After a bit of shopping in the big indoor market, where we were grabbed and beckoned and pestered, Neal, Louise and I met the others to go to the War Remnant Muesum. An interesting place, but truly harrowing, sad and often sickening. Having been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki Peace Muesums, I was saddened by them and left unable to comprehend the terror and pain of such an experience. But the Vietnam War Muesum was worse. It showed aspects of both Vietnamese and other nations in and affected by the war . But it wasn' the photos that were the worst (and they were definitely not nice), but war prison model that you could walk around. All I could imagine as I read about the conditions people had to suffer, was how you'd rather die than live in such a place. Anyway, harrowing and terrible, but something that had to be experienced while in HCM, and we were all in need of a beer after!

After dinner that night, we decided to go to Apocalypse Now, a nightclub that well-known in the backpacker world (actually I don't know that, I only knew cos the girls read about it in the Lonely Planet!). So off we trekked, and after having a drink at another bar where Gerard became 'the Lord of the Rings' and won a T-shirt, and Neal was given a token-loser T-shirt, we headed off. Apocalypse Now was just like any other nightclub, with really expensive drinks! After a drink and a bit of a boogie, us girls rejoined the boys as they people watched! In particular, 3 Vietnamese chicks who were getting hit on left, right, and centre by dodgy gaijin! Very amusing, and slightly cringe-worthy to watch as guys who needed to get a clue tried their luck..!

Today was a bit of a disaster. One of those days when not much went right! There is usually one when you travel, especially in a group of 6! The morning started fine, with a bit of last minute shopping in Hoi An, before we left for the famed China Beach. The rain started on the drive to Danang, where we had to call at the Vietnam Airlines to get Louise's ticket, and leave our bags for the day. We should've abandoned the idea then. If only we all didn't have disillusioned thoughts that China Beach would have a cool boardwalk type area with restaurants, shops and cafes (well they were my disillusioned ideas!). The taxi dropped us off at this area that wasn't so glam, so we walked down to the beach to be met by kids and women pesting us, and a beach that was nothing much at all! Admittedly, it is the off-season, and it was raining. But there was nothing bar two beach restaurant things...

So we walked off, towards the Marble Mountains to find another taxi. I bought a marble Buddha in the townish that sold and made everything Marble! Including HUGE statues of Jesus, Mary, lions and Buddhas etc! Very cool! We got a taxi, and asked to go to a different area of beach up the coast more. Again we were met by nothing great, and contractors doing work on the beach front! At the end of our tethers and hungry we asked the driver to take us into Danang. But, no he couldn't, so he dropped us at a round-about for another taxi to get us!

Thinking things couldn't get worse, we get into the city, and get dropped in area of a restaurant we thought we'd try. Of course we couldn't find it, so it was decided that we would walk the 20minutes to another one. It was still raining, and we eventually made it to the restaurant!

Now, in our travels we realised we had passed about 3 Vietnam Airlines! Knowing that if we asked a taxi to take us to Vietnam Air, we'd probably end up at the wrong one, we had to find out which it was! To cut a long story a little shorter, we eventually found out where the airline was, got our bags, made it to the airport, and then made it to Ho Chi Minh! We accepted whatever accommodation we could get just to get the day over, and go for a beer!!

Near Hoi An is My Son and in My Son are the Champa Kingdom Ruins. Lonely Planet informed us that best time is at sunrise or sunset. I thought it was so you could watch the sunrise or sunset. But turns out its not! So at 4.30am, Team Nam are getting up, and heading for My Son at 5am to see some ruins. They say these times are good to miss the crowds, hence we were the only people there! But we did get to go in an army jeep! That was definitely a highlight! The ruins were cool though. We wandered around, and there was an erie, mistiness to the place which suited it.

The thing with getting up at 4.30am, we were home by 9.30am and still had the whole day to go!! After some shopping with Louise, we went to the beach and met the others. Since it was our last beach day, I decided to go for a swim... It was rough! The beach had big waves and strong undertow, so in attempt to ride the waves, I nearly drowned! Even if your back was turned at the wrong time they got us and face planted us in the sea!! Oh the fun!

Hoi An is famed for having tailors everywhere and you can get anything made. It also has a lovely beach about a 20 minute bike away. So this is what the plan was for Monday. We rented bikes and set off for the beach. Louise and Jo were a bit nervous, and then terrified following a woman crashing off her bike and nudging Jo's bike wheel in the process! You should have seen the action though, as soon as it happened everyone rallied and before you knew the woman was being escorted away on a cyclo with the bell ringing!

