You didn't give up on me?

Yup, it's official. I'm the worst blogger ever. Apparently when I heard "holiday," I took that to mean a holiday from blogging too. But now I'm back. And I'll try not to leave you hanging for so long next time.

My big news is that I moved apartments. I was just too far from town, and it was getting to be too annoying. The bus only came every hour and a half, and I ended up taking a lot of taxis. So I moved into a three-bedroom apartment with two other girls from my class. One is from Switzerland, and the other is from France -- except the girl from France actually moved out to another apartment over Christmas break. I'm that hard to live with. :) No, actually she'd been thinking about moving for a while. She wanted to get farther out of town. How ironic. We should have switched places. So, now we have an extra bedroom. Anyone want to move to Costa Rica and live with me? Rent is only $240 a month with everything included. :) It's actually a really nice apartment, too. I'll have to take some pics and post them for you all. This apartment includes such luxuries as hot water throughout the house (most places, including my last apartment, only have hot water in the shower), an oven and a stove (no more hotplates and toaster ovens), a doorbell (most places you have to shout someone's name to get them to come out and unlock the front gate for you), and a balcony. I don't have as great a view, and I don't have a dryer anymore, but everything else is a total upgrade. And I get to have roommates again! So I'm rather happy.

My other big event of the past few weeks is that I went home for Christmas (perhaps that could be my excuse for not blogging??) It was wonderful to be home doing nothing for three weeks (well, I shouldn't say "nothing" -- my old work kept me pretty busy with editing jobs. Thanks, Carol!) I got to spend tons of time with the fam and all my friends in Chicago. I played Trivial Pursuit twice, and lost twice. I played Scattegories once, and lost once. I played Wordsters once, and ... wait ... I actually won that one. But my mom did give me a run for my money. I saw my old high school friends, I saw my old college roommates, I saw my old college newspaper coworkers, and I saw my cats! (They're in "foster care" with my old roommie and former co-owner of the cats.) I was a busy girl.

But now I'm back in Costa Rica. I just flew in last night (Wednesday). I left the house at 5:20 in the morning, and I didn't land in Costa Rica until 9:00. Most of that time was waiting around in airports (I had a layover in Phoenix), but still, it was exhausting. And I had my first class already today.

The weather is absolutely perfect here. Warm, but not too hot. Sunny. I was so happy when I got off the plane and rode in the back of the taxi with the windows down, and then I got in my bedroom and saw some ants crawling around, and I remembered that I wasn't the only one who loved warm weather. The bugs here really are everywhere. I took a shower with a big spider today. And the ants seem to like electronics for some reason -- every once in a while I see one or two on my computer, on my camera, on my printer, on my alarm clock. Other people say the same thing about their electronics. Weird. I'm looking at two tiny ants crawling on my desk right now. Wait, there's another one. Sigh. You may be freezing back in the States, but if you're relatively bug-free, you should count yourself lucky.