The Dapper Dame

Put your Money where your Values are

2012-02-06T22:52:00.001-05:00

Ever since moving to Alberta, getting a real job and becoming an adult I have started to track all of my expenditures on excel to see where my money goes. Time and money are good indicators of where a person's values lay. Apparently I don't value savings right now....

Right off the top 25% of my income goes directly to the Ontario government to repay OSAP (student) loans. We're, of course, talking net income. A big chunk of my cash goes right back to Alberta whether I agree with how the conservatives spend it or not. Back to OSAP. So far I am off to a good start - it is a painful percentage to look at but it shows that I want to be out of debt as fast as I can and it ain't all talk.

The next 25% keeps me warm, dry and mobile - rent and car payments. This is just slightly over a full 25%. Hopefully no need to justify rent but I will point that I went the more affordable shared place pre-furnished to save dough which then gets handed over to the crones of Mr. McGuinty. The car would be irresponsible in a big city with mucho public transport however, I need the car to get around this sprawling urban mess and out to the rural sites I cover for work.

Gas - $100-$150 per month. I had set a budget of $100 however I have tended to go over this. A good chunk of it gets reimbursed eventually for driving to those far away work sites. Another large percentage of this is weekend trips to Edmonton. I value good friends - money well-spent.

Food - budget: $300. Actual: $350...ish. This seems large and it is half and half. The budget is high because I have decided to buy all of my meat at a butcher that only sells local, organic, free range dead animal muscle tissue. Organic milk and other dairy products. Organic fruits and vegetables. Local whenever possible. A good investment. The kicker is - quite a bit of my monthly food bill goes to eating out. When I eat out it is more expensive and I buy things that don't fit my rules of organic or cruelty-free.
How can I make my food budget more closely reflect my values/goals? 1) Stop buying coffee at work. I lost my ceramic mug so it is even worse right now with those dang paper cups. The coffee isn't fair trade but it is convenient. I don't need caffeine to get through the day but it does waste my money. Money spent on coffee would be better used to save a bit of money for travel. 2) Stop eating out unless it is a social event and, still, make wise choices. No more subway after the gym.

Booze - by most people's standards my booze expenditures would be pathetic - about $30 a month for a beverage here and there when out with friends. But I just don't really even like it that much and I don't care if I have it or not. Somehow that doesn't sound like a good place to put my funds. Maybe I'll try sticking to water.

"Me" things - I'm not too frivolous but I did buy a wii. And a new coat. And make up at Sephora. If I am going to spend money on well made items I would like to start making sure I know where it was made and a little bit about the company I am supporting.

Charity - $0. Or about that. Correct. The most embarrassing one on this list. It is like closer to $1.28 if you could the change I put in box at the cash at Tim's after I buy myself a coffee. I like to get passionate about causes and I like to think that I care about others but I don't show that with my money. As a poor student I always said I would support charities/causes in which I believe with my money when I had it. Guess what? I have it. Yes, money can be tight but it isn't like I will be waking up any time soon and be chillin' on a private island with the owners of Wal-mart (ew) and Bill Gates. If I really wanted to I could be giving something. Challenge to self: put some money where my values are to help other people.

Overall this turned out better than I had expected. I am generally responsible with my money but it is the little things that I let slide. Less coffee would mean more money for savings - savings that I might get to use for travel, something I love to do and have been pining for. The most telling was the money I spend on charity or lack thereof. Maybe this means it is time to change. Next up: I'll see what how I spend my time says about me.

Does how you spend your money reflect your goals and values?

A Story of Friendship

2012-01-29T22:29:00.001-05:00

Apparently ShanWow and DIW (Does-It-Weller) are having all kinds of fun up there in Edmonton. They spent some time putting together the story of the friendship of The Dapperdame (aka KV), ShanWow, DIW, JSLPA and Hi-C and sent it to the latter two lovely ladies. The unicorn might have been embellished.

You Don't Make Friends with Yellow Tights (Saga II)

2012-01-26T23:09:00.002-05:00

Yellow tights shouldn't get such a bad rap but they do. Enough to feature in two blog posts. Good thing I don't give rodent's hiney whether people like my fun tights or not. The abuse continued today when I decided to wear the mustard-hued tights to the longterm care home that I work at once a week. Or let's call them "stockings" because if you're over the age of 70 apparently that is the word for them.

Little old lady (LOL): Miss, miss!
Me: Yes?
LOL: Why did you wear those stockings?
Me: Because I like them.
LOL: Really? Because they are HORRIBLE.
*sigh, + eye roll*

Me (to little old man): You wanted help with _______ , I have some time now.
Little old dude (LOD): No thanks, I'm busy [staring at the table, breathing].
Me: Sure, it is just that I'm only here once a week so if you don't want to do this now you will have to wait until next week.
LOD: No, I think I'll just keep on [watching dust fall]
Me: No problem, just thought maybe now would be good since you asked and we'll have to wait until next week.
LOD: Well, maybe if you had on some different stockings.

I want to say that I'm pretty sure he was joking. Perhaps he was entirely serious.

Next week I'm going to wear the burnt orange ones.

The Results Are In

2012-01-22T13:35:00.003-05:00

The results are late and not scientific but they are finally being "published" on here. Don't remember what I'm talking about? Almost exactly one year ago I decided to find out once and for all if we SLPs were as unique of a group as we thought. Our hypotheses included SLPs (or at least those in our class) were more likely to be first born, left-handed, and to have cooked extra long in the womb. My big plan was to use SPSS to analyze the results and be all scientific about it but then I got lazy and didn't have access to SPSS (but actually I did in the computer lab until April). It is safe to say that I'm not going to follow through and that it isn't even a true random sample because all participants were self-selected, and all non-SLPs for comparison were on my facebook and therefore more likely to be in the same socioeconomic class as myself and at the same or similar education level.

Fact:
N (slp) = 31
N (non) = 37

Enough prefacing - here are the results:

Question 1: Are you an SLP?

We've got ourselves a nice sample.

Question 2: Are you a first born?

Remember, this is not scientific so I have no idea if these numbers are SIGNIFICANT but it looks like the answer to this one it YES. Yes, SLPs are more likely to be a first child and to bring along all the control issues and over-achieving inherent to the position.

Question 3: Did you cook too long? ie Time spent in womb

On this front things look pretty equal. My gut says these results are not significant so our hunch was wrong - being in the womb too long is not necessarily related to the typical SLP personality or a strong desire to watch people swallow things.

Question 4: Tell me which hand you prefer (Right or Left)

This one is clearly scientific. SLPs are officially more likely to be left handed than the general population. The world average is 5-10% of the population and we hit a full quarter. A creative bunch? One needs to be creative to come up with a way to make teaching children gerunds fun and effective. "Jumping. She is JUMPing. Jumping!"

Question 5: How did you do in school? What was the lowest grade you have ever received since the beginning of undergrad?

This was a lot of analysis for, what looked to my extremely trained eye (sarcasm), to be inconclusive. Perhaps I should have asked for the second lowest grade ever since we all have that one that haunts us - or that could just be me.

Question 6: Did/Do you play the French Horn?

Maybe all that left-handedness is paying off - only 23% of SLPs (surveyed) find music only in their souls compared to 49% of the "general" population. The french horn and wind instruments are appear especially popular. Does anyone have a joke about SLPs and our affinity for wind instruments/long tubes?

Did anyone fit the whole profile?

Yes! One person fit the entire profile of an SLP: first born, late delivered, left-handed, over-achieving, french horn player!

There was a close second as well that hit all the criteria but plays some other wind instrument.

Question 7: What did you get for Christmas?
Nerdiness all around. I don't feel like analyzing this one but it looks like everyone (SLP and Non) likes to get children's books for Christmas.

Question 8: Tell me something terribly nerdy/neurotic
This question was optional and SLPs were primarily the only ones to offer something up (except my former OT-roomie). Here are a few choice submissions:
"For my 10th birthday (or so) party, I wrote a schedule, timed to the quarter hour, and got somewhat upset when things didn't go according to plan..."

"Well, I think I have become even more last minute than ever before since I started this program. I've pulled more all-nighters and have had more coffee (to the point where my tolerance is crazy). These are indicators that I am one of the more relaxed people in class. I just wanna be a good SLP. BEST NEWS I HEARD RECENTLY: MARKS DON'T MATTER FOR JOBS. WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME LEVEL mouhahahah (hehe)"

"I would not call myself a keener or particularly uptight, although I absolutely HATE listening to someone speak when they have excess saliva/mucous/phlegm in their throat and won't clear it."

"I remember in grade 7, I got a B- for my French spelling (I am a terrible speller!) and I started to cry and when a boy named S.P. who had a crush on me asked me why I actually yelled at him that I got a B- and universities didn't accept people that got B-'s. I have never told anyone that story." Woops, now you told the whole internets.

"I won the "Too Keen For School Award". Nuff said."

"I have to eat my peanut butter from the jar in flat lines... can't just scoop a spoonful out and leave it. Also I got stressed out by choose-your-own-ending books for the exact same reason as you!"

The Red Deer "Scene"

2012-01-15T17:09:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I compromise - even though I would rather stay in an play Rumoli with some friends and have some good chats over nickels I'll agree to the clubs now and then. Besides, dancing is good for your soul (if you're doing it for you). The reason going to the bars is not really my scene is because I'm generally not going to meet the kind of people I would prefer to spend time with there nor would I be able to talk to them or the people I go with anyway.

Between the four of us we rules out every bar in the city before we even left the house. One refused to party downtown and another doesn't do country (very limiting in this town) and dated a bouncer at the one and only real dance club I have ever even heard of here. So we went to The Vat. This was probably the first and only time I have or will ever find metal/screamo refreshing but it was. It was the first time I glimpsed the grunge crowd in Red Deer and there was enough long hair in the room to make a new fur coat for Snuffy - and that was just the men. The floor was sticky, the waitresses were rude and the lights were tacky - and some young'uns bought us drinks.

When our late-20s eardrums could take no more we compromised and convinced The Skip to chance Bellini's - bouncer or no bouncer for a little dancing. Well the temperature in that club was sweat-inducing and I'm pretty sure it was all of the menopause in the room. Not once have I been to the most "happening" place in a city with fairly current dance music and found myself between groups of 18 year olds dressed like Jersey Shore wannabes and a pack of 60-somethings trying to shake what their mommas gave them....a while ago. Overall a pretty fun night but, if (when) you come visit me let's stay in and play rumoli and talk about the big life questions.

Edmonton: A New Arrival

2012-01-14T19:55:00.000-05:00

Last weekend was spent in Edmonton getting to know the city and celebrating the arrival of another SLPeep, Miss Does-it-Weller (or DIW). She is officially all moved in just 3 floors above ShanWow - running the stairs in PJs felt like a trip back to residence but without having to hold my breath while walking through the bad-smelling floor or the communal bathrooms. ShanWow and DIW worked hard to come up with a list of all kinds of Edmonton activities to explore the city - a large percentage of them involving yummy food/drink.

Friday night we immediately set out for a frozen lake to strap some thin blades to our feet and skate around more-or-less-gracefully. Saturday ShanWow and I took a brisk walk by the riverfront while DIW got some shut eye.

DIW really needed some sleep after the move so we entertained ourselves for a while.

For a pretty long time....

After we dragged DIW out of bed ShanWow patiently directed me and Otto to the Old Strathcona market for some local goodness. I found some lovely pesto, DIW bought all kinds of flower-flavoured jellies (stomach-turn) and ShanWow tried to steal some Ghanaian peanut soup. After a hard day of perusing we ventured to Dream Tea for some tapioca infused tastiness then hit up the organic food market where I picked up some PEANUT BUTTER PUFFINS (why, red deer, do you only have plain and cinnamon? why?!?) and a toothbrush made of old yogurt containers. SOLD. A shopping spree on Whyte Ave ensued and then the long anticipated Ethiopian cuisine!

If you aren't into Ethiopian or have never had it that multi-coloured palate of mush might not look appetizing but I promise you that Ethiopians make some of the most splendid and flavourful mushes out there and you get to eat it with your hands by tearing off pieces of flat (and tangy) injera bread and scooping it up. What are you waiting for?? Try some! We spent the evening stuffing out faces with food whose names we did not pronounce correctly (always get the cabbagey one though!) and speculating about the odds of two families who didn't know each other - we're almost positive they didn't know each other - both with an adopted African and Asian child each dining at the same small joint at the same time.

For good measure we all got our yoga on the next morning and I actually enjoyed it. Even the hippie dippy aromatherapy "bonus" at the end. My core felt stronger for days until it faded because I stopped exercising. Did I mention that it is frigid here?

Since The Duchess, Edmonton's finest French bakerie with scrumptious lattes, was closed (gr) we headed straight to West Ed (what "people-in-the-know" call The West Edmonton Mall) for some Viet food (go salad rolls!) and more bubble tea. The purpose of the trip was more colourful Anthro tights for me and tapioca pearls for home plus some pineapple coconut buns for snacking. Oh T&T how I love you.

We parted and I drove home with a happy heart and a very full bladder (but a not-so-full gas tank requiring a pit-stop on the way for emptying one and filling the other). Come join us in Edmonton - we're oh so fun*.

*I'll work on the slogan.

Yellow Tights

2012-01-08T22:15:00.000-05:00

Anthropologie has released (and since un-released!!) lovely opaque tights which I have started to collect. Lavender first. Then Mustard as a surprise from the lovely and thoughtful ShanWow. Today - red and forest green, both on sale from the last of the batch. Why anthro? Why?!?! On New Years Eve I paired my grey calvin klein dress with my brown leather boots and the mustard tights. Oh, did I love that outfit. The tights were similar to these:

http://lookbook.nu/look/233790-watch-me

These are the names I got at the New Years party (well, I went to two - the comments only came from one)
-big bird
-mustard tights (well...yes)
-Simpson legs
-jaundiced

Some of those were quite clever. It didn't get me down - I still love my richly coloured legs and can't wait to try the forest green with my mustard & ivory (anthro) dress tomorrow at work.

A Year in Books (2011)

2012-01-02T03:11:00.000-05:00

For a few years now I have been tracking every book that I read on goodreads.com. It gives me a sense of satisfaction to check the book off my list, keeps list of "want-to-reads" to inspire me, and provides statistics about the year's reading. A few weeks ago I realized that if I got my read-on I could beat my 2009 record of 33 books that year. 2010 had an abysmal 14 books so we won't go there. Did I make the goal??? No. Life caught up to me and I tied with 2009 at 33 books - if I had rallied I could have surpassed because I have another book sitting 7/8ths complete by my bedside.

So what did I read? Did any of it impact me? How do the stats look?

Number of Books Read (2011): 33
Total Number of Pages Read: 11053 (29 more pages than 2009)
Most Read Author: Bill Bryson - 6 of his books and the 7th is nearly complete. He tends to have two types of books 1) Travel books with witty lines and apt observations. My favourite so far in this category would be The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America. 2) Then he turns it around and writes beautifully researched books about history with a few comedic quips for good measure but generally just lots of information presented in a readable way. The fave from this category was At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Longest: Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. This also took me the longest to complete as the first half was completed in Kenya where my book was subsequently stolen (and likely unappreciated!) and the second half was tackled on Canadian soil. It isn't easy to get one's hands on Can-Lit while traveling.

Best Read of 2011:
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth
by Kenneth Cain, Andrew Thomson, and Heidi Postlewait

3 perspectives - 5 conflicts. How young, idealistic humans found themselves cleaning up after the great genocides of the 1990s and how the UN went wrong.
I read this book while traveling in Kenya (a country that borders on Somalia) and learned so much about where good intentions alone will get us. Not a light-hearted read but a definite must for anyone who considers themselves a "global citizen" (please for give the cliche, I gagged a bit when typing it).

Best Fiction Read of 2011:
The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
I want to like Doug. I really really want to like it. I DO like him. But the books I was expecting to blow me away could barely blow out a birthday candle. The Gum Thief was an unexpected gem, one that I had not heard of nor developed any expectations. I cared about the characters.

Most Disappointing Read of 2011:
My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
by Jill Bolte Taylor
I'm stingy with my top rating of 5 stars, giving no books this year just one star although 5 books received only two stars. I had high hopes for this book; I watched the TED Talk while baking bread and was highly intrigued. Her story is fascinating - she even makes some very thought-provoking points - and then she rambles on like a new-age hippie for the second half of the book. It isn't as much about her recovery process as her new spirituality. Grain of Salt: tons of other people love this book and I'm heartless.

Oldest Read of 2011:
The Screwtape Letters
by C.S. Lewis - published in 1942
No, I'm not that in to Christianity but good ol' C.S. speaks to me. So much of what he wrote just tapped into human nature anyway and could be completely removed from spirituality. Try some Lewis! You might like him.

Recap 2011: This year I traveled across the American states with both Jack Kerouac and Bill Bryson - first with youthful indulgence then with humour. Mr. Bryson also brought me to the UK, Australia, back in time to Shakespeare, into an 16th century British home and right back to the big bang. I thought about my own role as one person in this big world while reading Emergency Sex and learned that things are never how they appear in Africa in It's Our Turn to Eat. I sympathized with the plight of street children in Ask me Why I Hurt and found myself unable to sympathize with a the selfish and frustrating Corinne Hofmann (author of The White Masai). Through books I felt a hint of the frustration that black women would have felt living in the American South in the 1960s but just a hint. Dave Cullen revealed the real motives and the real plan behind Columbine in the best surprise read of 2011. And over and over again I examined what it meant to be human, to be an individual and to live in the time and place in which I am.

What was your Best Read of 2011?

The Whole Bibliography:
5 Stars:
It's Our Turn to Eat by Michaela Wrong
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures (see above)
4 Stars:
At Home: A short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson
Ask me Why I Hurt by Randy Christensen
The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The White Masai by Corinne Hofmann
Columbine by Dave Cullen
The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner by Dean Karnazes
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher
3 Stars:
One Hundred Names for Love by Diane Ackerman
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Plain Truth by Jodi Picoult
The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way by Bill Bryson
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America by Bill Bryson
In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture by Douglas Coupland *Last Book Finished in 2011*
Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
The Other Brain by Douglas R. Fields
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University by Kevin Roose
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill *Roots is a much better read*
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
2 Stars:
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon
My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
Girlfriend in a Coma by Douglas Coupland

A "Berry" Merry Christmas

2011-12-29T22:24:00.001-05:00

The first time I have ever spent Christmas away from the nuclear family (mom, pops, sister and bro) happened to be in Regina, Saskatchewan - I didn't see that one coming. Not that there is anything wrong with Saskatchewan but I knew missing family Christmas would happen one day but I always pictured it while I was working away in Prague or New Zealand and unable to afford the trek home for the holidays.

My dad's sister, her husband and their 4 delightful progeny were kind enough to host me at the Berry* household with Coco the cat, Peanut the gerbil, three salamanders, one gecko and two underwater frogs for the big day. We ate too much junk food, I tried out their xbox kinect (the first video game that is ACTUALLY a work out - I could barely stick out 3 levels!), fell for the new Zelda game so much that I'm thinking about getting a wii to play it, played some uno, took lots of naps, and exchanged gifts. My mommy shipped me my stocking and I cleaned up with a freshwater pearl necklace, a car safety kit, some cool canvas bags, granola, a cookbook, sweet potato & cinnamon muffin mix, and - so that I'm not the only one in my office without one - my very own Fossil purse!

