I really think I am a rural person at heart, because I just love seeing crops all around me everywhere I go. Kenny thinks that I like it right now only because I don't really live here, and I'll get real sick of it once I realize I can't go to Starbucks and to our sushi restaurant etc. But they have a Wal Mart which has everything I could EVER want, including cherries, strawberries, and bananas which I got and have been snacking on a bunch. And they are totally delicious. It's not that much hotter than NC is, but it seems like you feel the hotness more because you see the dirt all dried out and the corn fields and stuff, and there's not much shade in a corn field. We have to ride the bus 45 minutes each way to school every day, and it's straight on these bumpy old roads and seriously I am glad I am in a tank of a bus and that the bus is only allowed to go 45 mph because it feels like we are flying. If the bus wasn't such a tank I might fear for my life. I sit in the back of the bus and it looks like the bus on Forrest Gump when the mean kid says "SEAT'S TAKEN" and Jenny lets Forrest sit with her. I say "SEAT'S TAKEN" every time I go on the bus just for fun. I can actually read for about half of the time on the bus because there's more of a rhythm to our bumping once we get on the main stretch of highway, and the rest of the time when I get sick-feeling I like looking out the window. You really don't see that many people out and about, at least not during the times I'm riding around. The houses I see are probably 50% trailers, and completely falling down. It's amazing that people live there. On Monday when we left school it looked like there were storm clouds in the distance, and as we drove down the road we literally watched the storm cross over the corn fields and we could see the rain in the distance coming closer and closer to us, and then it caught up with us and we had to roll up all the school bus windows and it got super hot and steamy and gross in there but then the storm just passed on by and we watched it go in the other direction. It was insanely cool. I'm glad it wasn't a tornado we were watching... They were telling us on the first day about how important summer school is for our students, and this one girl who is one of our advisors and is a teacher at the next school over, said that her school's summer program feeds in to our school and we'd be getting one of her best students Reginald in one of our classes. According to her, he was making really good progress throughout the year, until in February when they had a really strange cold snap and actually had snow days where school was canceled for like a week. Ronald lived in a trailer with four adults and nine children, and during the snow week a heater overturned in the trailer and burned it down, and Ronald and all the children and his father got out okay, but his mom, aunt and grandmother were killed. He got burned really badly in the fire and spent some time in the hospital, and so now summer school is his one-shot chance at making up all the learning he missed out on so he can move on to the next grade with all his friends. So then I cried a little at the end of this story, but so did some other people, and it was majorly sobering, not that any of us would take teaching summer school un-seriously, but sobering in that summer school can have an incredibly positive effect on a student's education, or it can be just a waste of time, and these students can't afford to have any of their learning time wasted. So I'm excited about what I get to teach -- I got to pick my first two books today: "The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963" (one of my most favorite books EVER) and "Maniac Magee". I get to re-read those on the bus now but I"m excited because it will be fun reading. Wellllllllll, that's enough for tonight... I have to go to bed. LOVE YOU MORE (ps I like how you made LOVE YOU in huge font. I felt way more loved with the words that big) Thanks for texting and checking in with me! I'll talk to you soon peace and love and smooches forever