wrapping up 2015, starting off 2016

Well it's been a while, again (sorry parents), but I've finally dug out some time today to try and catch up on blog posts and Facebook photo uploads. This first one will be a bit short, just to catch up on the rest of 2015 and beginning of 2016.

After Kanazawa I:
 - went bowling with the General Affairs Bureau, which was surprisingly fun (I even bowled several strikes!). Our team won a prize for having the lowest total score out of all of them, hahaha. -.-'
 - attended a block event in Narita and Chiba AJET's traditional Thanksgiving dinner, which as usual involved lots of turkey and pumpkin pie from Costco :3
 - went to the CIR mid-year conference, which was probably the most fun one yet, involving a LINE chat that was most active during boring seminars, the traditional meetup at Irish Pub Always on the first night, and lots of good times in general
 - went to Kuroshio Yosakoi, the last yosakoi event of the year
 - helped welcome 100 barangay captains from our sister city in the Philippines
 - finalized that this will be my fourth and final year on JET, which is bittersweet and exciting and scary at the same time. 

And then I went home for Christmas! Since this is my Japan blog I won't go into too many details, but my family and the two other families that were my parents' good friends in grad school (who I basically consider my extended family in the US) all gathered together for Christmas for the first time in apparently over a decade! We rented a little cabin in the mountains of north Georgia a few days before Christmas (with things like a jukebox and a hot tub!) and generally had a wonderful time, including rewatching all three Lord of the Rings movies. :3 The rest of my time was spent eating far too much of my mom's cooking and generally doing nothing at home, which was fabulous.

Then it was time to go back to Japan, which was a bit of an ordeal that turned out all right in the end. I had originally booked flights that would get me back in Japan the day before New Year's Eve, so I could spend it with friends and have some time to adjust to jetlag before work started on the 4th. I had booked with United instead of my usual Delta for cheaper tickets/slightly better travel times, which was fine on the way over.

But then on the day I was supposed to leave, snow in the midwest led to delay in my first flight, which made it impossible for me to transfer to the next flight, so I had to call and reschedule for the next day (luckily we had checked before leaving for the airport). Except that my friend had been planning to stay at my apartment that night after I arrived. :/ But anyway, I booked a new flight for very early the next morning.

And then woke up and found out that flight had been completely cancelled (presumable due to bad weather). D: We decided to go the airport anyway to talk to agents directly about rescheduling (I tried calling on the way there but couldn't connect even after waiting for like half an hour), and after a long, tense wait in line.....the United agent hooked me up with two Delta flights to take instead! Which meant that I got miles, and because I was Silver Medallion last year I even got upgraded to business class - on both flights!! So I got to enjoy free breakfast on a short domestic flight, followed by the most comfortable trans-Pacific flight I've ever had, with a seat that reclined, super cushy blankets and pillows, and lots of tasty food. So all's well that ends well. :)

I got back on the afternoon of New Year's Eve, and a couple of hours later went to go pick up my (very drunk from having spent all day drinking cheap wine in a chain restaurant) friends from the station and brought them back to my apartment! The rest of the new year's adventures (not all in one day) involved watching Japanese NYE TV, (starting and) finishing up a bottle of vodka somebody had given me forever ago, mixing hot chocolate and whisky, playing Set and Bananagrams, and going to Mcdonalds for our first meal of the year. Good times all around. :D