Hello all! a quick shout out to my family members who sent me christmas packages. Thank you so much, things like peanut butter and starbucks VIA to go are always welcomed! Also, if you ever come accross any teaching materials that you think would be good for teaching english...feel free to send it my way! Things are going well here in Shabran. My family continues to be most wonderful to me and I am so lucky to have two amazing sitemates who are the most have been helping me get through the tough times. my students are what makes this all worth it, and hopefully my teachers will come around soon enough, as we say here yavash-yavash, bit by bit. I think being here is teaching me to just live each day as it comes and to realize the small successes. For example, one of my teachers is starting to pronounce her TH's after watching me give a lesson on it to the kids. We may not be fully lesson planning until next year, but hopefully by the end of all this, we will have a complete transfer of skills. Yet sometimes it is difficuly to try to help people who don't want to work for it, yavash-yavash. Hopefully now that I have discovered internet at my school, I can do this more often. Although it gets scary in here when the teacher gets out his stick to swat the kids with. eesh! tootls!