Christmas vacation is here!  Last year K and I split  our time between Korea and Doha.  This year K is back in Canada, enjoying Christmas with her family.  As for me, I decided to go to Nepal and do some work with Habitat For Humanity.  Overall I’ll be out here for 12 days, 8 of which will be spent working on the house.

The decision to get involved with HFH started back in September.  I got the email from a co-worker and discussed it with K.  Although initially hesitant, she eventually gave me her blessing to go.  It’s hard to explain why I got involved this year.

Back in September I was especially down in the dumps.  It was a situation of my own doing, I took the summer off from wBork and left my studies on the back-burner.  This meant I had the bulk of my readings and a 4000 word paper due in addition to my full time job.  I got through it, passed the paper in on time and even got a pretty good grade for my efforts.

After things settled down in October I got contemplative. Some important questions and answers.  Was I happy?  Not really.  Why?  Don’t like my life in it’s current form.  Not satisfied with work.  What can I do to correct this?  What are the things I can change and what are the things I cannot.

The answers here are more complex.  I can change my job. But…  The money is frankly far better than what I can make elsewhere, and with debts to pay off it’s just as well to chuck this one into the ‘can’t change’ pile.  At least for now. And since it’s in the can’t pile I realized that there’s no point in getting worked up over work.

So my decision was actually pretty simple.  Be nice and do nice things.  Do nice things often, just small little things where possible, smile and say hi in the hallways.  Smile in the classroom, lend a helping hand if and when needed.  So when I got an email from a co-worker in September about doing a habitat build in Nepal, ‘I’d love to but…’ was my initial reaction. However, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it.  So in October, I decided to go for it. Be nice, and do nice things.