Sabrina's Postcards: 2008....

2008is here and we've hit the ground running. My host family and I spent midnight on the beach in Salinas with thousands of people throwing confetti, popping champagne and lighting fireworks and all that. We made a short video to send to Diego in Germany and then one to send home to my dad. It was nice to have everyone put in like that. We burned a "viejo", a papier-mache doll that represents the year that's passing and all the regrets or unhappy events of the year before. From there I went out with my friends and we had an absolute blast on the boardwalk until 5 AM. New Year's night was only part of a perfect beach weekend, relaxing, sunning, riding on one of those banana boats until it flipped and we all got soaked, drinking banana smoothies, and doing typical girly teenage things.

Since I got home I've been paying my post-beach dues, picking at a bad sunburn and trying to catch up on laundry. I checked in on school today, talked with my teachers whose final exams I was worried about and even took the first final of the weeklong testing-got a 95% in history. If only I could get credit for it back home...

Other than that, time is moving along as usual. I'm so close to halfway done, I can smell it. School ends in a week, and at the end of the month, I change to my new host family, the Stacy family, with a mom, dad, brother [13] and sister [8] in a gated community further into the city, but still on the outskirts. Their current exchange daughter, Karlijn, will come to my house. I'm going to miss my family but I'll also be glad to change.

61 days until I turn 18... The excitement is building...

[EDIT] PS: Here's some photos!