The Break In

Thursday, August 16, 2007 11:57 AM

Hello all,
    I've taught another class and everything went well. My own classes starts on monday. My schedule will probably be 4-6 PM level 3, 6-7 PM Conversation club, 7-9PM level, M-Thursday. Then on Sundays I will have class probably from 10-5, teaching level 1 and also conversation clubs. I'm a little intimidated now but once I get everything figured out I should be fine.
     On sunday, we observed some classes and then I went home to relax. A couple hours later my friend called me from her apartment which is in the same building as mine. She was crying. She said that two men had broken into her house and she had locked herself into her room. She could hear them moving around outside the door. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't call 911 and we weren't even sure if the Ukrainian police department would care. I ran over to her house and started yelling to her landlady (babbushka) that I needed help. She said (in Russian) she didn't understand english so I called Gayla, a uUrainain girl I know, and asked her to translate. The line cut out so I ran to the elevator and was planning on beating up the guys who had broke in, when the elevator door opened and Gayla was there. Gayla went over to the landlady and I ran onto the elevator.
    When I got to my friend's door, I didn't know if the guys were still there so I banged on the door and yelled, "Are you okay?" my friend opened the door and was crying and clearly very upset.
     Apparently while she was sleeping she heard some keys rattling outside her door and the doorknob turn. Expecting her roommate home any day, she unlocked the door and two guys barged in. She yelled at them but they pushed her out of the way and she ran for her bedroom. When she had locked herself in she realized that her purse was in the kitchen so she ran for it. The guys cornered her and yhe only thing she could understand was Coffee, so she grabbed the coffee can and pushed it in their faces while running for her room. She got to her room but a guy tried to push his way in. She was stronger.Once in her room, she called Gayla and then me. The guys were gone by the time Gayla got there which had to be 5 minutes later.
     Gayla called the police and they came. They caught the guys because the landlady didn't see them leave the building so we knew they were still there. The police dusted for fingerprints and took pictures of the apartment, it was very CSI. While Gayla and my friend were downstairs talking to the police I stayed in the apartment. After a little while I heard a knock on the door and looked through the peephole to see a man and a woman. They kept knocking and finally I yelled, "Who is it?" The woman said, "I am your neighbor, open the door." Well, I wasn't about to open the door so I yelled, "What do you want?" "Open the door." she yelled back. I ignored her. She kept knocking and yelling "open the door" and I refused. Finally she said, "Look, is this your's?" she held a plastic bag up to the peephole. "I don't know," I yelled back. "Open the door and look." "Just leave it outside the door and I'll look later."
      Meanwhile I called Gayla and she said, "Do not open the door, I will be up with the police in a minute." The woman kept knocking and yelliing but finally she left the bag outside the door and went into her apartment. I waited some more and in about 15 minutes she was back at the door knocking. "Is this your's?" "No." I yelled and she left. A couple of minutes later
Gayla came back upstairs followed by Carolin and the police. Gayla knocked on the neighbor's door and the neighbor lady said that she had found a plastic bag full of stuff by the elevator. We looked through it and thought maybe it was the roomate of my friend's stuff, whose room was open. The cops took everything to the station with them. The roommate is away and should be coming back this week, we haven't been able to get a hold of her, so she's in for a surprise.
     Other than that nothing too exciting has happened. I was lost in Kiev for a while, roaming around, but luckily I found some people who spoke English who could guide me. We were supposed to go to a new school to observe some classes but I had never been there so I asked T2 to go with me, because he had been there. He stood me up, which I figured would happen, he's a bit of a jerk and is starting to piss some people off.
     Anyway Gayla tried to guide me by phone but it is a hard place to find. I was very proud of myself for finally getting there. Everybody else has had a guide to take them to the school, I found it on my own.
     Today I went to a huge second hand clothing store and bought a lot of nice clothes. They had a lot of H&M stuff for cheap. Tonight Olga and my friend and I are going to watch a movie. Jason, one of the new teachers, is leaving o go teach in Odessa so we might also go out with him. I'm starting to feel accustommed here and am having a good time. I'm excited for when more people arrive. I miss everyone and hope all is well.
Love, Jacy

Biography: The Beginning of My Life and What Lead to My Two Metal Hips Part 1

       In 1975, my parents moved into the forests of Wisconsin from Minneapolis. Originally, they moved out to the country with another couple, sharing space in an old farmhouse they rented. However, not long afterward, my parents bought a piece of land and began building their own house. They did odd jobs for money. My mom worked in Minneapolis (an hour and a half away) at Planned Parenthood. My dad worked, at different times, as a school bus driver for the High School, a dishwasher at a nearby restaurant, and a disc jockey for the local radio station. They weren't the only hippies in the area. There was a little enclave of hippies surrounding them; mainly artists who had moved out of Minneapolis and St Paul to reconnect with nature. Many lived in rundown school houses or had built their own places. They would meet often for pot lucks and sweat lodges, and had even put out a cookbook for their little community.

