School's Out For Summer!

Okay, so maybe school technically isn't out, and maybe the weather we've been having is closer to winter weather than summer weather, but still! I'm done!

On Monday I had my practice proposal. I had been losing sleep for the past month or so over this presentation, and last weekend I was pretty much locked indoors, glued to the computer, pulling it all together (well, that and it was raining and cold, so going out wasn't all that appealing anyways). All the hard work and lack of social life paid off though -- my presentation went great! Everyone was really impressed and excited about the direction I'm going in, and I got lots of great feedback from people too.

My actual panel presentation is scheduled for the end of February. It's probably more time than I need, but as Gary, one of the professors here, was pointing out, that gives me time to work on my ethics application. And, if I do get accepted to the IASSCS conference, I'll have to write a paper for that as well.

Having passed through the first of a series of hurdles to get my research off the ground, I have decided to take a mental break. With the pressure of a looming deadline off, I quickly realized that I really do need a bit of brain rest, and that if I start up now with the readings and making changes to my proposal, that I'll get right back into the cycle and push myself through the Christmas break. So, since my campus is closing next week for the holidays anyways, I have decided to just not do any uni work until after Christmas.

Instead I have been catching up on my RA job, catching up with friends, and catching up on sleep. I've also got some catching up on Christmas preparations to do. I am going to treat myself to a couple of luxuries I've been putting off as well -- like getting a haircut and checking out the new cheap bookstore near my tram stop. Over the holidays I'm just looking forward to being able to get out and explore more of Melbourne without having that lingering guilty feeling that I really should be finishing that book or typing up my notes or whatever.

The other thing I now have time to do is house hunt! No, I'm not buying a place, I haven't suddenly won the lottery. My housemate and I are looking for a new place to rent as our landlord has taken to devaluing our place and upping the rent. And, despite my love for northern Melbourne, I have agreed to moving south of the Yarra. So today we're heading out into the southern suburbs to check out a couple of houses.

It's funny, when I first moved here being near the city was so important to me. But now that I've been here nearly a year and have established myself, that has become much less important to me. I love my neighbourhood, and I love the next neighbourhood up even more. If we can find a good place in the same area we're currently living in, we'll stay. But so far we haven't found anything there that's a step up, or even sideways, just down.

Even if we do find something in our neck of the woods, it's actually more convenient for me to live in the south. Most of my friends live in the south, the group I go to on Thursday nights is in the south, and pretty much any activity I'd be interested in getting involved with in the future is probably going to be in the south. Everything seems to happen in the south. So as far as I'm concerned, right now, I'm happy to make the change.

Time Flies When It Matters

All of a sudden it's December and I'm 10 days away from the practice run of my proposal! My anxiety levels are pretty high right now. While everything does not need to be perfect, or complete, for the practice run of my proposal, I do actually need a theory section, a method section, and a powerpoint presentation. So while we are enjoying some lovely summer weather, I am hunkering down and getting to work. Any minute now.

I decided to take yesterday off and spent the afternoon wandering around Collingwood, something I told myself I'd do back when I first moved here. Yesterday we had really nice summer weather and I was very glad that I decided to go out and enjoy it, so any minute now I'll get back to work.

I had some visitors towards the end of November: Jeannine and Drew came out to Melbourne for a couple of days. It was really nice to see them, especially since it's been something like 5 years. I was happy to have people come out to my city and have a chance to show them around. Unforunately, they were only staying for a couple of days at the end of their vacation in Queensland, so we were limited in both time and energy. I took them up to Carlton and we had dinner at an Italian restaurant, then gellato as we headed back into the CBD. The next day we met up again and I got to show them a bit of the Queen Victoria Market, which is right across from my campus. Then we went on a couple of river cruises on the Yarra. It was a nice, relaxing way to spend the afternoon, but I didn't feel that the river cruises did Melbourne justice.

Well, I guess that's enough avoidance of my work for the time being. So I will leave you with this: a picture of the latest creature to set up house in our back yard.

November-a-go-go

I haven't had a great deal to update about. Life is puttering along as life does. Hay feaver season is upon us and I am happily stocked up on antihistemines and kleenex. Apparently Melbourne is the hay feavor capital of the world, and I'm pretty sure my street is the hay feavor capital of Melbourne.

Uni is going well. My supervisors are very pleased with the quality of my writing and are happy to have me spend a bit more time producing a really complex and well crafted piece of research, which is great because I know that if I can work at my own speed what I will produce will be well worth the wait. I'm currently turning up the gears and working on getting my proposal off the ground. My practice run will likely be next month. That means that I will be super busy and if you do see any new updates from me, it's because I'm in avoidance mode.

