the New Year! Cheers!

Merry Christmas!!

I'll catch you up on my life and share some pictures, but first I want to wish YOU a very Merry Christmas! I'll be thinking of you.

This time I'll start off with the pictures. So enjoy!

This is the top shelf of a book shelf in my room. I've bought quite a few Christmas things here, but that makes sense since Germany pretty much equals Christmas. ANYWAYS...I felt rather festive and since the Germans don't put up their trees until a few days before Christmas OR even on the 24th, I wanted something Christmasy in my room.

I absolutely LOVE this guy!!! He doesn't have a name yet, but I love him and I know he loves me too! You see a lot of these guys at the Christmas Markets. I had a really hard time finding one that I really liked. (I fell in love with an antic one in the toy museum....) (They are called Räuchermann.) However, I really like this one! I bought it in the Nürnberg Christmas Market, which is the most famous Christmas Market in all of Germany!!!

I also bought this in Nürnberg. These are also quite typical. They are called Pyramiden and when you light these candels than the hot air rises and moves the spinny thing on top which causes the little figures to move around in a circle! Excellent??? HECK YES!

I feel a little bit like Mrs. Claus! (These are my presents to different people! Aren't they excellent! GO CANADA!) Apparently Santa Claus doesn't have a wife in Germany and they think it's funny that there is a Mrs. Claus in North America.

I thought I'd give you a close up! Oh and those are sooooo maple candies! Believe it!

Deneige here comes all of that Art stuff I promised you!! So this is my wire rose which I fell in love with and bought in Trier for 2 Euros and I pretty much think it's one of the best souveniors ever!!!

And if you didn't fall in love with the rose, then here is the little bicycle. It even has a kick stand!!!!

This, in case it's not obvious, was my attempt to sketch a lemon. It's one of the first things I have ever really drawn.

This is kind of random, but I really like it. I painted this with some water colours back when I lived in Oberellenbach. I think it's rather cute.

I love drawing eyes. Sometimes my papers will just be covered in drawings of eyes. This is by far my best.

This picture has a funny story behind it. I drew this in art class and I have to say I'm pleased with it considering I have never taken an art class and we don't have a lot of instruction in my current art class. I drew this and as I went to put it away in the drawer where we leave our papers after class this one guy asked if he could see it. Of course I didn't want to show him. I mean the German kids have had art classes for years and of course I haven't. I reluctantly said yes and he looked at it and asked me who it was. I honestly answered no one, because it wasn't based on anyone. Then he asked if I liked black men. I'm sure my eyes were completely wide with shock and I'm surprised I was able to speak. I said, 'It didn't matter.' What else could I say?? It's just a picture! How does drawing one picture of a black man translate into I really like black guys. Well it's a funny story, at least hahaha.

This is the first German book that I've read. There is quite a bit of text in these books, although they are children's books. The vocabulary is also quite clever at times and the pictures are BEYOND adorable. Anyways, Katrin gave this to me to read the first day I came to live with them. The title of the book translates roughly to How Findus came to live with Petterson. She said that it seemed fitting because I was coming to live with them. Cute? Oh ya. So I would read the book with my dictionary beside me and during some evenings Katrin would listen while I read it and then she helped me with my pronounciation. That has really helped me.

I'm sure many of you have heard about the legendary Haribo gummy bears. This is a tiny package. It was sooo small and cute that I thought it deserved a picture. (Oh and the green ones are the best.)

This is a picture of one of my scarves close up. I think it's so cool and I've talked to a few of you about it so now you can see it too!

So this is my agenda for school. I covered it with Canada things, now before all of you think I've been converted to become a Flames fan or I've fallen in love with the Canucks you are DEFINETLY wrong. The only reason that Montreal stickers aren't plastered all over this baby is because Montreal didn't send me any free stuff to take with me. The Flames and the Canucks did. There, now you know!

Here is the best German movie of all time. I don't know if you can find it in Canada, but I've spoken about it before. It's sooooo funny!!!

Now I'll get onto all of my news!