We made it to the beach, enjoyed the sun and all that, then it was time to head back to meet Neal and Erin who were arriving. Off we bike, and discover Jo has a puncture, making the hot bike ride even more difficult. But we continue to bike... "Are we there yet," calls Jo, "I don't think so" says Selene, and we continue... Eventually Gerard goes ahead to see, and when he comes flying back by. he waves as if to mean that he is turning around to join us...but no he doesn't! Used to his random disappearing 'for a minute' acts, we continued. Eventually Jo gives up biking and walks the bike, so I go ahead to see how much further to go... Things get weird when I get to road works! I knew that all that work couldn't happen in a few hours! I ask an old man with no English "Hoi An?" and he points back! Damn it!! So I turn around and almost immediately see a wee sign saying "Hoi An - 3kms"!! Of course I felt bad that I had lead the girls too far, especially when Jo was meant to be meeting Erin for dressmaking. In the end, I walked the punctured bike back, the others carried on. By the time I got back, I was sunburnt, sick of being laughed at and talked about by Vietnamese! Gerard was coming to meet me as I got to the bike rental, where I demanded the money back for the bike, using the line, "If my friend wanted to walk, she wouldn't have rented a bike"! I was possibly a little rude...

So yeah, another transport 'issue'!!

Gerard, Jo, Louise and I were booked to fly to Danang at 5pm, so we had the day to kill. In the morning Neal and Erin went off to the Perfume Pagoda and River, and Selena went off on her own to explore somewhere..!?

We called at our travel agent to pay for the tickets and we arranged to leave our bags there for the day. But damn it, when we returned he had just remembered that they were closing early cos of the holiday, so that left us with all our packs for the day when we had been intending to go shopping and do stuff! We had a great lunch at this great cafe called the 'Kangaroo Cafe'. Though quite expensive (in Vietnamese terms), it is so yummy! Let me just tell you a little about money in Vietnam. I was a millionaire in Vietnam! For 10,000 yen, you get about 1.4 million dong! Yay! And the money just keeps going and going - it's like and energiser battery! When we complained that the beers were 25000 dong on new years, we were complaining about spending 170 yen instead of 125 yen! When we went for dinner and decided it was expensive at 60,000 dong, we were in fact saying 420 yen was too expensive and would prefer going to a 30,000 dong (210 yen) per meal restaurant!! Hell yeah, Vietnam was cheap!

Okay, I'm back. So after lunch Louise and I played bag watchers while Gerard and Jo went to the Temple of Lit. Apart from the odd street seller trying to sell us whatever they had, we were relatively undisturbed. and no one tried to do and run-by and steal our bags! Despite being a lovely person and quite trusting, I found it difficult to trust some Vietnamese and always felt like we were going to be ripped off!

So, after an hour flight we got to Danang and expecting there to be heaps of hotel people there wanting us to stay at there hotel, we walked outside to nothing! Great! But we managed to get a taxi with a lone JET traveller to Hoi An. Louise was put off by her because she bought a Japanese guide book..!? Anyway, the taxi driver took us to a particular hotel (always after their commission), and it was good enough to stay at, so we did.

Merry Christmas!!!

Woke up, not hungover, bar a wee headache maybe..! After breakfast it was back to the boat, and we cruised back to the boat trip start place. Unfortunately the weather was still overcast and cool, so we didn't stop to go swimming or anything. Instead we lounged around upstairs on the deck tired and in varying degrees of hungoverness! Conversation got onto Ange's school's lithergy's, and how a rap one could be good (Her and I had great fun rapping "Jingle Bells" the night before for some reason..!). This lead to her friend Eve coming up with the line of the century, about God having "the most amazing sperm". It was hilarious, and you could see her realising what she had said as soon as it was out of her mouth!! And we laughed about it in an instant, anytime for the rest of the trip!

After a long ride back in the bus, we arrived in Hanoi, and had to find hotel for one night. We realised the other one was a rip off and knew it was easy enough getting accommodation. Hotel found wonderfully by Jo, Selena and Louise, and upon coming back to the tour agent to get us all, we headed for the hotel... But they couldn't find it, and we were lost!! Okay it wasn't that bad, it was found after not too long - just going for drama!!