I am planning on coming back to Canada in 2009 for sure now, though many of my other travel plans have been pushed aside. I don't know when in 2009 I'll be back, but it's looking like some time between March and June. I'm thinking of staying in Canada for 6-8 weeks, but we shall see. I'm hoping to get my flights booked in January. I'm also hoping to be able to make enough money to pay my rent while I am away since I will likely be suspending my candidature and therefore not be receiving incoming funds. There is a lot yet to be decided.

Christmas decorations and merchandising has officially started here. It is completely surreal to be walking around wishing you had worn something lighter because it's actally quite warm, and then stumble across a crowd of families with small children lining up to get a good look at the Christmas display windows at Myer. The windows have snow in them, just the rest of the country's got it wrong. Then treating yourself to an icecream to cool down while "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" is blaring in the background. Apparently in Australia that means spending Christmas at the beach. It's not an altogether unpleasant suggestion, though I suspect I'd end up with sunstroke, hallucinating reindeer. Perhaps I will buy a festive Christmas-in-summer hat to replace my traditionally worn elf hat.

Moments of Clarity

My time here in Melbourne has flown by. I have already been here 7 months, but it feels like I have both been here forever and have only just arrived. When I reached the 7 month mark in Ottawa, I was happy to be staying on a bit longer, but I knew that I wanted to come back to Calgary. When I reached the 7 month mark in Amsterdam, I was enjoying my university program but was sick of my housing situation and badly wanted to come home. Now, at the 7 month mark in Melbourne, I feel no need to go home because I know I am already there.

Sometimes this knowing that I am at home in this city hits me with such force, such clarity, that I have to give it a moment's pause. Now that spring has a firm hold over the city I find myself having these moments of clarity with more frequency. Just today, as I was walking back to my office with a bag full of fresh produce I purchased at the Vic Market, the sun hit my face and I thought "why would I ever leave?"

I even experienced this sensation this weekend, while in the midst of a nightmarish incident with my landlord. On Saturday he called our house and tried to bully us into storing a "new" stove that we do not want for "a few weeks" until he can get it installed. I told him no, we do not have the room, and when he persisted I said I would have to talk to my housemate and she would call him back. When she hadn't called him back immediately, he decided to show up on our doorstep. I let the second call go to voicemail, and when I listened to the message saying he was now waiting outside our house my face went white. I had to hide in my house for about an hour before I felt confident enough to make a run for it to a nearby cafe. He was still waiting as I snuck past. The experience left me feeling like I could no longer be free from harassment, that I could no longer spend my Saturday mornings lazing about the house, because if I was caught at home I would be harassed by a man who is legally not allowed to contact us directly.

Kirsty, my housemate, and I decided that since this man had ruined our Saturday, we would not let him ruin our Sunday and we set out to enjoy the warm weather by the bay in Williamstown. Even though we were both stressed from the day before and things weren't all going our way with the Williamstown outting, we were able to have a really nice day. We went out on a short boat tour and as we looked out at the CBD from the ocean I said to her "Why would I ever leave this place?"

Regardless of the upsets and the headaches that our landlord has taken to inspiring in us; regardless of the long, cold winter spent mostly without heat; regardless of the fact that the seasons are in reverse; regardless of the fact that summer is too hot for too long; regardless of how much more expensive things are here; regardless of how far away Australia is from the rest of the world, making international travel more expensive; this is my home and I have no desire to leave.

Queensland entry

I finally finished my blog entry about my trip to Queensland, and if you scroll down, you'll see that it has posted after Academic Life III.

I tried to move it foward, but all my formatting went, so, you'll just have to scroll down to read it.

Academic Life III

I am working on an update about my recent trip to Queensland, but I just had a rather stress inducing supervision meeting, so I'm feeling the need to blog about that first.

As per Academic Life II, I have started writing. What I ended up handing in to my supervisors was a draft of my survey questionnaire. In our meeting today we spent nearly 2 hours going over the draft; questioning the ordering and phrasing of certain questions, discussing my rationale behind asking certain questions, and mostly, expanding on the different areas I'll want to cover off in my survey.

The result was that everything is way too big to be reasonably dealt with (and I'd add that that's quite an understatement). My supervisors were expressing anxiety at the size the the inquiry we had just created, but I was calm, knowing that this process was inevitable and choosing to embrace it full on. Then we ended the meeting and I started to process what I had just set myself up for... and the terror began to sink in.

