The Longoverduehereisabunchofrandomstuff Post!

For those of you who have been wondering whether we are still alive - fear not! We are! My reasons for not updating include the following:
1. I was too busy with school.
2. I was not too busy, just too lazy.

I apologize for the second reason. We've been on break this whole week, and I guess I got caught up in that "Wow, I really don't have to do anything right now!" mentality - it's been splendiferous, actually.

But, here I sit, waiting for the rice to cook and for Michael to come back with the rest of our dinner, and I figured, why not, I'll get started on the most longest overdue blog post I've ever had.

To catch you up, I would like to start with a visual of what we've experienced on our October break thus far:

That's right! The construction that has been happening at our school (almost constantly) for the last 3.5 years has been amped up! They are, supposedly, working on putting in a new drainage system of some sort. They built a new sidewalk right outside our apartment (shown above), so we no longer will have to walk several steps through the mud when it rains. Yay! I think they will also be putting in an awning over the sidewalk...but they have to finish the sidewalk first...at least, I hope that's the order in which it will happen. You can never really tell with these things.

Another visual, this time of the soccer field:

It's break, so no one needs to play soccer, right? Hopefully, at some point, it will once again resemble a soccer field rather than a construction site.

For the last three years (well, okay, two and a half), the new administration building has been in progress of being built. It is nearly finished, I think; I'm not exactly sure what else needs to be done, other than taking the plastic off the new furniture inside it and moving more stuff inside.

 This view is from the bottom of the stairs that lead to our apartment - we are LITERALLY right next to the new building - our kitchen window looks straight at the wall (it's quite a sight, really). The room pictured directly ahead will be the new staff room - all the way across campus from where our classrooms are.

Another view from the parking lot - the second and third floors are apartments, but the ground floor is all offices.

All in all - there's a lot happening on campus during this break, none of which we will be taking part in! While I'm on the topic of our school campus, I took a video during our last week of school before October break that you might enjoy. We had several rainy days (not just the "rain for an hour" kind - the "all day steady to heavy rain" kind) and our campus flooded quite nicely:

I guess that new drainage system might come in handy when it's finished! Michael and I both had to take off our shoes, roll up our pants, and walk straight through that flood of a puddle in order to get to class that day. It was kind of gross - to all of you who enjoyed jumping in puddles in the rain when you were young, you probably never had to walk through this kind of puddle. Fortunately, a couple of hours after shot the video, the rain stopped enough for this flooding to drain away. It made for a rather sparse population in my 8:00 class, though!

So, what have we been up to outside of, well, nothing? Well, there have been a lot of odds and ends in the last few weeks (all those events I mentioned in the last post, for example). School was quite busy, with the end of our first semester, report cards, etc. We were also able to get back into our regular Saturday routine: going to the pool/water park at the mall with our friends! It isn't just a pool - it's a rooftop water park, complete with lazy river, water slides, lap pool, and kiddie pool/play area. It's pretty sweet, actually - you should be jealous. :) The pool was closed for renovation up through the middle of September, so we weren't able to go. The whole thing was redone quite nicely, though, and we've thoroughly enjoyed hanging out there each Saturday morning for a couple of hours.

We have another week of break - school starts up again on November 4. The next week won't be quite as boring as this - we'll be heading to a beach with some friends for several days! I'm really looking forward to spending some time in the sunshine, relaxing and reading a book. That's what breaks are for, right?

That is really about all I have to say - after such a long time between posts, you were probably expecting something a whole lot more exciting than that.  So sorry to disappoint you!

Until another time...