I'm going to Bali!

Hola everyone! Just thought I'd send a quick little update from this side of the world...

Exciting recent events in Tori's life:
1. We now have a stove (and working gas tank after quite an adventure) at our house, which means we can now make our beloved cuisines from our respectful countries (US, Poland, China). I tried once but failed miserably to make spaghetti with veggies. I had just placed the veggies in the pan to steam when poof! Our tiny gas tank ran out...and so after running around the city (at 9:00 at night, mind you) for an hour trying to find another tiny gas tank, we gave up and took our veggies to the little old woman down the street who owns a food stall and we actually asked her if we could use her stove to just at least finish cooking our veggies. We were quite embarrassed, but we didn't want to waste all those good veggies (I mean, we're talking broccoli, cauliflower, baby corn and carrots!). To our surprise, she not only let us use her stove, but she actually cooked the veggies for us while we sat there and chatted with her. She was so cute! And to show our appreciation we gave her Rp.5000 (about $0.50...yea we're big spenders!).

2. I'm going to Bali for Christmas!!! Hindy, Lily, Robe, Jonathan (his 14yr old bro), Vivi (his 26yr old sis) and I decided we did not want to be bored at Christmas this year, so we are headed off to Bali for 4 days!

3. I came home the other day as the Poles were decorating our very own Christmas tree! They bought this 3-foot artificial tree at a supermarket and decorated it with ornaments and garland. The only thing we are currently lacking is an angel or a star, but as you can imagine all of these things are hard to come by in a Muslim country...

4. We bought 5 fish for the pond outside our house, and despite the millions of cats that now hang out in our yard, all the fish are still alive! We thought about getting a cat or a dog, but then we decided this was a bad idea for 7 20-somethings to adopt an animal that actually requires real care...meh!

5. I just found out my Mom and Grandma Nay Nay are coming to visit me in January!!! Oh wow I'm so excited!!! I miss everyone back at home so much and this is going to be so wonderful! Of course, I might be tempted to come home with them, I don't know... :) If anyone else wants to visit me, please please please! It would be so great! You can have free lodging if you don't mind sleeping on the floor...

6. The other day I visited Blitar (a city about 2.5 hours away from Malang) to teach at a high school there. I was really happy because after my class, all of the teachers and the headmaster all told me that I had a great talent for teaching and that I was better than any of the other native speakers they've invited in the past. I was really pleased :) Just thought I'd brag a little bit...

Okay that's about it. I should get going. I have a class in 8 minutes. Busy, busy, busy!!