Over the next two weeks, I will be creating a monster of epic proportions. A survey that will cover off every possible aspect of every possible avenue I may wish to explore. It will be beyond massive.

I am making a monster so that I can then destroy it. Once I have laid out all the different ways my research can go, I will have to decide which ways it will go.

It's like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when she has to fight a demon that is non-corporeal. They make the demon corporeal so that she can fight it, even though this usually means dealing with a much bigger, stronger, and nastier demon than before. (With, of course, the exception of the season 4 Halloween episode, where once the demon took corporeal form it was very tiny and easily squashed.)

So, to quote Buffy, "Wish me demons!"

Adventures in Queensland

A couple weeks ago I made my first out of state trip and met up with Mary in Queensland for a few days of R&R. I had a really nice time catching up with Mary and seeing some more of Australia. Here's how it went.

Thursday
I woke up bright and early and made my way to the airport. This was my first time on a domestic flight in Australia, so I wanted to make sure I got to the airport with lots of time in case of any snags. But it turns out that's not really a worry here. I wasn't once asked for ID to confirm that I was, in fact, the person whose name was on the ticket. After walking through the security checkpoint with little more than a nod from the staff, I realized that people who didn't have boarding passes were at the gate sending their friends and family off! I suspect that this wouldn't happen on international flights, but I'll just have to go travel and find out.

So 9am I'm at the airport, checked into my flight, and I decide to grab a coffee. The little airport cafe that I went to was also a bar, and much to my surprise, at 9am, there was a group of guy who had been sitting at a table drinking for a while. Now, I've seen piles and piles of empty beer bottles at 9am before, but they've been from drinking that stopped by about 6am, not from drinking that had more recently started. One of the guys spilt some of my coffee on my hand as he wasn't paying attention and was too busy trying to flirt with the staff to notice me in my bright red jacket with a hot coffee. Me who had been up for a few hours and had not yet had any coffee. Me who now had a hot, sticky hand covered in coffee. I managed to refrain from dumping the rest of my coffee on him, but only just.

My flight to Brisbane was wonderfully uneventful. I flew on a plane named 'Peta Pan'. I got into Brisbane a bit after noon, and instead of grabbing lunch at the airport like a sensible person, I headed straight for the train station and got on the train to the Gold Coast to meet up with Mary. My train ride was an hour and a half, so by the time I got off, I was really ready for some lunch! There was a mall near the train station, so I headed over and got myself something from the foodcourt before going back to the taxi stand at the train station. I'm really glad I went and got lunch first because I then spent the next hour waiting for a taxi, with a growing number of other people also desperately waiting for a taxi. Finally a couple of taxi's showed up and I was able to arrange for several more taxis to come and get the rest of us.

Mary's conference was at the Hyatt at Sanctuary Cove, and it was really beautiful there. It was a resort community, a playground for the rich, as you could see by the numberous yachts docked at the pier. I got myself settled in at the hotel and had a bit of a wander before finding a nice table by one of the pools to sit at and read while I waited for Mary. We met up and went for a swim, which was nice and relaxing. She had a dinner event, so we parted ways and I went into the resort village for dinner. After dinner I made my way back to the hotel room and soon found myself barely able to open my eyes. I slept well that night.

Friday
Mary's conference was continuing on until the afternoon, so I had decided to spend the morning getting a pedicure. I went down to the lobby to have breakfast at the hotel restaurant. I wasn't sure how they worked the seating, if you had to wait or if you just sat yourself down somewhere. There was no sign and no staff willing to come over and help me, so I shrugged and found a table and sat down to brunch. I helped myself to breakfast, and eventually someone came around and served me coffee. After I had finished breakfast I was faced with figuring out how to pay. Again there was no staff willing to pay me any attention and I was quickly realizing that you were supposed to pay before sitting down. So I thought to myself "well, I could wait around for someone to pay attention to me, explain the situation, and pay, or I could leave." So I left.

I wandered around the hotel grounds until it was time for my pedicure, then went to the lovely hotel spa that had a very similar feel to the Hepburn Spa (only Hepburn looks more like the BC rainforest, and actually was nicer -- posher than posh). The girl that did my pedicure was really nice, and really into naturopathy, so that was pretty cool. Afterwards I wandered around the resort community, checking out the shops, and I went for lunch at a Mexican restaurant.

Mary and I met up and decided to drive out to Surfers Paradise for the afternoon. After a few wrong turns, we got ourselves going the right direction and made our way into Surfers Paradise. I probably never would have gone out had we not gone that afternoon since Surfers Paradise is just a big tourist city, but I'm glad that I got to go. And I'm glad that I don't ever have to go back again.