And now a lesson - the second you can afford not to use the greyhound you will suddenly be too good for the greyhound. 12 hours there, 15 hours back - bus limit reached!. I sat with my legs cramped dreaming of my very own Otto, right in my driveway. Driving would have allowed me to stop and explore all the dinky little towns along the way that called to me from the loser-cruiser. The roommate was kind enough to check in on a regular basis regarding the attachment of my head to my body.

And a bit of a rant about the bus system - definitely not built for comfort. Just a few hours outside regina you will be kicked off the bus in a place called Swiftcurrent. The bus depot was "conveniently" built in an industrial park with no other sources for nourishment than their very own restaurant. And what a restaurant it was. $10 for a juice, a soggy ceasar salad (alliteration!) and a grilled cheese on organ-preserving white bread with rubber "cheese" inside served in a cafeteria. The worst part was all of the old people sitting around commenting on the fantastic quality of the food. I would hate to know what most of them eat on a regular basis. Fine. Swiftcurrent is small. Calgary should be better right? Nope. The same set up on a larger scale - nothing outside but warehouses - nothing inside but expensive fried food. AND there is no bus schedule posted (electronic or otherwise) so if one wants to know what time one's bus leaves or from which platform (which your ticket will not tell you) you must wait in line at the ticket/information counter in order to inquire.

*Spelling of last name changed because my aunt is fairly paranoid ;

Tasty Houses

2011-12-21T22:14:00.002-05:00

We made houses for cookie people and then ATE THOSE HOUSES. Just joking - I plan to eat it for Christmas. A fun little quirk of the cafe in our hospital is that they make extra dough for various sweet treats and then sell it to the staff at the hospital. This time of year you can pick up gingerbread and ginger snap doughs (as well as sugar cookie dough and pie crust). Taking the easy way out I and two friends at work got ourselves some raw cookie junk and made three little personalized edible houses. Every time I start a project like this I feel like "Ok Martha, this can't be that hard" and I end up feeling like a kindergarten student by the end painting goopy icing on with my fingers.

B's house reminiscent of Mario's Rainbow Road

My house with skittle walkway (if only....)

Salud's kitschy crooked-but-charming roofed house with marshmallow walkway

B's special "juice"

The mess

The back of my house and an evergreen made of feet

"I can't believe it's not feces" now in gingerbread

Harper's Tangrams

2011-12-15T09:11:00.001-05:00

I get the feeling that Canada doesn't look quite right to PriMordial Stephen Harper. Tangrams were a grade 4 make work activity to develop visuospatial intelligence. (or apparently Wikipedia thinks they are an ancient Chinese puzzle). I'm not going to lie - the idea for this political toon came to me and I was so absorbed in the idea and in trying to get that creepy glint to Harper's eye that I'm not entirely sure it makes sense outside of my own brain.

It is basically a commentary on how I think our Not-so-Prime Minister has the ultimate goal of changing the shape (values, vision, political structure) of Canada to more closely resemble the United States. And he just creeps me out. Yes, I realize the tangrams don't include the territories but I think Harper's USA-shaped-Canada would not include them I am sad to say (unless, of course, the primary industries are blown wide open up there).

We Were All Thinking It

2011-12-14T23:18:00.001-05:00

There have been two big uproars in the normally internationally ignored Canadian political front. The first came earlier this week (as no surprise) when the conservative government officially withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol. This move took a swift chunk right out of Canada's world image and brought it another step closer to the conservative's ultimate plan of an America shaped Canada. Honestly, some of the the conservative government's reasons for pulling out even make sense on the surface: we can't hit the targets without damaging the Canadian economy, none of the other big polluters have to do it! (waaaah), they have a better plan, we shouldn't have signed it in the first place. Yes, the economy is important. Ours is one of the only economies in the "west" not looking directly into the crapper and, of course, it would be nice to keep it that way. No, the US and China did not sign Kyoto. They have a better plan - this one I can't even address except to say - um, yeah right. The point more than Kyoto or not is that we're tarnishing Canada's reputation, we're going back on our word and we're taking the easy way out. I'm tired of feeling like I have to apologize to the world for the behaviour of our current government (thank clothespins I at least did not vote for them).

That brings me to the second media storm: Justin Trudeau calling Environment Minister Peter Kent a "piece of sh*t". The worst part is that he had to apologize. Please. Environment Minister is a puppet post for this government, a mere formality with a good salary. I think this outburst is a sign of the opposition's growing frustration with this insufferable PC cabinet. I say, well done Mr. Trudeau; it isn't like everyone in the room wasn't already thinking it. Could you direct that Harper's way next time?

Ladies with Brooms

2011-12-07T22:46:00.001-05:00

Moving to the West I made a big list of fun times and new experiences. Life-enriching moments if you will. And near the top of that list was Curling. So I joined a fun league and play every Tuesday night. If I say I'm busy Tuesday then I'm sliding down the ice on my "slippy shoe"*. You may be surprised to find out that curling actually requires quite a bit of skill. Lots of that is figuring out how hard to throw the rock, how much to turn it, and how to fall gracefully. I haven't mastered any of those things.

I've even been reading up on the game (I was going to say "sport" but don't want to start any arguments). While on my trip back to TO for graduation I found myself exploring a street near where I was staying and found a box of FREE STUFF. FREE. Just waiting for me at the top was a "Curling for Dummies" book. It was fate.

Some curling terms:
House: the whole bulls-eye painted under the ice
Button: the very middle circle
Draw: to put the rock in the house
Sweep: the crazy action of sweeping really fast in front of the rock in the belief that the harder you sweep the less the rock will "curl" off to one side or another - I'm not yet convinced. But then again, I haven't reached the sweeping chapter in my Dummies book.
Skip: the person on the team who calls all the shots
Hurry hard!!!! what you get to yell as loud as you want to encourage vigorous sweeping

Mostly I enjoy the banter. The cooperativeness (it is a very polite game). And the fact that curling lends itself so well to Happy Gilmore quotes.
"Go home! Are you too good for your home?"
"Just tap it in. Just tap it in. Give the ol' tap tap tapperoo"

Curling is winter's golf: it really does take skill but you can play even if you spend the other 166 hours in the week eating cheetos and watching HD tv. You can also reach your peak at age 67. This sport is my last chance to make the Olympics. Iqaluit 2042 here I come!

*Every time I say or think "slippy shoe" I then begin to sing "damn, that's a slippy shoe. That's a slippy shoe" to myself - it goes to the tune of the "Sexy B*tch** song.
**I don't know why it is always vowels that get starred out in "curse" words. Really, if you want to disguise the word it would be the least effective way to do so since the consonants are more at the heart of most English words. Removing vowels still make many words fairly recognizable when we attempt to slur the consonants together - school = sch-l, pen = pn, flower = flwr. See? Try blocking out random consonants and the words aren't as easy to recognize - ca, reote, awl. Did you guess that those were cab, remote and crawl? It may be better off writing "*itch, or shi*. Ok, swears are still recognizable but there is some doubt and I don't automatically pronounce properly in my head. But swears don't offend me so I don't care either way.

My Alberta Life

2011-12-04T22:39:00.001-05:00

An excerpt from a text convo with my roomie last night (approx 11pm):

Roomie: you still up

Me: Yeah, what's up?

Roomie: want to do me a favour?

Me: Perhaps I could be persuaded. What can I do?

Roomie: you would need to get gun powder out of my vault and bring it here. for that I would take you to jasper or louise.

Me: Interesting. What are you going to do with it?

Roomie: im going to shoot a baby canon with it

That is the first time I have been requested to deliver gun powder and I brought it to the armories. I left the line about jasper/louise in there just to prove it later on. It sounds like quite the lifestyle but if the zombie apocalypse hits I have almost assured safety. My roommate even has a plan: unload the gun cabinet (actually a room), high-tail it to Costco, secure the roof and, bam!, we control the resources and have a great lookout post.

Bonus photo - when I dropped off the gun powder I got a tour of the big weapons.

Speaking of zombie apocalypse, I had a wonderful visit from the Jedi Master and her new hubs, the Eagle. We enjoyed some lovely blooming teas and very bacon-y perogies at Glenn's Tea House. We basically soaked up all the culture in Red Deer. I think, in that instance, we were the culture in town. On top of all of that greatness I got a lovely gift of raw honey crafted by Toronto bees and earned by the Jedi Master and her bee gear.

A Fitting End to November

2011-11-30T22:53:00.001-05:00

My November had little to do with mustaches (except my last post) but a whole lot to do with snow. Perhaps SNOvember would be more accurate (I'm sure that was highly original of me). To cap off the month we got 15cm of snow overnight. Just the chance to test out Otto's new winter boots. I was debating back and forth about whether he deserved/needed such extravagant footwear and today was a confirmation that I made the right grown up choice. I had to drive out to a rural site 30 minutes away on a teeny highway and he gripped like nobody's business. Plus, with the extra control, I had fun throwing out his back end around snowy corners at every opportunity (read: without other drivers around to hit).

Is it wrong to love tires so much? I considered trying to get a photo hugging them but it is cold out and the angle was awkward. Look at THOSE TREADS!!!! LOOK!

Otto has a snowy smile. Without the flash it looks like he's got a bit of Lindsay Lohan going on.

I have been doing all kinds of things that adults who own cars do:

-shoveling the driveway
-using a car wash
-scraping car windows (ALL THE TIME)
-parallel parking
-plugging the car in at night
-checking the weather report to know if I NEED to plug in the car the night before
-filling up the gas tank (wait...the guy who pumps the gas does that)

Also, when I went to drop off my car for the new tires I had to hand over my keys. It was at that moment that I remembered that my keychain says "Pastors of Excellence". Best. Keychain. Ever. I wonder if they noticed....

Wasted Mustaches

2011-11-26T18:09:00.001-05:00

I was on mustache watch today. So many quality lip furs and I'm pretty sure the growers were not even aware of Movember. The 'staches were a matter of personal style and most likely not going to charity. The Innisfail horse auction today was prime upper-lip caterpillar spotting. And it was pretty good for scoping out horses. Every time I drive out to Innisfail - I cover the small hospital and longterm care facility there once a week - I hear this older gentleman rambling on the radio about coming on down to the Innisfail auction for "red geranium back heifers" or "1.90 calves for the best price all year" or whatever he is saying. He is officially the worst person at making radio commercials. Except that it worked and spent my Saturday afternoon at a horse auction. It was difficult not to bid considering I could have gotten myself a mini horse for $100! Plus, there was a real auctioneer with the fast-talkin and the deal-makin and the gavel-hittin.

This is Angel. She is 10. She was so sweet. I believe she went for $650.

Showin' off the horse skills. Look! You can even lasso a cow on this one!

Sadly, none of the mustachioed men made it into my photos.

Time for Bridge Nights and 4pm Dinners

2011-11-14T19:55:00.001-05:00

Every few years I feel as if I have hit the "adult" phase of my life. The first time was at the age of 12 when my mother would not let me do whatever I so chose and had to tell her where I was going and with whom. How could she treat my grown-up self like that? Then I moved off 8 hours away from my family to do my undergrad and, in my second year, rented a townhouse with three friends. I was sure that I had definitely found adulthood - I mean, I had to BUY MY OWN GROCERIES and cook and manage my own time. Clearly adult-like things. Of course, those parents of mine were still more or less covering the bill. Fast forward to the beginning of grad school. Surely I was an adult now. I was paying for my life with student loans and parental funds however funds to be repaid this time.

Negatory. I am NOW an adult. How do I know? There are three main ways:
1) I make my own money and if I spend it all on a $200 purse before my next paycheck then I have to eat Ramen for the rest of the week. Getting on my feet, even making decent dollahz, means that I am living more or less paycheck to paycheck.
2) A good chunk of my paycheck goes to lame things. 1/4 is auto-dropped down on loans. Do you know how many new fossil purses I could be buying with that money? Dresses at Anthropologie? Tickets to Cuba*?
My car also sucks the dinero right out of me. Thanks to the premature blizzards (november?! Really?!?) my car now demands expensive new rubber shoes with all kinds of special "grooves" and "treads" that I don't understand but apparently need. Oh, and it needs a timer so it knows when to start heating up. Oh, and I have to be an adult and go out in the cold to actually plug the car in.
3) My conversations with friends involve lame things and, guess what, I enjoy it! My time in Toronto with friends I haven't seen in way too long was spent talking about loans and saving for the future and down-payments and investments and the importance of 0% financing. Don't worry though, I believe we still talked about bowel movements schedules being interrupted by new jobs.

How did you know you were an adult?

*Ok, it isn't SO much each month to purchase tickets to Cuba in the plural.

Convocation

2011-11-13T21:08:00.001-05:00

After two packed years of grad school I am officially no longer a "Masters of Health Science" candidate but hold the official MHSc. paperwork. To retrieve it I was fortunate enough to get three days off work (plus a stat! Thank you Remembrance Day) which I used to fly out to the great Toronto. How much I miss Toronto (Tronno) could be a whole new post. It is a city that gets a bad rap around the country (and Mayor Ford is doing NOTHING to help this) but those people clearly have not lived in the downtown core and experienced all that the city can offer when one does not have the stress of driving in that monstrous videogame (10 points for the garbage can! 30 points for dodging that biker!).

For conVAcation on Tuesday evening my parents and two friends from home (plus their tiniest dude who turned one that very day!) made the drive to watch me wear a silly robe in front of over 1000 people. I felt very loved. Here are some photos of me becoming a master.

A gaggle of lovely classmates

Me and Obama

Introducing Hi-C, ShanWow and Katie V, MHSc. (all)

Thank you, UofT

Chilling with RoRoW and others in Convocation Hall

Overly intelligent people in silly robes

Hi-C and the Golden Sceptre (possible children's book?)

Paddy - thumbs up to the crowds?

More golden sceptre

Me and the padres. Can we tell that it was humid in Toronto? Point for Red Deer: optimal hair conditions

I'll (not) Be Home for Christmas

2011-11-06T23:29:00.003-05:00

See what I did there? Clever, eh? Even if the sentence becomes a slightly Brit way of saying things. Moving way out here I had known that not going home with my family for the holidays would be a possibility this year with me being the noob at work I was not expecting first dibs on vacation time. And I was right. But not even that - this year we get 4 days off in a row due to when Christmas falls. Knowing this I decided to at least TRY to get home. This time it was the airlines that crushed my dreams. Thank you Westjet and Air Canada for a lonely Christmas due to your greed. To get my sorry butt to my parents's house for the big day was going to run me around $1700! Yep, you read that right. To fly in my OWN COUNTRY. Let me remind you that it cost me less to fly to Nairobi, Kenya just this summer. Add to that kidney-punch of a price the flights are at the most inconvenient times giving me barely 48 hours with the famjam. Let's break that down: 1700/48 = $35.42 per hour to hang out with my family. If you include time wasted sleeping then it gets up to about $65/hour. After a realistic and very adult conversation with my mother on the phone tonight we mutually agreed that, while sad, we would not be lining neither Air Ebeneezer's nor ScroogeJet's coffers this season.

Fear not, dear friends! I had a few very kind offers from friends and co-workers in the area for some company over the holidays but the best offer so far has been to head over to Regina and spend it with my Aunt and Uncle and their 4 cool kiddos (shout out!). So maaaaaybe I spoke to soon about where my money would be going but perhaps not. Tickets are still pricey at about $800 (if I'm lucky) to do the Regina thing by air so my cheap cheap heart has been considering a $166 greyhound ticket. I thought my bussin' days were behind me but that saved $600 could go to new shoes.....or my loans. So looks like I'll probably be packing some good books and my ipod and hunkering down for a long winter's nap in a chair covered in stained 80s fabric.

Sneaky, Sneaky Chapters

2011-11-05T19:47:00.002-04:00

So - I went to Chapters last weekend on a whim. Not that big of a whim because I wander around that store rarely buying anything at least once a week. So maybe it should read "I went to Chapters last weekend on schedule". Set up near the front of the store was a table with a young dude and some books displayed in an obvious "I wrote this book and I'mma sign it for you" kinda way. So I approached because I can't resist a book. It turned out to be a graphic novel which is rarely how I roll but it got me thinking: Hey, my sister likes all this jazz. DING DING! Christmas! It was all dark and foreboding looking with a razor on the front and black used a lot. I flipped through it and it had werewolves and guns and generally seediness and angst. Perfect! Sister will love it! Plus the dude mentioned that it was already in the works to become a movie. Not only would I be giving my sister a novel I think she would enjoy it was about to become extra cool and she could say that she liked it "before it was cool" which is what every hipster wants*. Excited I texted her to say that I had found part of her Christmas gift and golly gee whiz would she ever like it.

Flash forward to this weekend: I grab the book off my shelf to sneakily read a chunk and see what it is like when I spotted the dedication at the front. "This book is dedicated to every soul still searching for the Truth, the Life, and the Way. Oh no you didn't. I quickly scanned my brain - there had to be some other reference that would use that line than John 4:16 (ie. the bible). But in my heart I knew. I flipped through the book more carefully hoping to allay my fears but e'erbody be wearin a CROSS! This be a Christian graphic novel. My sister don't really roll that way (and we know from previous posts that neither do I). Should Chapters not have to post some sort of warning on booths like this? Or hide the table in the religious section? I guess not in Red Deer you don't.

Thank goodness sister has a sense of humour so we had a good chuckle over text when I broke it to her that the "totally amazing and right up her alley gift" likely would not be all I had made it out to be. She said she'd take it anyway - apparently a graphic novel is a graphic novel. Plus I have to hand it to the dude - the drawings are pretty wicked.

*I should clarify that my sister isn't really a hipster. But I think everyone appreciates being able to slightly arrogantly claim to have "known about [insert pop culture reference here] before it became cool" every once in a while.

What's In a Name

2011-11-01T20:50:00.000-04:00

My given name is Katie. I assure that that is my full name. You can look at my birth certificate (although, let's be honest, if you were going to fake a form of Canadian legal identification this would be the one - it looks so easy!). In fact, people sometimes have such a hard time believing that Katie is not short for anything that I have to whip out the blue-proof-of-my-existence just to shut them up. So, to clarify, my name isn't Catherine/Katherine, Caitlyn (or any variant thereof), Kathleen or Frederick. Just Katie.

It is a pretty solid name and I have no complaints but I do sometimes wish I had a longer, more sophisticated (read: grown up) name to fall back on. With this in mind I had the epiphany that I could be whomever I chose when I moved to Red Deer so I set out to be Kate. Just to test the waters. To get a feel for the name. When in social settings and at work I introduce myself as "Kate" and it is starting to feel less weird. I even answer to it most of the time. The plan hasn't been foolproof because my resume had said Katie and so my coworkers were expecting someone by that name. Some have made the transition and others haven't but I don't correct anyone. It is my name after all and I don't really notice. And - woops - my name tag at work says Katie so it is about 50/50 what I will get called. What feels the strangest to the point that I just can't really say it with a serious face is my full name with Kate instead of Katie (ie with my last name). It just has a different flow and doesn't have the same ring that one feels after 26 years of using the same name. So if you come to Red Deer you can still call me Katie but you might hear me introduce myself as Kate. Who knows how long this will last. What I have learned so far is that I like using Kate at work when introducing myself to clients but that there really isn't anything wrong with Katie and I think I like my name even more now.

Anyone else ever try to transition to a new name (or variant of your given name)? Whether moving to a new place or not.

Time to "Gopher" an Adventure

2011-10-30T17:19:00.001-04:00

I'm so witty.

The purpose of this is multi-fold. 1) To make you incredibly jealous of my adventures. 2) To show you that if you come to visit me I bring it. 3) To demonstrate the somewhat backwardness of this region of Canada.

