Christmas 2016

Well another Christmas abroad has come and gone, and it was a good one.

To start off, Yen and I are not together, so we are doing a Christmas in January thing in Manila next month. In that respect alone it was not as great as it could have been if she was here. Still, it was much better than I thought it would be.

It started off on Christmas eve when my neighbour and friend Mike came down with his wife. We were just going to relax a bit and have a few beers. Well with a couple of hours half the Bocui building were here. A few of us were off to Matt's place, where his fiancee Jingya was cooking a huge dinner. We ate a bit here and hung out until about seven where half of the people who live in that building ended up dropping by at various points in the night. It wrapped up about midnight, and I went home feeling very full. It was certainly the best Christmas since the 2014 Christmas party Yen and I had in Daegu in our old Sangin apartment. Only two years but feels like a lifetime ago. Last year we were in Hanoi at an airbnb rental, which was nice but it was hard to feel festive.

It is also nice for me that I have so many good people near me, all of whom I didn't know six months ago. It was a lot of fun, and made for a very Merry Christmas. It was also the first time that Nanning felt homeish.