6.... oh wait, 5 weeks.

So sorry about missing Week 6, in my defense, I flew to San Francisco that day.
Once in San Francisco, my mom and I took a couple of hours to try and figure out the BART/bus system in what seemed to be a whole 'nother world from Seattle. Once to our hotel, a cute Japanese hotel right in the Japantown of San Francisco (it was also walking-distance from the consulate, which was necessary for our sanity as far as transportation goes).
The day after we arrived, we set out towards the consulate, our backpack full of important-looking documents and approximately 3,214 copies of each of them. We arrived outside the consulate about an hour before our appointment, and they prefer that you do not come in more than 10 minutes early, so we looked around and found a Mediterranean food hole-in-the-wall place. We sat down in the little shop, and I had the best breakfast EVER (incredible iced chai latte, olives, hummus, pita, babghanoush, and cake for desert!).
We entered the matchbox-sized lobby 11 minutes early, and joined the sizable (for that space) crowd of people all ready waiting anxiously. We got everything in order, and had my appointment. It went well, with just a couple things needing fixing.
Afterwards we headed home to our hotel, and we enjoyed the beautiful view out of our window.
The rest of the trip went very well, we both got cute haircuts and spent a day on the beach.

Fastforward to this week: my birthday!!
Due to my immense skills of procrastination, I was able to put off planning anything until it was almost too late. Lucky for me, a close family friend of mine was hosting a party a couple of days before and I decided to bake cupcakes (dry) for all of the end-of-july birthdays (two).
It was enough of a party for me, especially since I am almost completely booked for the rest of the summer getting ready for my departure.
The actual day of my birthday was spent with my dad and involved a delicious lunch from Panera, a nap (him), homework for summer school (me), and a slightly rushed dinner in order to get me off to karate in time.

That's about all that has happened to me, I imagine I will be busier in the coming five weeks (is it just me, or is that an altogether too short amount of time?)

Thanks for reading!

7 WEEKS!

Well.
Let's see here about the last week of my life.
Turns out, besides the daily summer school routine, the three-times-a-week karate (which I love) and the semi-constantly worrying about where I'm going in, oh gosh, 49 days, my life is really, really boring.
Amidst the large, overly warm (it's been 90 degrees more than once in the past week. Let's get it together Washington) void of boring that has been my life, one glorious day had a (small) reason to celebrate. (That last sentence may have been just a bit glorified, but what is life without a little poetic license?)
Anywho, this day to remember was simply the day that the long-awaited visa papers came from AFS and we finally had everything(ish) ready to go for the Visa Application Day, which is coming up quickly.
Turns out, the Visa paperwork was infinitely less complicated than AFS makes it out to be, although it was not a sans-stress process (see earlier posts).
Alright, well that is about it for this week.
I will post more next week and I suppose the countdown is officially on and I can finally quote Sherlock Holmes, though in this case, I won't be chasing down a criminal...
"The game's afoot!"

8 WEEKS??!?

I realize that that sounds like not a lot of time, but it seems to be creeping up on me suspiciously quickly.
I have said my good-byes to too many people, including Molly, who I recently saw at the airport (a great surprise) and Olivia, who is (*sniff* *sniff* 'oh goodness, don't cry.') going to Utah for forever. These goodbyes bring the imminency of the departure date closer and closer and before I know it, that fateful day will be upon us and I will have to wave goodbye one last time to my friends and family.
Anyway, nothing much has happened concretely since I last posted, but all of a sudden I realized that in two months exactly, I would be gone. I think I have had this idea that everything just ends as soon as my countdown ends. Now, unfortunately, this dilusion has ended, and the reality of what I will have to wear after this countdown is setting in. That's right. Packing.
Oh, dear goodness, packing. You have to understand, normally packing is a two-hours-before-I-leave kind of activity, and I almost always forget something or another. This time however, I have made a list, and I think I will do it right, choosing what is really the most important etc. etc. etc.  Let me tell ya, (yes, 'ya' is now an acceptable variation of 'you', unlike 'u'.) this is muy stressful.
Ok, that is about all for today, I will keep y'all (again, I think that that is acceptable english) posted as to what goes on, and hopefully figure out how to put pictures on here.
Thanks for reading. :)