The biggest thing would have to be, I am officially going to NYU in the fall! If you are in NY, please feel free to (read: please please please please PLEASE) be my friend! I am awesome and enjoy, wine, dancing, television, and restaurants of all kinds. If you have ever lived in NY, please tell me where to eat and/or live. If you live in LA, please hang out with me before August so I don’t cry because I never got to see you before being a plane ride away. I am (at this time) planning on coming back to LA after the program (its about a year), so at the very least, stay in LA for about a year, and then we can hang out again!

The next thing is, I can run again! After 2+ months of being injured and subsequently annoyed, I’ve been running three times (only about 2 miles, but hey, you have to start – again – somewhere), and all runs have been (pretty much) pain free! Let’s hope this keeps up for the Color Run and for the 10K I just signed up for in October. In D.C. Because I’ll be living on the East Coast. (Sorry, just need to remind myself sometimes.)

Last thing is my mom has been visiting this week, as it is my Spring Break, hence my lack of internet presence. We did a whole lot of shopping and eating and little else. Its nice to finally show off all my LA knowledge to someone before leaving for the immediate future. Plus, she always makes me work out more than normal, as no one can not work out when faced with the fact that your mom can do 10 pull ups and you can’t do more than 20 assisted pull ups. She also came to Bootie LA with my friends and I, permanently cementing her as coolest mom ever in my friends eyes.

And one more (actual) last thing, inspired by Nicole, Drea, Amber and Sara, I finally recorded myself reading one of my early-ish blog posts from over 4 (!!) years ago, when I was interning in LA my junior year and ventured into the scary world of LA salons for the first time. Thank the lord I finally have someone I can ACTUALLY talk to at the salon so things like this tale of salon awkwardness don’t happen anymore.

A week ago, I was anxiously checking my email every 20 minutes waiting to hear back from Teach For America about a job that could keep me in LA.

This morning, I called NYU to schedule a meeting with a student in the Theater Education department to ask questions about their program when I fly back East this weekend.

Oh, did I not mention that I got into a graduate program at NYU? Because I did…Let me back up.

As I was obsessively checking my email last Wednesday, as I was still waiting to hear about this job the day AFTER TFA told me I would hear from them, and only 10 minutes after talking to my mother about how CRAZY I was going waiting to hear from TFA, I randomly and unexpectedly got an email from NYU.

“Congratulations! On behalf of the Admissions Committee, I am delighted to offer you a place in NYU Steinhardt’s Fall 2012 entering class”

I, of course, immediately called my mom back, laughing, to tell her I had gotten news but not the news I had been waiting to hear.

Two hours later, I got a call from Teach for America. They were very sorry. They think I had a lot to offer and believe in my talent, but they don’t have a place for those talents right now. It was the news I thought I had been dreading, but after having another plan, another option, an option that after a week of reflecting I realize now is probably the better choice for me, I was fine. I didn’t cry…or even feel like crying. It felt like the right call for everyone.

In that moment, I thanked the universe for letting TFA make me wait that extra day, for letting me get that NYU email first to save me from even one minute of freaking out, thinking I would have no option for next year. The universe is weird that way sometimes.

I also want to thank the universe for letting this be the week I finally started The Joy Equation. As I said last week, I have never been at this sort of crossroads before. While I am so happy to another option for next year (potentially two: still waiting to hear back from Emerson), I still need to make a difficult decision. Leaving my school next year, especially as every student I have taught at that school, is entering his or her senior year – I taught 9th, 10th, and now 11th grade – will be really emotionally difficult, and moving is always a logistical nightmare. On top of that, I have a life in LA. I have amazing friends in LA. I have become accustomed to the weather and proximity to the beach in LA. Leaving all of that behind is not something I can do lightly. With all of these thoughts constantly swirling around in my head, giving myself this chance to journal every day and spend over an hour every week – as I did today – really reflecting on who I am, what I want, and how I think I can get there, has really been amazing and restoring, and I think will continue to be so over the next month as I grapple with these choices.

Later this week, I’m heading to the east coast for my grandma’s 75th birthday and to take a quick trip into New York to check out NYU’s campus. I’m hoping as I make this trip and continue reflecting, things will keep coming into focus!

