And it's been a long time....

I do SOOO apologize for not having written in forever. However, in my defense I will say that I have had an absolutely insane last few weeks.

Thank you so much for all of the comments!! Robe says hello and thank you for all the congratulations. We are so excited to get back to the States. I miss it so much and Robe is really looking forward to this next chapter of his life (Aunt Heather's words, not his! ;-).

I wanted to say thank you to Dad & Tammy for the candy, Grandma Marsha & Grandpa Vic for the card and wishes, Aunt Becki for the awesome photo album (which made me really regret not being able to spend Christmas with you all...) and Aunt Heather for the engagement gift. Thank you guys so much! I feel like I was connected to you for just a little bit!

As most of you already know, my Mom and Grandma visited me here in Malang a little over 2 weeks ago. We all had an absolute blast! Robe and I flew to Jakarta to pick them up as they arrived in the country. The two of us had some fun touring the city for a couple of days before Mom & Grandma got here. That was pretty cool - one of Robe's dad's "employees" works up in Jakarta, and we met up with him. He gave us the royal treatment - finding us a really nice hotel and taking us around the city. We had such a great time!

So I was so shocked to see people I actually know get off the plane in Jakarta (Mom & Nay Nay, I mean). It was kind of weird to have members of my family actually in Indonesia, but I got over that pretty quickly. We picked them up around 9pm at the airport and we ended up staying up really late (like 2am) that night, just catching up and everything. Actually Robe's parents were on a trip in Cambodia and surprise! They came home two days early and met us at the hotel in Jakarta. The next day we flew to Malang and our little adventure was underway!

We did so much in a short 3 days -- we visited a neighboring city (called "Batu," which means 'stone' in Indonesian) where there is an absolutely beautiful waterfall called "Coban Rondo." We traveled around Malang a bit -- saw my university, Matos (the infamous local mall that I spend way too much time at), ate LOTS of (what I thought was) good food. I think Mom liked the food, but I'm not so sure about Grandma. They also got to meet a lot of people - all of Robe's family (and they were quite smitten with Robe's sister's fiancé Budi), my host family and some of my friends. We also had a rather amusing night at karaoke. Grandma, I have quite a hilarious video of you and Jonathan singing an Indonesian children's song. And Mom, I've got a video of me and you singing "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" which should never be shown without our supervision...

We all (Mom, Grandma, me and Lily) stayed at Robe's house for their visit, which was nice because we didn't have to worry about going back and forth to the hotel. The only thing that was maybe not so great was that meant that there was a lot of translating going on. I mean, I fully expected it but for some reason it stressed me out a lot. Whenever Robe's parents wanted to say something to Mom or Grandma, they would incessantly call my name regardless of whether or not I was already engaged in some other conversation. All in all, though, Mom & Grandma had a great time I think. Robe's parents are excellent hosts and everything was pretty much taken care of (and paid for) by Robe's dad. I'm pretty certain that Grandma wanted to take Jonathan (Robe's 14-yr-old brother) home with her.

Come to think of it, both Mom & Grandma were quite a hit. Everyone kept talking about how awesome my Grandma was (she taught Robe's sister how to knit and now Lia is absolutely unstoppable! she played silly card games with us and sang her heart out at karaoke). Then everyone kept saying how they thought Mom was actually my older sister and how pretty she was. I heard the phrase "hot mom" on more than two occasions...

It was really sad when they flew out, but it didn't make me more homesick (thank goodness!). I'm really ready to come home, but I've only got a little bit longer here, and I'm not that impatient.

So after that, Lily and I had some time before classes started up again at school. And actually today was my first day of real class. Yesterday Lily and I found out that they were allowing us to go into the regular classes with local students, which was exciting and yet terrifying at the same time. We were each allowed to choose our own classes, so I chose: Drama Appreciation, Phonology of Bahasa Indonesia, Semantics of Bahasa Indonesia, Sociology of Letters (not letters A, B, C, but Letters as in study of language), and Advanced Reading. So far I've been to one class of Phonology and one class of Semantics, and it's okay. Phonology wasn't so difficult and for Semantics I have a really funny professor who likes to show off his English skills (or lack thereof). The only thing is that each class is 1 hour 40 minutes, and at AU each class was only 1 hour 15 minutes, so I've got to get used to long class times. It's alright, though. I'm looking forward to really improving my spoken Indonesian. I was a scheduling genius, though, and now I only have to come to campus 3 days a week!!

In other news, I did decide to move in with Robe and actually I moved everything out of my old house this past weekend. It's okay living there, I guess. I mean, these days I stay out of the house A LOT on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I leave around 7am and don't come home until 6 or 7pm. The real test will be the end of this week, because I'll be stuck in the house all day with Robe's mom and their housekeeper. Their house is actually outside of the city of Malang, so it's too far to take public transportation. I'd have to switch mini-buses like 3 times just to get to the mall...Meh, I won't have much free time anyway because I'll be doing a lot of homework it seems!

Okay that's about it. Now I'm sitting here at the painfully slow internet cafe (but at least now I have my own laptop so I can use the wireless, which is a tiny bit faster...) waiting for Robe to pick me up and take me home. So I guess I will talk to you all later!! Miss you all and love you :) :) :)