Day of Silence, JSA Spring State, the Korean Dinner, and NSLI-Y flights!

Hey guys!
So in addition to talking about some NSLI-Y related news, I'll be discussing a few events which have taken place in the past few weeks that I thought would be nice to write about: Day of Silence, JSA Spring State, the Everyone's Free Annual Korean Dinner (explanations are coming for the confused), and my NSLI-Y plane itinerary.

So on April 23, 2014 (Disclaimer - DOS was officially on April 6, but my school did it on the 23rd instead, as the 6th was over our spring break), I participated in Day of Silence along with the vast majority of the other members of my school's GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance). Day of Silence is explained (quite perfectly, in fact) in the DOS cards which we were given that explained the reason for our silence to others as follows:
"Please understand my reasons for not speaking today. I am participating in the Day of Silence, a national youth movement bringing attention to the silence faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their allies. My deliberate silence echoes that silence, which is caused by anti-LGBT bullying, name-calling, and harassment. I believe that ending the silence is the first step towards building awareness and making a commitment to address these injustices. Think about the voices you are not hearing today." 
LGBTQIA rights is an issue which I care immensely about, and which I believe is extremely important in our society as it is today. People deserve to be treated with compassion, respect, and humanity regardless of any intrinsic trait, such as race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, creed, sexual orientation, and gender identity, and I would hope that the majority of kind-hearted people on this earth would agree with me.
If you believe in the loving and tolerant values enshrined in the DOS, I encourage you to participate next one, and also to do anything else you can to promote the advancement of LGBTQIA rights in the world and your own community. Thanks for considering.

Then, a few weeks ago, from April 25-27, I had the privilege of attending the JSA Midwest Spring State with my school's JSA chapter in Oakbrook, Illinois. JSA stands for "Junior States of America," and is very accurately described in its own mission statement as follows:

"The mission of the Junior State of America and the Junior Statesmen Foundation (JSA) is to strengthen American democracy by educating and preparing high school students for life-long involvement and responsible leadership in a democratic society.

In the student-run Junior State and at JSA summer schools and summer institutes, participants learn statesmanship as they engage in political discourse. They cultivate democratic leadership skills, challenge one another to think critically, advocate their own opinions, develop respect for opposing views and learn to rise above self-interest to promote the public good."

I had heard quite a lot about the organization from a number of people at my school who are involved, and I had been curious about it since the beginning of this school year, as lately I have been inspired to become more politically active to help advance ideas and causes which I believe in. I made a rather hasty and impromptu decision to attend one of the three annual states (conferences), Spring State, with my chapter. And I can safely say that I made an amazing decision.

Last Friday, my chapter and I were bused along with students from a few other nearby high schools to a hotel in Oakbrook, Illinois, right outside of Chicago, where the state was being held. The conference itself didn't start until the next day, and so we were free to spend much of the afternoon wandering the nearby Oakbrook Center Mall, a large open-air shopping mall located right next to our hotel, just talking and having fun and being the teenagers we are. :P The mall was also pretty good-looking, and there were beautiful fountains that we sat next to talking for a while after dinner, about anything and everything. So that was pleasant. :)

The next day the Spring State and the debates actually started. For anyone who is unfamiliar with JSA, essentially the way that things are set up at states are that there are around seven or eight debate blocks over the two days, and you can go to different debates offered in each block. Each debate has a main pro speaker, a main con speaker, a moderator who oversees the debate, and after the main speakers have finished, spectators are free to volunteer to deliver their own subsequent speeches.
The debates I attended over the course of the weekend included, "resolved, that the promotion of men's rights is currently unnecessary," "resolved, that senatorial filibusters should be abolished," "resolved, that it is futile to intervene in the conflicts of the Middle East," and so on. That night, after all the chapters of attendees performed their so-called "chapter caucus cheers (essentially just chapter cheers), there were a couple of night activities, including a dance and speed dating.
The next day consisted of more debates, the election of the" governors" for next year (my school's chapter president Katharine Wang got voted Midwest governor! :D), and then a closing ceremony. It seemed like it was over in an instant, and the closing ceremony brought out some emotional reactions from a great many seniors who were attending their last state.

