December!

Jon Here...

Wow... do we suck at this blogging stuff or what?! I guess a lot of stuff has happened since we last posted. Polly died (the ring worm took all her fur off, and then her skin started falling off... very sad and disturbing, but we dealt with it). All the volunteers except Kasey and like two others were kicked out of the country. And part of the wall that we live near was bombed and there have been HUGE fights and guns and the army and I'm just kidding. None of that stuff is real... tee hee.

Life has been pretty good here :) Kasey and I finally got settled (after a good 1.5-2 months), our new apartment is very nice and safe. We are actually going to get to go to IKEA when Kasey's break starts! So we will get more stuff and make it more "our style". The people that live in here after us are going to be very happy with the way it looks and all the stuff they are going to have :) But don't worry, we don't plan on giving all our stuff away for free :P

Polly loves Kasey and uses me for my heat. She is a little heater herself so it's nice to have her lay on you. She has gotten very accustom to putting herself inside our hoody's and fall asleep there while we do work or watch TV. It's very cute.

Since my last and final Field Study I haven't been able to post any pictures on facebook because the connection has been SO slow since I got back from Jordan. If you look on a map of Israel and look to the east side of the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea and go to the right of the Sea of Galilee and move your finger all the way down to Petra, then that's how much we saw (or traveled). It was a fun field trip, but if I had a choice to do it again I would not. It was a lot of money and out of about 11-12 sites only 3 of them were specifically related to the bible. So it was kind of shock to do all that stuff and have it not related to biblical history in a deep way. But it was really fun regardless and Petra is fantastic.

Since my last field study I have pretty much been studying for final exams. AND I actually just finished my last one yesterday! It was for Archaeology and it was worth 100% of my grade. SO every single student was extremely nervous about it, especially after hearing horror stories about the final. However, me and this other guy actually asked the teacher for a study guide and he said yes and gave us the essay questions for the first time in JUC history. So I'm pretty proud about that fact :P

Now that I have completed the first semester I now have two months off! So I bought my textbooks for next semester and am going to summarize a chapter a day out of my books in preparation for next semester. I am going to be redoing a bunch of my maps and organizing all my pictures I took (that will be a long but fulfilling process). And of course I will take up my role as "house wife" :P Because Kasey only gets about 2-3 weeks off during my two months. So she will be well taken care of during this time. And Polly and I will get to know each other much better.

Next semester will not be nearly as busy as it was this first one. Apparently the first semester of this degree is the hardest because they are trying to weed you out. So I will have weekends off next semester and will only go on 1 field trip at the most I believe.

This December Kasey and I have decided to stay home for the break as Kasey only has 2 weeks off. So instead of going to Egypt this month we want to go during the summer when it will be hot and we can spend our time swimming and eating :) We might do something with one of my friends from JUC and his wife. Don't know when, but we probably will during the christmas break sometime.

Food update! Kasey and I have started to make fresh Guacamole, and it SO good :) we are quite proud of ourselves :) And we found that "just add water" cake mix for only 10 shekels ($2.50 USD) so we have a good collection of cake mix in our cupboards to help our sweet tooth. AND we haven't had Macaroni for about 2 weeks now, which is kind of strange and I think it needs to be fixed soon.

Tonight our friends from Kasey's work have invited everyone over after church to make christmas decorations, have treats, and watch A Christmas Story and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation! :D I have seen A Christmas Story way too many times so I'm not too excited about that one. But Christmas Vacation is good every time :) I actually "borrowed" Christmas Vacation and The Polar Express from JUC for my break... I guess I totally forgot that it was a two month break... oops :P

Kasey is doing Extremely well in her job :) All of her students say that she is one of their favorite teachers at that school. AND just to brag about my wife a bit, the students have not made another newspaper featuring "Teacher of the Month" since they did one about Kasey. At least I haven't heard about it or seen it. Soooo, my wife is awesome.

Thank you all for your prayers! Please continue, after we are done in Israel then you can stop :P Just kidding. Merry Christmas! We will post more on a regular basis now that things have settled down a bit :)