ShanWow came down this weekend to the Deer and boy did I have some plans for us. Especially getting to bed nice and early on Friday night. So we could be up for adventure on Saturday....of course. The only thing that could have made Saturday better would have been me offering waffles and bacon for breakfast instead of lame-toast. But you can't win them all. We jumped into Otto and sped* off to the Red Deer craft show at Westerner Park.

Back up. I forgot one of the most exciting parts of the weekend. ShanWow arrived on the G'Hound at approx 830pm Friday night. Having yet to go to the station myself I used the ol'GPS to get there and, since her bus was late, pulled into the Dairy Queen across the street to wait (with a Blizzard). Things were dandy, we enjoyed some soft serve and then it was time to head home. Looking both ways I pulled out of the parking lot and made it about 30 feet when it simultaneously dawned on ShanWow to ask "This isn't a ONE WAY STREET is it?". Then sensory overload as I processed her question, the cars coming at me from the incorrect direction and the flashing Po-po lights in my rear-view mirror. Pulling into the nearest parking lot to wait for the officers. They are EVERYWHERE! And sneaky! This was my very first time being pulled over and my first time having to present my license and registration to a uniformed civil servant. I blame the poor signage. Although I played up my newness to Red Deer and they let me off with a friendly reminder that the downtown of the city is a maze of one-way streets.

Now back to the craft show. It was pretty darn cool. AND we bought things because we have jobs and money. And you couldn't elbow someone without damaging an unborn child. I swear to pumpkin milkshakes that every woman in Red Deer is reproducing. If the world is over-populated I have found the culprit. Government - if you're looking for a place to do top-secret medical testing this might be the place. But I walked out happy with some emu lip balm and a new children's book to add to my collection. Technically I buy a kid's book in any place that I travel but since moving here counts as an adventure and it was published by Red Deer Press AND the illustrator was there to SIGN IT I feel like this was a boon for me. I am now the proud owner of Tiger's New Cowboy Boots.

The craft show was just the opener though. Did you know that if you drive south 45 minutes to Olds, hang a louis and keep on going for another half hour you will find the jewel of the prairies? I'm using the term jewel metaphorically of course to represent the Torrington Gopher Museum. Since the moment I hear about this place I knew it would be awesome and, since ShanWow also has great taste, I saved it for her visit. Much to our dismay we found online that the museum was only open June to September. GASP! Do not fear fair readers - we decided to call *just in case*. We were rewarded for our tenacity, too. Who should pick but Diane, a curator of sorts for this magnificent display and she informed us that, with enough notice (meaning at least 3 minutes and 39 seconds needed for her to walk across town) she would open the museum for visitors throughout the year if we just "gave her a dingle" on her home phone. The rest of the story can be told pictographically.

Clem, the town mascot

Every hydrant here has a personality

We stopped for lunch.

Pizza N' More "Eh" has a monopoly on the local fuel market

We gave Diane a dingle and she met us at the museum. We took up the parking lot.

She asked if we wanted to wear the gopher head. Need she even ask???

Of course this was not all I had in store. The rest of the evening was spent making gnocchi from scratch then eating said gnocchi. We turned on Hocus Pocus (who doesn't love a buck-toothed Bette Midler and an air-headed Sarah Jessica Parker sucking the souls out of children?) and carved pumpkins until out hearts were full of Halloween spirit.

*I feel like a rebellious hooligan driving my usual 10km over the speed limit here.

Let's Talk About Food

2011-10-27T22:15:00.002-04:00

Since moving here I have been a bit lazy on the food front. Attempting to remedy that I headed down to that local, organic, hormone-free, had-a-happy-life butcher, picked up some chickpeas at the store and whipped up an old favourite. One of my very favourite things that my dad makes is chickpea meatloaf. How hard could it be? Not that hard except when the recipe says you need a food processor you should probably have a food processor and not improvise with a blender and a fork for smooshing rogue chickpeas. In the end, though, it was more than edible (although a bit chunky and not as good as my dad's). To top that off I baked some coffee bread but ended up with my worst batch so far. My excuses, I've decided, are going to be 1) it is a new oven with which I am not familiar to explain away the uncooked centre of one of the loaves, and 2) I didn't put enough flour in and the bread ended up disappointingly flattish.

Upsidedown mushy meat brick and an oh-so-tasty-one at that

And since we're on the topic of food I have decided to be a bit of a self-made human Zagat guide to Red Deer. Let's be honest, someone needs to do it. Since it is early in the "DapperDame Eats Red Deer Zagat" my focus has mainly been on the "ethnic" cuisine. Skipping over Italian because "East Side Mario's" isn't ethnic.

Here is the list online under "Ethnic" that I will be eating my way through + reviews:

East SideMario's Italian Eatery 2004-50 Ave. Red Deer - NOT ETHNIC....but I have eatenhere. It tasted like carbs.

Las Palmeras Mexican Restaurant 3630-50 Ave. Red Deer - This place has the prices of aschwanky pub but the look of a diner. It is missing that cheesy charm ofthe traditional Mexican restaurant and the lights are not dimis-that-a-drug-deal-going-down-in-the-corner-or-a-jukebox that is the typicalbackdrop for Mex food. What it lacks in cheesy-charm it makes up forinside its enchiladas. Seriously. One visit and I'm already in arut: do I get the enchilada again because I *know* it is awesome or trysomething else that *could* be awesome? - 4/5 tastebuds agree this place isworth the visitLucky's Lounge

Pho Thuy Dong Vietnamese Restaurant 5108-52 St. Red Deer - Looks just like any other vietrestaurant inside including requisite lucky cat statues and fish tank full ofangry creatures. A restaurant that would be hardly memorable were I stillin Toronto I know my selection is limited and I would definitely return. Plus they try hard and give a bit extra. Order the lychee juice andthey will put whole, fresh, peeled lychee in your drink to give it flair. Not the place to go if you don't eat animals. After asking for thevegetarian menu I was told anything could be made "vegetarian". Halfway through a good, if not a bit bland, pho it came out that thebroth was chicken broth. Woops. No puffy fried tofu either (but youcan't blame them for not serving it - the market might not be there in beefcountry). Big props for the variety of perfectly steamed veggies in thepho. 3/5 tastebuds.

Red CityDonair & Pita - Theminiature downtown core actually houses 3 donair (read: shawarma) restaurants. The first I wandered in to was slow and as I waited to try what they wereoffering I glanced at the condiment selection and was left disappointed. I decided to take my chances somewhere else and stumbled upon Red City. Not only was the pita dude extremely friendly the chicken shawarma waspretty darn good. The chicken was the best quality I have seen in ashawarma place. My decision to order was made up when I spied the neonpink pickled turnips that keep me going back to middle eastern restaurants. Even though I specified "everything" the gentleman left out theturnip and was surprised when I requested it specifically. Go to RedCity, get a dang chicken shawarma and risk it - order the pickled turnip! 4/5 tastebuds

Wok Box 5250-22 St. Red Deer - Ihave fallen for this one twice. Mostly because I love Asian food of(almost) all types and this place is right in my view. Let's not foolourselves though - 'tis a chain. The pad thai is tasty and flavourful andNOT PAD THAI. Not in the least. Not a hint of tamarind and, in my mind,the tamarind makes the pad (or the thai?). If you have yet to eat PadThai (or any asian dish for that matter) do not try it for the first timehere. The chicken teriyaki was better but perhaps I'm just lessfamiliar with what it SHOULD taste like. - 2/5 tastebuds....er....1.5tastebuds

Alberta Adventure: Drumheller Edition

2011-10-23T23:37:00.002-04:00

From the town of Red Deer one can drive to Drumheller (read: dinosaur capital of Canada) in 1.5 hours. Since moving here I have wanted to check this place out and today my roommate and I took the drive. The town is obviously proud of their cretaceous heritage and one cannot go 100 metres without yet ANOTHER statue of a dinosaur. Although, the triceratops is sadly under-represented. Today was a big day as I stood beneath the WORLD'S LARGEST T-REX STATUE. Jealous? I left a car in there for scale. That t-rex would eat the ones in Jurassic Park as a snack.

The town is also home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum - a pretty swanky joint with all kinds of dinosaur fossils and exhibits including a wicked look at what snorkeling could have been a billion years ago. Let me tell you - a little freaky.

The other thing that Drum is most famoso for is the BADLANDS. Sounds like a place where bandits hang out to rob unsuspecting tourists. In fact, it would be the perfect place to do this if this weren't Canada and a giant tourist circuit. It is quite beautiful and one of the big sources of fossils.

And the tall rocks with caps on are called Hoo Doos. Pronounced exactly like it is spelled. Can you get over those blue skies? The colours of the prairies, especially as the sun sets, still blow me away too.

The Things (That Make Us Who We Are)

2011-10-16T17:43:00.002-04:00

Since 2007 our family has lost three very special people: grandparents to me, parents to my parents, a brother to my great aunts and uncles. For each of them I wrote a post trying to summarize a life: Nonno, Nana, and Grandpa Les. But before this blog our family lost Grandma Maggie. She was one of the toughest woman I've known - she could hunt and fish, she raised 6 kids, and she could really bake. One of the biggest impacts she has had on me though, she'll never know.

2007, after finishing my undergrad in business and realizing that it was the last thing I wanted to do with my life I took a year off. I worked at an employment office. I save money. I used all of that money to travel to South America for three months on my own and learn Spanish. I shadowed an SLP and decided then that I could do that and I could like it. 4 years since - I worked to save money, spent a year at UWO getting the prerequisites and applying for the program, and after, thankfully, getting in on my first try, I spent two years in Toronto earning a Masters of Health Science. Now I can put things like MHSc., R.SLP and SLP(C) after my name. I collect letters.

The program at the University of Toronto is set up so that the first year lays a foundation and centres around child language development; the second year addresses acquired communication disorders and focuses primarily on adults. From my Grandma Maggie I already knew two things: 1) I wanted to help adults with communication disorders; 2) I was terrified that I would not be able to do it.

When my grandmother was still quite young a despicable disease started to slowly steal things from her - balance, coordination, the ability to walk, care for herself and even her speech. We eventually found out that she suffered from Progressive Supranuclear Palsy or PSP. Her speech became increasingly difficult to understand and, while they tried communication devices, the technology at the time was not as advanced and she had limited control of her hands with which to use the devices. After two years of study I now know that her speech was a mixture of Hypokinetic, Spastic and Ataxic* dysarthrias; all three fighting against her intelligibility. At the time, as a 10 year old, all I knew was that I couldn't understand what she was saying and I felt so guilty for not understanding her and too afraid to ask her to repeat herself for fear of hurting her feelings that I was afraid to talk to my own grandmother. That isn't easy to admit and I'm not saying it to hurt anyone's feelings but to be honest. To this day I feel badly about my 10 year old self and wish that I had spent more time with her being patient and admitting when I couldn't understand.

So that is where both my fear and motivation came from. I so badly wanted (and still want) to help adults with language and speech disorders communicate with their loved ones and improve their quality of life. I was also apprehensive that as soon as I was met with a client with a significant speech disorder I would discover that I could not understand them and that conversations would be exercises in frustration for both of us. That didn't happen. It didn't happen because I now knew to take the time to listen. I know now strategies to help people get their message across. And I discovered that I am often quite good at deciphering difficult speech. Now when I have clients with nearly-unintelligible speech my initial reaction is still a lump in my stomach but I remind myself that I now know what to do and set out to help them in any way I can. Thanks Grandma Maggie.

*Almost all speech disorders distort the pronunciation of speech sounds. On top of this, each unique type of dysarthria impact different subsections of the speech system to decrease intelligibility.
Hypokinetic Dysarthria: Often associated with Parkinson's Disease, this speech disorder makes it difficult to initiate speech and often causes people to speak in short, fast bursts at low volumes.
Spastic Dysarthria: This type of dysarthria causes a strained or strangled voice quality, slow speech, and a monotonous prosody.
Ataxic Dysarthria: this is a result of damage to the cerebellar system. Speech is often reported to sound "drunk". Sufferers have a difficult time coordinating speaking and breathing (something we take for granted all the time) and develop a tremor to the voice. Speech sounds become further distorted and speakers often have pitch breaks and uncontrolled volume changes.

Redneck Thanksgiving

2011-10-10T00:11:00.000-04:00

If it weren't for guns I would probably have been fairly lonely this Thanksgiving. That is a line I never imagined typing. Until today I had never even been near a gun but my roommate and his friends are in the reserves and have quite the collection of firearms. We headed out early this morning with a few vehicles full of guns and a bunch of guys with army nicknames - I didn't even have to come up with my own blog nicknames! Chachi, G, Fatboy and I headed out to Cookie's parent's farm to kill some zombies. Cookie's family was sweet and welcoming and even offered all of us turkey with all the scrumptious trimmins'.

Most of this can be best shown in a photo montage.

Lookin for a beaver

Found his dam. Target identified (ps. no beavers were harmed in the making of this Thanksgiving)

It looks so hardcore. I have no idea what kind of gun that is.

Another crazy looking weapon. I also tried a shotgun. And I'm pretty sure I never once hit a target.

Main targets: zombies

Lighting fires to set off the propane tanks

Apparently a propane tank won't just burst into flames if you shoot it - it needs to be in close proximity to a fire

And the whole stump is now gone

What was left of one of the 6 propane tanks (only 3 were ever recovered)

Shooting water bottles mid-air

Whiskey the horse

So now I have tried guns. I can't say that they are my "thing" but it was an interesting experience - I'm glad I did it with people who really knew what they were doing. And that the targets were paper. Plus I got to see more of Alberta farm country and it is beautiful. Nothing says thankfulness like a clip full of fresh rounds ;)

Red Deer Update #2

2011-10-08T18:10:00.001-04:00

Three weeks of work down and things are starting to come together. My very first paycheque arrived magically in my bank account yesterday. With this money came another momentous occasion: my very first OSAP loan payment! Any money I put on my loan until March of 2012 comes right off the ol'principle. BAZINGA! This has definitely been an adventure in adulthood (is that an oxymoron?). Today I finally located a place to cater to all of my hormone-free, free range, local, carnivorous needs at the Big Bend adorable-little-shop-inside-a-box-store. They carry locally produced organic milk for my cereal pleasure aussi. Actually, even if I don't stick 100% to the organic thing I'm hitched to the organic milk train even though organic milk tastes *funny*. It is still a bit of a shock to my taste buds every morning but I persist. Of course, I haven't even tried non-organic Alberta milk so perhaps conservative cows just make weird-tasting milk and the organicness isn't even a factor. A mystery I have yet to solve.

Organic, local milk: check
Hormone-free, local, free range dead animal muscle tissue for consumption: check
Homemade hummus in a variety of interesting flavours: check check! A local dude makes "Humble Hummus" and my lunches now centre around his chickpea mush concoctions.

Even though Alberta is growing on me (I've signed up for a gym, curling starts on Tuesday, work is still enjoyable) I am looking forward to my trip back east (ok, back "central") from Nov 8-12th. The flight has been book and money is being saved for a trip to Anthropologie.

Otto-Bus

2011-09-26T21:04:00.000-04:00

The car has a name: Otto! I hope I don't have to spell out why this name works so well - not to mention that it is a quirky old man-ish name and my car is kind of like a hipster. So thank you for the suggestions - as JSLPA and SARS were the people who submitted responses right on the blog they will both get a postcard (if you send me your addresses). Others gave me suggestions in other formats and I can't remember who chose the winning name so tough titty (said the kitty).

Otto took me comfortably to Edmonton and back this weekend and did so on a half tank of gas. Half of a small tank I am hoping. A quarter tank got me around 175km. Good, no? Well, I'm going to assume so except I don't actually know how large the tank is yet.

The weekend itself was lovely - Edmonton is a surprisingly beautiful city with so much green space. The H-Burts cooked up a fabulous turkey dins and I stuffed myself then drove home. First expedition just Otto and me - CHECK!

Second Nerd Post of the Week

2011-09-23T21:05:00.002-04:00

Moving to a town of 100 000 people I was already anticipating library disappointment (yes, that is a real thing). It isn't that I don't appreciate a library that tries hard but for two years I had access to the TORONTO public library. 99 branches. You want to read the fairly obscure "It's Our Turn to Eat"? 13 copies. Feeling like some Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Check out one of the 388 copies. You can see why I was expecting to be underwhelmed.

Because I had no proof of my address I was forced to wait over a week before I could get my hands on my library card. Plus they wanted me to PAY for it. Ok, just $10 but still. Before even physically entering the library I had run a completely non-scientific survey of the Red Deer library catalogue to determine if they offered my selections and things were not looking good, dear friends. I got my card, browsed around quickly and went to the check out. Ready to leave I almost walked away when I remembered to ask about suggesting books for purchase. That one remark opened a WHOLE NEW WORLD (unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings) of librariness. There is a secret *shhh* library card you can request and a secret online database that allows you access to ALL 290 BRANCHES in Alberta and their entire holdings. Take that TPL with your 99 - well, thanks to Rob Ford probably even fewer soon. So, not only can I browse the holdings of the entire province of Alberta and have them sent directly to my nearest library location I can also use the library in any other city in the network, take out books in person there (for example, Edmonton) and return said books to any other branch in the network (say, Red Deer). Ding ding ding! Library heaven.

It's Our Turn to Eat by Michela Wrong

2011-09-22T23:42:00.002-04:00

I am a giant nerd of a classic book-type and I have learned long ago that generally the non-fiction books that interest me are rarely prime conversational material for most other humans. Lucky for me this is my blog and I decide what to write about and if I am the only one who cares about the topic then, as my pops would say, no skin off my nose. My latest favourite on the book circuit is journalist Michela Wrong's "It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower". Of course, I am already a bit biased having just been to Kenya but I think we can all benefit from knowing more about other things that happen in the world (besides the newest Lonely Island video - not that that isn't noteworthy).

This book felt like a very poignant discussion of the history behind the tribalism so evident to anyone who has been to Kenyan and spoken to its citizens. The one thing I regret is not reading the book BEFORE visiting the country since it would have made me a much more in-tune with the tensions around me and the reasons for it. It drove home that the corruption I experienced while in Kenya, dirty as it felt, was just the ear of the hippo* compared to the scandals that characterize every government this barely middle-aged nation. The few men (inevitably men) in the top often siphon off as much from the public purse as enters it from foreign aid. Our government leaders know this. They have known this. Yet they still keep shoving money at the problem.

When asked what surprised me about Kenya after I returned one thing I often said was how racist I found the country. Speaking with Kenyans it rarely took more than one meeting to start hearing stereotypes about another tribe "Us ____ are the smart ones, we have sharp brains"; "The ____ tribe are slow, they are better at labour"; Oh ____ people are always good businessmen". What I did not know before reading the book is how much government corruption has led to this inter-tribal hatred. "It's Our Turn to Eat" refers to the tendency for each new government to look out for its own and "eat" its fill when given a turn - giving the best positions to fellow tribesmen, the most money to their home provinces, the better schools and newer clinics to their home towns.

It drives some hard questions for the western world about what impact we are actually having on Africa with our aid money and what message we send the Kenyan people when we fail to act against and condemn blatant corruption.

*A hippo, like an iceberg, sits primarily below the surface with often only its nose, ears and top butt sticking out. In the western world we call stuttering an iceberg - Hi-C and I started calling it a more culturally-appropriate hippo while abroad.

