Je suis retard.

(no, that doesn't' say "I am a retard." It says "I am late." ...in posting)

I suppose we have been pretty busy! Here is a quick recap of the last month:

I finished knitting my quilt!

I got my hair cut, by Jacques. Jacques is very French. He likes to throw your hair around, and he cuts every one's hair as if it were as easy as breathing. I went from having really long and straight hair to having much shorter (than I expected), very layered hair. I'm still getting used to how to style it properly. The picture makes it look pretty bad. It's not that bad.

(before and after)

Next we had "boyfriend Dan" come for a visit. This is the boyfriend of my cousin Anna. He is living in France for a year (like she did) as an English teaching assistant. He isn't very far from us, so he stopped by for the weekend during a week-long break. It was nice to finally meet him! Next time maybe we can see him and Anna together...if they ever get their schedules coordinated! :o)

While Dan was with us we had another overnight visitor. Maddie! Some of our friends went on vacation and I got to pet sit. For the entire week! It was nice having Maddie around. It made me want to have Duncan over here more and helped me to see what it would be like if he were here. Maybe...

We also celebrated Halloween! Here are 4 pictures of our first pumpkin, Jack. From design to slightly rotting (notice his "black eye"). We thought he was nice and scary. The only sad thing is, when we put him outside i the trash one night we saw pieces of him the next morning in the street...I don't think he made it to the dump. :o( Poor guy.

One of the most eventful and anticipated events of the YEAR has also happened. David has finished taking his PhD qualifying exams. After 4 months of studying, 3 written exams, and 3 oral exams, he is finished! What's next? Waiting for the results. Hopefully he passed all of them, but if he didn't he has one more chance (again in March). FYI - he could pass 1 and retake 2, or pass 2 and retake 1, or pass none and retake all of them, OR pass all of them and be finished! This is just something that is required to obtain a PhD... and for mechanical engineers at Georgia Tech it isn't easy (thus the 4 months of studying).

And...we got a TV. Our thanks goes out to one of my english students and his family for donating it. They got two really nice new flat screen TVs and were just going to put this one in the trash, but they offered it to me and I took it off their hands. Not we have access to hundreds of channels with our digital TV service that we have finally activated. We can watch everything from CNN International to the Al Jazeera channel. It's amazing how many international stations we have.

Lastly, we purchased tickets to go home for Christmas last night! We will get to stay in GA for almost an entire month. We are very excited. We will be home on December 11th. Hope to see everyone!