On Tuesday one of my teacher's pulled me aside and asked how long I would be here in Germany. He thought I left in January, so he wanted to make sure to say goodbye. That really really touched me. He's a very nice man. That same day my math teacher took all of us to the Rotenburg an der Fulda Christmas Market and bought us something hot to drink. That was pretty excellent! On that same day I almost bought a small poinsettia for my room. I was feeling rather festive and we always have a poinsettia in our house at Christmas time. So I would have liked one, but the ones that I saw were kind of weak and a bit sickly looking. Needless to say, I didn't buy one, but I was still pretty cheary.

While I was drinking tea and eating Christmas cookies with Katrin the phone rang and it ended up being Johannes' English teacher. She was wondering if I could come to Johannes' school on Friday and give a small presentation for her class about Christmas in Canada and the School System in Canada. I would speak in English, because it was an English class. I ended up saying yes. There wasn't as much pressure because it was in English and it would be nice change.

This is kind of random, but you would not believe how many times I have watched the movie Kung Fu Panda. I never watched it in Canada, but since I have been in Germany I have seen it 3 times. One of these times was this week in Art class. Craziness.

I sang Christmas carols in the choir in the hall on Thursday. It ended up being pretty fun and I thought fondly of Christmas caroling with you Tannis. I'll miss that so much this year. There were a lot of good singers, so that was good! Hahaha while singing can be fun, I definetly don't have the voice of an angel.

My presentation went really well on Friday. I brought the class some Canadian presents and the presentation went really well. We ate breakfast together and I wanted to laugh when one of the girls brought out a package of butter. Only in Germany, seriously. I've found that people butter their toast before putting on jelly or other things. For snacks they will eat bread smeared with butter and then with some cheese or meat inside. They eat a lot more butter than I eat back home.

The teacher handed out secret Santa gifts and she had made one for me. I thought that was so incredibly sweet. So I received some sweets and a mug that says Bad Hersfeld on it. (That's the city where Johannes' school is.) Later that day I went to another Drama Rehersal.

On Saturday, my most family and I went to cut down a Christmas Tree. It rained on us. I have to say that I had imagined a bit of snow. Many of the trees were also more bluish than green. I also have to admit I imagined very green trees. We ended up finding a nice tree although it is more bluish than green and it will be my first real Christmas tree that I remember anyways. I don't think I had one as a young child, but maybe. I'll take lots of pictures once we have decorated it. Promise, promise.

That evening Johannes and I watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It wasn't Johnny's best performance, but it was still rather cute. Sunday was a pretty chill day, but I did end up going on a long walk with Katrin, Eberhard, and Mira. Even though it rained it was nice to get outside.

We ate sour crout and let me tell you it was acutally really really good. It is so much better in Germany. OH and we watched Ice Age 1, because it was on TV. It's sooo cute! I've seen it before in English and I think that Sid's voice is better in English, but it was still really good.

Today I had Drama from 10 am until 2:30 pm. It was suppose to be until 6 pm, but Herr Meyer saw the light. Thank goodness! It's hard to concentrate for so long. The play is slowly coming together. We haven't rehersed all of the scenes yet, but we've made some pretty cool ones so far. I'm starting to memorize my lines in German. (The ones I know, we still don't have a script.) It's a little hard core, because if I forget my lines in German it's a bit difficult to improve on the spot especially in front of an audience!!! So I hope that doesn't happen, but I still have quite a bit of time, so I'll try not to worry about that yet.

Now I will do my blurt about Art classes in Germany. Now unfortunately Deneige I don't really have much to report. Since the begining of the year we have been drawing with special pencils and paper and our topic has been drawing people. Or people's features like eyes, mouths, etc. People have put together presentations about different Art periods, but other than that we are just working by ourselves. So I haven't really recieved much instruction. After Christmas I think we will change to a new topic. However, now you can see a few things that I've drawn or painted. I wish I had more to tell you!

Either tonight or tomorrow we will decorate the tree. I'm pretty excited about that. I'll tell you all about Christmas in Germany once I have lived it. I won't be writing again until after Christmas so Merry Christmas and I'll save the Happy New Year until later!

I want to dedicate this post to all of my readers. That's right, this one is for you! One of the things that I've learned while I've been over here is that I am soo lucky and grateful for the people who are in my life. Thanks for being there now and then. So until we meet again reader, this one is for you...

Lunch Adventures, Hiking, Christmas Markets, PHOTO'S, VIDEO'S and much much more!!!