It also means I should have significantly less drama and angst in my life. When any of my friends or I am in a relationship, there are always so many questions – where is this relationship going? Why didn’t he call me today? Why did his voice sound so weird on the phone? Who is he texting all the time? Why is he hanging out alone with that girl he’s “only friends” with ALL THE TIME? Well, not all the time, but enough that is annoying and a thing and I’m going to ask questions about it, goddamnit! I mean…yeah, there are a lot of questions. And sometimes stress and angst, thus being single should be easy! Stress and question free! All Amanda All The Time!

But for some reason, for the last few months, it hasn’t been all easy. It has kind of sucked. And I know it’s sucky, not because being single is inherently sucky, but because I, on some level, am making it sucky for myself. It is sucky because I sulk about it to myself when I get asked these questions by my friends, when I see people holding hands or sitting on the same side of the booth at brunch (which, I mean, NO ONE SHOULD DO!! Just eat your eggs without getting handsy. It is not that hard), when I see stupid RomCom commercials and hear single girls behind me in CVS bitch about how Valentine’s Day isn’t fun for anyone because its about corporate greed and making single people sad! (Oh, CVS girls, you are just sooo original.) It’s sucky because I (horribly) have internalized that being single is somehow a reflection on my self worth, like it means that I am somehow less than a woman who is in a relationship and that no one wants me , not that I have yet to find anyone worthy of my awesomeness, which to be frank, is probably closer to the truth. (You are loving my humbleness right now….) I have grown up in a culture where, for girls, love is the goal, and since I have yet to attain it, I am somehow missing some big, important facet of my life and should be spending all my free time searching for it and sulking for not having it yet. It is even more sucky because I regularly deny to myself that all of the proceeding facts are true. I tell myself that I have actually truly internalized all the feminist literature I’ve read (and fully believe) and am totally happy with my awesomely independent life-style, but honestly, I still feel kind of sucky. It’s a terrible vicious cycle. I make myself feel sucky for being single and then feel sucky for feeling that way instead of feeling sassy and awesome and on and on and on.

BUT step 1 of my 2012 goal is to admit all of this, here on the internet, to try to begin breaking the cycle of sucky. I desperately want to fully enjoy being single because it is in so many ways, for me right now, the best possible thing. I need time and energy to focus on not failing at my job, on filling out grad school scholarship applications, and on finishing The Wire season 1. Plus, I need to spend as much time as possible with my amazingly awesome friends, who I will miss terribly come fall if I end up using those grad school scholarships and momentarily leaving LA. So, deep breath….new mantra: single is super not sucky.

Also, full disclosure, I will for the time being, be on E-Harmony, (Thanks enabling work friends who are also on E-harmony!) because single girls still like dates right? Right…

For a lot of people, this is a big deal, but in my family, I now see it as sort of a pivot point – the point at which my parents’ lives went in this new and totally interesting direction. At the time, of course, I did not give it proper credit. I was pretty wrapped up in that whole “I’m 18 and my life and where I’m choosing to go to college is pretty much the most important thing that has ever happened in the history of all mankind, forever” thing. I remember seeing him lying on the couch at home afterwards, wrapped in a blanket, because even though it was April, Ohio had decided it would be an awesome time for some snow. I said congratulations (I think), but really, I should have celebrated more. Up until I was in high school, my dad had always been moderately overweight. Not horribly, like a Biggest Loser contestant, but I would never have called him skinny, and I didn’t give that a second thought. That was just how my dad was. Then, when I was in high school, my dad started losing a ton of weight. And he started running. It culminated in his running a half-marathon. Again, I gave this very little thought at the time.

A year later, I was in college at BU, and I got to watch my uncle as he passed by my dorm in mile 25 of the Boston Marathon. My uncle had never run a marathon, but a series or circumstances – him being the weatherman on ABC and having the chance to run for a charity close to his heart – allowed him to do it, and he did. He finished the Boston Marathon.

His running Boston and my Dad running his half then inspired my mom to start running. When I went home the next fall, she would be out doing intervals in our neighborhood. When she started, she couldn’t run a mile.

This year, she ran her third marathon.

