vacations are never long enough

I got back at 5 in the morning on wednesday and have had the hardest time adjusting to the time change. I was home for about 3 weeks and had a really nice time seeing everyone, shopping, taking hot showers more than twice a week, eating mexican food, and speaking english without feeling guilty. School starts again for me tomorrow, hopefuly that will get me back into the swing of things here. I feel a little like I have to readjust all over again.

Lots of info about bird flu. As you all probably know there is bird flu in Turkey, and the region it is in is only about 100km away from the border of Georgia (and I am only a 45 minute drive away from the border). We are restricted from traveling to Turkey and had to tell our families to remove all fowl from our homes. We ate our bird yesterday. Poor little hen. I don't think it is going to be a problem as of now unless I go and rub my face all over a chicken since all the cases in turkey are bird to human transmission. Some of the volunteers have been discussing (and yes we feel terribly guilty for thinking this) that we arent entirely unhappy with the idea of bird flu coming to Georgia. Sounds terrible huh? But it does cross our minds.

My birthday was yesterday. It officially can go down in history as the lamest 21st birthday ever. I was supposed to have a small party with some volunteers, but everyone bailed on me at the last minute for various reasons. So I ended up just having cake with my family and taking a walk in the snow. It pretty much hasnt stopped snowing since I got back to Borjomi two days ago. Lots of snow. Its really quite prettty but also very cold. I am really glad I was able to stock up on winter clothing while home, I already whipped out the new ultra-thermal long underwear.

Okay, going to do some of the work that I have been avoiding recently. Yay paperwork-- always a good time.