Sorry, I know it’s been awhile reader. I’ve got tons of pictures for you this time, so I hope waiting for this entry was worth it!! (I will put up some pictures of some of my art and the wire art thingys next time Deniege! My next blog will be about the art classes I promise!!) I’ve been taking a lot of pictures lately so I wanted to get some of them on my blog now.

On Sunday I saw Stephan again. We went to the Rotenburg Christmas Market and talked it was nice to see him again. We also spent some time with Marion and Lutz. That day, I took some pretty cool pictures which I think captured the Christmas Market in Rotenburg pretty good. So I hope you can feel like you were there too!

That evening I sang some German Christmas songs with my host family and their neighbours. Many of you who know me pretty well know that I can’t really sing. Well I can, but not well. LOL And of course the neighbours had voices like angels. They had a amazing voices. I was sitting by all of them so I couldn’t really hear the Wagner’s. Anyways, it was fun, but my voice was a bit strained afterwards. I didn’t recognize any of the songs, although some of them were quite pretty. Insanely high, but pretty!!

I was finally able to get my camera this week!! Woohoo!! So I picked that up and I’ve been snapping pictures ever since!

I have a pretty funny story from last Thursday. I had a few free classes after lunch before I went to my Theatre Group so I decided to grab a bite to eat in town. I returned to Aladin’s the scene of the crazy garlic incident and I knew that I couldn’t buy a doner, because I wouldn’t have time to brush my teeth like crazy before Drama. So what’s a hungry Canadian exchange student to do? Well clearly order pasta! So I did just that. The same lady was there and her accent was just as noticeable this time. After I ordered she asked me something which I didn’t understand and I asked her to repeat it. I didn’t understand the next time and I figured it was just something to do with my pasta. Like do you want this or this. So I figured she was just giving me an option. So I told her the first one.

What I later figured out is she asked if I wanted to stay and eat or to go. I’d said to go. Well that wasn’t such a big deal. I would have rather stayed, but no harm done. Well there was one slight problem. After I left I realized she hadn’t given me a fork. OH BOY. I was pretty hungry…so I went into a small grocery store near by looking to see if I could find some plastic forks or something. Ya I know it was a long shot, but what else was I suppose to do?? Needless to say nothing there and nothing in the other small grocery store I tried.

I did how ever find baby spoons. Now I considered buying a baby spoon to eat my pasta, but I just couldn’t do it. I thought oh man they are going to think I have a kid or I’m pregnant or something and I’m so young. It’s a small town…ya da ya da…So I convinced myself not to do it. Besides those baby spoons were quite expensive! They come in a pack of two and are about 8 bucks Canadian!

So I wandered over to the Christmas Market which happened to be open over the lunch hour and I looked to see if I could find the little forks you use when you eat your sausages. Well I couldn’t find those either, but I did end of finding a thick plastic stick thing that I used to jab at my stuffed pasta. I ended up getting sauce over my jacket, because I ate as I walked. So it was kind of funny. I felt like a New Yorker. Someone who has no time to sit down to eat, so they eat while they walk.

I walked to the library at the stories don’t end there! So I go to the Library pick out some DVD’s and grab an English book. I don’t read a lot, but I read in English when my brain is so fryed from German that I can’t think straight. At the counter I explained to the clerk, in German of course, that my address had changed. She wanted some sort of proof that it had changed. (Like a bank statement or something.) Well I didn’t have anything like that. I told her my situation that I was an exchange student and I had switched families. Well that was no big deal she believed me and that was that. Thank goodness!!

Then another clerk asks me if I’m from Canada. I think my jaw hit the floor. How did he know that?? I’ve only been in here once or twice. As I left it was really cute, he said ‘I hope you have a nice day’ in English.

Now I know when I will be performing in our school play. We will be performing in the middle of March. I have some pretty intense rehearsals before Christmas and then we don’t rehearse over Christmas break.

On Saturday I went to Nürnberg with my 3rd host family to visit the Nürnberg Christmas Market which just so happens to be the most famous Christmas Market in Germany. BAH!! I was so excited. Renato came with us too. (He’s living with them right now.) First of all we went on a tour of the city which ended up being a bit of a let down for all of us. The tour guide spoke in really strange German so Renato and I understood practically nothing and my 3rd guest family had a hard time understanding him. After almost 2 hours of listening to him talk outside, it was a bit chilly, we went to this Bratwurst house and ate a very traditional German meal of Bratwursts (a type of sausage), sour crowte, potatoe salad, and pretzels.