Again, at the time, I did not give any of this much thought, except that when my mom came up to Boston my Junior year of college to run the Tufts 10K, I felt vaguely guilty and out of shape. A year later, after several visits home during which I would roll out of bed at 10, only to encounter my parents coming in from a ridiculously long run, I finally felt guilty and out-of-shape enough to try to start running myself. I went with the Couch to 5K program, and it went pretty well for about a month. I would go running along the Charles, congratulating myself on how fit and dedicated I looked. I got up to jogging for about 5 minutes. Then the knee pain hit. Debilitating knee pain that made me limp home in shame and made walking up and down stairs for the next week or so extremely difficult. Bye-bye running.

For the next few years, my parents continued to kick-ass at running. When they moved to Delaware, my mom got a job at a gym, which led to her becoming a personal trainer and starting a local running club. My mom began to inspire adults to run, giving them tips, helping them train, and giving them the inspiration to start. She also started coaching Girls on the Run, a program to help girls in 3rd-5th grade build confidence through training for and running a 5K. My parents ran several half-marathons before they needed a new challenge and decided to take on a full marathon – the Marine Corps Marathon, which my dad used to help run (as in facilitate) during his years as a Marine. At this milestone for my parents, my guilt kicked in again, and I thought I’d give this running thing another try. Maybe that knee thing was a fluke, and as I’d been using my knee as an excuse to not run anymore, I thought, why don’t I just do it again to see what happens. I got four weeks in for the 2nd time before the knee pain popped back up again. I gave up again, and frankly, I was sort of happy to have an excuse as to why I couldn’t do it to use every time people would say “So are you a runner like your parents?”

I used that excuse until this past Spring, I suddenly, and happily, became extremely close to Christina. Christina is a runner – a logs Daily Miles on facebook daily, has run 3-marathons runner, but she hasn’t always been. She only started three years ago when we started teaching. She ran the SRLA program at her school and ran her first LA marathon. She reminded me of my mom in that way.

Around this time, I also heard that Nicole was training for a half marathon, and I know that Nicole was not a runner before this.

Suddenly, I felt stupid and lazy with my excuse. My knee hurt. So what? My parents had several injuries that they had gotten over. So has ANYONE who has ever run, ever. My excuse felt flimsy, and I was suddenly tired of telling stories of my parents’ awesome running lives to my friends with awesome running lives, instead of having any of my own besides “Oh, I don’t run. You know…knee pain and all.”

So I started the Coach to 5K again, for a third time. I pretty much had the first 5 weeks memorized at this point. And at about a month and a half in, without fail, my knee pain came screaming back, but this time, I wasn’t secretly relieved. I was pissed off. I wanted to join this elusive running club of which I had never been able to gain entry. I wanted to punch this knee pain in the face. So I did.

I finally went to see a sports doctor who diagnosed my injury in 2.5 seconds and gave me a way to fix it. Two weeks later, I was easing back into running, pain free. Four weeks later, I ran for 20 minutes without stopping – the longest I have ever run in my life. And I couldn’t wait to call my mom and tell her.

This week, on the eve of attempting to run for 25 minutes, I signed up for a 5k and had my mom make me a training plan to work up to running a half-marathon in the Spring. Christina has been cheering me on all week. When I get back, I’ll probably ask Nicole to show me some running trails by our apartment. I finally feel part of the club.

I didn’t write a post this week about what I’m thankful for because it felt like it would be cliche and sound like everyone else’s. I’m of course thankful for my friends and family, but today, I am specifically thankful for having such inspiring, motivating, helpful and encouraging friends and family. If my dad, my uncle, my mom, Christina, and Nicole hadn’t put on shoes, walked outside and started to run, despite the fact that they had never done it before, despite the fact that it was hard, I never would have done it…three times. I would have given up and been fine with that, but seeing them do it and keep doing it, I realized I wasn’t fine with giving up. I wanted the joy, the frustration, the pain, and the triumph of running too. So, thanks you guys! I wouldn’t be doing this without you.

While my life on paper looks pretty much like it did before, there are some minor changes. Still Teaching For America, though as an official alumnus now and not as an active Corps Member, and I did move up a grade with my kiddos. Plus, I joined the TFA staff bandwagon, working at their Summer Institute this past summer, which was both the most ridiculously tiring and stressful and most ridiculously fun job I’ve ever had.

