Greeting from a letter home

Much of the posts that recently appeared on this blog were cribbed from a recent mass email home. I believe in efficiency (and also in sleep), so I'm updating the blog in this way. There is some original material here, but if you read the mass email already, you probably shouldn't even be trying to find the new stuff below. Here, at any rate, is the greeting from that email:

Dear friends, family, countrymen,

For the loyal readers out there (though I'm not sure how I could have loyal readers after just a couple of emails), I apologize for not getting an update out to you for a couple of weeks now. The intervening time has been rather full of language study, retreat, and general weariness. This week was probably the roughest I've had yet in terms of my feeling equal to the task set before me, and definitely was the lowest point in terms of my emotional state. Still, the intervening time had its high points. Both set of points, high and low, follow, perhaps in order of importance, but more likely in the order I'll remember them.