As I reflected during the time which I didn't spend sleeping, reading or talking to other people on the bus ride back home, I greatly enjoyed Spring State. I loved the electric atmosphere of constructive political debating, I loved being around so many motivated, informed, intelligent, and like-minded (not to mention well-dressed) people my age, I loved how involved and dedicated everyone who had been involved prior was. I can now safely say that JSA is an organization which I will strive to be part of for what remains of my high school career. I look forward to Fall State and hope to do subsequence for a couple of speeches, and maybe even take up a main speaker role.

I was surprised by this in many ways. In some ways, I took a bit of a chance going to Spring State - I missed two events (an annual fundraiser for my school's music program, and volunteering at an orientation for this area's outgoing American AFSers) that I would have gone to that weekend, and I was very handsomely rewarded for taking that chance. I found an organization that has started to give me a voice. One older JSAer I met who helped lead a workshop for us newbies early on the first day said, "once you find your voice, you will have it forever." I have little experience with public speaking, but thanks to this event I believe I have started to find my voice, and I plan to use it come Fall State. Aside from all this, it was great getting to spend time with all the awesome people in my school's JSA chapter, many of whom I didn't know well beforehand. Point being, Spring State was awesome, and I have now fashioned myself a proud JSAer.

Now, the Korean Dinner.

So I'm a part of a club at my school called the Everyone's Free Organization, which was founded by a classmate of mine, and whose primary mission is to save North Korean refugees, especially orphan children. I've been involved with Everyone's Free since the beginning of this year, and I've enjoyed it immensely, as I feel this is an extremely important cause we are addressing which often doesn't get the right kind of attention in the media. I also have begun to gain a great interest in Korea and Korean language and culture as a result of different events I've attended with Everyone's Free (hence the fact that I changed my second language in my top three NSLI-Y choices from Russian to Korean back in February). 

Back on May 2, we had our Second Annual Korean Dinner, an event for which we ask a number of Korean-owned restaurants and businesses in our area to provide us with donations of food, and use it to cater a dinner complete with Korean entertainment to raise money for the refugees.

This Korean Dinner was particularly special, though. We were honored to have Mr. Shin Dong-Hyuk as our guest speaker, who is the only known example of a person to have been born in one of North Korea's many concentration camps for political dissidents and to have escaped. The book Escape from Camp 14, which I would highly recommend, is written about his escape and his life story.

Several months ago, my friend and classmate John Park, the president and founder of Everyone's Free, emailed Shin Dong-Hyuk to tell him about our organization, and he agreed to come and speak at the Korean Dinner.

I was one of five members of the club to go pick him up at the Detroit Airport. It was absolutely amazing to meet him; I was thoroughly starstruck. The next day at the Korean Dinner, hearing him speak about his various experiences moved me to tears a number of times. For someone who has had to live through the atrocities he has, he has such a positive aura about him. He even very graciously agreed to sign my copy of Escape from Camp 14, which is now something of a prized possession to me.

In any case, the Korean Dinner was an absolutely amazing event which I was glad and honored to have been able to attend.

By the way: if you would like to do me, the rest of the organization, and all the North Korean refugees a huge favor, please consider checking out our website and helping to support our work and/or spread the word. Every bit counts. Thank you. <3

My signed copy! ^_^

Picking Shin Dong-Hyuk up at the airport.

Lastly, last Friday I received my flight itinerary from NSLI-Y!

I won't post a picture of it or write any explicit flight numbers, just for privacy reasons. But the point of the matter is that I leave home on June 22, on a 10 am-or-so United flight out of Detroit, and then will head to DC for the pre-departure orientation. Then on the 24, we will be flying out of Dulles Airport to Turkey. We will fly Air France and be connecting in the Paris Airport for around five hours before catching our connecting flight to Istanbul. The return itinerary is exactly the same, except in reverse. We return on August 11.

I wish we could have flown Turkish Airlines. I flew it on the way to Egypt and really enjoyed it. It's a quality airline, for all those who have any occasion to be flying with them anytime soon. But aside from that, it seems a bit grueling - we arrive in Paris at 5 am local time, and then have five hours to kill in Charles de Gaulle Airport before our connection. And coming back doesn't seem to be any easier - we leave on a 6 am flight out of Istanbul.

