North Gower

The start of our big trip was delayed by a full five days ... a long story that doesn't need to be included here. The downside was that we lost five days of hanging with my sister and her little guy, William Christopher (see pic below). But the upside was that I got an extra three days' pay to pad our travel fund. Overall, it ended up working out well as we weren't entirely prepared to leave Toronto on 17 Nov (per the original plan) anyway.

The girls at work gave me a wonderful multi-staged send-off, although I think with all the delays they were finally ready to see the back of me!

So my last day (Wednesday 22 Nov) finally arrived. It started out well. I thought I was pacing myself to finish at a decent time. But I started to realize by about early afternoon that I still had a lot of stuff to finish up. By late afternoon, I knew I was going to be staying late. I had a small (big) panic attack around 8:00pm, thinking about all the stuff that still needed to get done. And I finally left the office at 10:45pm when the lights went out. I still don't entirely know what happened.

The next day, aka the first day of my unemployment (Ulrik had finished as planned on Friday 17 Nov), my boss' husband very nicely gave us a lift to the train station. We were on our way!!! The big trip was finally here! We were headed to ... North Gower?! Yep, the first stop in our meander around the world was a visit with my sister and her family. Here she is with her son, William Christopher (six months):


It was really nice getting to spend some time with my family. We even celebrated Christmas early with a full Christmas dinner on Sat 25 Nov that included my dad, aunt, and uncle. And it was especially nice to spend some extended time with William (and my sister and her husband, of course!), since were weren't going to see him again until 2008(!), a fact that didn't really hit me until our last day. He's six months now, and we're not going to see him until he's almost two years old! It almost made me want to change our plans ... almost ...