Big Day - Short Post

2011-09-19T21:14:00.001-04:00

There is surprisingly little to report for this momentous day. I feel obligated to post something to mark the day but it was pleasantly uneventful. Parking was fairly easy (many people have told me that it is horrendous there) even if I had to walk 5+ minutes to get to the building. All of my new coworkers are friendly and helpful. For the first day I primarily shadowed the other acute care SLP to get a feel for the building and the system plus my rusty skills need some ah'polishin. I saw one client ALL BY MYSELF today and signed my very first chart as R.SLP. Based on that information I decided it was time to check "become an SLP" off my list of life goals. Perhaps next will be professional curler....

Old Butt ain't so Bad

2011-09-18T14:51:00.001-04:00

This week has been a bit insane - new place, new car, new life! Did I update about the house yet? I got my second choice but it ended up being the right place for me. The neighbourhood is nice and quiet, it feels homey and I have it to myself most of the time. Actually, I have yet to meet one of my housemates (the owner). That said, I routinely text him annoying questions about the house: How do I turn on your TV? Do you have a corkscrew? Where can I find a Philips head screwdriver (you know, the star one)? Do you recycle? He keeps the place extremely clean and tidy (perhaps his army background playing itself out?). It is painted in warm tones which makes it welcoming. It does lack a bit of a woman's touch in terms of wall "art" though. Case in point:

I think I'll refer to him as "sherman"

Vintage?

I can't really complain though as I have my own cozy space and my very own bathroom (eep!). My favourite thing so far is my brand new stylin' bed decked out in my colour scheme: grey and lilac with mustard accents. Even my new desk is lilac.

My first weekend alone in this house/town could have been tough but the lovely ShanWow made the trek down from Edmonton to help me explore. We skyped with the equally lovely Hi-C and JSLPA and then headed out to the farmer's market. That was the moment I decided I could really like Red Deer*. If you circumnavigate the city then all you will find are box stores and big highways; they even have a district named "Gasoline Alley" *eye roll*. However, if you venture into the meat of the city it is lovely - well-kept, quaint, and green. The market is held outdoors and it is huge! It could rival the St. Lawrence in T.O. and offers local produce, local honeys, preserves, baking and even organic, eco-friendly cleaning supplies in glass bottles (I may have caved on that). Point: Old Butt. The hospital also seems friendly and modern. The bowling alley offers 5- and 10-pin lanes. That's right, we checked it out and showed them how it is done. The weekend culminated with my first taste of Saskatoon berry jam - delish!

Fresh and local! Artichokes! On the stalk!

Friendly Mennonite zucchini

Zucchini or courgette?

Showing them how it is done.

Sorry for the photo quality - I have yet to replace my small camera so the blackberry takes its place and it was on the wrong setting. In all fairness, ShanWow kicked my butt on the first game but we don't have a photo of that one.

Car Name Update: I need some time to test out different names to get the right feel but here are the current submissions

Maximo
Carlos (Carlos the CAR haha....seems to me, SARS, that this could be the Latin edition of good ol' Carl)

Enrique

Mortimer "morty"

Everett

Sterling
Otto (the auto....I kind of love this)

Warren (since he is so well warrantied)

Thoughts? Votes?

Plus - TOMORROW IS THE BIG DAY. ie. the whole reason I moved out here. FIRST DAY OF MY NEW JOB!

*The nickname "Old Butt", coined by myself, ShanWow and Hi-C, does not reflect the city itself.

The Big Reveal

2011-09-16T16:23:00.002-04:00

Thanks for holding your breath, internets. With the-most-expensive-thing-I-have-ever-owned sitting just outside my new place I can safely blog about it. Should I just tell you what it is? Want to see it?
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THE MAZDA 3!!!!!!!!

Me with the stunt double

Oh look, no one else can take it cuz it be MINE!

Right before our first alone time.

Thanks, Ross!

159 956km left on the warranty

Definitely no red herrings thrown in there. By the time I got to Red Deer I had a pretty good idea that I would be driving away in a Mazda. It was a matter of testing out the hatchback v. the sedan. The Matrix remained a close contender but, ultimately, Mazda was willing to offer me 0% financing and that's smart. Plus the car is uber cute. The downside: it be grey. My heart was set on the pretty blue-jay colour but I landed my second choice. The problem is that they are still selling their 2011s (ie the 2012s have yet to come out) so there is limited selection at dealerships. Plus it is the base model while I wanted the middle of the road model. Again, limited supply. But we worked together and added in the features I wanted (mainly cruise control and steering wheel volume control). Ross threw in some all weather mats, a tank of gas, free first oil change, etc. Let's be honest - someone else may have gotten a better deal but I think I did pretty well for my first car, not being a natural born bargainer. That thing is warrantied up the wazoo because I know that I know nothing about cars and if anything ever went wrong I would definitely be the one being interviewed on the local TV news after falling victim to a mechanic that was charging 3x the price and using parts salvaged from the impound lot.

You may have noticed the outfit change between photos. That is no camera trick, the first photos were taken the day that I signed ALL the papers and the last few were taken today when I picked up the car to take it home. That actually isn't even my car in the first one but it was exactly the same so let's just pretend. My mommy got me a lovely, brand new GPS to go with it since I have yet to really drive around this city. Plus I will throw in a little brag: I am the SOLE OWNER of aforementioned car*. Even though I am totally broke I guess having had a well managed credit card for the last 8 years plus some earning potential was enough to seal the deal. No need to co-sign. Boo-Yah!

*It's a boy! Now he needs a name. Suggestions? If someone suggests a name that I end up using I'll send you a POSTCARD. From RED DEER! Now THAT is a prize. Or I'll just pick a winner (ie my fave suggestion) even if I go with something else haha.

Moving Fast but Not Fast Enough

2011-09-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

Alberta is freakin' cold right now. I nearly died of shivering at 9am this morning AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER. Red Deer, we aren't off to a good start. It is definitely a big change from downtown to Toronto meaning that the entire city seems to be a giant suburb. Although comparable in size to the city where my parents live and where I went to high school it just recently popped up out of the prairies. Apparently doing things new means making them box-shaped. King Kong could have a good time playing legos in (with?) this town. Most of what I have seen so far lacks character but I'll try to keep an open mind. The river is lovely - point: Red Deer.

We rolled into Alberta last night around 5pm and criss-crossed the city looking at 5 different potential places to live. I wanted to move as quickly as possible but things are not exactly following MY timeline. I'm waiting to hear from my #1 place (it wins in all categories except for price [a bit more pricey each month] and neighbourhood [nice but near an industrial area]). So we're sitting twiddling our thumbs until this evening when we hear because I can't do much else around here without an official address like change my license, get insurance, buy my car, sign my work papers....and...so..............on.

The second choice room is in a house, a really nice neighbourhood, a little closer to work, really cute place, I get the place to myself at least 50% of the time BUT I would have to live with two dudes I won't meet until next week (they work up north in Fort McMurray) and I would have to take the small room until November. The more I think about it this almost becomes my first pick because of the neighbourhood and distance to work....is that weird that I am willing to live with strangers? I guess I have done it before.

As for all-the-people-on-the-edge-of-your-computer-chairs waiting patiently to find out which car I would choose - wait no longer. Ok, keep waiting, I have anxiety issues with saying things before they are official so wait until tomorrow and I'll let you know what I buy. But it is hanging out in the sold lot waiting for me to give it a good home but first I need to find that home. I even got it a present today: a swanky new GPS. Best. Investment. Ever.

Reaching the 50% Mark

2011-09-12T00:48:00.005-04:00

Around 2pm (mountain time) today I reached the halfway point in attempting to visit all 10 of Canada's provinces while remaining at a whopping 0% of our territories - they are on the list, I swear! Not quite used to the time change I managed to set the alarm for 6am so we were on the road early which worked because we hit Regina by 4pm which gave plenty of family hang time. My dad continued to humour me in my need to document my travels as evidenced below. Tonight is spent one of my dad's lovely sisters and her family in Regina. The trip went something like this:

Flags at half mast in North Dakota for 9/11

The intense North Dakotan prairie sun. North Dakota counts, right, because I peed there?

It is official - I have been to Manitoba! That is a big W for Winnipeg

Mom and some lovely Winnipeg flowers

Me and pops - Saskatchewan's own vanna white's

The padres in the prairies

The cousins - Gen and Empay lighting it up

Auntie C with the bday cake

It is official, my mom is older than she was two days ago!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2011-09-10T23:15:00.001-04:00

And for your big day you get to drive across the country to bring your daughter three provinces away. Today was day one of three of "the big move". The major excitement is, of course, collecting states and provinces. Today I added Wisconsin and Minnesota. Tomorrow we might *fingers crossed* add Manitoba and definitely some Saskatchewan action. It is an extra 50 minutes to drive up to Manitoba instead of continuing to go the American way but then I may NEVER go to Manitoba. Boy, my parents love me.

My dad, who somehow decided to drive almost the entire 12 hours today himself, even humoured my weird need to really experience Wisconsin in order to check it off my list. I was determined not to leave the state without some curdled milk product but, even with our keen eyes, we found ourselves staring down a "15 miles to Duluth [Minnesota]" without any hint of cheese. Until, low and behold, Beth's Cheese Shop to the rescue. My dad had to do some evasive driving maneuvers but I got my wish.

With garlic & dill cheese curds we were free to pass into the next state. Our first big travel night is being spent in Crookston, Minnesota - home of the Ox Cart and (maybe?) Paul Bunyan. This is what memories are made of:

(If) The Price is Right

2011-09-07T16:40:00.003-04:00

In order to function in my new job in Red Deer I will be needing myself a car to travel outside the city two days per week. When I first came back from traveling I was entirely gung ho about the process and was determined to test drive every model of small sedan on the market. Every time I drove one I could hear Bob Barker exclaiming "A neeew caarrrr" in my ear. But the novelty wore off as I discovered that the excitement of test-driving came with the less exciting car dealers. This is not a jab a car dealers who often get the "sleaze" title. I never had a negative experience with any of them and some were exceptionally helpful but, that said, they are there to sell me a car and I was there to shop around. The phone calls started (thank goodness I gave my parents's home number instead of my cell) and continued...and continued....and crushed my car-buying spirit. After speaking with a few friends and my parents's offer to drive me out west in their vehicle I decided to leave the purchase for out there. The test-driving did give me a good idea of which car I would like to see myself in.

There are a few decisions that go in to buying a car (ok, many, many decisions) and one of the first I had to consider was new or used.

Decision 1: New or used
Friends: I'm going with new. Perhaps not as financially savvy as you used buyers out there but I will gladly take the full warranty that comes with a new car. The other obstacle is that I have about one day to find a car. To me, buying used should be a process where one scours the market, compares dealers and vehicles, waits for desired models, years or features and buys when the right car comes up. Having one day to seal the deal does not give me confidence in my ability to find what I want or to sufficiently research the history of the vehicle and make sure it ain't no lemon.

Decision 2: buy or lease
Leasing is a tempting option because the payments are about $100 less per month. Holla! I wanna pay off these freakin student loans. But hold up - you need to pay about $1000 upfront before taking that car home and that is $1000 I ain't got. There are km limits on how much you can drive the car and going over costs a bundle. Plus, everyone I have spoken to about leasing uses the word "scam" or has a story about themselves or a friend (or friend of a friend?) who had to pay insane amounts of cash to hand over the vehicle at the end for minor defects in the car: scuffed dashboard; a small scratch; a dead, decomposing fox in the trunk. Ok, I was guessing on the actual problems but it seems like there is always a catch. Case in point: the dealers try to so hard to get you to lease. Why??? Wouldn't they prefer you drove away with that hunk of metal for good? My mind has been made up: A NEW CAR!

Decision 3: manufacturer and model
This is the one that is currently giving me heartburn. I only perused three dealers before I gave up and all were Asian-sounding. Apparently I can get a way more decked-out car for cheaper if I go the Ford (chevy? who?) route but, let's be honest, I buy into the hype that the others will give me fewer problems down the road. On this question I'm still up in the air but here have been my experiences.

Test drive 1: Mazda 3 - A very pretty car with a fun, young interior. The options packages make sense and I would end up with steering wheel mounted blue tooth and cruise control. The dashboard is pretty. It handles smoothly. Friends tell me good things about their Mazdas. I was instantly smitten with this car. AND they were willing to offer 0% financing for up to 60 months. Um, yes please. I hope I didn't miss the boat on that one by choosing to wait.

Test drive 2: Honda Civic - My initial impression was "this is a hideous car". They put out a new model for 2012 and it is ugly. The interior is nicer than the exterior but almost a little too showy for me - it felt like it was trying too hard with its little computer screen and digital dashboard. Plus they were offering financing at a ridiculous 4.99% NO MATTER THE TERM. Even with the reputation for quality I couldn't get over how much I hated the look and how stupid I would have to be to finance at that rate. This car is OUT.

Test drive 3: Toyota Corolla - my brother drives an 03 and I was honestly expecting this one to give the Mazda a run for its money based on its great reputation. On first glance it is a sporty little car on the outside with a reputation for reliability - sign me up! The problem was the interior: I hated it immediately. It felt like a grandma car inside. In fact, I made the remark that I hated the beige interior to a friend and the dealer corrected me saying that it is actually grey inside (correction: I'm SURE the dash was beige but perhaps the seats were grey) although he conceded that I wasn't even the first person to say that the car FELT BEIGE. Who wants to drive a car that feels beige inside!?!?! Depressing. On top of that, for some reason, Toyota mounts all of their cruise controls on a stick under the steering wheel and would not mount my bluetooth in a convenient spot. AND the clock was so low down under the radio and everything else I had to lean back or tip my head sideways to tell the time. Details, people. OUT.

Test drive 4: To attempt to make me happy they convinced me to try the Corolla Sport. Definitely not beige on the inside and handled even better than the plain corolla. But when I stepped back it hadn't remedied any of my other annoyances: cruise control? Still the little stick. Bluetooth? Not so much. Clock? Still in the wrong freakin spot. Plus the price tag for the "upgrade" was a hefty one. OUT.

Test drive 5: Toyota Matrix - I have to thank my lovely friend Mama J here for accompanying me back to the dealership and convincing me to try the Matrix. It drove well but felt a little heftier on the road which appeals to my slight nervousness for winter highway driving. The interior was immensely cuter and all black and silver. The clock wasn't even annoying! The cruise control was still that freaking stick but I would be willing to overlook this since I was so happy with the car. A definite top runner.

Those were all my test drives so far. Right now the Mazda 3 and the Matrix are neck and neck but that just leads me to more test driving. Before I buy I am definitely going to try the Mazda 3 hatchback and their other car similar to the matrix. Depending on how patient I'm feeling in Red Deer I might try whatever that Ford or Dodge or other "in" car is right now.

Then I have to decide on colour and features.....

Please tell me about your car buying experience - what did you end up with and why? Have you been happy with your decision?

Let's Get Cultural

2011-09-05T21:02:00.001-04:00

This weekend one of the local First Nations reserves hosted a powwow and it was open to everyone. I'm always game for some culture so it was a no-brainer to accept an invitation to check it out. It was a small gathering with representatives from the local reserves, a few from across the border in the US and some from further north in Ontario. The event started with the Grand Entry which was basically a sacred parade. Everyone was instructed to remove their hats - unless said hat contained an eagle feather. I had neither a hat nor an eagle feather so I just stood. For quite a long time. Spectators sat on bleachers in a large circle with another smaller circle in the middle containing the singers and drummers. The participants walked/danced around the circle as they were introduced. The people ranged from plain clothes to intricate and beautiful costumes. The dances were mesmerizing - keeping a beat to an unfamiliar but soothing beat.

I apologize for the quality of the photos but this is a blackberry and I wasn't sure when I could take photos.

Note young guy with brown shirt and feathers - sweet dancer.

Tiny Tots.

After a few dances we took a break to try out the local cuisine. First up: Indian Tacos. No, I did not name them. It is basically bannock or fry bread covered with taco-type toppings. Definitely tasty.

Next came dessert: bread with blueberries baked inside, smothered with strawberry sauce and, a little overkill, smothered yet again in whipped cream. Delish.

Speaking of culture, so much was happening that went way over my head. At one point a large group paraded around the circle led by a teenage girl in satiny dress. When the song ended she was welcomed (although, to an outsider like me, it was not obvious to what she was being welcomed). The community approached her for hugs and congratulations then she and her mother took a bowl of strawberries around to the other members of the community and offered one to each.

We did some browsing and then settled in for the last dance - Tiny Tots! Any child under 6 in regalia was invited to dance and dance they did. And regalia they wore.

Things to Do in Red Deer

2011-08-31T21:52:00.001-04:00

I have been doing my research about Red Deer since I will be there in less than two weeks. The good news: there is a vietnamese restaurant. The bad news: I can't get Sault pizza. I was important for me to know that I would have access to pho. After finding a place to live, buying a car (will update soon on this) and then actually working to get a paycheck I plan to get myself a Canada Goose Jacket. That is because goose feathers make life worth living in the dead of frozen Alberta. In order to accept my wintry fate I plan to join a curling league - probably the beginner one - to stave off boredom. Who knows, maybe there is an Olympic medal in my future.
So far that list is:
1. Get a wicked winter coat.
2. Join a winter sport ("sport"?).

And I will add:
3. Take a class. The local college has a plethora of classes. While the nerd side of me is drawn to "physics" and "human osteology" and "the philosophy of knowledge" the person who is tired of studying is considering "ceramics" or "cooking". Mmm....cooking.
4. Buy organic and nice-to-animals. A friend of a friend has given me the name of her organic farmer. Now I just need my own cheese maker.
5. Join the local NDP party. Is it bad to state my political allegiances online? I guess I already gave myself away with my sad post about Jack Layton.
6. Outdoor skating.
7. Running. Right. I want to do that again. I need a goal of another half marathon to get myself motivated.

Oh yeah....and working full-time.

Begin Again

2011-08-29T12:09:00.000-04:00

I got fat in Africa. I probably wouldn't put that on the internet but it is topical: running is hard. Apparently I was taking a break from everything other than hanging out and stuffing my cake/pie/chip/ice cream-hole so today was my first run since I left for Africa. Yeah, that's almost four months baby. For a person who loses her stamina by just looking at a donut and thinking about a couch this was deadly. I felt those extra pounds hammering down on my poor legs as they TOUCHED when I ran. It was nothing impressive, that is to be sure; a mere 4 kms but I didn't stop and I didn't get a stitch. Let's hope that thigh rub is enough motivation to keep me going. It is disheartening (even if it is my own fault) to go from half marathons to wheezing after a jog around the block. Help me stay motivated, friends (ie. ask if I have moved my lazy butt on a regular basis).

A New Badge

2011-08-25T12:37:00.000-04:00

In a previous post I introduced the idea of Life Badges - a way for adults with a certain type of personality to continue getting tangible proof of accomplishment. I whipped up a new badge to commemorate getting the email to confirm my completion of all course requirements for SLP. Maybe this badge should wait until the official graduation when we have fake diplomas in hand but it is ready NOW. So now the badge is posted. Feel proud to claim this badge for yourself if you have completed the SLP masters program.

Salute, Mr. Layton

2011-08-22T13:31:00.000-04:00

The last time Canada experienced an election I relished the opportunity to visit the polls and indicate my support for the NDP. I penciled in my vote with the hope that the next day would bring news of a new era with Jack Layton as leader of this fine country. Great things happened in the last election with major political upheaval in the Parliament, enough to hold my hope over to the next election, to bide our time until we could have a leader with a vision of a better Canada. My condolences go to Olivia Chow and their two children but also to our country because we lost the chance to see his great vision for us come to fruition. Young people are looking for somewhere else to place their hope for our country. Wherever we go next I hope Jack Layton would be proud of the direction we take; that we would strive for the fairer, better, more equal country he dreamed about and called for in his last letter to our nation.

