Cal-Mum 1

25th of September, Thursday

My sore back needed resting, so I didn't go to school today. Herb called the attendance office, and all was settled. I watched Switched at Birth on (I was alone in the house), and I let Ella, the 14 year old Pomeranian dog out. She's like a slow, orange fur ball. So I let her out in the front, as we always do. But I forgot to let her in! 40 minutes later, I realized I forgot about her and ran out, only to find the dog was missing! So I panicked, called Herb, who immediately came home, and we searched the neighborhood together. It was 11:30 then. After 90 minutes of searching and finding nothing, we gave up. I made some flyers to put up (LOST DOG, ELLA, if found please return her, …). And then I waited. At 3:15, Sun came home, and 15 minutes later, someone called, saying they found Ella! I was so happy! So we went up to the corner, where they brought her. Apparently they found the dog, and they knew about her being missing, but they kept her inside their house for hours (according to their neighbor). But I was just happy they gave Ella back.
  Then I packed for the Cal-Mum weekend. It's a Rotary event for the inbound students. Herb took me and Sun down to this little town where it's held. We met at the high school, and caught up with what's up, how everybody's doing. They're a really nice bunch of people, and the diversity is amazing! We were assigned to host families, a few students/family. I was staying with Pat and Jeff Mead, two wonderful people living in a beautiful house, and I was with Maria from Sweden and Tabata from Ecuador. They're really nice and funny. We had dinner, which was a delicious blend of vegetables, and afterwards we had a few of the other exchange students over for like 1 or 2 hours, because they live with the family next door. Varda from India, Anita from Bolivia, Tatty from Thailand and Gwen from the Netherlands. We had a lot of fun, having girly talks mixed with interesting multicultural discussions.
  They left at 10:40. Afterwards I bonded with Pat, who works at the local open air American history museum. She and her husband adopted two girls from Korea and India. I met the latter one, her name is Ania, and she's really nice. I feel I'm making friends really easily here. I'm happy to meet all these wonderful people.
  Because I don't have my laptop with me, I might have to keep the pictures till the end of the weekend when I get home, and I can upload them. I'm sure there's gonna be a lot!