               My parents had moved to Minneapolis shortly after marrying in the fall of 1973. My dad was from Dubuque, Iowa, and my mom was from just across the river in East Dubuque, Illinois.  They had met while working as orderlies in the Mental Health ward of Sacred Heart Hospital in Dubuque. They had gone to the same High School and had hung around at the same parties, and had known of each other prior to meeting. My mom trained my dad in as an orderly and they started dating. Less than a year later they were married and on their way to Minneapolis.

               They had moved out to the country with dreams of making their own way. My mom baked fresh bread and worked on the garden as my dad built the house. For a while they lived in a tent. My dad says that summer was when he was healthiest he had ever been. He was tanned from working in the sun, and buff from hammering all day long. Soon they had a one room house built, with a loft for a bedroom. The house wasn't large; it had no toilet or TV.  My parents lived 10 long years using an outhouse, something our guests (mainly my grandparents) were not pleased about. Luckily, for me, I was still young and using a baby toilet, when they built on a second and third floor that included a bathroom with a toilet. There was also a wood stove for heat and a gas stove for cooking. Even as a small child it was my responsibility to run out and grab some logs for the stove. After school, before my parents got home from work, I would start up the wood stove while my younger brother brought in the wood and kindling. Until I was 5, the wood stove was the main source of heat for our house, and after that it continued to be the source of heat for the entire downstairs and my parent's bedroom. 

My mom

My dad

           Nine years after getting married, and seven years after moving to the country, I arrived into the little world my parents had made for themselves in the forests of Wisconsin. I was their first child and they were excited to be parents. There is a video of me at about 8 months. It was made by friends who had a son my age. They lived about a quarter mile away, and we were the only babies in the neighborhood.  In the video, I can be seen pulling myself up and walking unsteadily with the use of couches and chairs. I had bright blue eyes and dark hair and at one point I looked directly into the camera and said 'Dah'. Our friends had brought all their son’s pacifiers along, hoping to make a video of us fighting over them. However, never having used a pacifier, I didn't know what to do with them and for the most part was disinterested. The other baby and I would paw at the pacifiers and eventually he would get one in his mouth. If I did manage to pick one up, I'd simply chew on it. The video was filmed on a very cold and snowy day, and everyone was dressed warmly, sitting downstairs at our house. My parents were in their early 30s at the time and looked the part of young parents. There is such an innocence about the scene. Two sets of young parents playing with their toddlers. When this video was filmed, the tumor that wouldn’t be discovered for another month, was already making a home for itself within my small frame. In fact, when it was discovered, it was at such a severe stage it is possible it had all begun in the womb. At any rate, what happened a month after the video was taken, makes the video itself seem all the more innocent. A simple glimpse at a time 'before', where most of my parent's concerns were wrapped up in whether, as my mom mentions in the video, they were spoiling me. 

Taken from the porch of our house in the country. Mom holding me, dad holding my brother, and my dad's parents.

Email 3 from Ukraine

Bus 

View of church from my apartment.

Email titled: No water but plenty of vodka

Note: I've decided to not use people's full names, just the first letter of their names. In this post there are two guys whose names start with T so I've decided to call them T and T2.

Saturday, August 11, 2007 9:29 AM

Hey everybody,
   So Thursday night I taught my first class and I was
very nervous, but I think it went pretty well. I was
being observed by my training director and three
american guys, so it was a little nerve-racking. Also
the cirriculum here is so structured, I have so much
to memorize. But I think I will enjoy it once I get
used to it.

