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Josie's been sick. Yesterday, Chris took her to a dog hospital. He said it was more like a dog institute that specializes in the training and care of dogs. They took good care of her. She had been sniffling and coughing for the past few days and it turns out that she had a fever as well. They are also treating her for roundworm. They were a bit concerned they she might have a serious infection because of where we bought her from. Turns out, that is just about the worse place to buy a dog. However, they drew blood and looked at her stool under the microscope and fortunately, it is not an infection. When Chris left yesterday to take her to the vet, we prepared the boys for the worse (in other words, Josie might not be coming home.) I'm so glad she's ok. However, roundworm is something that could be very dangerous if the children were to somehow ingest some of her stool, so we all have to be very careful and make sure we are constantly washing our hands.

I'm really enjoying my Chinese classes. So far we've learned 16 radicals (radicals are the individual strokes or units that make up a complete Chinese character.) If you know what radical has gone into making a character, you can somewhat figure out what the character means even if you've never seen it before. I often see Chris do this when he sees a new word. He'll say "It's some kind of science" or "It's some kind of dog type animal". Does my explination make sense? We've also learned the four tones and about 20 common classroom phrases (open your book, look at the blackboard, etc.) Chinese is such a challenging language! Not only is it necessary to memorize the vocabulary and definitions, but you also have memorize the tones and characters. Although I'm not taking this class for credit, I'm still taking the tests and doing the homework. I really do want to learn Chinese. Also, I've found it quite cute how excited Chris is that I'm taking Chinese. Everyday he askes what I've learned and we talk about it. He helps me a lot with my pronounciation, too.

Homeschool is going well. We started back on Monday. We're having it in the afternoons now since I'm in class all morning. I thought they might be more resistant to having class in the afternoon, but I think it's going to work out just fine.

Overall, I'm feeling much better when it comes to my mental well being. I'm not so negative about being here anymore. Life is good. oh! Mariannette gave me two books for my birthday: No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, and Julie & Julia. Yay for new books! Wendi, we are downloading first episode of "The Dresden Files" but it probably won't be complete until tomorrow. Looking forward to it :)

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The Chinese students are on a different schedule from our study abroad students. We stick to the American schedule although this means that we were on break while the Chinese students still attended class. It also means that the Chinese students are on break now while we attend classes. This results in us pretty much having the whole entire campus to ourselves. It's wondeful. Today I took the boys down to the soccer field. They've never had the chance to play on it before because it's always so busy with students. We were the only ones there! We had a blast. The weather was still cold today (in the 40's) but at least it was sunny.

Josie seems in better spirits, but she's coughing a lot. Last night I couldn't sleep because I kept wondering if we had made a huge mistake in getting her. What if the kids get sick because of her? As if I don't have enough to think about when I'm trying to go to sleep at night.