Ah yes, Xena. Well, right now a committee is trying to redefine exactly what being a planet entails. So perhaps old Pluto will get pushed out of the fun mnemonics we learnt in school. Well Xena is indeed what as of right now is a planet; she is 97 AU's away!!! Being as though old Pluto is about 45 AU's away she's way off the charts. Also she is much BIGGER then our common friend Pluto!!

Apparently I had it wrong, the guy we had thanksgiving with, discovered her moons. He said that Xena is only a temporary name, and most likely to continue with the Greek God/dess names. (The largest moon is being called Gabrielle, aka Xena's sidekick!!) He has been thinking about naming the moons a Hawaiian name since they were found on the Keck Telescope in Hawaii.

Oh and I wanted to include a picture from our recent bike trip, around the volcano. It was a LOT of fun! Joel’s old roommate, Nick, had a road bike as well so the ride was a bit easier then the rest of people on their Mt. bikes. At one point we saw an interesting small hillish type thing in the lava so we got off our bikes and went for a look. We found some Pele’s hair and lava that looks like sponge!!! I had never heard of either but, both Joel and Nick had heard about them from a geology class here. The sponge was really neat…and the hair (Pele is the God of the Volcano’s so when she’s upset they erupt and if you take lava off the islands “you’re cursed by Pele”) is glass that was formed (lol um I forget what Joel told me…something about glass and….uhhh heat? Lol) and it looks just like a stick of glass that is thin as a hair. Anyways we took some samples of them. Oh and there was a looooooooot of down hill. Lol and since I’m a huge chicken I spend a lot of time with my fingers clutched to the brakes. Joel and I did make a top speed of 34 mph and Nick got 38 mph. Which I realize seems slow. But I thought it was REALLY fast lol it was kind of fun when the speed limit at one point was 35 and we were doing 30 on our little bikes.

Anyways the moral of the story is that, you guys should come out and visit us!!!! We would love to show you around sometime! No rush, we’ll be here for a while finishing up school :D