Later we went for dinner with Ange, Eve, Ivana and Tom, and Maren and Margetta from the tour. Trying to have a nice Xmas dinner, but keeping it cheap, we went into a random restaurant in a restaurant area... It turned out to be not the best! The poor staff, I don't think had ever had to cater for that many people (13) at once! So food was forgot, and things misunderstood... thank goodness the company was good! So that ended a very un-Xmas like Day! I'm glad the Xmas eve was festive to make up for Xmas day. Honestly I kept forgetting it was Xmas day at all!

We went on an overnight tour to Halong Bay. Last year in Thailand, we went on a boat tour for Xmas day, and it was an awesome way to spent the day to make it specialler (..!?) when being away from the fam. So we set off from the hotel, 7 of us with the arrival of Erin, and 6 other tourists. After driving for ages, we arrived at the place to get on the boat. The boats are Chinese style if I recall, and usually have seating inside, and you can lounge around outside upstairs. To just walk onto the boat would be too simple, no we had to walk over about four boats to get to ours! Gerard was almost crushed by another boat in the process!

As it's winter in Vietnam, the north can be quite cool. This was one of the cool, shitty days! The previous day had been glorious, but trip day was overcast and misty and not warm at all! But all the same the bay did look beautiful. Halong Bay has hundreds of sea mountain things that tower out of the water, some have holes worn out of them by the sea, and all that. So throughout the day we sat round chatting, playing uno (the trip game, initially scoring was taken to see who would shout the 1st drinks at the next city, but the game sort of dissipated later...), and getting to know the other travellers. It turned out that four of the others (a Danish couple, and an Aussie couple) had paid for an overnight on the boat, but weren't going to get it. So most of the day they were battling it out with the tour guide! It didn't affect us, or our fun, but sucked for them. Anyway, we went to a huge limestone cave somewhere along the way. Honestly it was huge. As we were about to walk over and through one part Louise says to me, "Oh, that's very fallic" about a bit rock. Then as soon as we are through into the main 'cathedral' we are confronted with the MOST fallic thing you could ever see in your entire life, bar being confronted with the real thing! Out the side of a rock, is another long fallic rock, illumated red!! Now, someone had to be taking the piss when designing the illuminations of this place cos it was so blatantly obvious! So while we all stop in hysterics, and Gerard tries to capture a photo of Louise doing an inappropriate act on the rock, more people come through and of course with us all acting like 15 year olds, it doesn't take long for them to crack up too!! Oh how funny, it made the day a lot brighter I tell you!

We go back on the boat after the caves, and headed for Cat Ba Island where we were staying for the night. After dinner and starting a few drinks with the others on the tour we headed out to find some Xmas festivities. We ended up at a bar which was having a Xmas Party from 9pm, so we got started drinking and by the time the party started we were all getting well drunk! We even got a glass of terrible champayne (two if you stole another!), and we could get a present off the tree (more if you stole more - which I didn't). I was stoked cos I got a free beer! Others got random kid's socks - a single sock at that..? Jo and Louise also got the most scary looking Santa toy you could ever see. Scary enough to make any kid afraid of Santa! After this we pulled the Christmas decorations off the tree and all danced around! The night ended with this French Canadian guy insisting on dancing with me, and I insisting that I can't dance properly, but we stumbled around the floor for a while, with him teaching me, and I'm sure I improved a little - in between looking at the girls over his shoulder and laughing hysterically! When I handed him over to Erin, she fell over (as she does!), so he came back and said, at least you don't fall over ! In the end I shafted him off to Selena, and she had her dance lesson!! Random guy...

So it was a great Xmas eve. Celebrated in the perfect was, going out, drinking and dancing before going home drunk - just like I do in NZ! It was cool to get to know the others on our tour better too. Unlike last year's Thai trip where there were the ultimate in Euro-trash people, and other unsocial couples, there were a great bunch of fun people to go out drinking with.

We got up, breakfasted and all that, then it was off for the first cultural activity of 'Team Nam' (a.k.a. 'Team Guch'), to visit Ho Chi Minh at the Mussoleum. Ol' Uncle Ho as the pamphlet says Vietnamese like to call him is well looked after and commands the utmost respect. We arrived and had to check in our bags (but could take our wallets and cameras), then we had to watch a video (in Vietnamese, surely saying how and why Uncle Ho is so wonderful). After that, we were escorted through the grounds in two lines, to the next booth where we had to had in our cameras. It was all swift action and decorum from there. We continued around the Mussoleum building in line, with armed guards lining the way up the path. Once on the red carpet (actually plastic stuff), we were not to stray or talk, I think smiling and showing any action that could be misconstrued as being disrespectful was also 'dame'! Jo and I got shushed even - who'd have thought!? So once in the presence of the wise one, we streamed past his coffin thing, where he was laid out, looking incredibly plastic-like. All a bit weird really...no time for stopping as I'm sure one of the guards guarding would have shot you if you stopped moving! Once out we were free to continue around the gardens at our leisure..! So we went and looked at Uncle Ho's former home - a huge BRIGHT yellow mansion. With guard-type people speckled about, we were almost afraid to talk about Ho Chi Minh in case they were trained to understand criticism/propoganda/slander about him in any language!!