Another First: Head Wound Edition

2011-08-18T18:59:00.000-04:00

You may want to skip this post if blood makes ya queasy. This morning I took the little corolla out on the highway for almost two hours in order to meet my aunts and cousins at a lovely place called bathtub island. Situated only 45 minutes from Wawa it is hard to believe that I had never been to this cutesy alcove of smooth rocks and shallow, sun-warmed pools of warm water. I'll have to go back because my memories of it are still a bit blurry. After 10 minutes in the area I promptly slipped on the rocky island (it was BERY SLIPEWY) and cracked my head. The first thing I noticed was the enormous gush of blood all over. The island is about the size of a postage stamp but there happened to be a registered nurse hanging out with her kids who also had a maxi pad and a bandaid. They cleaned me up a bit and got me back to the shore where we discovered that my aunt had run out to the road and flagged down two MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources) guys and the whole troupe came running down the beach to me sitting calmly on a log with a big bandage on my forehead. So much for visiting with family; the nurse recommended stitches so we arranged to meet my mom halfway and have a friend drive the car home. Before I could leave for safety my family insisted on me having my photo taken with the MNR guys and a few with all the blood - thanks family! So far no headache and only the teeniest bit of nausea - as far as I can tell I never lost consciousness. Fastforward a few hours - the doc sewed me up good with FOUR stitches. The stitching didn't hurt it was when he pushed my skin and pulled it to show my mom where I tore right through the muscle. When I do something I do it all the way.

Warning: possibly disturbing photos

The bathing suit aftermath

Pre-stitch - thanks mom for cleaning up my wound.

Despues los stiches. More gruesome?

Becoming all Growed Up

2011-08-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

It has taken me forever to update the internet on my latest news because I was committed to creating a new header to go with my NEW JOB (imagine Bob Barker saying that). It went like this: a friend sent me a job posting for a mat leave in Red Deer, Alberta during my last week in Kenya. I applied because, hey, why not? In a few days I had an interview set up for the Thursday after my return to Canada. Thursday morning I had a phone interview for this year contract. Friday they contacted my references (and probably weren't expecting one to act more like a mom - she let them know that they have to be understanding and flexible as this will not be an insignificant move - thanks beekeeper!). On Friday night, after finally flying back north to see my family, they sent me an email* to offer me the position. Apparently I interview well (if just a little to verbose). On Saturday night I accepted.

Fast forward to today: I bought myself a swanky blackberry Torch so I can be up with the techno revolution; I am test driving cars since I will need one for my job. More on that in the future. I am looking for a place in R'Deer and even ordered some literature from amazon to celebrate my employment. My biggest fear now is that I'll put out all this money for this job (no paycheck until the end of Sept, eep!) and then I won't be able to do it. Intimidating!

*Yes, it is odd to get a job offer by email, however, I had limited phone access throughout this whole process. I actually had to stay with a friend in order to have a phone on which to do the interview.

Back from Africa

2011-08-14T18:39:00.000-04:00

It has now been almost two weeks since I flew back into Canada and it already feels like an alternate reality. Since returning I have spent 4 days in Toronto, interviewed for a job (more on that in a subsequent post), got a job, and spent a whole week at Jesus camp (definitely more on this in a subsequent post). To be honest, I had expected the transition to be more difficult. I suppose that three months is not long enough to unlearn 26 years of life in a developed country. A year abroad might demand more of an adjustment upon returning. The things that felt the weirdest were minor things. This computer for one - it is MASSIVE at 17 inches compared to the 10 inch wonder I had been using. But really, the biggest adjustments included:

1. "I see white people". In Africa I always found I got my back up when there were too many whities around; it felt uncomfortable, like we were all seeking each other out. Seeing a gaggle of melanin-challenged people was a reminder that I was a tourist just like them and no one wants to be reminded that they are tourists. Now, we are everywhere.

2. Sidewalks. We have them.

3. The lack of smells. This is a primarily smell-free zone whereas my nose was assaulted most of the time in Kenya.

4. Not getting as much sleep. We have electricity all the time here and TV and other distractions so I don't go to bed at 10pm every day and get up at 7am. Getting fewer than 8 hours of sleep puts me in a crabby mood - ok, fewer than 9 - and when I get tired I can barely keep my eyes open.

5. Time. I'm now in the SAME time zone as most of my friends and family now (or at least separated by only one or two hours instead of 7). Yet, I still find myself converting the time in my head whenever I go to make a phone call.

Honestly, other than those minor things it does not feel that strange to be home.

Quotes from a 3-year-old

2011-08-14T11:28:00.000-04:00

This blog needs some serious updating including: returning from Africa; Jesus camp; my future career. So instead of all of that I will give you some quotes of one of the best 3-year-olds ever. Ever. Seriously. We'll call him Ripper.

Me: What are you doing? (as I approach child sitting on the stairs)
R: Shooting bears with my laser eyes. Look, a bear! [opens eyes as wide as possible and stares]
Me: Can I have laser eyes too?
R: Oh sure, here is an extra pair.

In line at Wendy's on the drive home from camp.
R: Mom, I want one of those toys.
His mom: Well, you can't have one of the toys.
R: But I WANT one.
HM: You're already getting a froster.
R: Fine, I'm just going to tell this lady that I'll have a toy.
HM: No you won't, you can try telling your dad that you want one.
R: Ugh, he already knows! FINE! I'll just play with this then [sits down at mom's feet and starts playing with the rubber carpet]

A conversation between 3-year-olds - both walk in to the cabin - I hear them walk into Ripper's room.
R: No, M, you can't come in here, I'm changing.
M: yes I can.
R: Go away. Unless you want to see my penis and my bum you need to LEAVE!

There are more but I'm drawing a blank. This should buy me some time until I can update my blog fo reals.

Going on 46

2011-08-02T07:44:00.000-04:00

46 hours that is - of travel. We left Nairobi at 930am (EST) Sunday, July 31st and should arrive to downtown TO at approximately 4pm EST - about 55 hours from when we started. I thought the 36 hours to get to Nairobi last time was my limit. Apparently this is my limit. Everything went smoothly on our first two flights.

We even spent another lovely evening in Doha, Qatar where it was about 45 degrees celcius and humid. I thought the desert wasn't humid. Warning: it can be. We didn't arrive to Doha until around midnight so most of the city was closed but the restaurants in Souq Waqif stay open late - some until 4am during Ramadan. So we hunkered down for some beloved Qatari food (thyme and flatbread + goat cheese and flat bread + mint lemonade) and practiced drawing animals. We made them all into Masai animals with shukas, the traditional plaid blankets, and beaded necklaces. We then wandered through the closed market and ended up at another restaurant where we sat on the roof overlooking all of the city lights and languished under their fans drinking soda that quickly got warm and partaking in another social tradition. When we arrived two local men asked us to sit with them but the restaurant was almost empty and we felt somewhat uncomfortable so we turned them down and sat at a nearby table. We got a creep vibe. We ended up making friends with the restaurant workers (mostly from Nepal and some from Egypt) and spoke in gestures and incomplete English. They gave us free soda and shared their chicken sandwiches with us at 2am. When we went to pay our bill we were informed that the two "creepy" men had paid our bill for us on their way out. Ouch. A big thank you to them, we are sorry we never got to thank them in person. Qatar has amazed me each time with the friendliness of the people and the safety of the city (we walked alone along the boardwalk at 4am without drawing any attention).

We made it through the 13 hour Doha - DC flight without a hitch (except for my inability to sleep on a plane. Hi-C was log-like before the plane even took off. With two of three flights done we were excited to be nearly finished our journey. We raced through all the checkpoints in the DC airport to make our TO flight on time only to be told it was delayed. No big deal, we sat and read. Flights were being canceled all around us due to lightning but the storm was clearing and they boarded our planes. Poor suckers going to Syracuse. After a half hour on the tarmac we were informed that our flight, too, would be canceled and we were ushered off the airplane. They booked us on another flight - at 8:53 pm the next day - more than 24hours later. Finally with some finagling we got a seat on the 1230 flight and here we sit. I slept in the airport lounge in two hours spurts. This is the second day in this outfit (yes, even those, these are my extra undies) and I just washed my face and armpits (in that order) in a public washroom. Toronto will not be seeing my freshest side.

NBD II

2011-07-29T13:32:00.000-04:00

No big deal, just hung out in the Masai Mara for a few days scoping dangerous animals. I'm too lazy to post many photos but you know what the animals look like. Some highlights from the trip include:

-Thousands of zebra
-Herds of wildebeest
-Fat fat hippos

-Once, twice, five times we saw lions (once with a zebra carcass, once with a dead wildebeest and a fun lion who liked to play with a dirt clod)

-Ostriches

-Rhinos ...we think (we failed to bring binoculars and our camera had very limited zoom so we were told they were rhinos)

-Lazy lazy cheetahs

-Giant pack of hyenas eating an unidentified dead creature

-A giraffe running next to our vehicle (so incredible...likely my favourite moment)

-ELEPHANTS!

-Conversations with Masai warriors. Their definition of a "man" is a bit different than the western definition. Some of our guy friends had never killed a lion nor owned any cows so, in Masai eyes, they were the equivalent of preteens. No ladies for them.

Me with one buttcheek in Kenya and one in Tanzania!

There was a Masai warrior hanging out at our camp (a few Italians had hired him as a guide) and he hung out with us after dinner to chat. It took him 6 years in the bush but he killed a lion and now he is back to raise his herd of 50 cows and marry. His first wedding is in 5 months. He anticipates the second one in 7 months. If he has his way he will have 5 wives someday. His sandals have a spike sticking vertically from the toe which he informed us acts as a sundial. Ingenious. He also asked how long it would take to walk to Canada. We tried to explain that he would need a boat....he insisted on knowing so I just said "one year". He seemed satisfied with his answer. He walks to Nairobi in 1.5 days.

Strangeville, Uganda

2011-07-25T05:22:00.000-04:00

Sometimes Hi-C wonders if I even like traveling or if I just enjoy collecting stamps in my passport. The truth is that I enjoy both. It is my favourite kind of stamp collecting and will not require me to rent out storage space or close off entire rooms of my (future) house to accomodate my addiction; although it will require vacation time and funding but I am working on that. The most recent addition to my collection has been the lovely entry and exit stamps for Uganda (plus another entry stamp into Kenya - I'm not picky!).

We returned to Nairobi last night after shelling out for the Royal Treatment on Akamba buses and getting something more equivalent to what fleeing exiled monarchs must receive. TIA*. The last few days in Uganda were spent in Kampala, the capital city. It is a bustling town with more charm and less danger than Nairobi (sorry Nairobbery - you have a special place in my heart but you kinda suck). In the two days we had in Kampala we lived it up. First stop on our whirlwind tour was......the cinema! To our amazement and excitement they were playing the FINAL HARRY POTTER! We could have waited a week but then we would not have watched it in a swanky theatre all to ourselves in Kampala, Uganda.

Already on a roll we decided to see another show but this time it was a local production at La Bonita, a small theatre near our hotel. What an experience that was. There is no way to truly describe it but it was akin to a Ugandan soap opera + musical + variety show. It followed three crazy and minimally converging storylines** with a series of set changes and interspersed videos of (what I would assume to be) local celebrities adding their opinions and giving clues about what was to come next. There were up to 30 actors on stage at any given time, they switched constantly between English and Luganda (we were a bit lost) and it was all prerecorded so the actors lip-synced all their lines and the songs. After 3.5 hours of this sans intermission and no end in sight we left very befuddled. Definitely worth your $6 if you find yourself in Kampala. The group is called the Ebonies and the episode (yes, the shows are episodes with continuing stories) was called "Enslaved by Love".

Our second day was comparably tame. We walked through the most massive and crowded local market I have ever witnessed to end up at the Gadaffi mosque at the centre of the city. Women are allowed to tour the mosque (with skirts and covered heads of course!) so we rented some scarves and toured the third largest mosque in Africa. The crown jewel of the tour (and the part that has a cost) is the 40metre minaret you can climb to get a view of the entire city.

On the way home we stopped for soft serve to beat the heat and happened upon the grand opening of a lovely little bakery. You cannot understand the significance of handmade multi-grain loaves until you have been in Africa long enough to realize that their equivalent of wonderbread (Don't say bread - say SUPA LOAF!) is all that is available and painfully dry. I digress. I approached the manager and asked how one could get an invitation to the swanky looking opening and we were invited to join them***. We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting with the ambassador to the US, bakery owners and arrogant, embittered coffee businessmen while sipping free wine and champagne, eating free cheeses and fancy hors d'oeurves and left with a handwoven basket full of fresh baked goods. Oh, the life.

Now we are back in Nairobi to say goodbye to friends and spend three days tracking animals in Maasai Mara. elephants - here I come!

*This is Africa. Self-explanatory?

**Storyline example: man in his 40s tries to seduce a 16 year old high school student by dressing like one himself. They turn the adorable song "16 going on 17" from the Sound of Music into something wrong in so many ways. Then he gets her back to his house where she promptly reveals that she isn't a school girl, puts on her hooker uniform and cons him out of a giant wad of cash when his wife discovers them.

***I am just going to say it: we were invited in because we were white. Africa works like that. Not to say there weren't any Africans at the opening but there were significantly more white people and all kinds of embassy officials (it was a Dutch-Ugandan partnership). Sadly, white skin gets you a special status here (and higher prices for everything) - it is the first time in my life that the colour of my skin really seems to matter and it bothers me.

NBD

2011-07-21T04:48:00.000-04:00

No big deal. Just rafted the Nile. Those are grade 5 rapids (if that means anything). I'm one of the people already underwater. This was our first rapid and we just flipped immediately. Everyone else popped up right away but for some reason the water held on to me for what felt like an eternity (was probably closer to 10 seconds). So I was a total chicken for the rest the subsequent 8 rapids - woops. But it was an amazing experience. The water was intense and when it was calm we were allowed to swim behind the raft in the NILE. Right. The river you read about when talking about Egypt or Africa in general. A few more photos for your awe.

Our raft hit a wave and got stuck so we just surfed there for 15-20 seconds. It was awesome [o]possum. There was so much anticipation because we were just waiting for it to flip us over into that mess. But suddenly it just spit us out completely upright. The legs in the air belong to Jumaa our rafting guide who has been doing this for 12 years. He was really enjoying himself.

The last rapid. We had a round of high fives after finishing this one sans flip. It was then that the guide pointed out that we had lost one guy way back at the start of the rapid. Woops. The camera man was clearly on top of his game.

Onwards and Upwards + Mbita Update

2011-07-15T12:20:00.001-04:00

Today was technically our last day of placement EVER! The last real day of our masters program (although I still have about a day of paperwork left....thanks UofT). We spent our last day on a ferry to Kisumu (shhhhh....don't tell she-who-shall-not-be-named). Now we have holed up in a swanky hotel room with ELECTRICITY and RUNNING WATER and a TELEVISION! (for only $15 a night with brekky) while wait to leave for Kakamega rainforest tomorrow. Hi-C pointed out that, even though diarrhea sucks, if you are going to have it then a place called KakaMega would be the place. Fingers crossed for cooperative bowels all around.

We just finished two weeks living and working in rural Kenya (Nyanza province for those curious few) in a town called Mbita on Lake Victoria. Due to limited electricity supplies the blogging has been infrequent and without photos given the slow internet connection. Even with the dust (so dusty!), the bugs, the outdoor toilets and the skirts* I fell in love with the place and the people. Accept this photo diary of Mbita and area so I can procrastinate from doing my final paperwork.

A car just like the one we rode for 2 hours with 11 people and a chicken + screaming baby.

The three of us in the car - Hi-C, me, and SuperJ. It took about 12 tries to get one where superJ felt she was happy enough.

The maize (like corn but tougher, ground into flour for ugali - the Kenya staple food) field on the compound in which we learned to harvest. Our hosts we impressed at how quickly we adapted to African life incomparison to some of their other foreign wageni/visitors.

The sunset over Lake Victoria just down the hill from where we were staying.

Here we are "contributing to research" on the control of tsetse flies on Lake Victoria. Hi-C is pouring water into the bottom of a fancy fly-zapper so the carcasses don't get away and they can be counted. Sort of morbid, Hi-C.

We went to three schools and worked with some wonderful children. All kids in Kenya wear uniforms to school and it is too cute.

My language assessment materials. With these things you can do naming, numbers, colours, big/small, prepositions, picture identification, reading, story-telling, following directions and more to get an idea of receptive and expressive language skills.

Haiba, the little one at the house where we stayed. Officially the cutest baby in Africa. She acted as a daily reminder of what normal (or above normal) development looks like. Haiba snuggles are the best.

This is what I meant when I said sometimes we roll like William Shatner with the right demographic. Every school we went to required an entire photoshoot - sometimes with hand holding.

Pendo carrying Haiba to the gate of the compound. Haiba is just over 1 year and needs no help to hang on to her sister for a walk around the yard.

Charles, our faithful piki piki driver who drove slowly around Mbita to get us safely to all of our destinations.

The market in town. Every stall was selling the same things (it is called product differentiation people!) - maize, millet, green grams, and a variety of beans.

This is a choo (pronounced cho-oh). If you have never peed in a squatty this is what you have to look forward to in Africa. They are surprisingly often preferable to toilets.

We took a public boat to Mfangano Island, home to the Suba peopl on Lake Victoria. Sometimes the boats were not able (or said they weren't able) to get right up to the shore. When this happened a group of men would rush the sides of the boat and offer to carry you to shore for 20 bob (about 25 cents). Business men were their best customers. And girls in skirts who didnt' want to touch water filled with bird poop - we paid for a ride.

Public boats only leave when packed - with people, a motorcycle and 7 crates of white bread (white bread! I curse you!)

The boat ride.

Ancient rock paintings mostly worth the hour hike up a mountain (on Mfangano Island) in the heat. I'm mostly surprised that I have yet to learn that asking a guide if they know the place well before setting out means nothing in Africa. Your guide will get lost. They haven't been there in 5 or 6 months. We did find it eventually and eat a passion fruit fresh off the tree so all was forgotten :)

The other two adorable daughters - Pendo (meaning Love) and Joy all dolled up for church.

Church was a non-negotiable. The girls looked so cute walking there. I bit off all of my finger nails off.

We boated past "bird island". Named for all the birds (duh). Many of the trees have been choked out by the mass of avian excrement covering their leaves and preventing photosynthesis. We could also see monitor lizards sunning themselves on rocks. If you are unfamiliar with monitor lizards just think of them as little brothers to the komodo dragon - that is if the komodo dragon is a 7ft basketball player and his "little" brother is "only" 6"3.

A small fishing town called Takawiri off shore of Mbita.

We shared a pop with a cheeky little boy (we think boy - clothes are not always a good indicator of gender here) on Takawiri.

We ended the day with coconuts fresh from the tree (that we never actually got to eat but that is a long story....)

*Mbita is a very strict christian place. To be accepted we spent any time outside the compound in long skirts - great for cutting the heat but not great for keeping away thorns or riding motorcycles.

Rollin' Like a Celebrity

2011-07-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

The song "Beverly Hills" by Weezer has been in my head since arriving in this tiny rural town where electricity and beer are hard to come by. Not because of the distinct contrast between Mbita and the famous American zipcode but because of the line "rollin' like a celebrity". That is how I feel every day here: like a D-list celebrity. Like Willian Shatner. Hear me out. I'm going to replace the word musungu or "white person" with "William Shatner" for demonstration (bonus - both of us are Canadian).

