After 5-6 years of being here it's started to get to me.

On the flip side, our upstairs neighbors took their maternity leave during xmas and went to Thailand for a month. The leave is paid through the state, normally I think 80% of ones salary. Moms get 1.5 yrs and Pops .5yrs.

Also with vacation time being quite a bit more than stateside and with vacation time being accumulative, I could probably start a war with revealing how much time my gf has racked up- about 8-9 weeks paid, excluding normal holidays.

The flipside to the dark winter is also a wonderful light summer, the suns setting around 930pm right now with twilight until around midnight.