Hellooooooo bloggerville!

Ok, so, sorry I've been MIA for a while now. A lot has happened since I last posted. I'm currently writing this from our new flat that we moved into rather quickly on Feb 1. It's kind of a crazy story; the short story is that our landlady was slightly out in left field, we fled under the cover of darkness on Jan 31-with 2.5 hours notice, I might add-remained homeless for a night and crashed at Patsy's flat, picked up the keys to our new flat on the 1st, battled the roaches for a few days-an ongoing battle; Friday is Raid and mop day-finished moving in the 2nd and here we are! It's taken so long to update you all on what's going on because we're having some internet issues, so it's kind of hit and miss, which can be frustrating. All that being said, we are actually in a great flat in a great area of town. My room (I'll post a picture at some point) reminds me of a ship's cabin, so of course I LOVE IT! Also, our living room is ginormous with a whole wall of windows. It's really a great place.
As far as what's been going on here; LOTS! Here's a quick run-down:
*we met with a woman named Ella, who is friends with Sean and Lydia and a professor at the University. It turns out she teaches psychology to education students (which Amber and I both were!) and wants us to come to her classes and invite her students to an English conversation club/Bible study!
*We've learned how to use our new washer which empties into the toilet; there's a hose you have to hook over the seat of the commode while the washer's in use; no kidding
*we met with some men from the church here who want us to be involved in an English conversation club/Bible study with local high school students which will end up in a summer camp in, um, the summer
*we went to Warsaw this past Tues/Wed to work on some things for our VISA applications; for about 45 minutes I was in the USA at the embassy! How fun is that? We also ate at a TGIFridays which was thrilling...AND a mexican restaurant (heaven); went to a HUGE mall; bought some Polish pottery and saw some of Old Town Warsaw
*we met with a woman named Kasia, who works at the Unviversity. A friend of hers is Patsy's landlady and she put the two of them in touch, and Amber and I in turn got in touch with her...I should probably add that she probably thinks I'm crazy. She's a professor of wetlands research (or something like that) so, of course, I had to ask her what she knows about Lake Erie. I am such a dork, but you can take the girl away from the Lake, but you can't take the Lake away from the girl!
*I found out from our language teacher where the largest lake in Poland is and where there's lots of sailing. Still a little brisk for lakes and sailing, but I'll find the train that takes me there this summer!
*we had a super fun Day-After Valentine's Day party with the Stevenson's. We played games, ate heart sugar cookies, and gave out Valentine's. I definitely got "out" just about first every round of "hot heart". Not that I'm bitter.

So, that's Olsztyn in a nutshell. Right now, I'm enjoying the last few minutes of sunlight which has actually shown all day and getting ready to go make some dinner. We are meeting Ola tonight to hang out for a bit, so that should be fun. Tomorrow, Amber and I are meeting the secretary from our language school, named Basia, to go get my nails done. Woo-hoo! She's super sweet and I'm really looking forward to spending the afternoon with her. AND she can translate for me...we definitely haven't learned the words for going to the nail salon in language class. For some reason, Milosz hasn't covered that yet. Odd...I'll let you know how it goes!