Surfers looks a lot like Miami as you drive into it. They were even setting up the streets for some sort of NASCAR racing (or some kind of car racing), and I do have to admit that THAT would be pretty cool to watch. The main drag was full of bars and restaurants and touristy shops. The beach was pretty though. And the water was not nearly as cold as I thought it would be. When we first dipped our feet in I had no interest in going any further, but Mary convinced me to change into my swimmers and she confinced me to go into the water, and once I did I had a great time. It was actually my first time really going into the ocean since I've been in Australia, and I had forgotten about how fun facing the waves can be. I'm actually pretty nervous about going in the ocean around Melbourne since the water in some spots is quite dangerous. Now that the weather is picking up though, I'll probably go out to the beaches with my Melbourne friends who know where it's safe to go for a swim.

After we had our dip in the ocean we wandered around the town for a bit and then headed back to Sanctuary Cove. We had dinner at the hotel that night, at the same place where I had dined and dashed at breakfast. This time we made sure to pay before sitting down. Dinner was alright, but a dinner buffet is generally not geared towards vegetarians, so my food options were rather limited considering the price. Not that I was paying, but still.

Saturday
The time had come to check out of our lovely hotel and head on to Brisbane. We had breakfast at a restaurant in the resort town and people watched as the locals drove their golf carts in to pick up brekky or a coffee. We debated heading straight into Brisbane and going shopping or going somewhere in the countryside around the Gold Coast and heading into Brisbane for the evening. We decided on going to O'Reilly's Bird Sanctuary, which was about an hour away and involved driving up a mountain.

On the way we stopped at a winnery that was along a river where you could look for platapus. We didn't see any platapus in our brief stop, but it was completely beautiful there and I have filed it away as a place to go back to one day.

We made our way up the narrow, windy road to the top of the mountain (don't think Rockies, much smaller than that) and found ourselves at the bird sanctuary. There was a tree top walk and a botanical garden that you could wander through, so we went and had a walk through. Then we had lunch at the cafe that looked out into the surrounding hills. It was quite lovely. Lots of birds came by trying to sneak some food.

After lunch we bought some bird seed and went and fed the birds. There were scarlett rosellas and king parrots flying around, landing on people, and eatting seed out of our hands. I was nervous at first to have birds climbing all over me to get at the seed, but as soon as the first bird came and landed on my arm I was fine. Soon we had a bird on each arm and an occassional bird on our head. A king parrot decided to land on my boob at one point. I didn't particularly enjoy having bird wings flapping in my face while said bird tried to get its footing on my chest, but it soon flew off. We had a good time feeding the birds, and eventually I'll get around to putting up the pictures.

As we left the bird sanctuary, at the top of the mountain, Mary set the GPS in the car to tell us how to get to our hotel in Brisbane. Now, we had to spend the first 30-40 minutes of the trip on a narrow road that has no other option than the direction you are going in, so the GPS really wasn't necessary until we got to the base of the mountain. As soon as we went to head out of the parking lot the GPS gave us the wrong direction. Since we knew we couldn't go where the GPS was telling us, we ignored it. In retrospect, what we should have done was waited until we got to the winnery at the bottom of the mountain, pulled over, and set up the GPS. But we didn't.

We continued on, going the way we had come up, laughing at the directions the GPS was giving us. We figured that once it got it's baring straight it would route recalculate us onto the right path. Nope. We drove on down a country road and eventually came upon a town. There was a sign that said Brisbane was to the left and the Gold Coast to the right. So left we went. We drove down a narrow country backroad with no sign of the highway anywhere, and no sign saying anything about how far we were from Brisbane.

We turned around and made our way back to the town. I suggested that we stop and ask someone for directions, but Mary decided to try relying on the GPS instead. So we followed the directions on the GPS. We followed them until we suddenly found ourselves heading back to the bird sanctuary. This was when we realized that the GPS was so confused from being started at the top of the mountain, that it didn't know what we wanted and it wanted us to go back to our starting point to start our journey again. We pulled over at the winnery to figure out a new plan.

Eventually we ended up deciding to drive back to the town and go right and try the Gold Coast (again in lue of stopping for directions). Fortunately, this time we were able to head out of the country and towards the city. We were quite relieved to see what I imagine was Surfers Paradise cropping up against the now dark sky. Fortunately, we had to stop for gas and there was a gas station open as we came up to the main road. As Mary filled up the car, I ran in and asked for directions to Brisbane. The guy at the counter was very helpful and gave me very clear directions on how to get to the proper highway.

