Every New Beginning Starts With Some Other Beginning's End

And here I sit.

Waiting for everyone to arrive to start eating supper. The last supper of 2006.

And everyone who will eat here is someone that I didn't know last New Year's. Everyone who I will hug, or kiss, or laugh with tonight is someone who has only known me a short time... not even 5% of my total life so far. The longest friendships I have here (tonight) are Steve, Stu, Nicola, Max, Lana and Bryce. And they are only longer by a few days on Karen, Matt, Helen and Dave. Others, like Amy, Jessica and Jeannie can be counted in weeks. But it's quality, not quantity, right?

These people have defined my life here in Korea. They have made my memories here as special as any that I could imagine having.

And this does not mean that I have forgotten anyone back in Canada. On the contrary, it's at times like these that I miss you all the most. I don't know who reads (or doesn't) my blog (except for those who leave comments), but even the blog has now evolved into something that I didn't expect it to be - my journal of my time here. I sometimes forget the things I have done, and go back reading over again and reliving again the times that I've had here.

This year, I have:

• moved from Montreal, leaving behind almost all I owned;
• moved from Canada, leaving behind my family, friends and cats;
• gained (and lost) new friends;
  
• gained new perspectives and new insights about myself;
• walked in the shoes of the illiterate, the foreign and the lost;
• not been present when my best Canadian friends may have needed me;
  
• stood on a mountaintop in Korea;
  
• sat on the Great Wall of China;
• sunk my feet into the sands of Malaysia;
• walked the streets of Singapore at midnight;
• stood in the oldest temple imaginable in Japan;
• eaten some weird, sometimes delicious, things that I never even knew existed;
• swum with sharks, while dodging clown fish;
• ridden my scooter (!) through rice paddies, on a highway and on winding single-lane roads to temples and beyond;
  
• used a wide variety of toilets - from primitive Malaysian squats to heated Japanese bidets;
  
• become "the Hostess", "the Sister", "the Organizer";
• bathed with a hundred other naked women in a Korean bath house;
  
• been treated like a queen, or a lackey...
  

There are times when I stop. When I look around. When I ask myself the seemingly simple question of "How did I get here?". When I don't know how to answer but to shake it off, and keep on going to the next adventure.

Because I know that this is only just the beginning.

Happy New Year