Then I was set free to look around the Christmas market. Pretty excellent!! I bought a few really cool souvenirs. I haven’t taken pictures of them yet so I’ll wait until next time to explain them and I will include pictures!!

Yesterday, my host family took Renato and I on a small hike to the place where the old castle of Rotenburg once was. There are some ruins, but almost nothing is let there. We had a great time!! The sun was out and the sky was bluer than I have seen it in ages. Sometimes I really am starving for a vast blue Albertan sky.

After looking at the castle we hiked to a little restaurant on the mountain and had some traditional sausages, mustard, bread, and pickles. The German’s really know how to make sausages and their mustard is soo much better than anything we have in Canada.

Renato lost his camera in the Frankfurt rive (I know…) so I let him go crazy taking pictures. The landscape, for me, wasn’t so unusual, but to him it was. So it took a lot of pictures and after looking at them today, he took some gorgeous shots.
Now I’ll explain briefly some of these pictures and yes I also have a few short videos so you can really feel like you were at a German Christmas market!!! ENJOY!!

Above is what remains of one of the towers of the Rotenburg Castle!

This is Renato from Brasil.
You are looking at the biggest Pyramiden in Germany. I KNOW!! It's in Rotenburg! Go figure! It is really impressive. You can buy little Pyramiden and they tend to be made of wood. They are a common Christmas decoration. There are candels around it a wind mill like thing on the top. When the candels are lit the middle begins to rotate and the wind mill thing turns. It is sooo cool! I bought one! You'll see pictures next time!

You can see some of the figures!

Here are some more!

At these Christmas Markets there are also small rides and things for kids.

Wood handcrafted decorations are quite typical. So these stands are quite common at these markets.
Here I am in Nürnberg with my new scarf!! I love it!!! Here are also my gloves from EDIT which are super warm and comfy!


Welcome to my pictures of the Nürnberg Christmas Market!


Here it is during the day. It's more impressive at night!

Here is a typical stand with lots of wooden decorations and ornaments.

Here is the Nürnberg Pyramiden. Pretty tiny compared to ours in Rotenburg I know!!

The following 3 videos can hopefully give you a better impression about what the Christmas marekts are like. I hope you enjoy it!!

=) Did somebody say pictures? =)

"Pictures!!! NO WAY!" *look of shock*

No way, there can't be pictures on Marita's blog. There haven't been pictures FOREVER and she still doesn't have her new camera yet. How can this be SO?????

Yesterday I was in Fulda with my Host parents and I purchased this card reader thing so I was able to put all of my pictures of the Wildenhayn's camera onto my portal hard drive. Woo hoo. OH and news on the camera front, it should be (crossing my fingers) be in my hot little hands on Monday. Then I will go picture crazy.

And you can also see a picture of this years Bunnyhug!!!! Hehehe.

So now, I need to go back in time a little bit. This was my first host family. This is Lutz my host father and marion my host mother.

You've already seen a picture of Stephan, so this is a picture of Jonas.

And now the moment all of you have been waiting for! This is ANTON. You've heard a lot about him, so now you can feel like you know him a little too.

This is the crest for Rotenburg an der Fulda. So now we are moving forward in time and saying Goodbye to Oberellenbach.

I know it's been a long time since Halloween, but I just had to show you the pumpkin that my new brother Johannes and I made on Halloween. (It was my second day in my new host family.)

The snow never lasts particularly long around here so I needed to take a picture while I could. My family also mentioned that it has snowed here more this year than it did all of last winter in Rotenburg. (It really hasn't snowed much, so I wonder how much snow I will actually experience here.)

The Europeans sure know how to wear scarves and I talk about scarves a lot, so here is a picture of one of mine that I bought over here.

This is the skyline in Frankfurt. Skylines are not common in Germany. I was in Frankfurt for my Rotary Cultural weekend.

And this is....dun dun dun da....THE BLAZER after Frankfurt. It's epic. You can click on the image to make it bigger and I don't know if you'll be able to see it, but up on the right hand side I have this diamond yellow sign with a kangaroo on it from Australia. I love it sooo much! OH and you can definetly see the bannannas from Ecquador! BAH I love them!