         Thursday night, we all went out to a
German pub and hung out. Then T, who is the
ring-leader of our little group, announced that we
were going to go back to his friend Artur's apartment.
We all went outside to get taxis but Artur was no
where in sight and T didn't know where he lived.
So, we stood outside for a while and eventually Artur
showed up. There were so many of us that we had to
take three different taxis. The first taxi held Artur
and others and they made it to the apartment right
away. The taxi I was in roamed the city for over an
hour in search of the apartment, but we eventually got
there. The third taxi dropped everyone off at a metro
station somewhere, so they had to get another taxi and
try again.

    When we had all arrived we went up to
Artur's apartment which was huge and beautiful. From
the outside all apartment buildings look the same,
like crap. The lobbys are falling apart, not all of the lights work,
and everything smells horrible. But once inside an
apartment, everything changes. Its the communist
mentality that nobody can seem like they have more
than any one else.

   At the apartment everybody got
really drunk and Artur played guitar and sang to us,
songs that he had made up. They were very beautiful
and I was very impressed.

   At 330 in the morning another American teacher,

D, wanted to go home, so
I said I'd join her in a taxi. This was very upsetting
to Artur who couldn't understand why we were leaving
so early, were we not having fun? We had to keep
explaining that we were tired. D had to work the
next day, but still Artur could not understand. Finally, we
got a taxi and went home.

    The next day, I traveled into the city by myself.

 I got a little switched around on
the metro and had to do some backtracking, but
eventually I got to where I wanted to go. Petrivka has
an outside market that, although very ugly, has a lot
of cool stuff. I bought some things and wandered
around, then went back home.

My local grocery store.

   One thing I should mention is, when I woke

 up yesterday morning I had no
water. However, do to my waterless time in Mexico
City, I was prepared (I spent a vacation visiting a friend in Mexico City and the water kept being turned off. We would leave the faucet turned on at night and wake up to the sound of water flowing in the sink. We'd jump out of bed and fill ever bucket we could find, bathe really quickly, and fill up the toilet tank before the water shut off again. We had about an hour of flowing water to work with). When I got back that night (after going to the market),

 I was going to just buy some water at the store but then I
noticed a guy carrying buckets and decided to follow
him. He led me to a well right outside my apartment
building so I ran in and grabbed some water containers

The well where I got my water.

and filled them up. I'm such a survivlist.

   When I got back to the apartment C called me and told me
everyone was down by the canal. I walked down and met
T2 and another American teacher, S, and his
Ukrainian girlfriend along the way. Everybody was just
hanging out drinking and playing guitar, so I sat and
talked with them for a while. T kept on me about
why I didn't drink, he thought it was because I was a
bible-thumper and wanted to convert Ukrainians. Let's
say he learned never to make assumptions again. After
a while everybody got so drunk that our conversations
didn't make any sense and I went home.

     Everybody is really nice and I am having a good time. Today C
and I are going to the old part of town to explore, and
we will probably meet up with an Ukrainian teacher.
Tomorrow we have class. And just in case you are
worrying, my water is back on. I miss you all and hope
everything is going well. Love, Jacy

View of the statue from my apartment.

Preface to the second email I sent from Ukraine:

               When I arrived in Ukraine the school was not ready for me. Apparently the guy who had hired me thought I would be coming a month later than I actually did. I had to wait for the next batch of American teachers to arrive before I could have my own apartment and start teaching. They arrived a month after me. I spent the first month in Ukraine staying at another teacher’s apartment while she was on vacation. She had been living in Ukraine for over ten years and had remodeled an apartment to make it more comfortable. I could sleep in her bed until she came back and then I would be relegated to the couch. However, she was a very nice lady, and stayed with the director of our school until the new teachers arrived, letting me have her apartment to myself. It was a great place to stay, but I was incredibly bored. After a week of training, there was nothing for me to do. All the other teachers had classes, but I spent my days at the apartment afraid to venture out. It is interesting how palpable that fear was. I knew no one would understand me and was scared that people finding out I didn’t belong. I spent my days inside the apartment, only going out to get groceries. I was lonely and bored. I have never been more aware of world events than during that month, thanks to Aljezzera, which I watched constantly, it being the only English TV channel I had. I also read a lot. I didn’t have internet at my apartment, so those were my only two activities. It was a bit of a miserable start. Soon, however, my loneliness and boredom outweighed my fears of venturing out of the apartment. I was forced out of my comfort zone. To this day, whenever I travel, I spend the first couple of days in a frightened stupor, scared to leave the house. They’ll find me out, I think, buried beneath blankets, afraid to move. However, I’m never allowed to stay in that state for very long. It’s an excellent lesson in conquering your fears and pushing yourself.