I suppose Willy isn't exactly D-List but he is a bit of a joke in the celeb community. When we roll into town we get noticed. Everyone seems to know who we are. People call out to us as we walk by but the tone varies from awe (less common) "William Shatner...oooo!" to Circus freak "pssst - look, it is William SHATner" to taunting contempt "WILLIAM SHATNER! hahahah....."

People run up to shake our hands when we are walking down the street and sometimes giggle, run away or stand awestruck in our presence "Amosi/How are you?" met by crickets "Ber?/Good?" followed by running away.

Many people see that we are William Shatner and equate that with money* so they try to buddy up in hopes that some of that would transfer to them ("Can I have your shoes/camera/soda/insert my item here?")**. We quickly lose many friends when they realize we will not be giving our items away.

And, like William, a few people in the right demographic ADORE us. They want to be seen with us, want their photos taken with us, suck up to us and ask to spend more time with us. They pull out all the stops to show off for us.

Oh, the life of a "celebrity".

*People in Kenya often have an interesting idea of what Canada is like. For example - that everyone is rich and the government gives us all houses. I put it in a term they could understand and things seemed less rosy in Canada. When I get back to Canada I will have no job and a debt equivalent to 2.5million Kenyan Shillings. Oh.....2.5 million sounds daunting to people that usually make less than 10 000 shillings a month.

**We were on a small island on lake Victoria yesterday waiting for the boat to take us back to Mbita. We started a conversation with a local pediatrician about his clinic (including a lesson on why NOT to cut children's tongues to help them talk). He gave us a tour of the clinic and then inquired if we knew of any Canadian women who were looking for a husband - anyone for him to marry. He had land to offer. I instructed him to check the internet. The offer still stands if you are interested. 50 year old doctor with his own clinic, patch of maize and a good heart seeking Canadian woman.

Kate, Hill and Jane do Mbita

2011-07-08T00:42:00.000-04:00

Two more weeks and we will have completed all the course requirements to be speech-language pathologists in Canada. Most other people in the program will be tying up loose ends, getting ready for the last two weeks in a place that has become very familiar. We just arrived in a new town – a third new place for this internship – to work with a new population and board with new people. So much for ending on a note of confidence!

It is worth it, of course, to see this part of Kenya. Our supervisor was going back and forth about whether she would drive her own vehicle here or if we would take public transport and get “the real Kenya experience”. The real experience it most definitely was. Our first of the three legs of this journey was a comfortable shuttle….which we waited for over an hour to leave because no vehicle here leaves with an empty seat. Other than having to beg (from the back of the shuttle including knocking repeatedly on the sides of the van) to relieve myself this first part was fairly uneventful. We arrived in Kisii looking for a matatu to Homa Bay. A matatu we found. They stuffed the three of us into the back and then a fourth man for good measure. It was at this point that the fact that the ceiling was low, there was no way out the side door due to crowding and my usual planned escape route out the side window was barred off that my anxiety got the best of me and we insisted on seats closer to the front. It was during this exchange that Super handed over 1000 shillings for our tickets to the matatu conductor. When we switched seats he clearly saw his chance to rip off the wasungu/white people*. There was a very dramatic and heated debate when he demanded our payment a second time. Even though SuperJ had her first ticket as proof there was nothing we could do as he maintained his innocence passionately but everyone waiting on the matatu was sure of his guilt. We ended up paying again – but boy did SuperJ lay the shame on thick. It soured my favourite part of the journey where people shove things in your face through the window and I check out their wares. Finds of the day: boiled peanuts (good!), sweet baby bananas, fresh Kenyan coffee. Lesson: do not ignore the matatu sellers.

When we alighted from the matatu in Homa Bay something was amiss. Or missing, I should say. SuperJ’s bag did not make it all the way to the town. It was her packsack with clothes, glasses, contact solution, makeup, shampoo…the essentials. The drivers made a big show of trying to locate the bag but we knew it was futile so some curse words were said and we walked off to secure our seats for the last ride. We went from shuttle to matatu (basically a shuttle but more crowded and more dirty) to a medium-sized car with 11 people, a baby and a chicken or two. I wish I were exaggerating. Legs fell asleep. So did butts. Even the driver’s seat was not sacred and he sat on a passenger’s lap. But, 13 hours after we left home that day we arrived in Mbita to stay with a lovely family. Who knows what this town will bring.

Canada: I'm a Fan

2011-07-01T17:24:00.000-04:00

Happy 144th Birthday Canada!

In your honour, Hi-C and I sang a screechy-but-heartfelt-rendition of your national anthem over our weaties for the family we stay with. They were suitably impressed.

Lacking red clothing I have donned a flag pin and plan to tell everyone I encounter today about your special day. If they can be acquired, fireworks will be set off tonight after dinner (no need to stay up late - the lighting will be firework-appropriate by 7pm).

Things I miss about you, Oh Canada:

Free Healthcare: Fine. Not *free* since we pay hefty taxes but healthcare for all without the grabby middleman that is insurance. I want to be able to go to the doctor when I need it instead of waiting to be approved beforehand. People may complain about our healthcare, dear Canada, but the ambulance comes when you call it and a stay in the hospital will not financially cripple the average citizen. Thank you!

Long summer days: How I miss the presence of the sun on perfect summer days and campfires when it goes down. Sunset by 7pm year round has its drawbacks.

Condiments: more specifically ketchup (catsup?). At home I'm mostly a ketchup-goes-on-french-fries girl but I still find I miss it. If you ask for ketchup here you get something mysterious called "Peptang". A thin, neon orange liquid that is basically sweet and sour sauce without the sour. Not. the. same. It wouldn't kill people to use a little BBQ sauce here and there either.

Tolerance: holy racism, Batman. Yes, it is still racism if I get bumped to the front of the line for being white. It is racism when a Somali teen gets beaten to the point of permanent brain injury just for being Somali. It is intolerance when the national newspaper doesn't bother to distinguish between homosexual and pedophile.

1% Milk: heck, 2% milk! Not that I can't get used to eating my wheaties with 3% milk (cream?) but my waistline adjusts by expanding.

Lack of corruption: I suppose I would be fooling myself if I thought there were no corruption in Canada. However, *most* money that goes to taxes comes back out in the form of government programs and social services (ie.not into politician pockets). You can call the police and expect them to help you without receiving a bribe or cut.

Water from the tap

Consistent and reliable power

Sidewalks

This post truly isn't meant to be a rant or be against any one country. It is just a celebration of what is great about Canada and the things that I appreciate even more now after being away. And being away for only 2 months. If I were to be here a year I would also really miss: real desserts, donuts, fresh air, sweaters, good cheese, thai food, vietnamese food....Download: www.ieType.com/f.php?FzLMOu

Download: www.ieType.com/f.php?FzLMOu

Right Place, Right Time kinda Day

2011-06-24T15:51:00.000-04:00

You cannot truly understand the healthcare system of a country until you have to use it. (posted with permission). Hi-C and I left placement a few hours early today since all of our clients and our supervisor had already checked out. Getting home early I tiptoed past Auntie* since she was napping in her chair. After 15 minutes, I was crouched in the bathroom scrubbing my gitch when we started hearing snoring. The snoring soon became snorted moans coming from Auntie. I tried to wake her: nothing. Hi-C rubbed her sternum: nada. Uh oh.

Long story short, she was unconscious but, thankfully, breathing. That is when it hit me: at home I would immediately call 911. There is no 911 here. You have to call an ambulance company, of which we knew none. So we called her daughters who rushed home. In between attempting to wake her, checking her blood sugar (she is diabetic), and shining a light in her eyes (pupils reactive! woot!) her daughter called an ambulance. No answer. That is right: NO ANSWER! She called her doctor who agreed to come. Still no answer from the ambulance. Eventually about a half hour has now passed since realizing she was unconscious and daughter N sends me in a taxi to the hospital down the road to find an ambulance. I had to FIND AND AMBULANCE.

I asked at the desk about some medical transport and was sent to another desk - where I was promptly told to wait my turn. I was finally told that the hospital did not, in fact, have ambulances but they could give me a number to call one: just give them five minutes to call and find out the number. I got fed up waiting and decided to approach the drivers of the ambulance I had seen sitting at the entrance. Success!

Then there was the issue of payment. No ride without 5500 shillings (about $60) - in cash. Fine. Not exorbitant but we are talking about 5500 shillings in a place where a significant portion of the population makes less than 10 000 shillings a month. Thankfully this family could make it happen. So off we went to the house.

I lost track of time but it was over 1.5 hours from time of discovery to hospital entrance and the hospital is a 15 minute walk away (ie. a 3-5 min drive sans sirens).

Moral of the story: if you plan on having a heart attack, don't come to Kenya.

Auntie is home now and doing just fine.

*The mom in the house we are staying who cooks the most awesomest Indian food.

Percy

2011-06-18T06:07:00.001-04:00

Percy the parasite has taken up residence in my small intestine. At least that is my interpretation of my recent symptoms. Between Hi-C and I, we have had every possible parasite-related symptom*. Hi-C has had more of the unexpected and interesting ones. At first we thought it was traveler's runs after drinking all kinds of fresh juices at hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Lamu. Things we on the upswing after some hydration earlier this week. But I still can't eat a meal without stomach cramps, food holds little appeal for me and I can only consume small amounts at a time (which I then often pay for for hours afterwards). We are both now on a regimen on 6 wormwood anti-parasiticals per day that taste like dry hay. Today has been named "operation parasite destruction day". Off to the pharmacy we go because we still haven't replaced our phones and I can't go to the doctor without first calling my insurance company.

All part of hanging out in a developing country and refusing to only eat with the tourists.

And yes, we are still having a good time we are just doing it slowly and low key lately.

*According to one website. I can't say for sure if we have had EVERY symptom but quite a vast array of interesting happenstances.

Update: de-worming has commenced. Apparently everyone here is supposed to "de-worm" every 3 months. We figured, for 35 cents and one pill we can give it a shot. Here's to feeling better!

Want my Travel Groove Back

2011-06-12T05:58:00.000-04:00

From Mombasa we rode the bus to Lamu, the town I mentioned in my last post as Zanzibar-before-the-tourists, but relaxing it has not turned out to be. We fly back to Nairobi tonight and I just want a day to relax before placement after this "vacation".

We have been staying at a lovely hostel with awesome breakfast included (go fresh passion fruit juice!). The downside was robbery. And the fun of everyone we meet remarking on how nice it is to come to Lamu because it is so safe. Safe other than getting robbed on the beach. Hi-C and I are camera and phone-less. And he also got a nice pair of prescription glasses - thank goodness I brought an old pair. Thankfully no one was hurt and we were not carrying passports or identification. Partly it is our own fault because we ended up on a part of the beach with no one else nearby and tried to return to civilization but we just weren't quite quick enough. We had been lulled by everyone telling us that Lamu is the safest place in Kenya. Expensive lesson #1: don't let your guard down anywhere in Africa.

We have been seeing the city with an American girl who lost some cash in "the incident" but managed to keep her camera. All the photos I have of this lovely town are hers; 80% of the photos are of animals. I think I have a portrait of every single stray cat in the town and a few of every donkey. Last night after dinner with a local family (which, instead of being a local cooking lesson and cultural event we paid too much for fish and ate dinner with tourists....but enough complaining) I rode their donkey home (name: Number 10). Not the smoothest ride but a friendly donkey. I am fairly sad there is no photo to commemorate my journey on donkey-back as people were remarking that I looked like a princess riding my donkey through town with my posse walking behind. Oh, what a glorious 20 minutes it was.

On top of the loss of goods, Hi-C spent yesterday rehydrating after spewing her lunch over one of the town garbage heaps. To be honest, this is the first time I have lost the travel bug and I hope I can get it back. The urge to pack it all up and head home is tempting. The time difference doesn't make it any easier since prime times I can access the phone and internet are times when people at home are often sleeping or at work. Instead of going home it is back to placement tomorrow and on to planning a presentation for a staff meeting Friday.

Happy donkey at the donkey hospital servicing the island's 6000 beasts of burden.

The lovely arabic corner.

Hi-C feeding a donkey.

Lamu shoreline.

One of the Swahili doors.

Taking the Local Bus

2011-06-09T13:33:00.001-04:00

Since arriving in Kenya everyone we have spoken to has told us "you have to see Lamu". One person described it as Zanzibar before all the tourists. Plus it was only a 7 hour bus ride from Mombasa. We arose around 430am today to be at the bus stop by 530ish. The bus was late - no surprise. The baggage stow was filled with a few inches of water since it was raining (luckily they stuck our bags inside the bus by the driver). We went for a bus instead of the matatu option this time since people warned that the road there wasn't "optimal". If sub-optimal means brain-shaking bumps for the last 4 hours then that is the correct term. At least we were protected by the two men with AK-47s in the front seat.

Locals are always more entertaining/interesting than a bus full of wazungu (the plural of mzungu or one white person). The population here is largely Muslim so we witnessed men using tiny portable prayer speakers on the bus - and the awkwardness of the other men who had not been so pious. The man behind me had no qualms with horking and spitting constantly out his window and I got some chicken dropped on my feet when the man in front of me threw the bones from his meal out the window. Here, food scraps go out the window.

Speaking of food scraps I was starting to doubt that Kenyans could keep up with Peruvians with the extent of their culinary selections to be had through the bus window. That was until today. Peruvians watch out! Kenyan's are it. Cheap and fresh. For 10 bob you can get yourself a whole mango with the top sliced and peeled handily and spicy flavouring on top. Not into spicy? How about roasted corn for 20 shillings? Water? Milk? Goat blood? We shoved 10ksh out the window and decided to try something brown and rhombus shaped. That was smart. Basically hard, dirty fudge - pure sugar. Mmmm.

In Lamu for a few hours so far the town is beautiful. I have pet multiple baby donkeys and we ate fresh kingfish kebabs with veggies and tamarind sauce sitting with a view of the ocean. Wandering the "main street" - busy but only about 1 meter wide in some places - we came across a lovely fabric store with a tailor that will make anything for you custom. We're both off to modcloth.com for some inspiration!

We also found ourselves in a fairtrade crafts store. I was standing next to the shopkeeper's daughter (about 5yrs) while browsing the wallets when I felt something warm and wet. I looked down expecting to have been peed on - nope - vomit. There was a new one. Oh well, I just kept shopping, it wasn't that much vomit. It looked like she had spaghettios for din-din.

How Africa Works

2011-06-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

Everything is just a little (or a very lot) different here. Sometimes you just have to laugh. I swear, I'm not jaded yet....

1. Time and timeliness

Time is kept by hours of daylight. Since the sun comes up at a reliable 6 am that is hour 0. If someone is meeting you at 6 that really means noon. Which brings me to the other point: being on time is subjective. People are often late for appointments (and, since exchanging cell phone numbers is considered a must-do) you can then call and confirm if they are, in fact, coming. The problem is that any time you ask "when" the answer is "10 minutes". We are almost there! 10 minutes! Just so you know - not 10 minutes. Likely an hour. Perhaps more.

2. Language

If you're white they will speak to you in "tourist". They use words that they wouldn't use with each other. And you will be welcomed to Kenya all. the. time. Even if, like The Boss, you have been here for 7 months and speak decent kiswahili. They will greet you with "Jambo!" but to eachother will say "hujambo" (one is just the word "matters/problems" while the latter is a question "any problems?"). Sometimes they will throw out a "hujambo" as a test - if you answer "jambo" you're tourist bait - if you answer "si jambo/no problems" you're in. Well, as "in" as you'll be as a tourist with minimal melanin. They also say "hakuna matata" all.the.time. To us. To each other it is "hakuna shida" which means "no problems". Apparently matata=chaos and Timone and Puumba need to brush up on their kiswahili translation.

3. Food service

Restaurants often have very long menus. If you order something they will do one of two things: either tell you that they dont' have it while you continue to play a guessing game about which dish on the menu they actually will prepare for you (hint: it is likely cabbage, fish and ugali) OR they will tell you that they have it only to return an hour later - after your stomach has eaten itself - to inform you that they have not prepared anything while your table mates are happily chowing down.

Examples - we went to a fancy restaurant. Our pizzas took about 1.5 hours to arrive. Hi-C and I had both ordered the same pizza and I jokingly said "if only one comes - I get it!". Woops. Jinx. Only one came. After I sat for 15 minutes longingly watching others eat (somehow Hi-C got the one pizza) they informed me that - oops- the chef forgot my pizza.

-We stayed at a lovely eco lodge this weekend. Hi-C and I decided to get lunch there because they offered "grilled chicken with banana sauce and coconut rice". Woot! There were only 3 items on the menu so I imagined that I was golden. However, when he took our lunch order (at breakfast) he informed us there was fresh fish from the river. No thanks, I'll still have the chicken. And you could see the fear in his eyes. Sure....the chicken....riiiight. We got a phone call an hour or so later informing us that there was no chicken - fish then? Fine. Fish it is.

4. The Telephone.

Sometimes I question why I bought a cellphone here. No one can understand my accent over the phone. People who speak English very well and I could have very detailed an informative conversations with in person are hopeless at understanding me over the phone (and yes, I can usually understand their accent). I have been trying to track down information about ABR testing* (and just any hearing testing in Mombasa) for a client. My first few attempts were by telephone but not one person could understand "hearing test".

Hearing test!
Do you test hearing??
Ears - hearing - do you test it?
ABR?
Hearing tests? For babies?
Do you do them?

Nothing - Sorry maam, I'm just not getting you.

It is so bad that I have resorted to actually going to the hospital myself to inquire. Which, of course, brings up a whole host of other issues. But this post is getting long and ranty. I should point out - I really do like it here!

Just to be a good sport: an example of when something goes awesomely right.

We headed to a nearby beach where a few young Kenyan men have started a nature conservation area + snorkeling! For 500 shillings (about $6) you get a knowledgeable tourguide (also very attractive) who knows many scientific names for things and snorkel gear. While the tide was low we walked among the pools checking out the nifty creatures and then headed for the water as it got a bit deeper. THIS was incredible snorkeling. The water was low enough that we swam with the fish, had to swim between the corals and often brushed up against the seaweed.

We saw:
lionfish
giant puffer fish (2-3 feet long!)
clown fish (nemo)
a variety of sea cucumbers (including the long sticky purplish strands they spew if disturbed)
starfish (grey ones with bright red designs, brittle stars, cushion starfish, a 20-armed spiky monstrosity)
an electric ray
trigger fish
So many other lovely fish I can't name them

The only downside was my own fault - I applied sunscreen but 4 hours in the water washed it away and left me burnt from ankle to butt. Ouch!

*Auditory brainstem response testing - it is a method of testing the function of the inner ear to determine amount of hearing loss in infants and toddlers primarily.

Howayu???

2011-05-31T15:31:00.000-04:00

Walking around the city of Mombasa with gothic-pale skin one tends to stand out. Especially if you happened to be joined by two other whities. People are constantly trying to get our attention (they must recognize me from my blog) and yell out almost anything to do so. It has been a weird adjustment to have to rudely ignore people in the street but I am getting adept at this. Here is a list of some of the common and not-so-common things people have yelled at me (or us) in the street here:

1. Mzungu! (white person) - very common
2. Howayu??? - all the time
3. I love you
4. I like you
5. Obama! (I'm assuming that they were trying to build a quick rapport and not that I resemble the American president)
6. Norway? Norway! Norwaaay! - just once, apparently I'm *that* white
7. Ca va? Ca va bien.
8. Excuse me! Excuse me! Arrrrrgghhhhhhh!