It actually greatly resembles my (original) travel itinerary to Egypt that got changed the night of the gateway orientation, which I guess shouldn't surprise me too much since Egypt and Turkey are geographically pretty close to each other.

But the specifics don't matter. The point is that I know now that I'm traveling to Turkey, and when/how it will be happening. And I'm forever fangirling inside for that reason. XD

 That's all for now, folks. I'll be back if I have anymore noteworthy news.

Görüşmek üzere!

-Nico 

I'm obsessing, as you can see.

A blurb

Hey guys! I found this in an exchange student group on Facebook, and thought it was very true, so I wanted to share it with you all.

"Exchange is change.

Rapid, brutal, beautiful, hurtful, colorful, amazing, unexpected, overwhelming and most of all constant change. Change in lifestyle, country, language, friends, parents, houses, school, simply everything. Exchange is realizing that everything they told you beforehand is wrong, but also right in a way. Exchange is going from thinking you know who you are, to having no idea who you are anymore to being someone new. But not entirely new. You are still the person you were before but you jumped into that ice cold lake. You know how it feels like to be on your own. Away from home, with no one you really know. And you find out that you can actually do it.

Exchange is learning to trust.

Trust people, who, at first, are only names on a piece of paper, trust that they want the best for you, that they care. Trust, that you have the strength to endure a year on your own, endure a year of being apart from everything that mattered to you before. Trust that you will have friends. Trust that everything’s going to be alright. And it is seeing this trust being justified.

Exchange is thinking.

All the time. About everything. Thinking about those strange costumes, the strange food, the strange language. About why you’re here and not back home. About how it’s going to be like once you come back home. How that girl/boy is going to react when you see them again. About who’s hanging out where this weekend. At first who’s inviting you at all. And in the end where you’re supposed to go, when you’re invited to ten different things. About how everybody at home is doing. About how stupid this whole time-zone thing is. Not only because of home, but also because the TV ads for shows keep confusing you.Thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong. About how stupid or rude you just were to someone without meaning to be. About the point of all this. About the sense of life. About who you want to be, what you want to do. And about when that English essay is due, even though your marks don’t count. About whether you should go home after school, or hang out at someone’s place until midnight. Someone you didn’t even know a few months ago. And about what the hell that guy just said.

Exchange is people.

Those incredibly strange people, who look at you like you’re an alien. Those people who are too afraid to talk to you. And those people who actually talk to you. Those people who know your name, even though you have never met them. Those people, who tell you who to stay away from. Those people who talk about you behind your back, those people who make fun of your country. All those people, who aren’t worth your giving a damn. Those people you ignore. And those people who invite you to their homes. Who keep you sane. Who become your friends.

Exchange is music.

New music, weird music, cool music, music you will remember all your life as the soundtrack of your exchange. Music that will make you cry because all those lyrics express exactly how you feel, so far away. Music that will make you feel like you could take on the whole world. And it is music you make. With the most amazing musicians you’ve ever met. And it is site reading a thousand pages just to be part of the school band.

Exchange is uncomfortable.

It’s feeling out of place, like a fifth wheel. It’s talking to people you don’t like. It’s trying to be nice all the time. It’s bugs.. and bears. It’s cold, freezing cold. It’s homesickness, it’s awkward silence and its feeling guilty because you didn’t talk to someone at home. Or feeling guilty because you missed something because you were talking on Skype.

Exchange is great.It’s feeling the connection between you and your host parents grow. It’s hearing your little host brother asking where his big brother is. It’s knowing in which cupboard the peanut butter is. It’s meeting people from all over the world. It’s having a place to stay in almost every country of the world. It’s getting 5 new families. One of them being a huge group of the most awesome teenagers in the world. It’s cooking food from your home country and not messing up. It’s seeing beautiful landscapes that you never knew existed.

Exchange is exchange students.

The most amazing people in the whole wide world. Those people from everywhere who know exactly how you feel and those people who become your absolute best friends even though you only see most of them 3 or 4 times during your year. The people, who take almost an hour to say their final goodbyes to each other. Those people with the jackets full of pins. All over the world.

