Home Thoughts From Abroad

March Break used to be the time that my colleagues in Ontario would take off for the Caribbean for a break from the stress of teaching and a way to shake off the winter blues. We could never afford that ourselves, but I certainly sympathized with the sentiment and would often envy them the leisure time. Teachers over here are no different, and all this week I have been hearing about Australia and China and other neat places my colleagues have gone without many stories of my own to tell.

We are not exactly broke anymore, but we did have a pretty spectacular visit to New Zealand over Christmas and Pam has just got back from an almost uninterrupted month of travel around Southeast Asia. So this March Break we could think of nothing we would rather do than grab our towels and bathing suits and head on down to the pool with a coffee and a good book. So that is what we did all week.

The weather was pretty cooperative and most days we had the pool to ourselves. We swam and sat and chatted and then swam some more until it was too hot to sit outside, and then we took the elevator back to our apartment where we read and sat and chatted and then read some more. Pretty boring week, right?

Well I didn’t think so. I thought it was darn near the nicest holiday I had ever had! The alternating exercise and relaxation was exactly what this old body needed and it was good to get caught up with my partner’s life beyond the mandatory, ‘How was your day?’ We were able to finalize our flights home and get ourselves prepared for a change in our ministry focus in the coming year. All that and we were able to sleep in our beds at night. All in all a nice little holiday.