Wednesday, August 8, 2007 3:00 PM

Hi all,
So, I still don't have internet in my apartment and am right now at a friend's house using hers. It's a
little frustrating but everything in Ukraine is slow, I'm used to the American way of getting things done
 instantly. Waiting is the word of the year. But It’s nice to have a little bit slower pace of life.

My apartment is gorgeous, (I should have written that the inside of my apartment was gorgeous. As you can see from the following pictures, the rest of it was a bit sketchy), although I don't get to stay there forever. Right now I'm by myself living at another teacher's house while she is on vacation. She will be coming back next week and I hear that she likes to cook, which works very well for me. The apartment has a Jacuzzi bathtub, which is pretty sweet, and cable, but really that just consists of Aljazeera in English, which I watch.

The hall outside my apartment.
My door is on the left.

My apartment building.
My apartment is on the left, on the 8th floor.

The front door of my apartment building.

The two keys I needed to get into my front door.

Underneath my apartment building.

 One for the doorknob lock and one for a lock higher up on the door.

                                                                                                                                         



The view is amazing also. I can see a beautiful gold towered cathedral and an enormous statue from across the river. They say the statue is bigger than the statue of liberty (it also is of a woman) but I haven't been there to check it out yet.




'Mother Motherland', the statue

 I could see from my apartment-203 feet tall.


I've been into the city only once, we went to a famous street, which I will be working on once I'm done with the training. We walked down the street and into Independence Square, where millions of people rallied during the Orange Revolution in 2004. There were some cool statues and the views were magnificent. We also did some shopping and then had dinner with a bunch of teachers. But since then we've just been training, so I haven't had time for any more site-seeing. My trainer says that she will take me to a nice second hand store, so I'm excited about that.


So far its been pretty warm here, not as bad as Florida but still sweaty and humid. The
worst is there is no air conditioning and Ukrainians don't believe in opening windows, they are afraid it
 would create a draft and make everybody sick. However, I'm not one for suffocating, so I open the windows in the classroom.

Right now my diet is pretty pathetic, mainly consisting of bread, cheese, cereal and pasta.
I did have some beets the other day. I've been cooking my own food which is really not a good idea, my
 standard of cooking just doesn't work for me. But my laziness usually wins over my want for good taste.

This weekend we are going to do some more site-seeing and maybe head to the beach. Carolyn (the only other american girl here) and I are hoping for some more girl teachers, some more teachers will be arriving in a couple of weeks. The American guys are gaga over the Ukrainian women. They also like to drink, a lot, and the director of my school who is 38 is right there with them. It is kinda annoying because whatever we do turns into a big drinking fest and Carolin and I are always the only American girls, the Ukrainian girls are always being flirted with by the American boys so we tend to get bored. But it has been very interesting so far. I miss everyone and hope everyone is doing

well. Love, Jacy

Here are some of the sights we saw on our sight-seeing tour:

A church in Kiev

The Chimera building, a governmental building

The beginning of Ukraine

Saturday, August 4, 2007 2:08 PM

Hi Everyone,

A recent photo of Cari and me

My trip to Ukraine began with the frantic anxiety that comes with moving overseas, albeit a bit more than necessary. In hindsight, moving places for me is never a good idea, and I should have realized all would not go as planned (the year before I had moved from Wisconsin to Florida, losing my car in a spectacular and traumatic road-side break-down somewhere in Tennessee, forcing us to rent a car the rest of the way.) Nevertheless, I woke up the day of my flight anxious yet excited for what was to come. I had stayed over at a friend's house, my flight left from Chicago around 6:00 PM and she lived two hours away. I had come to Illinois to say goodbye to friends and family and, after a couple of farewell parties, I was ready to be on my way. My friend, Cari, had to work the early part of the day but planned to arrive home around 12 so we could have lunch and take a leisurely drive to the airport, arriving a good two hours before my flight left. She was at work when I realized the contents of my hotel sample shampoo bottle had spilled into my cosmetics bag, but by the time she arrived home, I had it all cleaned up. We pulled my two enormous suitcases up the stairs of her basement apartment and out into the car. All was ready and we joked as we prepared for the drive. It was at this point that our smiling faces turned to teary-eyed paniced ones. The keys, we soon realized, were not in her purse. Nor were they in her car or (and believe me we checked) any of her pockets. It so happened that the very item we needed to begin our two hour trip to the airport (and my seven hour flight to Poland where I would then take a 2 hour flight to Kiev), were sitting on the kitchen table, along with the house key. We were, as it turned out, locked out of the house and therefore, refused access to starting our car. Our first thoughts were to try the windows, perhaps one had been left unlocked, however, that was soon deemed unlikely and we sat to go on to plan two.

