Roller Coasters

At the beginning of the week I was informed that my fellow classmates and I were going to take our second progress test in Indonesian at the end of the week. They moved it up a little bit from what it would normally be to accommodate the others who are all taking the final test within the next month. It was a little bit of a surprise.
I have to say that for me, I was still more worried about the work I had to do in class every day and how to not come off looking really stupid every day than something clear at the end of the week. On one day, I was assigned to give a short speech on a subject to a fictional group of Indonesian students after which they (or really my co-workers pretending to be students) would ask me more questions. I realized this was going to be even more difficult than I had first supposed when I thought about how little I really knew about the subject in any language. I have been busting my brains trying to get the language. The test at the end of the week went fine, not a particularly shining moment for me but much better than the last time I took one a couple of months ago! It's important to hold on to any progress you can in the up and down of emotions while learning something hard.
I've also been going back and forth with a few different people on an idea to change my training schedule a bit so that I can arrive with my family at post a couple of weeks earlier than originally scheduled. I'm not 100% it will happen, but my wife and I have been going over all kinds of scenarios for what we would do differently with the change and our summer plans.
Also, on Saturday, I got to have fun on some real roller coasters at Hershey Park as a chaperon for the local middle school band as they played at a competition and then spent the rest of the day at the park. It was fun spending time there with my son and some of his classmates. We had fun on the many roller coasters there. I still love the thrill of it. My ideal thing at an amusement park would be to have dozens of intense roller coasters and I would run from one to the other and ride without any line all day long. I can still feel it now.
Happy Mother's Day to my mom and my wife! I hope you had a good day today. They are both the best. It was fun to see the kids cards and presents to my wife today and to try to make her day special. I hope it was. It was also fun to talk to my mom for a few minutes today. Thanks to both of you for all you do and have done for me.