We even have swings outside!

Aah, I am so sad that I have all my work to do and can't go out to play with my new friends. The weather is so nice too, and instead I must stay in my room and learn a whole bunch of phonetic symbols. Look, this is what my dorm looks like in the afternoon sunlight.

Lessee, news: I had dinner with my host parents, John and Jennifer, they were lovely. They have a house nearby in Woodstock, they seem very smart and they cook some tasty salmon. There's also a 6- year-old girl, Willa (after Willa Cather) and a 5-month-old boy called Hayden; I find them very cute despite my usual feelings about icky children. The host parent scheme is a great idea. Families from the local area who have an interest in travel and meeting people from other countries watch over a poor frightened foreign kidling, and they don't get paid either. This is Jennifer and Willa.

What else have I done? Went to the movies (Little Miss Sunshine); saw The Merry Wives of Windsor for free on the lawn in front of Eliot; went to a dance party (no sign of the Dance Commander) on the other side of the canyon; went to the Farmer's market, where I tried every free sample going but only coughed up for some nectarines; bought some Bud from the 7/11 just for the classiness of it all; enjoyed Labor Day; and hung out at 23rd and Powell's, because no visit to downtown Portland is complete without a trip to the most wonderful bookshop on the continent. I should really update more often, because no one is having any fun with the list format.

Oh, thanks to whoever sent me postcards! They gave me warm fuzzies and they're now stuck on my wall. We have a great system for collecting our mail, there's a whole wall of little brass safes open to the post office on one side and accessible by a genuine 2-wheel combination on the student side. The novelty has not yet worn off.