Alright, it has been a damn long time since I've updated this here blog and in that time I've seen the desert of Dubai, spent 10 days in England, visited Stonehenge, scattered my Grandma, traveled to Canada, hugged a large proportion of the Canadians that I love, reconciled with Ben, been given a diamond ring, celebrated Christmas with my Dad and Marilyn, traveled back to Singapore, been trapped in Heathrow for 12 hours, had my bags lost by either BA or Qantas, begun sharing my life in Singapore with Ben who is living here now, celebrated New Year's Eve with my Singaporean friends and been able to wake up beside my love and best friend in Asia for the last week.
Whew!
So that's the TL;DR version, if you can believe it.
I thought I'd start with that for y'all so that if you get bored of my expansion on things at least you will know that you kind of know what you've missed.
So, the longer version is:
School finished for the year in Singapore with my drama students performing their Lorax production for the open house geared at primary students who might be considering our school for next year. The Singaporean school year follows the calendar year, FYI, so it makes lots more sense but our end of the year holiday takes place in December which is why I have had all this time to go globetrotting and friend and family hugging.
The morning after the open house I was officially allowed to leave Singapore (I have to actually apply to leave the country because I'm a civil servant) and off I was! I took a flight connecting through Dubai which was neat because I could see the desert from the plane and I've never seen it before. Two 8 hour plane rides later I arrived in London.
Now, I made arrangements with Iain to stay with his son Joe who lives in London and who I had never met before. He sent me directions on how to get to his house by taking the Tube from the airport so after 16 hours of flying I dragged my huge bag through what felt like at least 10 kilometres of underground stations and on to a 1.5 hour journey to the area where Joe lives where I met him at his local pub.
Joe is a really cool guy, luckily, and we hit it off immediately. He was kind enough to host me for a few days in London and he and his roomate and best friend Ben took me around London to see the Tate, the Thames, Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, the Tower of London, Trafalgar Square, Whitechapel and also for some really tasty curry.
After London, I took a train to Salisbury to see my friend Iain for the first time since he left Singapore. It was awesome to see him and spend a few days catching up with him and going shopping at Tesco and such. He lives in a very small village and I don't know how he is maintaining his sanity there after living in Asia for so long, but he's working on it. I must also give him lots of props for managing to find Stonehenge, which he has lived near for most of his adult life and has never been to until I dragged him out to find it. It is not really so huge as you imagine, or brown for that matter. It's grey and covered in moss and rather pretty.
Then I took a 6 hour train ride up north to meet my Dad and stepmother in Keighly. We met up with my cousins Mary and Philip and Philip's family to go and scatter my Grandmother at Lake Windermere. It was a very cold and grey day (as most are in England) but having our cousins there made the whole journey much less painful I found. So, thanks guys!
After spending a few days in Yorkshire D+M and I flew back to Toronto and I spent a few days with them in Stoney Creek before I took a train to Toronto to meet up with Ben.
Now, I haven't talked very much on here about what's been going on with Ben because I didn't know if things were going to work out with us up until I saw him really. But he's been working on finding a way to come to Singapore for a while now and he found a great Mandarin Chinese program at the National University of Singapore where he can study and get his credentials for being such a ninja at Chinese and he is here doing that.
So Ben and I got together in Toronto and talked through our relationship stuff and were able to reconcile and work everything out which is really awesome for us both. Then he gave me a diamond ring, which was a giant shock to me, and everyone keeps congratulating me even though we are not engaged. Ben said it is a promise ring and it was my Christmas gift, but it is beautiful and Canadian diamonds.
We spent about a week in Toronto, Christina and Adam took the bus up to meet up with us and show us the lovely photos from their wedding which I of course missed being in Singapore. And Nicky and Eric hosted us for a night which was kind. We went to Bingo in a sketchy neighborhood and lost, as well as shopping a lot at the Eaton's Centre and all along Dundas and Yonge. It was really fun to be in Toronto with Ben and my friends and just hanging out and being back home in a place with Shopper's Drug Mart and the CN Tower and stuff like that.
I came back to Stoney Creek for a night from Toronto to surprise my Dad for his birthday and then Ben and I headed up to Kingston. My friend Ali took the bus all the way up from London on her way back home to the States for Christmas and spent a few days with Ben and I which was awesome and my friend Same came down from Brockville for a pub night. We went bowling with a group of friends and I managed to catch up with just about everyone in Kingston who is my good friend.
Ali and I even got the chance to come in to Starbucks for an open with Ben one morning and work behind the counter for about an hour before the store manager came in so I got the chance to make a few drinks again which was fun.
Ben's family had their Christmas while I was there which was really nice and then I headed back to Stoney Creek and Ben got ready to leave for Singapore. He actually left Canada before I did because he had to be here to write a placement test for his program so when I got back to Singapore he was already there to meet me.
The crappy thing was that I got bumped to a later connecting flight from London on my way back because my plane was delayed leaving Toronto which meant that I would miss my connection. That meant I ended up having a 12 hour stop over after an 8 hour flight and before another 12 hour flight and it was not overly enjoyable.
But the good thing was that even though my bag got lost, Ben was here when I arrived and now we are able to share living here and not be in a long distance relationship, or away from each other.
Last night we spent NYE with my friends Kyla and Kevin and their friends who are visiting from Canada and the U.S. and it was just really nice to have time here with my friends and to have Ben there as well.
So, that pretty much catches you up on a crazy month. I've spent hours and hours and hours travelling to one one place or the other but it's been nice to see a lot of my loved ones.
Happy New Year everyone!
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