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!