What's happening?

(S-cuse me, just a bit of thinking out loud here) . . . So today, do I write about a bigger topic like "failure" or "walls in Japan" or do I tell them about what's been happening here? The latter is easier . . . so I might go with that. I'll leave the other ideas till later.

Sunday was a recovery day, plus worship as usual at church in the morning. We also had an unexpected visitor for lunch, one of our OMF kids who's also a senior. I'm not always great with spontaneity like that with younger friends visiting, but older kids are just great.

The afternoon was largely spent relaxing. Two boys went to youth group and the rest of us just hung out.

Monday
Monday it was back into work. I'd been battling the start of a cold, so I was feeling particularly sluggish (the below-freezing temps outside didn't help). So I pulled out of two prayer meetings and stayed home. I worked quietly at my desk most of the day except for a quick ride to fill the pantry. Oh, and a dental check-up after school with our 11 y.o., but our dentist is at the station, less than a kilometre walk.

Korea

Where three of us are headed a month tomorrow.

Last night I ended up in the middle of a texting-blizzard. Two wresting-parent friends and I were trying to figure out a good package to fly to Korea and stay in hotels for the wrestling tournament next month. It's not something I've done much of: dealing with tour packages or, believe it or not, foreign travel! At least I've travelled a little, but not on my own. I've mostly travelled in a group or with an organisation where the responsibility of finding and organising transport, accommodation, flights etc has usually not been mine.

It seems as though it's been pretty much settled, now, though. I just need to pay for it! Travelling to Korea from here seems to be cheaper than travelling internally in Australia, or at least equivalent! It's certainly faster to get there than it is to travel from the east to west coast of Australia: 2 hrs 40 min (but about the same time as Brisbane to Melbourne). But we do have significant transfer time between home and the airport here and the airport and the hotel there (two hours both ends).

Getting around in a country where you don't speak the language is always interesting. We could have some adventures. But we'll be spending most of our time on or near the US air force base, so I presume we'll find a fair bit of English around. 

I'm excited about this little adventure. Three days of wrestling is going to be a treat, but also a tad exhausting, plus the travel that I always find tiring. I don't think I'll be ready to report for work on Monday morning (we get back late on Sunday night).

Confession: I'm feeling a little nervous about Korean food. I've never had kimchi! But it is the seventh Asian nation that I'll get to add to my "stayed in" list. Actually, truth is, the seventh country, outside of Australia, that I've ever stayed in. That's right: I've never been out of Asia, especially if you consider Australia geographically a part of Asia.

Second confession: David and I are both leaving the country for this and leaving our youngest two with friends (David's an assistant coach and gets to stay with the team on base, unlike the rest of us parents). Actually the only way we're managing this is because one of our friends will have our two younger boys to stay for the four nights David and I are away. Actually more than half of their family is also going to Korea. Two of their three boys are in the Varsity team (A team) and their mum is travelling with me. So the four of the ten of us who aren't going to Korea get to hang out together here. I think I might have to give them some money for having our boys for five days! At least to cover the food.

What else I did today
Aside from doing that, today, I've been working on editing (and helping someone else edit) for both the Winter and Spring issues of the magazine. In fact I got myself so mixed up that when I sat down to write my editorial for the Spring issue, I put stuff in there that is relevant to the Winter issue! Thankfully I figured that out pretty quickly.

My breathing is a little tight, but I am not coughing often and my cold hasn't moved past the mild zone, for that I'm very thankful. Working quietly at home and sipping honey and lemon drinks seems to have been all I needed this time to avoid a worse incursion of the dreaded cold-turned-asthma flare. Hopefully my day out with missionary friends for prayer and fellowship tomorrow will not reverse the effect of these quiet days.

Tonight I'm not cooking dinner. Indeed I've decided not to cook dinner on Tuesday nights until the wrestling season is over (4 ½ more weeks). Thanks to the inter school basketball schedule, we have basketball matches at CAJ every Tuesday for a number of weeks. That always means "concessions", which is a temporary shop in the gym foyer with both main-meal food as well as snacks that's run by the senior class. Our family loves to have dinner there, though it is quite scattered, you do meet various random people from the CAJ community. It's also helping raise money for the senior trip to Thailand in March.