I am so incredibly blessed!

Day One is ending and I am starting to feel settled...for now!  My host family is an older couple who live in this MANSION with a beautiful view of one of the many lakes in Lakeland.  Their house is a five minute walk from campus too, which is lovely.  The weather here is super gray and icky today but I've been promised that will not last...I hope that's true!

I'll be with this host family for the first three weeks here, with (eventually) 3 roommates.  So far I just have one roommate (the other two had their flights delayed).  So far we get along very well, which has been very comforting to me.

There are about ten of us here early for the credit program (I over estimated before, oops!)....strangely enough, I am in the minority because I am not a female from the mid-west.  Out of those of us here early, there is only one guy and I am the sole East Coaster...so far!  Our first set of classes is tomorrow, but we'll have a half day, so I am very much looking forward to enjoying the sunshine (hopefully!) and taking a nice walk around the lake tomorrow afternoon.  There's about a 3 mile loop around the lake, and it sounds like it's a bit of a destination (my host mom stressed how people drive here to walk around the lake!).

And as if I was not already lucky enough with incredibly friendly and outgoing and INTERESTING host parents with a beautiful house in a beautiful location, they are also very involved in the Catholic Church, and so were quite happy to hear that I wanted to go to mass.  (And we said grace before dinner!) My host mom said she wanted to be a nun before she wanted to be an elementary school teacher...but that was all back in 1st grade.  We had a great time tonight telling each of our life stories!


Sorry my thoughts are all over the place...it's late but I wanted to share SOMETHING before I got distracted with all the new fun I'll be having :)  I promise I'll try to be a little less scatterbrained in the future!

Pictures to come!