On the "road" again...

Well actually it's more like a plane - errr, I mean 3 planes. It takes 3 flights to get to Chiang Mai. Even though it's only a total of 5 hours of flying time, it still equals a whole day of travel to get to Chiang Mai from Cebu. Thankfully we made it here without any problems. I left Andrey in Bangkok. He's meeting his boss there and they have 6 meetings to attend in 2 days. He'll join me in Chiang Mai Tuesday night.
We're here for the annual IJM Southeast Asia regional retreat. It's where the directors and their spouses of the southeast asian countries come together for a few days in the mountains. This will be the 4th one we've attended. In past years we've been living here so haven't needed to travel much. This year, now that we're in Cebu it feels like more a big deal to get to come here for it. I ALWAYS welcome a trip to Chiang Mai! It's the perfect situation really. We get to visit a highly desirable tourist destination and we can speak enough of the language to get around easily and we know our way around and we have really good friends here and oh yeah the food is DELICIOUS...and cheap!!! It's a great place to visit. We've extended the trip for a weekend after the retreat so we can spend some time with our friends here.
It's funny how I don't feel so "achey" coming here. Yeah, sure there are things I miss about Chiang Mai but despite that, I don't have the strong feelings of wishing I still lived here. I think that's because life is really good in Cebu. And that is all because God has mercifully blessed us there.
So while I'm extremely thankful to get to be here this week, I'm actually looking forward to being in Cebu once this period of frequent travel is over. I have a midwifery degree to accomplish! :)