home, and a staff party i'll easily forget

so, for those of you completely out of the loop...i went home for christmas.

I left Korea on December 22 at 6pm, flew back in time and arrived in Campbell River at 4pm the same day. I was home for 10 days. That sounds like a decent amount of time, but when you're battling jet lag, the Christmas season, and catching up with EVERYONE YOU KNOW, it's kinda of trying. I'm very glad I went home and it was great to see everyone, especially my family, but it was also really hard to leave. It wasn't long enough. I felt like I had absolutely no relaxation time, that everything had been rushed, and knew that I was coming straight back to 11 hour work days starting at 8:30. stress = boooooo
On the other hand, leaving was easy since I now consider Korea home. ...or a home away from home anyways. Getting on the plane was easy, knowing full well what was on the other side of that long trip.


again, really glad I did it and wouldn't have traded it for any trip to Thailand. It was fabulous to see everyone and especially to surprise my grandpa!


It just wasn't long enough, there were always people around. I didn't really get a chance to just chill with my parents and brother. Bryan was also visiting from out of town and was therefore gone a lot of the time doing his catching up. There were planned dinners almost every night, people came from other towns to visit, christmas was involved...that's an instant time eater.

There was one definetly memorable truly Campbell River night out at which my friend Katie who just left Korea was in attendance at. We did it up true Riv style.

I got up the mountain once with my family, for a beautiful day of snowboarding. Whenever I go home, be it just from the Mainland, or Asia, I remember how truly beautiful the North Island is. Campbell Riverites are truly blessed. I love where I'm from. It's astounding in it's beauty. We'll see how Switzerland holds up around this time next year....

I'll have to stick around longer next time i'm there ;)


ok, now for the back in Korea updates.

I'll start with two weekends ago...and the Youngdo staff party. It was a big party...there were over 200 teachers there. Some would think "sweet, what an awesome party!" and it would have been....had it been held in North America. A Korean staff party consists of real good food and about a million speeches. You should never leave your table. You should clap a lot. You should watch kinda funny videos of your friends teaching. You should try not to look like you want to kill yourself.

ok, it wasn't THAT bad. It was just 4 hours of my life that I'll never get back. I've been more bored. A few times.

It was held in one of the most expensive hotels in Korea, in a huge ballroom that would've been kick ass for a party. oh well...I got to see some teachers from other schools that I don't see that often. We went out afterwards all dolled-up to Gangnam and Hongdae and made our OWN fun! HAH!!!

Seriously, I don't have anything else to report from my huge company christmas/new years staff party than that beyond they gave us dinky towels with YES YOUNGDO embroidered on them. Sad.