Hi-C and I sat in on the classroom/nursery school next door to our office in to observe a child's performance in class. We were treated to a lesson about petticoats that was addressed to a group of co-ed five-year-olds. For those who don't know what a petticoat is - fear not - I was in the same circumstance as you just yesterday. It is not, in fact, a coat of any sort. It is a slip or some form of undergarment that goes under a skirt but over the panties. The teacher called out during a lesson about how we get ready in the morning and what we wear "And WHY do we wear a petticoat??? In case we sit carelessly and our legs should open!"

Muh muh muh muh muh My Shimoni

2011-05-29T16:27:00.000-04:00

We may have had to work Friday unlike our classmates attending teaching clinic - miss you! - but, then again, we went snorkeling with our supervisor and a multi-cultural parade of other Mombasa volunteers. A two hour matatu ride south of the city brings you to a place called "Shimoni" and a boat across a short stretch of salt water gets you to a small island by the name of "wasini". This place has about 4 small towns (maybe 1200 people total on the island) and not one car. It would be difficult to build roads through the rocky, coral covered island where shells are so ubiquitous the paths seem to be paved by them and they are trampled without a second thought. The lodge we stayed at was about $7 for the night with cozy beds, nice* showers and bathrooms, and an incredible view of the ocean.

There was some to-do about booking our snorkel boat, the hotels and meals but generally I tried to stay out of it. I think there were some miscommunications and perhaps a bit of desperation on the part of the lodge owners who hadn't seen visitors in three weeks due to the May low season. Overall, when you look past some of the attempts to charge way too much (500 shillings for a meal vs. 80 at a local restaurant which took us quite a while to find on our own) they tried very hard to make us happy, took us on a tour of the island, provided a mosquito coil while we sat and chatted on the balconies, brought us glasses for our drinks and sent someone to the mainland to bring over beer to the 'dry' island. The son of the owner, a sweet kid about 12 years old, hung out with us at times (showed us around) and shared some local legends about how the large white birds perched in the trees were once Arab men in white cotton shirts who had come to kill a resident of the island, so the legend goes, but was foiled by a local Sharif.

We didn't make it to the snorkel spot until high tide so we were fairly far above the coral and fish but the view was still incredible: a giant blue starfish, nemo, angelfish, zebra fish, parrot fish, a multitude of other colourful fish and large corals. It took some getting used to swimming in the open ocean (deep water has always been a fear of mine) especially when there really could have been sharks (although highly unlikely). The boat stayed close by and we all floated on the surface, face down for an hour before heading back to Wasini to tour the island. Only 7x3 km the island hosts an amazing grove of old coral reefs that have turned to towering stones and a mangrove forest home to the Trogdor crab** (see below). Money from entry fees to tour the coral park (only $2) go towards town projects like schools and medicine for the dispensary.

The Mombasa ferry.

There is always room for one more on a matatu.

Dhows in the harbour at Shimoni.

Our lodge (or basically our lodge)

The view of the balcony (sneaky pic there, Hi-C)

Low tide on Wasini island

Where water bottles go to die. For all the beauty in Africa this sight taints every single one.

Just a weird duck.

The Trogdor crab (just one beefy arm!)

The coral forest near dusk.

*Nice meaning clean, toilet paper available, flushable toilets and showers with enough water pressure to get the shampoo out, even if it was cold water.

**Trogdor is a cartoon dragon with one beefy arm sticking out of its back. The idea may well have been stolen from these crabs. They should sue.

Living at Mombasa Pace

2011-05-26T11:21:00.000-04:00

We have been in Mombasa, Kenya for almost a week now. There is much to say but I'll intersperse with pictures to keep you interested (or do you all just look at the pictures?). Topics to cover: our house; the city; the work.

Here are some pictures of our sparse but cozy living quarters:

Cute little matresses on the floor (now complete with mosquito net!).

The dining room (the living room is just behind with one comfy chair)

Kitchen. We can't drink the water, brush our teeth with it or wash fruits and veggies so we lots of jugs.

Hi-C cooking at our propane tank by lantern light (not that you can tell it is dark; thanks flash)

We have pet geckos frequenting our rooms and ants will infiltrate anything within minutes. Poor Hi-C has managed to be bitten by some bug or another routinely. The house itself is situated on an amazing compound run by the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya (APDK). For the first two days we were here we were so busy we didn't tour and had no idea about everything going on around us. There are multiple workshops on-site where people with disabilities are employed to make crafts; there is a leather workshop, jewelry, textiles and a shop for creating Kenya-friendly wheelchairs. A daycare behind the house provides care for children with cerebral palsy. Even more surprising is the restaurant with rural Kenyan theme-park - recreations of traditional huts from all over eastern Africa and actors playing traditional music or welcoming visitors into their "homes".

These big dudes are EVERYWHERE!

I was pretty excited to find an extra-large one.

Hi-C was a little less excited.

We didn't even realize what a hub we were in until last night when we stumbled upon a performance of a traditional African dance on the compound only to discover that it was hosted for delegates from all over the world that are here to attend the World Fair Trade Organization summit. They will all be displaying their wares here tomorrow - uh oh!

I have a little extra cash for fair trade stuff since we can make dinner for under $1.50 for three people using fresh veggies, spices and chapatis or rice. A delicious, juicy fresh mango is 15 cents! 15 cents! I'll say it again - 15 cents!

Swahili update: I still can't say much. But I did finally figure out why everyone looked so confused when I would introduce myself: my name is one tense vowel away from the word "sit!" in their language. I've started calling myself just "Kate" and it seems to go over just fine.

And now to attempt to explain the city. I wish that i had more photos but I hate how voyeuristic it feels to whip out my camera in the street here (nevermind the fact that I have a a digital camera when most people live on less than a dollar a day). The city itself (called 'town') is on an island but, like the GTA, it splays outward almost indefinitely. Surrounding town is a series of "suburbs" which, also like in the GTA, all look very much the same. The difference being that outside of town there are few stable, permanent structures. Along the main road where matatus, pikipikis (motorcycles) and tuktuks often jostle past eachother in threes on a two lane highway the sides of the roads are lined in dirt. This dirt becomes mud when it rains (which tends to happen in rainy season). After rain the large divots along the road become ponds filled with opaque grey water (I won't speculate about its contents). Most businesses are clapboard huts with tin roofs or, like the restaurant we frequent nearby, a frame made of thin tree poles with black plastic walls. The general layout is veggie shop, veggies shop, fabric, tailor, veggie shop, corner store (ie. pop, cellphone minutes, etc), veggies shop, furniture maker x5. All of the shops seem to hawk the same wares - especially produce places that consistently offer bananas, tomatoes, mangoes, onions, leafy greens and occasionally cilantro, eggplant, oranges, garlic and papaya. At the restaurant I mentioned you can get a hot meal of ugali (corn meal mush bread) and beans or cabbage plus a chai (the word for all tea here) for about 50 cents. Honestly, almost the entire expanse of suburbia beyond the downtown is what I would have initially guessed to be a 'slum' and I'm still not sure if it differs much from the major Nairobi slum Kibera (which we will be visiting later in the placement to do some work at a school there). To call it is slum is not an attempt to degrade it but to qualify in a fairly north american term what this feels like. The problem with the word slum is that is automatically connotes suffering, hopelessness (helplessness?), and despair. I don't feel any of these things walking through the main areas - I have seen fewer people overtly begging for money than on the streets of Toronto - people work hard and live on little but many own their own businesses, support their families and are extremely welcoming.

The other side of the shilling is that many people do see white skin and assume money. Children will ask if you have any treats, some people out right ask for money or possessions (give me your shoes) - even people who hold permanent jobs. Just as we have no real concept of what it is like here until you come (and even now, do I really know?) most do not really know what our lives are like in Canada. For example, I joined a Kenyan employee of IPDK (who functions something like a community outreach/social worker) out in the field. I relayed a story that while waiting for her a pikipiki driver had asked my name and then proceeded to tell me that he loved me. We had a good laugh over this and I felt like we were understanding each other. That is, until later in the matatu ride when she asked if I was engaged and, discovering that I was not, offered me here brother for marriage. I can only assume he was in his early 40s based on her age. I politely declined and laughed a bit, thinking that was that. No. About an hour later she turned to me in a quiet moment "So, it is agreed, you marry my brother?". I guess I have a way to stay in Kenya if I really want....

The field work itself was interesting and eye-opening. It challenges my faith in my own usefulness because what the children with disabilities here need is often just parents to talk to them, to get down to their level, to use gestures or pictures to communicate but, with so many other children to care for and mouths to feed it is a constant feeling that even these suggestions are quickly forgotten as you walk out the door. I'm not sure I can blame them. I do not know what it is like to be a single monther of four young children living in a one room cement box with a bed, (maybe) a chair, a corner for the coals and small pot and a few possessions. This was a common scene during field work meaning these mothers also had at least one child with a fairly severe physical and/or intellectual disabilities.

The streets here definitely make those in Toronto feel so dull and boring.

Mombasa, Kenya

2011-05-22T11:09:00.000-04:00

Even though it is 30+ degrees and humid in the sun I oddly find myself craving a hot chocolate or a coffee. We arrived in Mombasa last night after being on the bus all day and hopped in a taxi headed for Bombolulu (best. name. ever). It is a workshop that employs people with physical disabilities and we are staying on the compound with H-Can, our clinical supervisor. She is generously letting us crash for free here for three weeks so our expenses are transportation (i'll get to that) and food. Fresh fruit and veggies are so cheap and, for 30 cents, you can have the best mango you will ever taste.

Transportation here is unbelievably cheap. The matatus, or 10 seater vans that prowl the streets, will take you 10 min down the road for just over 10 cents! I've been learning to barter because I'm usually quite a pushover and feel quite badly about haggling over the equivalent of 10 cents but it is the principle! I'll admit that I don't like being ripped off just because my skin is white. Like I said, my instinct is not to care since I do actually have mroe than the people running matatus but it is considered uncool to bow to the higher prices because it drives inflation for everyone. A good example is that last night we met up with a big group of couchsurfers in Mombasa and, we were all standing on the side of the road to catch a ride, a matatu saw a big group of mzungus* (white people/foreigners), pulled over, kicked all of the local riders off the matatu and - with big dollar signs in his eyes - offered it to us. No thanks. We waited for the next one to drive by.

We hung out on the beach today before starting our placement Monday. The sand was perfectly white and had the texture of fine powder. The water is room temperature and very clear.

Therapy bonuses:
1. I worked on the word "orgasmic" with a client the other day. The exercise was to read an article in the newspaper and highlight difficult words and that was one of them. So we broke it in to syllables (or - GAS- mic) and defined it.
2. This week was my first little kid who had never seen a mzungu - as I was talking to his parents he was playing around at our feet and, since I was wearing capris, he would reach over and touch the skin on my leg every once in a while. Perhaps just to see if I felt the same as other people.

*People will literally yell or state "mzungu" as you pass them on the street. It isn't really meant to be good or bad but just an observation. Car! Mango Stand! White person!

A Language Lesson

2011-05-19T01:36:00.000-04:00

It has been a great week (read: tiring) with plenty of interesting clients. After a good chat with a client's husband (Hi-C was seeing the wife so the husband and I had some chai) two things happened: he told me that I'm close to the spirit of god and invited us both out to their farm where they grow coffee! Let's recap: some super christian man said I'm closer to the spirit of god than he is. Yikes. Perhaps he is very sweet but not a very good judge of spirity-ness. And - hecks yes we want to go to a coffee plantation thing. Unfortunately we are off to Mombasa (the coast) on Saturday morning but we exchanged numbers so it might still happen when we return to Nairobi.

Since we'll be off to Mombasa where people tend to speak more Kiswahili than English we had our first language lesson last night; a bit of a crash course in greetings and the verb "to be". To a native English speaker the language is complicated and just not intuitive. But beautiful and interesting. My favourite greeting so far is "shikamoo" = shee-kah-MOH-oh = "I touch your feet?" to which the elder answers "marahaba". How cool is that?

How else is it not intuitive? Well, for starters, "si" is the way to negate (at least in present "to be"). For someone who has studied Spanish for a long time this is confusing because "si" means yes*.

Embarrassing language moment: I couldn't even break a word into syllables! I was working with an adult client on speech and one technique is to break up the syllables by pacing (speaking more slowly) and emphasizing the sounds to be more easily understood. I had the client teach me a few new kiswahili words and off we went. Fundi = technician. /foon-dee/ Syllables foon-dee. Right? Wrong. The syllables are foo-ndi. The /n/ goes with the /d/. I did this multiple times with the client and didn't realize until that night after doing some research on the sounds of kiswahili that I was way off. At least we all had a good laugh the next day about my ineptitude.

Mimi ni Katie.
Mimi ni mcanada.
Mimi ni msichana.

I'm a person (in the first noun class) and I'm just one person so all of the nouns referring to me take on an /m/. If it were about Hi-C and me it would be "sisi ni wacanada". Plural takes a "wa". But only for classes 1 and 2 of nouns (I think there are 10ish classes - we haven't gotten there yet).

AAAAAnd the big REVEAL:

Where will Hi-C and I be going for our final two weeks in Africa? Our (tentative) plans are:
-finish placement in mbita on the coast of lake victoria
-grab a bus to jinga, Uganda for some white water rafting.
-get back on the bus and head to....RWANDA for a few days. See some sights.
-head back to Nairobi
-3 days in the maasai mara (aka serengeti) tracking animals and waiting for the wildebeest to migrate
-back to Nairobi to fly home

*Technically the "si" should have an accent on the /i/ to mean yes instead of "if" but I don't feel like figuring out how to do that right now.

The Tourist Circuit

2011-05-15T15:23:00.000-04:00

We hired a driver today and hit the tourist circuit near Nairobi. Sometimes you just have to do that; there is a reason tourists flock to these places. Who can say no to baby animals???

On the way there we speculated about the animals we might see. Can you guess what we are?

The animals themselves were slightly more exciting. But I'll tell the story in photos:

Shaking hands with Benny the spot-nosed monkey. Very soft little old man hands!

Hanging out with a teeny little dik-dik. Full grown!

Feeding an ostrich....a grabby guy.

Orphan baby elephants coming out for their lunch.

Mud party!

I swear, he is finding peanuts in there.

tight with the giraffes. don't be fooled - she wouldn't stick around one second after the last pellet disappeared

Giraffe kisses - with whisker burn!

Crocodile meat (which I promptly spat out)

i actually consumed ox testical.

For lunch, after a hard day of animal petting, we hit up carnivore restaurant. For a set fee men wander around with sticks and swords of meat and offer to slice a hunk onto your plate. Lamb, miss? Turkey? Ostrich meat balls? Yes please. It isn't my typical haunt and I was basically meated-out after the first pass but it was pricey and i was feeling adventurous so I pressed on. The exotic meats on offer today were ostrich (gamey but good), camel (my fave of the day, so tender with great spices!), crocodile (the most repulsive - full of cartilage and the strongest fish taste I have experience...not my cup of chai) and a few organs of which I tried ox balls. Yes, testicles. And I have to admit, it was the second-best tasting item of the meal to my surprise. I still gagged a little knowing what it was....

A Stalker and a Slasher

2011-05-14T16:50:00.000-04:00

Yes mom, I'm fine.

It has been one week in Nairobi and we're still alive and (almost 100%) well. There is so much to talk about so I'll try to keep it interesting and touch on all the important stuff: placement, my digestive system, today's adventures.

1. Placement: we love it. Our two supervisors are fantastic and they are extremely hospitable. So far we have only worked with E and she just throws us right in. Sink or swim and we're treading water. The clients are wonderful, they often come in with their entire families. So far we have seen all adults and in one week it has ranged from fluency to voice to aphasia to dysarthria (speech issues) and almost everything in between. Dysphagia too - feeding for a videofluoroscopic swallowing study. Score! The cultural differences can be a barrier and they can be a conversation starter. Everyone is extremely warm and I have a sweet client working on his speech while teaching me kiswahili. Nataka chai = I want tea! Different interpretations of appointment time is something that can be difficult to get used to (plus traffic in Nairobi can be horrendous). On thursday we had clients scheduled back to back at 11am, noon and 1pm and all showed up at noon. There is only one SLP room but luckily there were 3 of us so we split up and found nooks in the rehab department to do therapy.

2. Digestive system: nature isn't calling, she is stalking me now. It is getting old. We were find until we decided to purchase some juice made from fresh grapes. I knew the result even before I paid for my drink but, apparently, it wasn't deterrent enough. Three days later....I'm on a regimen of pro-biotics and some homeopathic remedy and some rehydration gatorade-like drink was thrown in today. Annoying but still manageable (knock on wood).

3. Today's adventures: Leaving the house mid-morning today we set out to see "town" for the first time - meaning downtown Nairobi. We grabbed our first matatu - a cheap form of public transport involving a large van that may or may not come to a complete stop to let passengers on and off and that may or may not obey the rules of traffic* - where the driver insisted that we ride shotgun with him. We finally saw the real Nairobi: half torn up roads, a used goods market outside bigger than 5 values villages, a scrap yard for cars on the way into the downtown, people walking between moving cars selling candy, bananas, shoes and just about anything else. We "alighted" from the matatu (proper term) at our destination which was not at a proper matatu "stage", risking imprisonment and ran into our supervisor having tea with a Canadian friend. We sat with them to sort out our route and were quickly informed that downtown was no place ot carry a purse (even if it had very little in it) so I tucked money in one cup and my camera in the other (thank goodness I had a jacket on to cover the extra bulge!) and my phone in my pocket and stowed my bag with our supervisor E.

We toured the city seeing beautiful fabric shops, city markets where it is impossible to move 3 feet without someone imploring you into their stall ("looking is free!") or pulling your hand and approaching you with a clever ruse to get you into their shop ("do you have a canadian flag pin for trading? I will trade you something for it...I will give you a good price now that we are friends"). We had lunch at the Trattoria, an old colonial cafe with servers in blue coats and white collars. I had to remove my camera from my bra when entering the conference centre as it set off the metal detector...woops. It wasn't easy to get photos of the real city as most places in the heart of the city weren't really safe to pull out a camera. Most of the photos are from a car window but you can still get an idea. Now I have walked all over Cusco, Peru at all times of day and never felt unsafe but there were times in heart of downtown Nairobbery that I wouldn't have walked alone in broad daylight. It isn't exactly dangerous but you do feel out of place. We met friends downtown for a ride home after a long day of walking and, when we had almost reached their car, I looked at Hi-C's bag and found a gaping slash right through it! Thank goodness it was just a flimsy shopping bag that contained only some cheap souvenirs and nothing went missing (those slashers must have been disappointed) but it was clearly cut with a razor.

Now for the photo recap:

One of many cool old cars in town

Hi-C at the Trattoria

Nairobi from a random high window

BEST NOTE EVER. Left on a message board at the Thorn Tree Cafe. Photo taken with my siblings in mind.

Side of the road on the way home from town.

The Kenyatta International conference Centre. Sci-fi lovers - isn't that building great? It rivals Toronto's City Hall as most likely to open up and abduct surrounding citizens before returning to the home planet.

*rules of traffic seems to be subjective for all vehicles. A four way stop in this city consists of a game of chicken through the intersection but hardly any stopping.

