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Published: January 16th 2016
*A new restaurant opened up within walking distance and we tried it out
*Went shopping at some outlet stores nearby with one of my Indonesian friends
*Year End Volleyball Party, Celebrating what a great season we had. I asked the team if they wanted to have a yearend party and if they did, they had to come up with what it was they wanted to do. I mentioned I would help plan if they needed me but I wanted to put the ownership on them. In the end a day trip was planned to a private island. We had a catered lunch and enjoyed ripping around on the ocean driving sea-doos. This party ended up being a gift to the team from one of the girls’ parents. Needless to say, this was certainly by far the most extravagant year end party I have ever been a part of as I’m used to dinner out at a restaurant with the team.
*The social outreach committee , a student council group I supervise, held a baking session one day after school where we made three different kinds of cookies and bagged them all up attached to mini cards to give
to patients in the hospital the next day. This committee has set up a weekly volunteer program where students can sign up and visit patients in a nearby hospital.
*Last year my friends and I hosted a Christmas party where we invited the community to come and enjoy. We did that again this year.
*About two weeks before we all flew home for the holidays, a small group of us were watching a Christmas movie one weekend. All of a sudden we felt a gentle sway rocking us back and forth – it ended up being an earthquake. The movement lasted for only ten seconds or so – long enough for us to feel it, and discuss if we were actually moving and reassess the situation before all went still again as normal. I was sitting on the couch and it almost felt like you were on a boat gently rocking in the waves back and forth. Ended up being 5.6 on the Ritcher Scale.
*We had our annual Staff Christmas Lunch at work
*Contracts for next year were given again to sign as they need the next 5 months to recruit, and do VISA processing
for the new staff members.
*Worked really hard on report cards before the Christmas break as they are due the first week back. Spent time in transit finishing my marking and only one afternoon on my break entering grades.
*The weekend 5 weeks till Christmas I was walking back home from the mall with the friend I was planning to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia with over the break when I mentioned we should probably set time aside the next day and books flights, hotels etc. as we had just researched up to that point. She said “Yeah….about that…..” turns out she wanted to go home and use this holiday to determine if she would return the following year or not. Since it was only 5 weeks out and everyone else was planning to go home and had their tickets booked already or others yet were planning to stick around Jakarta for the holidays which I didn’t want to do, I also ended up booking a ticket home. That morning I woke up thinking I was going to spend Christmas in South-East Asia where as that night I was officially going home instead! I decided to use my
original plans as my cover story so that I was able to unexpectedly surprise family and close friends. The reactions were priceless – I caught everyone off guard 100+%!!(MISSING) The range of reactions was funny too. The break was relaxing – certainly more so than if I was traveling and hustling around everywhere like what the original plan was. I was able to spend significant time with family and close friends, snowshoe in the mountains, go downtown, celebrate two different friends and their engagements etc. Between Christmas and New Years, I experienced another earthquake – this time at home and the shaking was much, much stronger but only lasted for 5 seconds . Again, enough time to wonder what in the world was going on and realizing it was an earthquake when it stopped again. Some people woke up from their sleep while others were headed to bed like me.
Well, Happy New Year Everyone – Here’s to 2016!
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