The News Gets Worse, and I Head Home

Jan 10-16, 2011


After some bad news last week, which turned a little brighter over the weekend, on Monday I decided to go ahead and book a trip for the Lunar New Year (a.k.a. Chinese New Year, Solar New Year, and in Korea 설날) since we had 5 days off at the start of February. I had been holding off since getting word of Nan's problems, but hearing that she was in the hospital getting good care, and seemed to be getting better, I took the plunge and booked a trip to Shanghai. It wasn't my first choice, but since time was short, and I had waited too long to get in on any of the good deals to places like Hong Kong, Indonesia, or the Philippines, Shanghai it was. I planned to go with my coworker Chrissy, and possibly Frank, who I had talked to about it over the weekend. Chrissy was able to find a pretty good deal using her American Express membership. For a round trip ticket and decent hotel, it would cost only $470. We signed up and hoped for the best, not booking cancellation insurance, which would be a bit of a stresser as the week unfolded. After work I headed home to watch some football playoff action before calling it a night just after 1.
Tuesday morning it was up early again and off to work for 930. Work went by as usual, nothing overly exciting happened, but the day was good and quick. After work I headed to Itaewon with John to hit up Sam Ryan's, a foreigner pub, for their cheap rib and beer night. It was nice to be able to take advantage of activities going on at night that would usually be out of the question given my regular schedule. We stayed for a few hours, and enjoyed some beers with a few of John's friends, and with Wes who showed up a little after we did. Eventually we were among the last people in the bar, at about 1230am, and John bought one more round for us to chug before going home. John and i were able to catch the last bus out of Samgakgi, then walked home from Sillim where it dropped us off. I was able to get home and into bed before 2am, and felt good about not being out too late.
That feeling of not too bad quickly turned to feeling like crap when I woke up at 830 with a hangover. It didn't help that the jerks I share the floor of my apartment building with had the heat turned up to over 30 degrees, which made my apartment a small oven, furthering the dehydrating process I started with alcohol the night before. I forced myself to get out of bed and shower, and then got off to work. Once at work, I revealed in the fact that I wasn't the only one who felt terrible. John also came in feeling crappy, and we both spent a good part of the day with our heads down on our desks whenever we were not engaged in our jobs as roll models. After work, still feeling pretty bad, I went straight home, put on a football game and laid down for the night.
Waking up Thursday, I felt much better, and had no trouble getting ready and off to work with plenty of time to spare. After my first couple classes, I took some time to head to the bank and take care of some transferring, as well as taking out some money to give to Chrissy for the trip we had booked to Shanghai on her credit card. At the end of the day I took some time to try and fix the projection screen in Peters classroom that had come unravelled several weeks ago. I took it all apart with Johns help and then tried rewinding the screen around the spindle and putting it back together. It seemed to go back together alright, but then as I stared coiling and uncoiling it to create tension on the internal spring it became apparent that the pin in place that keeps it from uncoiling after tension has been created had broken, so it could not be pulled too far out before the spring inside it would let go, releasing all the tension it needs to retract when you are done using it. That being the case I took it apart again and rehung just the screen on the wall so Peter could still use his projector. After the failed attempt I headed home to watch some more playoff football and have a bite to eat.
Friday started out as a promising day. I got up and got all the documents Chrissy and I needed for our Chinese visas in order and then headed over to work. After my first class, I hit the subway to make the trip to the travel agent in Myeongdong to get the visa process started. I was there just after 11 which meant the office was closed but the travel agent would be able to get our passports in on Monday. On the way back to work I received a message from Frank saying that he had booked a ticket and would be coming with us to Shanghai. This was good news. Not that I didn't want to spend the whole time alone with Chrissy, but it is always nice to have more people around to talk with and share in the fun. Once back at work I went about the rest of the day as per usual. Just before the end of the day, I called the wine buffet to increase our reservation to 30 people, and then finished out the day so I could go home and take it easy before the big party Saturday. Things seemed to be going well, and then, as I was relaxing and watching a game, I got an urgent message from Ash to tell me Nan had taken a turn for the worse over night, and that it didn't look good. Getting calls like that is never a favourable thing, but when you are on the other side of the world it is, strangely enough, easier to deal with. I quickly called home and talked with Ash and Mom at the hospital to see what was going on. It turned out that Nan had caught pneumonia and pretty much had a complete system crash. We were all very shocked at this turn in condition since she had recently showed such promising signs. The family, along with the doctors decided to discontinue all support systems and simply place her in an induced coma state so that she could live out her last hours in comfort. It was hard to hear the family in such pain over the phone, and not be able to be there, but they did have each other and that mad me feel better. I spent the rest of the night MSN messaging Ash, as well as talking to Gavin and his brothers, and my other grandmother, who in turn called my dad at work to let him know he should head up to the hospital. By the time I could no longer keep my eyes open, it was 530 in the morning, and I went to sleep knowing that the worse call was yet to come.
