Hey everybody. How's it going.

Ah, it's good to hear it. I'm doing fine, thanks for asking.

This week is finals "week." I put week in quotations because it's a lie. I have my first paper due tomorrow morning, a paper on Tuesday, two essay tests, and the Korean final marathon. All in all it stretched into sometime in the middle of next next week. Ich.

As some of you have already heard, my contract on the job this winter fell through. There was more opposition at the embassy with getting us all work permits than the company had initially predicted, so we were essentially left high and dry. After a week of concern and fret, I applied and was accepted at a different winter camp for the same pay. This camp assures us that they deal with foreign work permits all the time, but we are no longer naive enough to get our hopes up. If it works out, then great. If it bombs, then I've already coped with the disappointment so it's no longer a big deal.

After two weeks of intense computer troubles I'm finally back online. My computer decided one day that it was going to block internet access of all the programs and websites I use in the order I use them most. By the end of it I had tried everything I knew how to do but had still watched one thing after another fade away. Gmail, Skype, MSN messenger, Yahoo mail and messenger, Blogger, Facebook, Myspace, and AIM were systematically refused access to the internet, leaving me with an expensive and cumbersome mp3 player. Thanks to the Kazakhstani down the hall and his windows boot disks and drivers, however, everything is now back in order. Good thing too, since I was on the verge of scrapping my much anticipated February trip to Japan in order to afford a new computer. Thanks Kazakhstan! You are so much more intelligent than Borat and prostitutes.

As far as Christmas, many of us lonely, family-less foreigners are preparing to gather and be sad together on the Eve. At said gathering will be decorations, gift exchange, a veritable feast, music, and no tears....no tears. It is general consensus among us that it doesn't even feel like December, much less a holiday season. The stealth with which Thanksgiving slipped by was astounding, and Christmas is but weeks away and I still don't feel anything. Is it coincidence, just maturation, merely a blossoming lack of interest in Christmas that coincides with being abroad? Maybe its that the rainy, dark, dead weather here is more reminiscent of Georgia Januaries and Februaries than of Decembers. Could it be that there isn't a family member in this hemisphere? I like to think that it's a little of all three, with a dash of way-to-busy-to-care.

Are you following closely the resumption of 6 party talks here between the Koreas? How about the fourth coup in Fiji in less than 20 years? Midterm election shakedown? I know I am. There are so many more interesting things in this world than what I'm doing here. Thanks for continuing to come and to pay attention. I'll do my best this week to keep the posts a-coming, but it is testing testing testing from here 'til Christmas. I'll throw something up about the finality of this new potential winter job as well as the new private student I meet next week. Until then, adieu.