Still living in LA, but I made the move from my super trendy, Grove-adjacent neighborhood, to a less trendy, more quiet, much much much closer to work neighborhood within walking distance of Nicole and Drea. Also, I’m living alone for the first time, which was mildly terrifying at first (like double-checking the locks every night before I went to sleep and then getting up again after 10 minutes of being almost asleep to check them again terrifying), but now that I can come home, sit in silence while watching a DVR full of shows that only I have taped, I’m starting to enjoy it. Plus, I get to feel all adult and accomplished when I do crazy things like unclog my shower drain after being annoyed with the standing water for a month. (That’s an adult thing right?)

And there was that whole, I was in a long-term relationship and now am not thing…which I’m fine with. I’ve had a crazy single summer and have been spending more time brunching, dancing, and just generally hanging out with my amazing friends and some new amazing friends, all of whom say I’m way more fun than I was last year, so I’m going to call it a win. Also, I may be contemplating joining a synagogue just to meet new cute Jewish boys, which I think God would be totally fine with…so maybe I’m not totally fine with being single, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The other big change is that I’m thinking I may be done with teaching after this year. While I certainly don’t hate it, I’m starting to feel the “wow, I’m actually completely burned out” feeling, which may have something to do with that ridiculously tiring summer job and the fact that I”m teaching a new grade/subject for the third year in a row, and have thus never been able to reuse any of the work I’ve done for the past two years, and yeah….I’m feeling a little done, which means I need to now have that whole WHAT THE HECK AM I GOING TO DO NOW conversation in my mind for the next 8 months, which in turn means a lot of grad school applications, TFA staff applications, and web searches for jobs in theater education to see what comes up. So you’re welcome for the slew of angsty, where-do-I-want-my-life-to-go posts that will be coming your way in the next few months.

That’s all I’ve got for now – hopefully now that I’m a regular person again, after a lovely two-year hiatus, I’ll make this posting business a regular part of my week again. I mean, I owe it to the awesome redesign to at least give it a chance. (Thanks, Steph!)

So here, for public consumption and accountability are my goals for 2011:

1. Lose 10 pounds before the summer. (How? Working out an average of 3 times a week and re-joining Weight Watchers, which helped me lose 10 pounds in three months in 2009.)

2. Bike 50 miles in the Tour de Cure for Diabetes in Long Beach in May.

3. Read 8-10 books, with the help of my new super awesome Nook!

4. Blog….more. (This shouldn’t be hard, as right now, I’ve averaging six posts a year.)

And that’s all I’ve got mentally for now, as I have a horrifying cold and am currently wrapped in the softest blanket on earth reading Dan Savage’s The Commitment on my Nook, both courtesy of my super awesome boyfriend. Hopefully, if I stick to goal #4, I’ll be back with a voice and a slightly higher capacity for thought soon.

Wednesday (my actual birthday), I’m going out to dinner with the boyfriend, and probably getting a chocolate cake from one of my students who came to me the other day to ask me, and I quote, “chocolate questions,” to determine my cake preferences.

Friday, my boyfriend organized a dinner with our awesome and amazing co-workers at one of my favorite LA spots. (In fact, I was just there enjoying buttery garlic balls with Andrea and Amy!)

Saturday, my roommates organized a dinner and small get together for my outside of work friends.

Today, my sister told me she is getting me tickets to go see a taping of “Big Bang Theory,” something we’ve been talking about wanting to do for months.

All in all, I’m feeling overwhelmed with the amount of love and general awesomeness in my life right now.

After my last post, I’ve been trying to live in the moment, to stop thinking about how my life looks and to start focusing on how happy I am at this juncture of my life.

In thinking about this coming birthday week, I went back and read what I posted last year on my 23rd birthday, and this one line in particular hit me:

“While my 23rd year most likely won’t seem as life-changing on paper as my 22nd, I’m thinking that by my 24th year, I’m going to be an entirely different person, and for today at least, I feel kind of OK with that.”

This hit me, because of how right I was in my assumption. On paper, my life is almost exactly the same as last year. I live in the same apartment. I have the same job. I have the same friends, but this year, I feel, somehow, more whole. I feel much more grown up, more settled. Despite stress, I feel good at my job, where as last year I felt, at times, like I was drowning. Last year, though I would rarely admit it, I felt utterly, emotionally alone, and now I’m with someone who constantly surprises me with understanding and with exactly what I need at the end of a long day. Last year, I still missed my “homes” in Boston and with my parents, and while I still feel a little ache for that, I now feel like when I come to my apartment, I’m home. I feel like LA is where I live, and when I fly into LAX, I feel like I’m returning instead of just staying for a bit.