It was as if I had only shut my eyes for a few moments when my computer buzzed letting me know I had a message. I got up, knowing all to well what it was going to be. It was Ash letting me know that Nan had passed away. It was 530pm Friday January 14th. I sent a message back saying that I would call in a few minutes after everyone had a minute to calm down, and to give myself a minute to breathe about the situation. After about 10 minutes I called Ash and talked to the whole family on speaker phone, before talking to just my mom and then Ash. I let them know that I would be coming home as soon as I could, but it might not be until Sunday. Though I could have threw some things in a bag and been at the airport within a couple hours, being a very work oriented person i felt it was necessary to go to work and make sure things were in place for the teachers that would have to cover my classes while I was gone. That, and in a truly cosmic joke, my passport was at the travel agency I had gone to the day before. I got to work trying to hold it together, which was hit and miss, and explained the situation to my bosses. They were very understanding, and even helped me make the call to the travel agent to get my passport back. the travel agent at first didn't understand the gravity of the situation, and said that I could get it back on Monday because he was in the middle of climbing a mountain. I asked my boss to let him know that one way or another I was getting my passport back Saturday, even if I had to throw a brick through his window and get it myself. I'm sure that's not what she told him, but in the end he agreed to cut his hike short and meet me at his office. I spent a couple hours typing up my lesson plans for the next week before gong to meet him, and then went back to the school and finished what I felt I had to do. After I was done at the school I was exhausted, as well as too late to make it on any flights for the night so i went home to have a nap. I woke up after only sleeping for a couple hours, and decided that it would be best for me to get out of the house and be with those people here that are the closest thing to family you could ask for. Since I had planned the wine buffet thing, I got ready and headed to the mall to meet up with everyone. It wasn't long before the news got around about what had happened, and everyone was really great about keeping me positive for the night. Eventually the buffet was over and people started heading either home or to Gangnam for some more drinks. I thought it would be best to head home, and having held it together pretty well all night and thinking everyone was gone, I had a bit of a breakdown in the hotel lobby. Little did I know, Alex and Louise were still there and weren't about to leave me be. They convinced me to not go home, and to come out for a few more drinks. We went to a bar called Voodoo with a bunch of other friends, where we drank, and I talked with Matei for a while, until 4am. Once I got home I quickly packed a bag to take home for the week and cleaned up, before passing out for a few hours.
I woke up Sunday morning at 9am, said good-bye to Goah and headed to the airport. On the way, I spoke with Wes to see if he could find any deals on tickets while I was on my way to the airport. The prices he found were similar to what I was eventually quoted at the airport, and in the end I bought a ticket on the 630pm flight out. That meant that I had 6 hours to kill before the plane left, so I took out my laptop and phoned home to let them know my flight details, and then sat around killing zombies until my battery was to low to start another game. After that I simply went to the check in counter, laid down on the floor and slept until they started checking people in for my flight, then I went through security and had another nap while waiting to to board. I was so into my nap that I almost missed my flight, but luckily was woken up by another passenger on his way to the plane. During the flight to Vancouver I sat next to a lady on her way home from doing volunteer work in Cambodia, and after a few hour chat I settled in and watched some movies. The flight went by fairly fast, that is until we hit Vancouver and got stuck in the ridiculously long customs line. There was only 6 customs workers trying to process over 1500 passengers. It was so backed up that they forewent he separation of Canadians from foreigners, and put us all in one long snaking line. It took just shy of 100 minutes to get through, and by the time I did, it looked as if I would miss my connecting flight through to Toronto. I was not very happy about this, and along with a dozen other passengers, ran through to the connecting flight check in counter; where we had to wait in another line. Eventually they called for the final boarding of our flight, at which point one of the check in attendants radioed up to see if there were any passengers in line, because there were still seats on the plane. They asked us and then skipped us past the line and told us to run to get on the plane. We did, and after a bit of panic, I was on the last leg of the flight home.
My plane touched down at 930pm, amazingly enough still Sunday night, and bags in hand I went out to find my father and sister who had come to pick me up. I had to walk between the international and domestic arrivals areas a couple of times before I found them, and we could head home in the -25C weather. We got into town just after 11, and Gav came over to visit until around 230. After he left I went to bed, to sleep off some of the impending jet lag.


It is always sad when a family member is lost, but with love and support even the toughest times can be overcome.