We set off from the gas station and found our way onto the highway with ease. It still took awhile to get to Brisbane, but it was smooth sailing. I was even able to fix the GPS so that it wasn't trying to take us back up a mountain anymore, but was actually telling us how to get to our hotel. We got a little turned around as we tried to navigate the streets of the Brisbane CBD, but it didn't take us long to get sorted out and find our hotel.

After getting ourselves settled in at the Hilton, we went out wandering on the Queen St. mall, looking for a place to grab some dinner. We ended up eatting at this very campy restaurant called Jo Jo's. It was on the first level of one of the buildings along the mall, and had a balcony with tables overlooking the mall. There was a bar that served champaigne, and tables you had to wait to be seated out, but you ordered your food from a counter like in a foodcourt. It was amusingly bizarre. After dinner we had a bit of a walk around the CBD. I had a laugh because Brisbane's CBD has nearly the same lay out as Melbourne's.

Sunday
Sunday was our last day together. We went out to the Queen Street mall for breakfast at one of the little pubs along the mall. It was okay, they screwed up my coffee order, which I wasn't pleased about, but we went and got coffee from another place. We didn't have a lot of time before Mary had to head off to the airport, so we went and check out Myer for a bit then headed back to the hotel to check out. I saw Mary off, put my suitcase in storage, and went back to the mall.

Now, Melbourne is the shopping capital of Australia, so I wasn't particularly excited about the Queen St mall, but I figured that since I had a few hours on my hands I might as well do some window shopping and see if I could find anything I wanted to buy when I got paid the next week. I did end up buying a dress at one store that wasn't a chain I'd be able to find in Melbourne, but that was about it.

I had lunch at a cafe in the mall, then grabbed my suitcase from the hotel and walked over to the train station where I caught a train to the airport. Then it was smooth flying all the way home.

All in all it was a nice getaway. I was glad to spend some time in the ocean and to get to experience some hot weather. My body is craving summer, having gone much longer than usual without one. The temperature is starting to rise in Melbourne though, and as it does, the Christmas decorations are starting to find their way into the shops...

Academic Life II

My supervisors have declared that it is time for me to write! I've sort of been avoiding this moment for a long time, but under the direction of my supervisors my thinking is starting to become more clear and I'm almost feeling ready to put pen to paper, as it were.

So what am I going to write? Well, for the time being I'm just going to write and not worry about the structure of it. I was trying to explain this to one of my colleagues yesterday and our conversation went a bit like this:

"You're starting to write your lit review?"
"No, I'm just writing, it's not structured."
"Oh, so it's the start of your proposal?"
"No, it's just writing."
"So you're writing an essay?"
"No...there's no form to it, I'm just writing."

I can see why he was confused. What I start to write now may become part of my lit review, or my proposal, or an essay for something else, or it might not become anything other than where my thinking is at in that moment.

Writing a thesis is a bit like trying to hold running water still in your hands; it's very fluid, things are constantly changing and shifting, even if they appear to stay the same. The type of research I'm doing is not about proving "X" to be true or false. It's much more messy than that. The messiness doesn't sit well with some people, but I quite enjoy it. I like that I'll be able to produce a piece of research that will be able to grown and move with the times. At least, my hope is that I'll produce a piece of research that will remain relevant and interesting for a long time to come. Making that a reality is rather tricky.

There's this rhetoric that you hear a lot in academia: doing a PhD is a very isolating experience. The way I hear it discussed, a course work PhD is less isolating than a research PhD because you are directly engaging with others in your field. Since ARCSHS is a research centre, they have taken special care to make sure us postgrads don't get lost in the research. We have fortnightly seminars and fortnightly reading groups (which means that we meet once a week under the facilitation of the pedagogically inclined). I really enjoy these meetings, and ARCSHS is an amazingly welcoming and collegial place, but I don't buy into this rhetoric about course work being less isolating than research.

I think that certain environments do open themselves up to the possibility of isolation, and I am glad for all the support that is available for me here. But I think that the feeling of isolation is one that, as a student, you end up bringing on yourself. It's easy to get caught up in your own insecurities and to forget that everyone else is going through the same process. I recently realized that I had been cutting myself off because of certain changes in my thinking that have, in some ways, made me feel like I'm starting from scratch again.