            Plan 2) Call the landlord and beg him to run over and let us in. This too, failed, as the landlord refused to pick up the phone. Plan 3) Knock on the neighbors' doors and gain access to a phonebook in order to call a locksmith. The woman who answered the door, wearing a  muumuu, daytime soaps playing in the background, was very kind and understanding and lent us the use of her phonebook. Cari called the various numbers of locksmiths in town but received answers from no one. Plan 4) Call the Sheriff's office and see what advice they could have for us, advice that turned out to be call a locksmith. In the meantime Cari had put in a call to her boss, explaining the situation and hoping she would have some better advice for us. In a moment of inspiration, and salvation, she offered the use of her car, so plan 5) became, borrow bosses car to drive to the airport.

            45 minutes after our planned departure, Cari's boss Jessica pulled into the apartment building parking lot and we loaded my suitcases into her car (we had to get them out of Cari's trunk by pulling them through the backseat, not an easy feat). Once inside Jessica's car panic set in one again, the car was a manual, and, although I would be able to get us to the airport, Cari wouldn't be able to get back home. Plan 6) Take Jessica's husband's truck to the airport. So, finally Cari and I were rumbling down the highway in the biggest truck I had ever seen, and Cari had ever driven, on our way to the airport. And we weren't doing too bad on time, I'd arrive an hour ahead of time, instead of the leisurely two I usually like to have.

            Being a little late, Cari decided perhaps our best chance of making up that time was to take a way that could end up being a little faster, a shortcut if you will. This shortcut however, ended up being not nearly as much on the short side as we would have liked. In fact, it turned into a dead end and we had to double back, (a quick note, doing a y-turn in an enormous truck is not as simple as it seems.) What is more, within doubling back we became ensnared in a construction related traffic jam. I had now become a bit nervous, we were losing precious time and I was afraid I would miss my flight altogether. Once through the construction site, however, we flew down the road and finally found ourselves on the entrance ramp to the freeway. From here on in, we foolishly thought to ourselves, it will be smooth sailing, we were a mere 20 minute away and the truck was equipped with an I-pass, enabling us to cruise by tolls. Yet again, our plans were foiled, traffic on the freeway had begun to accumulate and we found ourselves anxiously chewing our fingernails in agonizingly slow-moving traffic again. Plan 7) get a new flight for the following day and spend the night in a hotel, so as not to have to go through the same thing again. Having finally arrived at check-in I tumbled out of the car, suitcases in tow as Cari wished me luck.

            The line was short inside and as I panted up to check-in saying, “I hope I made it,” the guy merely glanced at me and asked for my passport. Ten minutes later, I at least knew my luggage had made it onto my flight, now I just had to get myself through the never-ending line for the security check-point.  At this point, according to my ticket my flight was boarding, however, I was still waiting in line. I asked a guy ushering people into straight lines if he thought I'd make my flight but he simply pointed to my line. I made it through security and ran to my gate and up to the desk to ask if they'd started boarding. The woman simply told me to take a seat, and finally I had a chance to breath.

     As I looked around, I saw that the waiting area was thronged with children and I overheard someone say, "there's 46 of them." A couple of the children were wearing shirts that said 'Children of Chernobyl Camp..'. They were all yelling and laughing in Russian. "Great" I thought, "I hope I'm not sitting next to any of these screaming kids." As it turned out my seat mate was a 6 or 7 year old boy, who, according to a name tag, was named Danil. Danil was seated by the window, and I on the aisle, across from all his friends. Danil spent a lot of time yelling over at his friends, especially to a boy named Vlad. I tried to relax into my seat excited to begin my Harry Potter book but Danil's yelling and constant moving made it hard. As the plane took off, I offered a piece of gum to Danil hoping to bribe him into good behavior. After a while Danil fell asleep and I got into my book. 

