Up till this afternoon, my Christmas plan was to stay put, work on my qualifier, have a small party, go to church and then someone’s house on Christmas eve, and also experience what it is like to have three Korean women in the apartment (my roommate’s mom and sister are coming over from South Korea for a visit). But my plan changed almost instantaneously.

The research center was having its year-end party, and as I was talking to my friends, it seems like everyone else is going somewhere for Christmas. My advisor told me that her daughters are driving 8-10 hours to get home for Christmas. And that got me thinking that perhaps I could make the 10-hour drive to Jackson, Michigan, and visit my family too. I was looking up the directions on Google maps, imagining what it would be like to drive 10 or more hours, and contemplating whether the weather would be good enough to drive in. I even printed out the driving directions. I must have been staring at the Google map page for quite some time, before Charlayne, my cubicle-mate, enquired about my plans. When I told her, she suggested flying there instead, since I’ll probably be paying just as much for gas if I’m driving. I searched online and found a reasonably priced round trip ticket to fly from nearby ABE airport to Detroit. After making sure that the Cheahs will be around, I bought the ticket. So now, I’m part of the American Christmas mass-migration statistics, and I’ll be spending two weeks, both Christmas and New Year, in Jackson, Michigan. I’m really looking forward to spending time with N-A-T