After lunch we shopped and dodged the motorbikes for a couple of hours. Vietnam has millions and millions of motorbikes/scooters/mopeds etc. In NZ when you have a family you get a car, or a bigger car. In Vietnam you just get a bike! While the kids are young, a bike fits the whole family! I saw 6 on a bike even!! Mostly they keep it to 3 or 4, and quite often I saw 5, but 6!! I wonder what age it is when they realise they need to split the family up onto two bikes? Or at what age do the kids get there own bike to ride..!?

We went to the water puppets in the evening after dinner at Little Hanoi. Lovely restaurant, especially amusing as Neal was hit on by the male waiter!! Unbeknownst to us, Neal was uncomfortably having his arm hairs played with, and shoulders rubbed when the guy came over!!! Oh how funny it was when we found out, and could laugh at Neal's unease when the waiter came back!! Poor Neal..! The water puppets were good, interesting and contrary to what some may have said, a must-see to get amongst the Vietnamese culture! A group play traditional instruments, and narrate while puppets do there thing in the water! Of course it's in Vietnamese and we can't understand the story but it's very cool. Traditionally the shows were put on in rice paddies, before the planting.

The trip started with travel problems, we should've taken it as a sign that there would be more transport issues to come..! Gerard, Louise and I got to Shimonoseki smoothly enough, and got on the bus on time too. Jo and Selena met us at their stops, then the bus was off to Fukuoka. Or so we thought... We made it onto the Kammon Bridge and not much further! After about about hour (honestly we were probably only 8kms from where we left), we finally realised that we weren't going to be going anywhere fast because there had been an accident in the tunnel immediately off the bridge! We also realised that we could easily be late for our plane, so when the bus was trying to get through the Moji traffic we decided to jump bus! Yip, a group of 5 gaijin, all with big packs got off the bus in the middle of a crowded street! And we had to pay the full fare to Fukuoka even though we'd only made it across the bridge! So then we had to walk to Moji Station, train to Kokura Station, get the shinkansen to Hakata, then subway to Fukuoka Domestic Airport, finally bussing to the International Terminal! Phew! We got there a little late, but luckily we made the plane, which I'm sure we wouldn't have if we'd stayed on the bus!

Korea Airport is cool! They have KFC, Burger King, and Subway!! The cash registers even show prices in won, yen and US dollars, how's that for thinking! But what's a group of deprived gaijin to do in such a situation..! There was talk of getting all of the above, but I ended up just getting BK and taking the anticipation of my return trip with me to Vietnam!

So the 5 of us arrived in Hanoi, and went outside for a taxi. Of course we were ripped off by some Airport taxi man who shuffled you along into one of his companies taxis! We cruised into the city without having a clue if we were even heading the right way! The roads were rough and we seemed to go off road to get to the next road! One would expect lots of high buildings and bright lights coming into a city, a capital city at that! But no...Hanoi was really dark, and the highest buildings we saw coming from the airport were narrow, 3-storey houses with French style facade and painting on the front and grey concrete on the sides!

We arrived at the hotel to be met by Neal, who arrived the day before. Went for a wander to try and get a beer, but nowhere to be found (it was only 1am too..!), so it was off to bed. Day One over.

Doing a Dan

I am going to do a Dan and write my holiday blogs as if I wrote them on the actual day! Cool eh! That way you'll still the great length of what my blogs can be, without me skimming cos I am enveloping more than one day into one blog! Yay for everyone!

Vietnam, here we come..!

I still cannot believe we leave tomorrow. Honestly, compared to last year when I remember the 6 week, 4 week, 3 week...countdown, I haven't hardly had time to think about the approaching date. I can't wait to sleep in, and do nothing for two weeks. Well, obviously we will be doing something, but when and what is a little bit of a mystery still...! There are definite ideas floating around the group though so it's all good! Every now and then though I have these thoughts that Vietnam is going to be so busy that we will have to stay in a five star hotel and pay shitloads or sleep on a park bench...!