My prediction came true. My 23rd year was not life-changing like last year was. I’m different now, and I’m still very OK with that.

The problem with this, and with me, really, is that I have terrible “grass is greener” syndrome. Even as I’ve been happy with my life, I’m always seeing the awesome, cool, interesting, and exotic things OTHER people are doing. I see people eating at amazing restaurants, going on hot air balloon rides, creating a ball-pit in their living room, traveling the world, staring their own businesses, decorating adorable apartments, getting married, going to grad school…I see all these things, and I think, THOSE are the types of things I want – the interesting lives with the new, small adventures, with the adorable outfits and the Etsy adorned apartment and the fun, entrepreneurial new job….

Lately, I’ve come to realize, however, that what we see on blogs is SUCH a small slice of people’s lives, and not just any slice, the slice people *choose* to share with the world. We sometimes see the struggles, but always protected and monitored, always as a small chunk of the image. We don’t see the daily grind, the annoying traffic, the family frustrations, the utter heartbreaks, and the boring days. The more bloggers I’ve met in real the life, the more evident this has become to me. As much as we know and share with each other, we don’t know that much *just* from reading blogs. People are doing these fun, cool, adventurous things, but they are also living real life. Just like I am.

With this realization, it has been my mission to think about how my life could (or would) be perceived (if I actually blogged about it on a regular basis, that is), and what people may see in me, when you take away all that daily grind crap.

My blog would show that I love my job, stress and crazy kids and all. It would show that I have a great adorable teacher boyfriend who loves me. It would show that I do go on some crazy adventures, like hitting up Disneyland with these lovely folks and having a heart attack on Space Mountain, like going with my best friend to see Maroon 5 at the Greek theater, and like going with my hilarious co-workers to Drag Bingo in West Hollywood. It would show that I do have some cute Etsy jewelry. I do go to fun restaurants that have been featured on “The Best Thing I ever Ate,” and even though it isn’t super decorated, I do have a pretty sweet apartment.

Someone reading would look at my life and not see the disorganized room, the hour of me in sitting (and screaming) in traffic, the pain of getting up at 5AM, and the lack of decoration in my apartment, but they would see someone who has a pretty good life. And it is definitely the life I want.

Rash decision one: Give up theater, after a life time of dance classes, voice lessons, summer theater camps, and a performing arts high school, after a terrible college program audition (complete with crying phone meltdown to my mother) and a comment from my high school drama/playwriting teacher that my play read more like a sitcom. Instead of pursuing an BFA in Musical Theater (which I could not have done solely due to lack of necessary talent…) or even a BA in Theater Studies, I decided to major in Television and Film with the new dream of writing for Television. It was quasi based on my lifetime love of television, but looking back, it was also quasi reactionary. Even so, that decision shaped the next four years of my life.

Rash decision number two: Apply to be a counselor at a Jewish summer camp. A completely random decision a the time, having never attended camp myself. It came up after a third or forth viewing of the MTV Documentary “Fat Camp” with my friend Nick my second semester of college, during which I talked about how I almost went to sleep away Jew camp as a kid, but chickened out at the last minute. I thought about how I had nothing to do that summer and about how much fun I’d had the summer before working at a Performing Arts Day camp, and how I’d always secretly wished I had just sucked it up and GONE to camp that summer, so I, of course, randomly started researching and applying to Jewish summer camps in the Midwest. I heard back from several, got hired at one, and proceeded to have the best two summers of my life 20 minutes outside of Cleveland, Ohio, which in turn led to both my amazing Australian adventure with my two camp BFF’s and my third rash decision.

Rash decision number three: Apply to Teach for America. After my second semester junior year experience of interning and hating life in LA, I felt lost. My rash decision to major in TV was looking like an epic failure after discovering I didn’t, in fact, enjoy working in television, and I had no idea what to do with my life. The only vague thought I had was to maybe apply to Emerson to study Theater Education and circle back to my original love of theater and my new found (Thanks to Camp!) love of working with kids. I doubted I would get in, however, with my limited camp experience teaching drama one summer and my one vaguely related to education class, the Politics of Education. Then I saw one of those pesky recruitment signs touting the (horrifying) statistics about low-income schools, which reminded me of all the things I learned were broken in the education system in my one education class. I went to an info meeting, told my mom I was thinking about applying, and filled out the application in a day, figuring I would let fate decide, since I didn’t really have faith in my decision making skills at the time. Then a funny thing happened. Fate decided I should be a teacher.