Exchange is falling in love. With this amazing, wild, beautiful country. And with your home country. Exchange is frustrating. Things you can’t do, things you don’t understand. Things you say, that mean the exact opposite of what you meant to say. Or even worse…Exchange is understanding. Exchange is unbelievable. Exchange is not a year in your life. It’s a life in one year. Exchange is nothing like you expected it to be, and everything you wanted it to be. Exchange is the best year of your life so far. Without a doubt. And it’s also the worst. Without a doubt. Exchange is something you will never forget, something that will always be a part of you. It is something no one back at home will ever truly understand. Exchange is growing up, realizing that everybody is the same, no matter where they’re from. That there are great people and douche bags everywhere. And that it only depends on you how good or bad your day is going to be. Or the whole year. And it is realizing that you can be on your own, that you are an independent person. Finally. And it’s trying to explain that to your parents. Exchange is dancing in the rain for no reason, crying without a reason, laughing at the same time. It’s a turmoil of every emotion possible. Exchange is everything. And exchange is something you can’t understand unless you’ve been through it."     

(A little) New Information!

Herkese Merhaba (Hey everybody)!

I haven't got much to report, but at the beginning of this week I did receive that packet of information from NSLI-Y in the mail. :D

There wasn't a huge amount of new information, but we received two forms to be returned to NSLI-Y/ACES (ACES = American Cultural Exchange Service, our implementing organization), an FAQ sheet which included a tentative itinerary of the summer (more on that in a moment), an FAQ sheet about financial planning and expenses for the trip, a packing list, a list of Turkish language resources to jump-start our language learning before the start of the program, our first Turkish study guides of several to come, and a packet with information about Turkey. 

The tentative itinerary is as follows: 

"Here is a brief timeline of the upcoming summer:

• June 22nd: Students will depart home and arrive in Washington DC for a pre-departure orientation held at the Hampton Inn and Suites Dulles Airport Hotel. 
• June 22nd - 23rd: Pre-departure orientation sessions.
• June 24th: Students and chaperones will depart for Turkey. 
• June 25th: Students and chaperones will arrive in Istanbul and spend two nights there. 
• June 27th: Students and chaperones will travel to Bursa. 
• August 11th: Students and chapereones will return to Washington DC and go directly to their domestic flights home. "

This is quite exiting for two reasons: for one thing, the pre-departure orientation in DC is a day or so longer than I had understood it would be, which is good - some of my friends who are NSLI-Y alumni got to go to their host country's embassy or cultural centers during pre-departure orientations, so I'm hoping we'll get to go places like those. And also, I'm SUPER exited that we'll be spending our first two days after arrival in ISTANBUL. :D I've wanted to see Istanbul for many years; it just looks so beautiful and has so much amazingly rich history, and I can't believe that we'll be there in less than two months! 

Also, apparently there's more to come:

According to the packet, "between now and your departure from home, we will be sending additional program information, including domestic and international flight information, a student handbook, pre-departure orientation details, a tentative program itinerary, culminating project information, and host family details."

I'm looking very forward to all of the above.

Also, I've been meeting up lately with a new friend: a girl named Krista from Dexter, a town about 15 minutes from where I live, also was picked as a finalist for Turkey! She's going with a different group, to Ankara instead of Bursa. But we've been meeting up lately, freaking out about our upcoming adventure and how much we want to skip over April and May to get to June for it.
Hey if you're reading this Krista ^_^ 

That's all for today, I haven't got much else to report for the moment. 

Hoping to be back soon with more exiting news,

Nico 

^And here's another Tarkan song. 

Teen Polyglot Challenge video

Hey guys!

So after having spent the month of March trying to squeeze a bit of Swedish learning into my busy life, I'm starting off my spring break by sharing the video which is both the end product of my month of learning, and also what I've submitted for the contest itself.

Without further ado, here is a video of me speaking in the Swedish I've learned since March 8, 2014. :D

I'm very much a beginner, and would really appreciate it if any Swedish speakers could help correct mistakes I've made in my video.

No news for now other than that, but I'll be back soon. I got an email yesterday from my program coordinator for the NSLI-Y summer program in Bursa, and apparently we'll be getting a packet of information in the mail next week, which I'm super exited for. :)

Det är allt. Hej hej!
(That's all. Bye bye!)

-Nico

Nico 101

Hey guys! 

So since I still have no more official news from NSLI-Y, I have decided to introduce myself/put myself out there a bit, since maybe newcomers to this blog (HAH - if there are any xD) might not know where this all originated from.