Like most postgrads, when I started out 6 months ago I had this big, vague idea floating around in my head and no idea where to start. So I read all sorts of different things on all sorts of different topics, sometimes moving closer to where I wanted to go, sometimes moving further away. I have had moments of absolute clarity about what it is I want to do and how I am going to do it, and they have usually been followed, shortly thereafter, by complete panic because there's some new part of the puzzle to fit in and I don't know how to make it all work together. It's a lot like being on a roller coaster.

Ultimately, I have realized that I'm not starting from scratch again. I've gained a lot of insight over the past 6 months and can talk with slightly more authority about what it is that I'm doing. I have absolute trust in my supervisors to guide me through, and as I look back over some of the things they've suggested to me in our past meetings, I can see that they've seen a line of reasoning in my thinking that I hadn't clarified for myself yet. They've given me the space to figure it out for myself, but have also given me the guidance needed to get there.

So now I'm pushing through and breaking out of my little bubble of isolation to share my ideas with others and learn from their insights. In fact, I've spent a good part of this week in meetings with a number of my peers, bouncing ideas back and forth, and have a couple more meetings lined up for next week. I'm learning that there's no benefit to keeping everything locked up inside of me, and that there's so much to gain from opening up to those around me.

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, the leaves are budding, and I am writing!

Travel Plans

Spring is here!!!! Finally!

At least, I have decided that spring is here, though I doubt few people would disagree with me today seeing as it's sunny and 18. It felt pretty darned good to get out in the sun, get out of the cold, and get out of my winter coat! Flowers are blooming, leaves are sprouting, birds are singing, bugs are buzzing, and after a long, long haul I am officially declaring winter over!

There may be a few naysayers out there going on about how it's still really cold at night and there's only like one new leaf on one tree (three and counting from my observations!), but they are clearly wrong and I am clearly right. There has been a shift, I can feel it in my bones. Spring is here and that is final.

And with the new season comes a new heap of travel plans for me. The next year and a half is potentially going to be jam packed with globe trotting. So far, I there are my potential plans:

September '08: Brisbane to visit Mary
October '08: silent meditation weekend retreat in the country
January '09: Hobart/Tasmania (I intend to actually learn how to drive over here in time for this vacation so that I can hire a car and drive around Tassie)
April '09: Vietnam for the next IASSCS conference (I've been back and forth about this one, but I'm realizing that I only have to have the abstract in by October, and by the time the conference starts I'll have some initial data to report on)
June '09: Canada, and since it's such a long flight, there may be a stop over somewhere in Asia along the way. Maybe Japan, maybe Singapore...
December '09/January '10: somewhere in Asia with friends (possibilities include India, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malyasia, Indonesia, Singapore...I may have added a few possibilities on there in hopes of persuading said friends)

These trips may not all actually happen, but most of them probably will. It's really just a matter of if I get accepted to the IASSCS conference, and if I save up enough money for the second Asia trip, which I have over a year to do.

Now for something completely unrelated. As many of you know, I'm a dog person (not at the exclusion of being a cat person, these things are not mutually exclusive!) and I tend to favour big dogs, since that's what I've always had.

But I'm living with a mini fox terrier named Bella, who is 16, deaf, and has cancer, and is just so adorable that I'm suddenly finding myself thinking that small dogs can be valid pet choices too, and not just for people who live in small houses!

She's a very cat like dog, in personality and in size, which I think is great because it's like having two pets for the price of one.

When I first came and saw the place where I'm living now, I was sitting on the couch and Bella jumped up on it and stood on my lap, looked up at me, and pretended to bite my nose. All of a sudden there was this itty bitty mouth of canines coming at my nose, and then *lick*, I got a kiss instead.

Of course, when she does it now, she mostly just tries to bites my nose...

Thoughts on Turning 26

Last year was a milestone birthday in that I turned 25. I had a fun time celebrating my birthday, but there was no milestone change in my life that year. My life continued on the path that it was on, so all in all it was an exciting, though ordinary year.

"But wait!" You say. "You went to New York and South Korea and moved to Australia and started your PhD! How is that an ordinary year?"

The reality of my life is that I tend to travel in these huge spurts over a relativey short time span. So within the course of a year I may travel to 5 different countries, and then the next year hardly leave the city I'm living in. Also, this is my third time moving away from home, and there was still a lot of uncertainty about what I'd do after finishing my PhD when I left home. As for starting my PhD, there was about 2 years of planning that went ahead of that, not to mention that I knew from the moment I applied to university that I wouldn't be stopping at an undergrad degree.

So while my 25th year was an exciting and particularly enjoyable year, it didn't really feel like a milestone year to me.

26 feels different. 26 feels like a milestone year.

