Hi guys,
I thought I might tell you about some more of my adventures during my Christmas holiday. So this last week, we had Christmas. That was a fantastic day, we were woken up at like 8:30 because they wanted to open all the present before their family showed up for breakfast. The Mays family was so kind to me, that they bought me Christmas presents and filed up a stocking for me. Then we had breakfast with their family and Megan's cousin, who is a for year old boy this year discovered how to open Christmas presents for the first time and he had the bug. Under the tree after we had finished were still a couple presents for Megan's brothers and nefew. Her cousin Trenton, was into them, it was the cutest thing ever although not all that helpful. Then I got to make trifle for them all and we went to Megan's Great Grandmother's house for Christmas dinner. That was a lot of fun, I like her great grandmother, she is a real character. In fact, I call her Ninja grandma because when our class went to Paducah, we stayed with her and I was getting ready one morning and I came out of one of the rooms early in the morning and all of a sudden, I looked to the side of the hall way and she was there. No sound of her waking up or even walking down the hall, and it scared me like you would not believe. She's a real character.

The next day we hopped on a bus, or more to the point, four buses and made our way to a town called Baltimore in the state of Maryland. There was a couple of kids from our class, Andrew and Jared Shipley, and Melanie from Austria. We drove four hours to get to the bus station. We got on the bus at three in the afternoon and got off the final bus at 6:50 the next morning, where we met Andrew and his dad. We drove straight to the train station afte where we met up with Melanie from Austria, Jared and his mother to go to Washington D.C. There we spent the day looking at the sights. We went to the Library of Congress, in the history building of the Smithsonian, the big Einstein on the stairs and touched its nose, because Andrew said it was good luck and wouldn't let me leave until I did. Let me tell you, it was not good luck, I almost fell off the back of the stairs getting off the arm. Then we went to the giant Abraham Lincoln memorial and saw the reflecting pool. That was really really cool. I honestly didn't think that I would be as exited as I was when we got to the memorial as I was. It was something I had seen in a movie, but never thought I would ever see in person. To make it better, I didn't know what it was called until we got there, so when they asked me what I wanted to see,I told them I wanted to see the big guy in the chair and now the Shipley family calls it that. Look at me effecting people's lives. We went home for about an hour and a half and then we went out to dinner for traditional Maryland food, which being by the ocean meant crab cakes and lasagna for me, because I don't eat seafood. The next day we went into Baltimore city. We went and looked at the tourist bit, which consisted of a submarine (which I missed), a Hard Rock Cafe, the oldest war ship in America which later shot out something without warning and scared the crud out of me., and a mall. Once we had finished looking around there, we went to the not touristy, but totally more fun bit of town. It looked really dodgy but was really cool. We are hotdogs, and looked in hats stores and this one secondhand clothing store, where I swear, only the ugly clothes go. After that, we went back to the Shipley's residence and they had a Christmas party. There were times of people there, especially for the size of the house.  The following day was Sunday so we went to there church. There, I met a lady from New Zealand. When I got to talk to her, I asked her if she knew my parents, it turned out that she dated my dad and was my mum's flatmate. It's a small world after all. After church, we got out first down time of the trip. We went with the boys' friends for lunch and then went back to one of their houses to watch a movie. They watched Sharknado and I sat in the back around the corner and drew pictures with Melanie from Austria. After that we went to another church which the Shipleys used to go to. It was all elderly people, but they were some of the nicest people. This one lady gave us each a dollar and three lollies in an envelope. So sweet!
We then went to the bus station.

In all , our trip to Baltimore was eight hours driving in between the bus station and Megan's house, eight buses, totaling in almost 34 hours. Getting to and from Kentucky and Lubbock, I will have driven 5 hours and been on five planes.

The week before school finished, we had exam week, we cleaned and packed up our apartments and learned our terms and fields.
The night we learned our teams, I was very nervous even though I already knew where I was going and who was going to be on my team. It was interesting, I expected that it would be a big secret and no one would know where they were going or who with, but I think only like tree two or three people didn't know where they were going. Apparently the one year that no one knew what was going on tones of people openly and bitterly cried when they found out. I cried a little, but it was Tanya Buddy, every time I hug her it makes us both homesick.
m am going to Miami, with three other girls, Melanie from Mexico, Lacy, who has been living in Scotland for the past couple of years and Taylor, from Kentucky. I am super duper excited about my field and my team. I will be working with children mostly.

I hope you had a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful new tea year.
God bless