16.5, Due on December 8

This section was interesting to read because it was neat to see an alternate way of encrypting messages, signing documents, and exchanging keys using the elliptic curves. Finally I see the application of this whole chapter on elliptic curves! I also found the fact that this method protects against values of n with small prime factors to be interesting and poignant.
From section 16.5.1 I am wondering how a message is represented as a point on a curve. Apparently it was described in section 16.2 but I don't recall how to do it. One other aspect that I'm a little shaky on still is adding points to get a third point on an elliptic curve. [This is probably because I am writing this quite early, and we have two more class periods of practice before we get to this lesson.] I bring this up because adding points on an elliptic curve seems to at the heart of these crypto-systems.