And that’s where I am now. One year into my two-year commitment to TFA, which is when everyone in TFA starts asking “What are you going to do next Spring when you finish?” They, of course, are asking so they can steer you into staying in education, thus fulfilling step two of their two-part plan to close the education gap. And for the first time in a while, I’m not feeling like making a rash decision that will throw me in a completely different direction.

Maybe it’s just because my life is going pretty well right now that I don’t feel like changing it and, eventually one small blip will send me looking at law school applications, but for now, for the first time ever, I’ve drafted out a plan for the next five years of my life, based on where I am now right now. It’s weird to write out where I want to be five years into the future, because for the last five years, my plans have been changing and evolving on a regular basis. There has never been a constant, because I have always felt unsure, like I wasn’t good enough to act or I wasn’t cut-throat enough for Hollywood. It’s kind of scary to feel stable and to plan, because I have a history of planning and then pursuing those plans only to chuck them out the window and do something totally different. I even wrote my college admissions essay about how I did this, and after that, I changed my mind again!

But maybe those rash decisions were all just leading me here, to the place I was supposed to end up. I just had to make those giant, seemingly random leaps because I wasn’t going to get to this place fast enough unless I made mistakes, took on random jobs and left a few things up to fate.

Maybe planning just feels scary, because, as I’ve seen, life doesn’t go according to plan, and I’m just afraid to fail. In the past, as my plans have changed or been only a few months ahead of me, I’ve never technically failed. I’ve gotten everything I’ve really tried to do. I don’t know how I would handle it if I made this plan, went for it with all I had, and then didn’t succeed.

Then again, life is scary and unpredictable, as I’ve seen, and I might fail, but I think I need to focus on the fact that right now, in this moment, I’m so incredibly grateful that I made those decisions, and that life, unpredictably, brought me here to this place where I can make plans for my future, because when I think of what my life would have been had I not made those random, rash decisions, I wouldn’t have all the life experience that is now factoring into my plans. I guess I just have to trust that even if life doesn’t go according to the plan, it can still lead you to a good place.

When I say I’m “going home” for the week, what I really mean is “I’m going to where my parents live.” Right now, that is Delaware. I lived here for a couple months after graduating last year, but I don’t have any friends here. I have no old hang-outs to visit, and I basically hang out with my parents and work-out at the JCC when I come here. It’s not home, except for the idea that home is where my parents live.

When I told people I was coming to Delaware this week, I said I was going home for the week, but being here and in Pittsburgh at a family reunion for the weekend, I realized, I’m not at home. I love my parents more than anything, and emotionally, yes, whenever I am in their house, I will feel some sense of home, but I had a surprising realization last night.

When I fly back to LA on Wednesday, I’ll be going home. I’ll be going to the place I feel like I truly belong at this point in my life. I’ll be going to the little home I’ve created with my best friends in our apartment. I’ll be going to the place where I can grab dinner and a movie with my sister at a moments notice. I’ll be going to the place I can drive around without thinking. I’ll be going to the place I feel comfortable and happy and settled. I’ll be going to the place I can’t imagine moving from any time soon, which is exactly the opposite of how I thought I would ever feel about Los Angeles.

The first time I lived there, I thought it was pretentious and loud and too spread out and too sunny. (Odd, I know.) Now, I’ve embraced and conquered (at times) the traffic. I’ve made amazing friends who always keep me busy when I want to be. I’ve found a job I’m (almost) really good at and that I feel fulfilled in. I’ve learned to love the constant sunny and 70 degree weather. I’ve found an apartment that feels cozy and comfortable and (almost) decorated, and I’ve found (for now) a guy who indulges me in seeing Toy Story 3, takes me to Dodgers games, enjoys hanging out and doing nothing but watching movies and eating pizza, and who doesn’t make me feel nervous or self-conscious or crazy about anything I do, say, or feel.

I’ve had a great weekend with my family, revisiting my favorite childhood theme park, Kennywood, hanging out at a waterpark with my cousins, and dancing to a super local Pittsburgh band at a hotel bar with all my aunts and uncles, but I am really excited to go home.