Happy Thanksgiving

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends.

I don't mind admitting that I was feeling pretty homesick this morning when I got up to go to school and remembered that everyone would be celebrating Thanksgiving today or yesterday. I was feeling pretty teary until I heard about the devastating earthquake in Pakistan. That gave me a good dose of reality and put homesickness and everything else into perspective.

I actually got to celebrate Thanksgiving with about 200 ex-pat Canadians at the Grand Hilton Hotel in Seoul on Saturday night. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce of Korea hosted a lovely turkey dinner in honour of Thanksgiving. It was really a beautiful setting and the meal was great - almost as good as being in Canada. It was a good networking opportunity too.

I had a great massage (not too hard this time) and got my hair cut in Itaewon (Seoul) on Friday night and then, on Saturday, was at the Women's University training for the International conference that will be held there this coming week-end.

I also met up with a beautiful young Korean woman, Janice (Sun-mi) who was one of my sister Cheryl's ESL students back in Canada. Janice lives in a suburb of Seoul and came and met me for lunch. It was so good to see her and to get caught up. The last time I saw her was at Easter at Cheryl's home in Thornhill. We had a couple of hours to chat, got our picture taken together and strolled along one of the very quaint streets in Insa-dong. It was hard to say good bye but we promised to see each other again soon. Janice is working very hard, long hours. She is a very hard worker.

After leaving Janice, I took the subway back to the Express Bus Terminal to catch the bus back to Yeonggwang. This was the first time for me to leave Seoul on my own and..........I made it back without getting lost!! Yeahhhhhh!!

Back to school today. The first 2 classes were very unruly and I laid down the law a few times. It seems to go in one ear and out the other. The other 4 classes I had were better and I think we accomplished what I had planned and that was for them to interview a partner by asking "What did you do yesterday?" and then to come to the front with their partner and introduce them and what they did to the class. Hopefully we are making progress.

As of tomorrow, I will have been gone from Canada 8 weeks. Can you believe it?? I can't.

Well, it's almost time for bed. I am always thrilled to hear from anyone at home so drop me a line or two.

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for??