packages and weekend fun

Let me introduce you to Joe. He was part of a "miracle" package from my former roommate, Johanna. You see, said package was mailed in August, and as September and most of October passed us by, we'd both pretty much given up on it, until it magically appeared outside my door (as all my mail does) directly from... Yuli. I'm not sure if I was more suprised by its arrival, or by the fact that the two-month-old fudge inside was still soft. Last week I received three more packages, I feel loved! :D
I got a letter and some chocolate from Kaia, and was suprised by a "house warming" gift from Ariel (in Yuli) - some dishes, and even more suprised by a box from Rose that contained a camel ornament.

I was quite social this weekend, more social that I usually am in a week if you don't count classes! My lunch on Friday was wonderful! Cindy studied in the states for 8 years and her English is almost like a native speaker's. We had some really good conversations. I also asked her about a few things I've been looking for in Yilan and she was able to help me find them! We went to the big grocery store (there's just a very small and not that great one by my house) and the library. Since Yilan library's English section is pretty small (not too suprised) she asked her brother-in-law if we could go to the university library, since he's a teacher at Yilan University. So on Saturday they took me there and it does indeed have a decent English section, but alas, I'm not a student so I can't get a library card there... I guess this means I need to make friends with some university students so they can take books out for me (preferably cute English majors...heh). Actually the teacher offered to let me borrow some books under his name. I spent the afternoon at their house (Cindy's sister and brother-in-law), playing with their 3 kids, answering random English questions, and trying to explain how it's possible to live in Western Canada but NOT Vancouver. In all, it was pretty enjoyable.

Today I had church and I knew all the songs but one! I gotta tell you though, 8:20 services are not condusive to staying away when you can understand less than 50% of the sermon! In the afternoon I went and played basketball with some of the high school and college students from the church. It was pretty fun! We played 3 on 3, until 5 points and then the loser had to switch off. There were about 5 teams. We actually won quite a few of our games, which was suprising since my basketball skills aren't exactly something to brag about...

Anyways, I have a virus on my computer. This makes me cranky.