And this is the back of the blazer! Fun stuff!

This is the advent calender Katrin made for Johannes and I. It was so incredibly sweet of her!

This is a picture of an advent's wreath. In December, every Sunday until Christmas a new candle is lit. Today is the second advent so now 2 candles are lit, but when I took this picture it was only 1.

In Germany these things are really popular. (Weihnachtsmarkt pyramide) They are handmade out of wood and they can be really eleborate like this one here. You light the candles and then the centre piece moves around. It is soo cool. This was one at a really sweet toy mueseum here in Rotenburg. It is 150 years old. Pretty excellent!

So I don't know if you celebrate St. Nicholas' Day, but my family does. Although, not quite the traditional way. Here in Germany it is very common. On December 6th 'St. Nicholas' comes to all of the kids and fills their shoes with sweets. The kids have to clean their shoes or he won't come. So that's my stash of things!

And now I'll hit some highlights since we last spoke. On Thursday it was determined which crazy person I will play in the school's play. I will be Carla, so if you've read the book, that's who I am. Now that I know who I am and since we still don't have a script yet I decided to buy the German version so I can try to memorize some of my lines. I don't know what Herr Meyer is planning, but I would really like to try to do the play in German. Which of course is a bit nerve wracking for me. Memorizing lines in English is hard enough somtimes, but I am going to do this. The book came quite promptly and I already have it!

I also went to this really really cool toy museum in Rotenburg an der Fulda. It had a special Christmas display and most of the Weihnachtsmarkt pyramides and other things were around 150 years old. They also had this really SWEET giftshop. So I bought a painted metal thingy in the shape of a pretzel which I am going to sew onto my blazer, a super cute ornament for myself, and a nutcracker pin! So my blazer will have some new editions. Did I mention how much I love my blazer???? I think the blazer will be my favourite souvenier. <3

On Friday evening I went with Caroline to the Christmas market here in Rotenburg. I had a really good time. I ate some typical Christmas market things like fruit dipped in chocolate and a German bratwurst. The stuff at the market wasn't as cool as in Frankfurt, but the atmosphere was great, the food was good, the company was wonderful, and the large moving Weihnachtsmarkt pyramide was soooooo cool and the largest in Germany!! I have a picture of a Weihnachtsmarkt pyramide on this blog. It's the thing with the candles.

Then yesterday I was in Fulda and I had a mission. I needed to find boots. My runners aren't in good shape. I ended up finding some really cute ones so I was pleased, but I had a lot of trouble. My feet aren't usually difficult to find shoes for, but yesterday they sure were! Strange! lol, but I guess when you are looking for something specific it's always harder to find. We looked around a little bit at the Christmas market in Fulda, but we came home so Johannes wasn't all by himself.

So it's been a good couple of days and I have a pretty full day today as well, but I'll talk about that next time. Take care reader! OH YA and in my new profile picture you can see a new pair of gloves from my favourite store in Lethbridge, Edit. If you haven't been there and checked it out seriously you need to go. Eco friendly and fashionable! Thanks Joanne for the gloves!

Attack of The Killer Birds, All Wrapped Up In Christmas, and Where Oh Where Is My Camera!

Hello reader. I am going to write a short post to tell you about what I have been up to. I'm just going to hit a few highlights. After I wrote my last post Eberhard, Katrin, Mira, and I went for a walk in the dark because the snow was so beautiful. We had this really cool torch thing, but the wind kept blowing out the flame. Too bad, but it still was very beautiful. It was nice to hear the crunch of snow beneath my feet. I had prepared myself not to have a lot of snow when I was here, so I was really excited that it had snowed.

I also watched the old version of The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock with my host family. The ending has got to be one of the lamest movie endings on the planet, but it was still pretty fun. I have to say, that I am now more aware of birds. The movie didn't bother me, but never the less I am much more aware of them.

Two weekends ago, I was in Flensburg with my host family. The trip was organized for a visit to Eberhard's mother. In the evening we were in Flensburg looking for some shoes. I desperately need shoes, seriously. My runners are not in good shape! They are begining to fall apart!