Another thing that comes with travelling is packing...I really bad at it, I worry and stress over it. Some may remember my NZ trip packing stirfe! Well, to be fair I haven't stressed about Vietnam packing, but I can never decide what to take, how many bottoms (trousers/shorts/skirts) to take, or how many tops (t-shirts/long sleeves/short sleeves..!?) to take! So I end up packing probably more than I need, but I figure, as long as my pack isn't too heavy it's ok..! My pack in fact at present, isn't too heavy, or even full, so I think I will cope...

Merry Christmas to everyone, and have wonderful Christmas days, especially the bunch celebrating in Hagi (How bout that for a shout out!) I'm sure I'll find somewhere to update in Vietnam so watch out for the stories...there may even be drama...!?

Lunch (well nearly...) time!!! Oishii yo!! 

Me, Louise and Mrs Kimura dishing up our Christmas dinner! 

Merry Christmas!!

Yay, Louise and I pulled off a splendid Christmas dinner! Now I feel as I do on a typical Christmas day - so full I could be sick, sleepy, but satsified! Yesterday I made the cheese sauce for the brocolli and a pavlova (meringue/marshmellowy sweey NZ dessert). The pav bombed and was burnt on the bum! No time to make another one then, as Osamu arrived and then we were off to Shimonoseki to meet the girls there (yes it was all girls and poor Osamu was the sole boy!). After chatting, drinking, gossiping Louise, Osamu and I got the last train back to Asa. So at 12:30am I decided that if I make another pav then, I could sleep a little later today! This one was great, so I slept easily knowing I had not failed so early in the proceedings!

Louise arrived this morning, and we set to work, wearing our Christmas hats and reindeer antlers. Even this morning had that Christmas day feel of preparing for the family feast! I kept thinking I should call the family and wish them a Merry Christmas! By 2pm our Japanese Asa friends started arriving, and the turkey was done by about 3pm so then we feasted...! We ate turkey, gravy. cranberry jelly, mixed veges, roasted potatoes, turkey stove top, brocolli cheese, Yorkshire puddings and pumpkin/sweet potato mash. Phew, it was so good! Though in the process I got a blistery steam burn on my finger, and we had the damn strife of using 2 J-ovens, and trying to have everything hot at the same time with hot plates - cos no one is having Christmas dinner on cold plates! Oh and we had Christmas crackers - with the cheapest gifts and silliest jokes inside! Can someone explain this to me: Q. What do you call a girl with a piano on her head? Ans. Joanna.

At about 5pm we had dessert: Pav, apple crumble, ice cream and the tiniest Christmas Pudding one has ever seen! So, all in all it was a lovely day, and the thing about these friends is they always take the leftovers so I don't have to put up a whole lot of food hanging around for days!

Now it is two days until Vietnam. Luckily I have half days, so I can get organised and pack etc. Then we're 'leaving on a jet plane...!!' Yay!!

I'm tired! This past few weeks have been so incredibly busy that I just want to sleep. It may also be the reason why I have a Temporomandibular (TM) disorder. As last year I spent time with the master of self-diagnosis, Abra, I too can now diagnose myself using the internet! But really I have found an accurate diagnosis. I have shooting pain by my ear at the top of my jaw on the right side, to be technical, pain in my Temporomandibular joint. Man it hurts, I should go to the doctor, but knowing Japan, I'll probably end up in some crazy head brace, or at least a crazy jaw brace, and that would just be damn stupid. my.webmd.com says that:

The most common cause of TM disorder is tension in the muscles that control the jaw, such as tension caused by clenching the jaws or grinding the teeth, and muscle tension in the neck and shoulder.

I think I may well have been stressed, first with that damn Japanese exam, and then having to do the damn "Reinventing the Textbook" presentation with Kenton and Gerard! Honestly, we were so ill-prepared, it's amazing we pulled it off, and even then it wasn't pulled off well! If it wasn't for Kenton cracking the jokes and refering to the JTE as "my baby's mumma!" at one
stage it could've been worse! Gerard I think definitely contributed to my TM disorder cos he had this idea of ripping the "What's this..." origami page out of the 1st year New Horizons and making origami with it and the kids saying, "What's this?" I was freaking out! It's not that I
didn't see the humour in it, I just didn't think the JTEs and some others would! So he had Mary's old textbook, and he was all set, with me being the only one to know of his stunt! Luckily, he changed his plan and had a false page in it, and pretended to rip it out. Thank God he did, cos some of the faces on those teachers were not happy!

