Tomorrow I'm leaving Japan and traveling back to my homeland to reconnect with my roots. No, I don't mean Canada.. I mean Vietnam! I'll be flying to Saigon on Thursday to spend Christmas and New Years exploring southern Vietnam. I have a lot of extended family in Saigon that I'll be meeting for the first time but, unfortunately, they don't speak English and I don't speak Vietnamese. Luckily, I will have some help because half of my family already moved to Vietnam three weeks ago! My brother, sister, niece, and brother-in-law all sold their belongings in Calgary to pick up and move to Vietnam. My niece is only 4 years old but she wasn't sad about about the move, especially after her mom kept telling her they were moving to "Beachland"! They're getting away from modern life in Canada to experience a new, exciting life in Vietnam and are hoping to start up a clothing business there. My mom also went and flew with them on the same day. She's the only one in our family who can speak Vietnamese so she'll be our translator to the rest of our relatives.

I'll be there from December 18th to January 4th and will get back into Japan on the 5th. I'll be traveling with Callie so we're going to spend a little bit of time with my family before we head off to backpack around Southern Vietnam and Cambodia! We only have a short 17 days to explore as much as we can so we booked a few tours, all-day and overnight buses, and a domestic flight already. Traveling around Vietnam is ridiculously cheap so we're only bringing a few hundred dollars with us for the two and a half weeks we're there. The domestic flight only costs $55 USD a seat! It's a pretty popular place to go over the winter break because I know of at least 15 ALT's from Hokkaido who are headed there too. It'll be my first Christmas without snow so I'm pretty excited about chilling on the beach and relaxing in the sun. I won't be blogging while I'm there but I'll have a lot of pictures and stories to put up when I get back! Until then, I hope you all have a