So, hello there. 
My name is Nicholas Borbely, but I typically go by Nico. I'm a 17-year-old high school junior from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I am hugely passionate about languages, other countries and cultures, traveling, human rights, peacemaking, LGBT(QIA) rights, politics, international relations, reading, writing, music, history, animals, swimming, skiing, photography, capoeira, and so on.
My greatest passion is probably languages, which I've been super into since I was about eleven or twelve years old. I speak four languages to varying degrees: native English, fluent Italian, as my wonderful mother hails from a tiny town in northern Italy (and her entire side of the family is there), decent Spanish, which I've taken in school for three years, and haphazard (Egyptian) Arabic, from the ten-month exchange which I spent in Alexandria, Egypt, with AFS Intercultural Programs from September 2012 to June 2013. I want to learn many more as well, including Finnish, Turkish, Korean, Swedish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Basque, Maltese, Hebrew, and Russian.
I've been lucky to have some incredible experiences which have helped me explore the world and its linguistic, cultural, and anthropological wonders. I have visited my relatives and close friends in Italy at least once a year for my whole life, and I even spent the second semester of my eighth grade year in my grandmother's home, studying at a local Italian middle school, from August 2010 to January 2011, which allowed me to deepen my familiarity and fluency with the place and in the language which have always been a part of me.
Then I started high school, which I've spent studying at a new International Baccalaureate, or IB, high school, as part of its soon-to-be inaugural graduating class - IB is essentially an advanced, internationalized curriculum which is offered and recognized in almost all of the world's countries. The opportunities I've been exposed to, the things that I've learned, and the amazing  friends that I've made make all of the late nights of project/essay writing and hair pulling (of which there are a great many) more than worth my while. :)
Then in September 2012, having completed my freshmen year, I embarked on the greatest adventure of my life so far, my year in Alexandria, Egypt with AFS, my year in the mother of the world, for which I started this blog. This experience was intense; immensely challenging yet equally rewarding. I lived with the Radwans, my lovely host family, and attended Taymour English School. My host family was by far the best thing about my exchange; they have truly become a second family to me, and I miss them very much. My experience at school was not a highlight of my experience, to put it lightly. But I still did make a few friends there that I'm glad to have met. Overall, my experience in Egypt was a challenge, as living in a country with a culture and a language so utterly different from everything I'd ever known with no one I knew by my side could be imagined. But it was equally rewarding in so many ways. My host family made everything worth it, taking me in like a brother and a son. I made amazing friends I never would have otherwise. I got to travel to beautiful places - I lived in Alexandria, I visited Cairo multiple times, and also got to explore the lesser known but beautiful cities of Ismailia, Luxor, and Aswan. And I gained an imperfect but solid base in one of the world's most beautiful and expressive languages, and an inside view of a hugely misunderstood religion and culture. So in spite of whatever hardships there were to face, it was an unbelievably worthwhile experience, which I'm very proud of. :)

And now.
As I've previously mentioned, last fall, my linguistic curiosity and passionate wanderlust stronger than ever, I applied to the NSLI-Y scholarship, with my top choices being Turkish, Russian, which I later changed to Korean, and Persian, in humble hopes that I might receive the honor of one of these amazing scholarships and get to dive headfirst into a completely new language, culture, and country. And it has payed off, more so that I ever could have hoped. :)
I will be leaving for Bursa four days after I finish finals this June, and spend six weeks there studying Turkish with a group of other Americans.
I know little more than this at the moment, so that's all I will leave you with. But for now I take solace in the fact that I am lucky enough to partake in this wonderful adventure.
Once again, thank you NSLI-Y. <3

Then, I return a week prior to the first day of my senior year, after which I intend to proceed on to college, likely to major in linguistics, anthropology, linguistic anthropology, some regionally specific cultural studies, international relations/studies, or something along those lines. I'm not entirely sure which college in particular yet, but I'm looking at the University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin Madison, Indiana U Bloomington, U of Toronto, and several others.

So there you go.
This has been a post.
I sincerely hope that I've not bored you all with my incessant rambling about myself, but I just wanted to put myself out there and say hi to any newcomers. So hi. :)

I will be back as soon as I have any more exciting or significant news or thoughts.
Thanks as usual for reading everyone.
Until next time,
Nico

Hey it's my face! :P

^My current favorite song. Just felt like adding it in. 