For the first time in my life I feel like a bona fide adult. I pay my own rent, I pay my own utilities, I cook my own food, I do my own laundry (though I've been doing that for a decade). I am self reliant, I am making big decisions about my life based on my own wants and desires and what feels right to me. I'm not dependent on anyone and no one's dependent on me. I'm starting to make a name for myself in my field. I'm also incredibly content to not be in a relationship, which is turning out to be a wonderful feeling.

I feel that I am in control of my own life now. I make the decisions that I feel are best for me, and I live with the consequences of those decisions. I've gained a great deal of self awareness in my time here and have been learning to let go of the things that would make me angry or upset or hurt in the past. I feel like a new person; a new person who is healthier and happier and more in control of her life.

Even though it means I'm closer to 30 than 20 and that I'm now half my Dad's age, it feels great to be 26!

Less Itchy Feet

In the six months since I left home I have experienced a shift within myself. Prior to coming to Australia, I hadn't had any big desire to come here. I always felt that if the opportunity to go to Australia presented itself I would take it up, but I wasn't going to go to any special efforts to make a trip to Australia happen. When I found out about ARCSHS I knew that's where I needed to go and off to Australia I went.

I liked Melbourne right away. Adjusting to life here was really easy; I found a great place to live, got my own furniture, and settled back into academic life in no time. I still wanted to travel all over the world and could frequenty be found making plans for trips I'd like to take. When I thought about what I'd do after I finished my PhD, I envisioned myself travelling in Africa, maybe even teaching at one of the many American universities around the continent.

But slowly that started to change. When I thought more about what I want to do career wise, I started realizing I'm more interested in doing research than being a teaching professor and I started to think about my PhD research in terms of what sort of post-doctorial research it could lead me to. I started to prioritize focusing on my own research above anything else. I stopped thinking about coming up with something to submit to international conferences because I recognized that my energy is better spent focusing on making my research strong now, so that when I have done my data collected and start my analysis I can have something interesting and important to say at those conferences.

When I think about the future now, and what I want from life now, I have a different picture than I did when I left home. I still want to travel, but I also want to make a place for myself that I can call home. And I want that place to be in Melbourne.

Calgary will always be my home town, but it hasn't been my "home" for the past 10 years. Living in Calgary, I felt trapped, like I couldn't be myself, like I couldn't reach my full potential. Over the years this feeling became more intense. Every time I left Calgary I felt a sense of relief, and every time I returned I felt claustophobic.

I've moved away twice before, both times with different experiences (in Ottawa I really felt "at home" and like if I wanted to, I could make a life for myself there, whereas in Amsterdam I had some amazing experiences, but I learned I could never feel "at home" living there, or likely anywhere in Europe). And both times coming back to my life in Calgary, when I had changed and grown as a person so much while I was gone, and the life I had left was waiting for me pretty much right where I left off, it was really rough. I found it extremely difficult to deal with and wasn't ever really successfully able to reconcile the changes I'd undergone with the life I was living in Calgary.

When I finished my undergrad degree I felt that I didn't have anything tying me to my life in Calgary anymore (my family and friends are still my family and friends no matter where I live) and started looking to make a life for myself elsewhere. I wasn't successful in that at that time, but it was during that time I found out about ARCSHS and, like I said, I knew that was where I needed to go. In the meantime, I took a job that I loathed so that I could earn money to be able to make the life I was dreaming about a reality. And it was really hard for me to stay with that job for as long as I did, but after a fair bit of manuveuring I was able to make it a bareable situation.

When I left this time, I knew that I'd never live in Calgary again. My reaction to Calgary when I came back from my trip to Peru last year was enough for me to know that this time when I got out I was staying out for good! Calgary is just not a place where I am able to feel happy, free, and at peace with myself and my life. I am not going to get into the reasons for why I feel that way here. But while I know I can't ever come back to Calgary to stay, it is a place I am happy to come back to visit, and will be doing just that in June 2009. Being in Calgary is much easier for me to manage when I know I don't have stay.

So why do I want to make a life for myself in Melbourne and not somewhere else in Canada like Ottawa? A lot of my reasons are quite strongly personal and not best expressed in this forum, but there are a great deal of practical reasons as well. The career path that I'm on now is quite different from where I was when I was living in Ottawa, and there isn't the same kind of space for the one I'm on now there. There's a different culture here, a different academic setting, and it's one I'm finding fits much more comfortably on me than what I've seen in Canada and Europe. I can visualize a potential career path for myself in Australia that just doesn't translate into anything that interests or excites me as much in Canada.