Sleepless in Nairobi

2011-05-11T00:53:00.000-04:00

Another blurb about time adjustment: not easy! At least I'm consistent: consistently awake at 5am. It wasn't so bad this time since I was asleep just after 10. But what do you do with all that time in the morning if you don't have placement until 9am? I have a suprising amount of downtime here because we aren't really allowed to leave the house after dark and it gets dark at about 6pm. We could, in theory, take a cab somewhere but we would need to know a destination. We have yet to see the downtown of Nairoberry so that will be our goal this weekend (along with kissing giraffes!).

Last night we got off placement before the sun set so one of our host sistaz kindly took us to the market and acted as our negotiator. I haven't learned anything from South America and still can't bargain to save my life; I just feel too bad! Let me tell you, this girl takes no guff and she takes no guff in kiswahili so no one messes with her. I got myself a little fabric doll for 200 kenyan shillings - I would have paid the 450 she was asking but The Negotiator brought down the price. 200 shillings (or "bob") is about $2 ish. Plus a little wooden mask for 100. Hi-C cleaned out the market and drove some mega-hard bargains.

Our Nairo-fam has been treating us so well. The other night we hit up the local Indian mall and the outdoor foodcourt. Instead of waiting in line like chumps you just sit down and people rush over to bring you their menus and you can order from any or all of them. We got some rockin' chicken tikka and butter paneer along with my very first glass of sugar cane juice and our first madufa - a cousin of the coconut.

They are also passing along their chapati making skills to us. The mom can churn out a perfect chapati in about 7 seconds. After about a minute of rolling I usually end up with dough stuck to the rolling stone. But I think they find our excitement over the art of chapati making entertaining so we're good for something - if only slowing down dinner.

And now for some photos of around the neighbourhood.

Home-sweet-compound - notice the barbed wire fence.

a street behind our apartment building

Chapati time! Which is ftting because I'm wearing my new Indian shirt

Dinner!

The view outside our window. One of those is a mall....

The battle begins (first Nairobi Post)

2011-05-09T03:08:00.001-04:00

The battle begins between me and the beast. The beast being my hair. There is a direct positive correlation between the size of my hair and the level of humidity in the air. Lots of humidity = giant hair. This afternoon I created a hair chart with a scale from 1 – carrot top to keep track of the volume of my hair while here. This afternoon I bought some local “hair”, which I believe translates into leave-in conditioner so we’ll see if something can tame this beast. Otherwise, it is going to be high buns for the next three months.

We are staying with a family from India: a woman and her two daughters who are a bit older than Hi-C and me. The two sisters speak English (and Kiswahili, and gujarati!) and we are quite good at miming with their mother (who happens to be an excellent cook). So far we have eaten in a very North American café and every other has been spectacular Indian food. I’m not sure when we’ll actually be eating something African but we can’t really complain. When we arrived yesterday the traffic kept our ride back two hours and we realized that we hadn’t written down her number or the address where we would be staying. Woops! Thank goodness she knew we can in at 12noon and not 12midnight. After eating, buying cell phones and minutes, setting each of us up with our own portable modems (which are of unpredictable reliability – I’m writing this in Word and I’ll post it when I get the internet next), we finally headed to the apartment. I was completely out by 1030pm and we didn’t get up until 130 in the afternoon! Definitely a needed rest.

The hospital is just down the road – we took a self-tour this morning and it is so much more colourful and full of beautiful outdoor sitting areas than Canadian hospitals. Everyone is friendly and every person we meet seems to have a relative or two in Canada. There is so much happening here but most of it can be explained better with photos. Tomorrow is the first day of placement and I’m guessing they will just throw us right in!

Doha, Qatar in Photos

2011-05-09T01:07:00.001-04:00

Falling asleep around 11 last night we assumed we had beaten the time change. That was until we both found ourselves wide awake at 3am. Wide awake enough to watch To Wong Foo all the way through. Hi-C managed to get some more shut-eye after that but I mostly tossed and turned since 5am and finally gave up at 7 to blog just for you!

A brief recount of our 7 hour doha-dventure in photos.

The first place we went: souq waqif

baby bunnies for sale in the pet section (along with cats, dogs, turtles, parrots, iguanas...dyed chicks)

The bustle of the pet section in the market around 11pm!

Fave building (a mosque overlooking the market)

The doha skyline from the corniche (paved and palm-treed walkway). Doesn't do those crazy buildings justice.

The "crappy" mall

A few boys at the mall skating rink. Apparently it isn't a mall unless it has a rink.

Let's try the skyline again from a different angle

The titanic building (not the official name)

Camels...apparently just for show.

Cute kid showing off near the camels.

Sharing cardamom tea with our new friend Nedal (approx 230am)

Bonus Post: The Flight

2011-05-06T21:54:00.000-04:00

Hi-C and I left for the airport in Toronto at 220pm Thursday may 5th. It is now 445am Doha time while I wait in the airport. I know that i'm tired but I couldn't quite tell you how long ago we left Canada or how long it has been since I have slept. Our journey started with a one hour flight to DC with 3 hours there and a 12 hour flight to Doha, Qatar. That is officially the longest I have ever been in the air at one time....by about double. And it wasn't nearly as unpleasant as expected. Likely because we flew Qatar Airlines. I definitely recommend. Economy class feels just ever so slightly better than that: free booze; hand cream in the washroom; blankets and pillows; our own TVs with games, current movies and TV shows (I watched 127 Hours and a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother); on call ice cream and cookies which I regret not taking advantage of; fairly comfy seats. I can't tell you how much I slept on the plane because it was punctuated by frequent wake-ups but I must have dozed off in between the babies crying and the loud-talkers.

Small world story: I ended up in the wrong seat for the first 10 minutes or so to let a woman with a bad knee sit on the aisle. The person I ended up sitting beside was a bangladeshi woman who had been visiting her hubby in the US and, when I mentioned that I was from Canada, she proceeded to tell me that she had a brother in my hometown of "Salt Marie". It is close to 5am and the sun is already rising out there.

My personal TV map of us hovering over Baghdad

Hi-C with her provisions at the DC airport. Or Toronto. Meh.

Would young people recognize these "electronic devices" these days?

You know you're an awesome airline when you give out fresh new socks! Socks! And a face mask!

Where the Streets are (basically) Paved with Gold

2011-05-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

When I found out that we would have a layover in Doha, Qatar (look it up on a map!) I decided we would definitely need to leave the airport. I may never find myself in the Middle East again and I wanted to make the best of the 13hours we would have. The result: success! Qatar is a tiny country with more oil money than it knows what to do with. So they build twisty skyscrapers and supply each citizen with a monthly salary for just being alive (plus they don’t need to pay taxes!). Our first questions, of course, before knowing anything about the area was: will it be safe? For women alone? At night (our layover is/was from 6pm to 730am)? Would they even let us in?

A resounding yes! I felt safest here than any other place I have been and I live in Canada ;) We dressed conservative-ish and no one paid us any attention. Our first stop was Souq Waqif since we were told it was the best place to see a market and get some good food all in one place. Within 15 minutes of wandering through stalls of beautiful fabric we had a new friend, Ousi, an Dutchman. He approached us asking if we spoke English and if we knew where all the good parties were because he was bored already after two days in the city. We would later find out that he really was a football player brought in by the Qatari team but he hadn’t been in the country for only 2 days but I guess it was a good ruse to meet new people. We all grabbed a cab and headed for the CityCentre which is code for MALL. They take their malls seriously here in Doha: skating rink, 6 floors, pristine white interior, stores we recognized (cinnabon, KFC, mango). And, apparently, this was one of their least impressive specimens. But a person can only spend so much time in the mall so we headed out to catch some air and explore the downtown which was dotted with incredible buildings. We quickly discovered this is not a city for walkers: no sidewalks in sight or ones that end abruptly in a pile of sand and no way to easily cross the very busy major streets. At about 30 cents per litre of gas everyone drives….everywhere. And since no one walks, if you aren’t at a major attraction like a mall or a hotel you won’t be catching a cab either. After strolling through an incredibly grand Four Seasons (right behind a building that was fashioned to look like the hull of a cruise ship lit up but about 5 times as tall) we walked for a near eternity until Ousi’s friend was kind enough to rescue us in his car from our taxi-purgatory. Thanks Nedal!

That led to the second half of our night. Back to Souq Waqif for some real arab food. We let Nedal do the ordering. After 5 minutes at the table Ousi was called away by some other friend and Nedal, having met us about 10 minutes prior, was left to entertain us and he was a very gracious host. The gist of many of the local dishes was flat bread (almost like a naan tortilla) with some kind of cheese inside and possibly spices (I recommend the one with sesame and thyme). There was also fresh cucumber and olives with egg and cheese. We drank tea, water, lemon mint tea, ate well and sat for hours to people watch. No one seemed to go home, it was still busy well past 2am with kids still out with their parents. It was warm all evening but I still managed to wear a light coat over my tshirt and long linen pants without too much discomfort because it wasn’t humid. No humidity = much better hair for me! Nedal was kind enough to offer a ride to the airport and he took us on a detour to a place where the locals hang out to watch the skyline across the bay while sipping milky cardamom tea; a definite must-have if you find yourself in Doha.

I apologize for lack of photos. Hi-C's camera was way better than mine so I just let her take care of photos so i'll post some when I get them :)

A sneak peek:

A fabric stall in souq waqif.

One Day until Takeoff

2011-05-04T19:53:00.001-04:00

After a small mishap* I'm back in Toronto a few hours earlier than I had planned. This meant that I flew the premier voyage of the Porter line from my hometown to Toronto: way swankier and way cheaper than the ol' Air Canada. How much swankier? No corn chips and plastic glasses of pop. This was my snack:

That is a mimosa. They had free wine so I chose the only palatable way to take advantage. The glasses were made of GLASS! On departure this afternoon there was a big spread, a cake and all kinds of media and bigshots (read: the mayor!) for this first flight. The one only negative is that they kept everyone away from the food and didn't cut the cake until after the flight took off. All fine and dandy but that meant that those of us who actually paid for the first flight out got zip: no cake! No little flutes full of sparkly juice! No skewers with bocconcini and olives! I love olives!

Flying into the Toronto Island airport was SO MUCH MORE CONVENIENT. The terminal was small, the wait for the "ferry" was quick, the shuttle arrived right away. I do like me a good ferry ride but you'd think they would use the engineering marvel of a bridge rather than ship us all 150 metres in a boat. Oh well, their poor financial decision was my lovely 2 minute boat ride.

Nerd Update: I had mentioned to my family that I was considering a faux wedding band while in Kenya because apparently it wards off marriage proposals (maybe I'm at an age now when I shouldn't be trying to ward those off?). When I was leaving for the airport my sister enquired if I had yet found one and when I said I hadn't she offered up a plethora of rings. So did my brother. In the end, the only ring that fit was the nerdiest ring on earth. THE RING. THE LORD OF THE RING(S). Does it have a name? Anyway, THAT ring. I cannot stand LOTR but it will have to do the trick. Hopefully LOTR isn't big in Kenya....

*Let's just say that it costs money if you book your one-way flight in the wrong direction. I'm not going to say how I might know that.

Roch Voisine.

2011-04-27T15:12:00.000-04:00

No, not RoCH VOIsine. RAW CUIsine. A little misunderstanding with the roomie when explaining our plans for last night. At that point I was skeptical and probably more interested in seeing Roch himself.

But what Balls wants for her birthday Balls gets. We headed over to Rawlicious in Yorkville to celebrate. Before leaving the city I want to make sure I have tried all that this city has to offer in terms of awesome cuisine but I hadn't even considered raw. Probably because it sounds a bit crazy. The concept behind this food movement is that nothing we eat should be cooked/heated over 40-42 degrees celcius (or 106-115 farenheit). Just above body temp. When you cook cinnamon buns the over is at 350 so just think that over. The point (i think) is to preserve nutrients. As you can probably imagine, all kinds of other restrictions usually come along with this lifestyle...like fun. It usually incorporates veganism, organic foods and, heck, let's throw local in there too. Just to make every meal almost impossibly difficult.

So, yes, I paid money for this food. The restaurant was adorable and all the servers looked like they really believed in raw food (interpret that as you may). My first thought was definitely: salad. I can have salad. But it sort of defeated the purpose of trying raw food so I ordered the pizza. So did Hi-C and RoRoW!

Looks pretty good, don't it? I have to say, I was definitely surprised. If someone challenged me to make a pizza without being able to use an oven or traditional cheese it definitely wouldn't be edible. The first few bites tasted a bit like earthiness but it grew on me and was surprisingly filling. There really was a crust, probably made of nuts or something. Instead of cooking they use dehydration to get "bread-like" substances so they even had cinnamon buns! In theory that is, they were "all out" last night. We thought the "cheese" was just the crumbled cashews on top but later hypothesized that the substance under the sauce may have been the cashew "cheese" they promised us. And yes, no ovens mean that the food is either room temp (ie cold) or lukewarm. I would eat this again but I might get it to-go and pop it in the microwave for a bit. B-Mac got the zuchinni pasta which was a mega-portion and surprisingly tasty. This dish wasn't even warm, though, and could have used some heating. Seriously. Cold pasta? Meh.

Pre-pizza Hi-C and I split an order of spring rolls with Thai dipping sauce. Now those were delicious. I could eat them every day. Major props for that culinary miracle.

So, if you're a vegan and it just isn't hardcore enough for you then I would recommend raw cuisine. Otherwise, it is a nice healthy treat every once in a while.

Another Goodbye (This time with cupcakes!)

2011-04-26T17:31:00.001-04:00

For a good portion of the time that I have been in this program I have been meeting with someone on a semi-regular basis. We talk about feelings. And strategies. And life. He gets paid to be my friend. Oh, and he is my therapist*. Although I can be a major pain in his rear end ("Ugh, are you going to ask me about how I feel about that?" - "Could you give me something a little concrete: what do I DO about it?") and I get frustrated with the constant hippie-dippy feelings and meditation talk I think I'm gonna miss him.

In order to commemorate our last appointment tomorrow I whipped up a batch of cupcakes as promised. Initially my big plan was to make cupcakes from scratch with marshmallow fondant and use an edible marker to decorate them. FAIL. The cupcakes are actually homemade (no box!) and so is the icing but marshmallow fondant is a lot of work and I couldn't find an edible marker - I swear they exist - so I settled for icing and a squeeze bag (thanks, ShanWow!).

Wanna see the cuppy cakes?

I won't tell you which emotion each represents but you can look here and try to guess. This was quite the challenge!

*Or is it counselor? Which one sounds less crazy?

PS. Shout out to the Class Baketress. She has mad skills and supplied me with the fabulous recipe for the cakes.

Countdown Obsession

2011-04-22T20:01:00.000-04:00

Let's be honest. I just love the clicker thing.

The number of classes left in this master's degree:

How completely bittersweet is that? 8 years since the completion of high school there actually appears to be a (likely) end in sight for my post-secondary education. No more classes or exams or cramming facts in beyond capacity or kowtowing to the lingo that professors want to hear when I reflect on my personal experiences. No more room 420 with the same 45 other people 4-5 days a week, 2-5 hours a day + extracurricular fun times + projects. No more holing-up in study rooms with teddy grahams and white board markers to hash out charts about various disorder groups or language milestones. I have always been fortunate to have a great group of friends wherever I have ended up but there is something special about the SLP class. A closeness of shared experience, shared lives, shared complaints, shared disappointment, shared excitement, shared worry, shared excitement for the future. There has been much reflecting over the last few days about what and who will be missed and what exactly was so great about our time together. What can I summarize from these talks as we try to grapple with leaving/changing/growing?

Everyone was accepted. Whether you felt accepted or not I can promise you that you were. There was no in-crowd or cool group. No one was put on a pedestal and no one was torn down. There was an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) respect for each and every person and exactly what made them unique; for the things that they brought to the table. I hope that everyone felt that this was a time in their lives where they could truly be themselves and be appreciated for that.

To have a few good friends you have to invest in those relationships while not investing in others. Everything is a choice, everything has an opportunity cost. I wish I had had more time to get to know each person equally as well but I feel like that I'm still pleasantly surprised, even after 2 years, about what I learn about my classmates. I may not have spent as much time with some people as I have others but I can honestly say that there isn't anyone I wouldn't be comfortable going out for coffee with and getting into a great discussion or someone I wouldn't be extremely excited to see 5 years from now at a speech-language pathology conference.

Goodbyes are hard. It hasn't even sunk in yet that we likely will never all be in the same room together again. Convocation will hopefully come close. Things will change, I will change, people will move away and, in a few weeks, or a few months, I'll be sitting at a cafe reading a book and I'll realize that I haven't seen my friends in a while. I'll be sad, maybe I'll get a little weepy. I'll wish all the best for each of them (each of you!).

Oh, the sap! I started writing little maple-sugar-filled notes for each of you lovely classmates on this blog but it felt cheesy. Maybe I'll come back and personalize it later. Or send me a message and maybe I'll let you know what I had planned to say.

The Countdown continues (no, this clicker thing just doesn't seem to get old)

This many sleeps until I leave for Kenya (15 "sleeps"* until I set foot on Kenyan soil)

The number of objectives out of 8 that I STILL need to complete for my portfolio!

The number of days I have left in Toronto. Sad.

The number of days I will be spending in Kenya/Africa.

The number of weeks until I am a grown-up SLP that can actually be paid for my services.

*I don't actually anticipate much real sleeping over the two days of airplanes and airports.

Tools of the Trade

2011-04-20T15:39:00.000-04:00

My to-do list keeps growing. A significant portion of the list is acquiring supplies for Kenya: dry shampoo for those days I don't feel like having a cold bucket shower; cheap flip flops to avoid parasites and fungi on my precious feeties; a subscription for clean blood (just in case). This week I was able to check off some major purchases for things I will actually need to do my "job"* while there.

Naming Contest: not as exciting as a puppy but my lovely new netbook needs a name. I'm not sure of it's gender, perhaps something androgynous? I was thinking Temperence (which doesn't fit my one criterion...I know). Suggestions? Here is some inspiration:

Perfect for streaming high-quality video.

A gorgeous/handsome pale blue shell.

Sooooo teeny tiny.

A big shout out to my mom (Mrs. V!) for the awesome-tastic gift. The webcam will be perfect for skype. So skype me people! Keep in mind the 7 hour time difference (I'll be 7 hours earlier than most of you - 5.5 hours newfie time). With 250GB I can bring all my episodes of No Reservations for in-flight viewage and the hundreds of lecture notes from all of my classes. And some music just to be sane.

The other piece of equipment I acquired was slightly less extravagant at $15. A handy-dandy clicker-thing. Apparently the proper term is "handheld tally counter". It took us forever to find them! We were about to start emailing night clubs to ask where they get theirs. Turns out that office supply stores carry them - no one uses to them to count laps in track anymore.

Count down to take-off. This may actually be one day inaccurate. So if you read this on Thursday, we're good.

Stumped as to what we might need these for???? Stuttering therapy. It will be used to count dysfluencies. Hi-C and I are going to while away the time in the airport watching videos of people stuttering on youtube and count the dysfluencies and then compare them to check our interrater reliability. We're party ANIMALS!

The other placement-related paraphernalia in my bag is a pen light courtesy of my last clinical educator (thanks!). Used for checking inside mouths.

CINNAPULLABUN UPDATE: Awesome. Soft. Sweet. They didn't even need icing. The one thing I would do differently next time is not try to cram all of them into one pan. The ones in the middle didn't rise enough and they were all stuck together. So more space between them when baking but otherwise: perfection!

*unpaid internship position