                    Soon there after, our meal came and Danil woke up. He asked for a coke from the drink cart and I prayed the flight attendant knew not to serve caffeine to minors after 7 at night. Unfortunately he didn't. I continued reading and tried to ignore Danil as best I could. As the rest of the cabin went to sleep the kids' behavior got rowdier, including pillow fights. I apparently was the only one watching them and spent my time reading and sporadically yelling, "come on you guys, you need to settle down." Finally I put my neck pillow on and tried to sleep. After a while I pulled out my eye mask, and after a little more time I put on my MP3 player. Every sense was blocked. Eventually Danil went to sleep and I dozed a little. After about an hour I woke to Danil throwing his head against my shoulder and encircling my arm with his little hands. I knew he must miss his family, and, with his hand holding on hard to my arm, I fell asleep too. 

               I woke to food being placed in front of me and soon we were descending to the Warsaw airport. After waiting in long lines for passport check, I arrived at my next gate and looked for a guy named Devin. We had exchanged emails, he also was a new teacher for the American English Center, and we had decided to try and meet up since we would both be on the same plane from Warsaw to Kiev. He described himself as having glasses, brown hair and a boyish face. I made eye contact with someone fitting this description but about ten years older than I imagined so I decided to ignore him and continue my book.

        On the next flight I got a whole row to myself. I stretched out and relished the hour and a half flight to Kiev. When I arrived in Kiev, customs went smoothly and my luggage came quickly. I walked through the exit and looked for a sign with my name on it. A tall girl with dyed red hair that was dreaded in the back was holding my sign and we introduced ourselves. She also introduced her friend, another faux redhead, and we waited for Devin. After about 45 minutes of waiting the driver came in and I  went back to the car with him to wait there. He didn't speak any English. A half an hour of waiting in silence was interrupted when the driver pointed to the steering wheel and said something. I just stared at him. He repeated himself and I said, a little hesitantly, "Steering wheel?" He pointed to the clock and said something else, I'm silent, he repeated himself and so I repeated him. He said the word more slowly, I copied, he pointed to the mirror and said something, I repeated, he pointed again and I said "mirror" he repeated me, then he pointed to the clock and I said "clock", he repeated. We sat in silence again. 

      Soon the faux redheads came back with Devin and they crowded into the back seat, along with all of Devin's luggage and I stretched out in the front. I watched the landscape as we drove by. We were in a suburb of Kiev and after dropping the friend faux redhead off, we headed into Kiev. It looked very gray, with tall apartment buildings unadorned and concrete. We dropped Devin off first at Jonathan's, the program's HR director, house and then went on to my apartment. I would be living at Linda's apartment for the month of August. She'd be out of town until the 13th, until which time I could have her bedroom. But after the 13th I would be sleeping on the couch. Her apartment was small but cute, and when I arrived I bathed and relaxed, after telling the redhead that I would prefer not to take a walk around town after a 14 hour flight

My first apartment in Ukraine

.

             At 7:30 I called Jonathan and he said 'we're going to meet everyone at 8 for dinner.' He said he'd meet me in the lobby of my apartment building. We walked down to a busy street with Jon pointing out the school I'd be training at along the way. When we arrived at a pizza place, we meet three other guys. And soon a girl named Carolyn joined our group. We wandered around for a while and then followed the river to a little outside eating area. We waited for about an hour but were finally served some slow-roasted pork and vegetables. It was delicious. We stayed and talked for a while but I was getting tired and Devin was absolutely exhausted so we headed back, and I soon found myself resting peacefully.

            Today, I woke up at 7 and couldn't fall back to sleep so I read for a while and then decided to try to take a nap in which I slept until 4. When I got up, I headed to the supermarket for some food. There was a slight mix-up when the lady asked if I wanted a bag and I just stared blankly at her. She pointed to the bags and I nodded. Apparently you have to pay for them..

      Afterwards I returned to my apartment and just read. I am now at Carolyn's apartment using her internet. I don't have internet at my place yet but hopefully soon. I have a cell phone but can't use it to call long distance but I can receive calls: I think the country code is 380, my house phone number is ... and my cell number is ... Hopefully you can get a hold of me. If not look up online how to call. Remember I am 7-8 hours ahead of you, so if you call at 5 in the afternoon, it will be midnight here. But you can probably call me anytime tonight since I got so much sleep today. I miss everyone and am a little lonely for you all. Love, Jacy