TÜRKİYE!

So I'm not one to type in all caps with a boatload of exclamation points, but....

I AM A FINALIST FOR TURKISH AND I'M GOING TO BURSA, TURKEY FOR LIKE SIX WEEKS THIS SUMMER AND I'M SO HAPPY AND SO EXITED AND AHHHH DFMHESPLNHOIPGDNIPMHGIFHFGIMGPHMDIHG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, and now that little public service announcement is over. Please return to your regularly scheduled Internet activities.

Today, after school, I was standing in a circle with a group of my best friends, laughing and talking normally, when my phone buzzed.
Just like the moment in which I got my semi-finalist notification back in December, it came at a moment in which I was NOT expecting it at all.
I pulled out my phone and casually checked it, thinking it would be nothing more than a meaningless Facebook notification or a "we're here" text from my carpool waiting outside. But instead, it was an email from NSLI-Y, and though I couldn't make out the entirety of the message, the sentence fragment "you have been selected..." was clearly visible.
I gasped out loud, frightening my friends quite a bit, and then, as my heart began to pound like a brass drum, I proceeded to download the attachment so that I could actually see where I had been picked to go, and saw that it was Turkey. :)

I will be studying Turkish in Bursa for six weeks this summer, from about June 23 to August 11.

That's about all I can say at the moment, no more information to report, really.
But if I notice any, I'll tell you all about it for sure.

For now, I just want to say: to NSLI-Y, to the State Department, to American taxpayers, to everyone that made it possible for me to make it this far: thank you all so much from the bottom of my heart for giving me this opportunity to make yet another of my many dreams come true. Çok teşekkür ederim!

And thank you guys too, for following my adventures from home to Alexandria and back, and now to Bursa. :)
Expect more from me, now that I know I'm going for sure.
I may even start making YouTube videos or something! Who knows...
But güle güle for now.
-Nico :)

                                     
                                     A fitting song.

My favorite Turkish song. 

Teen Polyglot Challenge - Jag ska lära svenska!

Hey guys!

So the month of March, and the Teen Polyglot Challenge, are now upon us.

I won't go very far into explaining just what the Teen Polyglot Challenge is, other than posting this Tim Doner video that I was going to anyway. :P

If you don't know who Tim Doner is, he is an American teenager who has become well known for being able to speak (to varying degrees) over twenty languages. He's basically my idol and I very highly admire him. :3

So long story short, I am going to be participating in the challenge, learning Swedish!
At first I was a bit conflicted about which language to learn. Like I've previously mentioned, I have a lot of languages that I'm interested in; at first I thought about learning Finnish, since that's the language I most want to learn and am most interested in. But the requirements for the challenge are pretty hefty, and so I figured that trying to participate in the challenge with a language so different from anything I know might not be the best idea, given the time constraint. I narrowed it down to either Swedish or Portuguese (two languages that are very similar to my respective mother tongues of English and Italian), and I decided to go with Swedish. :)
I told you the reasons I'm interested in all the languages I want to learn in this post that I wrote all the way back in my first months in Egypt, but in case you don't recall (which I doubt anyone does :P), I'm interested in Swedish mainly because of heritage - my American grandmother is of Swedish origin - and also just because I think Sweden looks like a truly amazing and beautiful country, and I'm very interested in not just Sweden and Swedish culture, but Scandinavia and Scandinavian cultures in general.

Long story short, here goes nothing!
I won't be going it alone though - my friend Chathu is also participating in the challenge, with the equally beautiful/amazing if not somewhat more challenging goal of picking up some Korean.
We've got this (I hope). xD
All kidding aside, I have high hopes. This will be fun!

Still no NSLI-Y news, much to the chagrin of my sanity. -.- I've got my fingers crossed, taking deep breaths, and am trying to exercise patience. :)

That's all for now, friends.
Hej då!
-Nico

PS: To any readers who happen to be participating in the challenge as well, GOOD LUCK! :D

(^My three favorite Swedish songs, all belonging to the wonderful, talented, and wonderfully talented Veronica Maggio, a lovely Swedish singer (of Italian origin to boot). Enjoy! :))