This weekend Louise and I are making Christmas dinner for J-friends, and then I can't believe it, we are all off to Vietnam on Wednesday! Honestly it has come by so incredibly fast this year, and so much to do still! So much shit to clean up and stuff to pack! Better get to it...

Oh What a Night..!!!

I was thinking of calling this blog entry "Drama, Drama, Drama" but the title was taken by Jo first! The AJET Christmas party definitely a night of drunkeness, drama, and damn funniness! In hindsight, I can definitely say starting drinking at 5pm, and not stopping for a good 7 hours was damn stupid. But at the time, everyone was jsut having a brilliant time, and it wasn't until we finished the first party at 9pm, that the drunkeness hit me in full force! Okay actually prior to that I was drunk...it was another one of those nights when Paul and I team up and end up getting totally shitfaced! Our table ended up being the drinking game table, and when there was 15mins of nomihodai, massive orders of more beer and sake were put in!? Crazy!

After hanging around downstairs from the party room, for ages, we went to karaoke and an izakaya. This is where things got incredibly messy... I was incredibly sick, and bless so many people for looking after me! I kept exclaiming that it was the coldest night ever in Japan. And it turns out that we went to a second karaoke place, I thought we didn't leave the first. When we finally did enter a karaoke room where some others were, I promptly passed out in the corner! Classy evening as a whole really!

So I was again sick on the way home, and this morning I woke to find that I had a massive headache! I checked my keitai and found there had been calls to Paul, Louise, Lauren and Jocelyn! I do remember calling Paul, cos his keitai was in his jacket pocket, which I ended up wearing (I recall leaving a crazy message...). I thought that maybe one of the girls might have borrowed my keitai, but Louise just called before. I had left a message on her home phone (!?), and it was hilarious!! I said something along the lines of: "Hello, where are you? we're looking for you? We're at - where are we? (to someone else), we're at Wai Wai Mura, Wai Wai Mura. Ok? WAI WAI MURA!!..." The message got a bit crazy then and I made less sense! Oh man, I just called Lauren to check if I left her a message, but she didn't answer so I guess I will find out later...

So, in another post-drunk thought, I have decided to pipe down with the drinking, at least pipe down in the quantity of my drinking! As I write this I recall, it was this time last year (the weekend before Seminar Park meeting) that I was incredibly drunk in Fukuoka and met a certain NZ guy, in a weird drunken occasion...!! How funny! Must go to bed, bye!

I'm back..!

But only just. Yesterday in the excitement of cleaning my apartment for the first time in weeks, I banged my head REALLY hard on one of the kitchen chairs. I was sitting on one chair, writing something, then I bent down to pick something off the floor, coming back up my forehead made major contact with the arm thing of the other chair. It hurt like all hell, but it was only this morning I woke up with a headache, and it still hasn't gone away. I can feel this constant pressure behind my forehead, and I'm sure my brain is black and blue, cos my skin isn't! I also feel like crap, and am really tired, so Abra, oh wise one with all knowledge of ailments and conditions - Do I have concussion!? I think I do.

My apartment is at least cleaner than before, and looking quite lovely for once in a long time. I have finally finished the Japanese study and exam. My theory was you see, if I wasn't going to study I shouldn't clean my house, cos I am meant to be too busy to clean my house. So instead I found other ways to procrastinate and not study! The exam was as hard as I thought it would be. Kanji was harder than I thought it would be, the reading as always sucked! Thankfully I did the grammar first knowing I could probably guess more of those answers right than the reading, then in the last 5 minutes I did about 5 reading passages! I won't find out if I failed (less than 60%) or got lucky and passed til February.

But no rest, now I'm trying to plan the presentation Kenton, Gerard, a JTE, and I have to do next Tuesday. If you know any of us, you'll know I hate presentations, Gerard hates preparing them and gets stubborn about it, and Kenton is good at them, when he gets around to doing the prep, or he'd prefer to wing it on the day! So yeah, we make for a great group! It should be highly entertaining, especially since we can't get together to discuss it...

Next weekend, Louise and I are going to cook a Christmas Turkey dinner for Japanese friends. Then three days after that, on the 22nd it's off to Vietnam! I can't it's come by so fast. I haven't even had time to think about it being 5 weeks, 4 weeks, 3 weeks... like last year. Thankfully Jo and Erin have been awesome at finding some structure to the trip. Or at least a couple of places to stay for the busy periods, and looked up a few fun things, or we literally would have been planning everything on the plane there!

Ok, I gotta go. I might enlighten you all with some photos sometime soon too...!