So I didn't really find anything until we went into this one shop and I found the most gorgeous black leather boots! I just about died! They were sooo pretty and they were made in Germany! LIKE OH MY GOSH. They were perfect, simple, but perfect. The tops folded over really cute, but there was just one problem....they had every size, but mine! I KNOW. Painful! lol Oh well this weekend Katrin is taking me to Fulda or Kassel to look for some shoes. Maybe I'll find them again, but this time in my size!

We've been doing some pretty cool things in Drama lately and we are hoping to perform in the middle of March. We have some pretty intense rehersals this month on the 20th, 22nd, and 23rd. They'll be all day rehersals and we should get a lot done.

Oh and in art class last week I drew this really excellent picture! The picture in the book was really beautiful and it wasn't a sketch so I didn't want to immitate it, but just take inspiration from it. It was so perfect that I didn't want to copy it. It was a picture of a black man made up of pieces of paper. So I also drew a black man with his head facing the same way, but I made him a little different. When I get my camera I will take a picture of it. I was really pleased with the way it turned out, especially since I have never taken an art class before, and I have a hard time understanding what is going on in the current art class I am taking. So it's pretty epic!

On Friday I went up to Frankfurt for a Rotary weekend. It was mostly for the German Outbounds for next year. All of the countries had to make two presentations. Since it was only my district there were no other Canadians. So I had to present by myself. I made a really cool powerpoint presentation for the Land Information Presentation. It went over really well. I played Tom Jackson's version of the Huron Carol for the Folkloric Presentation.

I was pleasently surpirsed to see a few friends from the other district there. Not all of the other district was there, but only the people whose country wasn't represented in our district. So I got to reconnect with some friendly faces. We also got to go to the Frankfurt Christmas Market. I wish we could have stayed longer it was sooo cool.

There were all sorts of sweets, food, ornaments, wood decorations, mittens, socks, and all sorts of other things. Some people said that the some of the people who sold their stuff at this Christmas Market spent all year making the things that they were going to sell. It was sooo cool and so big! There were tons of people!! I felt sooo short! It was hard not getting lost in the crowd. Some how Anin and I (a friend from Indonesia) managed to stay together.

I was back at school on Monday and I came home early yesterday because I was feeling really sick. I slept the entire afternoon and got up for a few hours to eat and talk with the family before going back to bed. I slept in pretty late today and I am feeling a lot better, so I'll be back at school tomorrow.

OH! I forgot to mention that last week I made my first German cookies! It was quite fun Johannes, Katrin, and I did this together and we played some German children's Christmas music and my Canadian Mix Christmas CD from Canada. It was pretty cool! Katrin says that we have more cookies to make in the coming weeks!

Also, Katrin has made me an advents calender. It is sooo cute. Every morning on my plate there is a white pouch tied with white ribbon and there is a leaf with a silver number on it. So far I have gotten a small chocolate bar that said 'Somebody is thinking of you. I think of you!' but in German of course! The second day was a package of mints and today I got a small bottle of vanilla hand cream. It is really sweet.

I've been drinking more tea and talking with the Wagner's and I think I really fit in well here. I'm able to practice a lot on my German with them and my confidence is building. It was really neat in Frankfurt, with all of the exchange students because I figured that people would talk only English or Spanish, but I ended up talking half in English and half in German all weekend. Some people were upset that they were losing their English, so they wanted to speak English and others only wanted me to speak to them in German.

I was really proud of myself, because I was able to understand most of what the speakers were talking about on the weekend and I was able to communicate in German to my fellow exchange students. So that was really quite neat. Not to mention my blazer looks so FANTASTIC! OH man when my camera comes I will take pictures so you can see it. It looks SO EXCELLENT!! Words cannot even begin to describe how excellent it looks. I got more pins over that weekend!

Speaking of my camera! I now know what has happened to it. It's not lost, but stuck in customs. Katrin and Eberhard tried to explain to the post office that this is a gift from my parents to me, an exchange student, in Germany and that I will be taking this camera home when my year is over so it doesn't make sense that I pay customs. Well the customs people really want me to pay those 20 Euros and if I went through a load of paperwork I might be able to get it back, but I'm just going to pay it so I can get my camera, take pictures, and upload them on blogger. So pretty soon I should have my camera and then I will snap a bunch of pictures and upload them! So your wait for pictures is almost over!

It's snowing again today and I am in a "Christmassy" mood. Well that's most of what has been going on here. I'll try to write again soon. Take care.