Things are different here. I am different here. I feel free in a way that I've never felt before, free to live my life on my own terms. It's an exciting and really envigorating feeling to have. Why I had to come so far away to feel this way is complicated at best, but the reality of it is that I've come a long way from home and gotten in touch with a very wonderful part of myself that has been neglected for just way too long. My feelings may change as I go along with this particular journey that I'm on now, but somehow I think that I'll always feel like my real home is in Melbourne.

Winter to Spring...any time now

Time has been flying by, and all of a sudden it's August. While my friends and family on the other side of the equator are enjoying the last month of summer, I'm anxiously waiting for my second winter to come to an end. July is the height of winter in Melbourne; August promises to be better. The days are slowly starting to get longer, and the temperature is not dropping quite so low at night anymore. Today, in fact, it's actually really gorgeous out.

A couple of weeks ago my housemate, Kirsty, and I spent a weekend up in Daylesford to take a mini-break from the various pressures of our lives/winter. Not that Daylesford is warmer than Melbourne - it is significantly colder. But it was a good weekend of retail and massage therapy. I have to say, I'm falling in love with the Victorian countryside. I love living in Melbourne and I love escaping to the country every now and then. Because of the train system (and my concession card) it's both easy and affordable to take a day trip, or even a weekend trip, out to the country without having to use Kirsty as a chauffeur.

On the academic front a looming supervisor meeting had me waking up in the middle of the night in terror. They want me to do my panel presentation in early November and had asked that I come to our next meeting with some reflections on my research questions and on the literature I have been reading. As I started to review the research questions I had come up with earlier in light of what had been piquing my interest in my latest research, I discovered a problem: my research questions had nothing to do with what I was interested in now and they weren't igniting any old interest either.

After a lot of pacing, a couple sleepless nights, and several pages of rewrites, I had a vague idea of some research questions that would bridge the gap.

I went into my meeting and laid it out for my supervisors: I had lost interest in the whole internet part of what I intended to research. Much to my surprise, this was met with a great deal of excitement. Positive excitement. They didn't think it was the end of this internet business for me, but saw that I had reached the proverbial "fork in the road". Apparently the fact that I had reached this cross roads at this particular stage of my PhD is a really good sign that I'm aware of where my thinking is and am in touch with my thought process. Or something. Like I said, I had 2 sleepless nights before the meeting.

After discussing where my interests were heading, what different options there were if I was to drop the internet bit, and what was expected of me as a PhD candidate, we came up with an idea that married my new interest to my old one that I suspect I am quite happy with. My task for my next meeting is to reflect more on what it is I want to research, do some clarifying around that, and go over my notes from when I was focusing my literature review on the internet to see if I can find where my passion for that topic got left off and if I can pick it up again. I'm feeling confident about it all.

So my plan for this weekend was to catch up on sleep and finish up some uni work that's been eatting up all my time. But somehow neither of those things has happened. I'm sleeping alright, but with regards to sleeping in, my body apparently had other plans. So I resorted to spending the mornings with a good book. Hopefully my ability to sleep through the night will continue on through the week, since I can't just lie in bed all morning with a non-uni book on weekdays.

Well, we have a house inspection coming up this week. Kirsty's going to see if they can come tomorrow since she'll be home sick. I'm not on the lease at this point, an issue that will be resolved this month, which means that I don't have to be here for the inspection. Which is great because most of the things that needs fixing I don't particularly care about, but Kirsty does. I'm a strong believer in that if you want something done right, you do it yourself. At any rate, I'm hiding in my room from my share of the housework, which tends to be the smaller share, so I should probably get on that.

Academic Life I

Having been away for about 6 months and working on my PhD for a good 5 months or so, it's come to my attention that I haven't really wrote anything about that process on here.

I came to ARCSHS with an idea to do research on young people and new communications technologies, looking at romantic and sexual development. It was an idea that I had put into a breif research proposal about a year before I arrived and hadn't looked at much since. So when I started, I had a lot of ground to cover and not a clue about where to start.

After a bit of mucking around in literature about technologies and some consultations with my supervisors I started to focus in more and more on literature around the internet and what's happening with people on it. After awhile I came to realize that I had narrowed in too much and the research questions I was considering from the literature where too small. So I changed my focus and started to bring sexuality into the mix. This helped me to clarify what it was that I wanted to look at. I started reading more about youth and romance and sexuality and became really interested in subcultures, and in particular binge drinking.

Again I took a step back and went back to reading about sexuality. I also started to ready some theory articles. The last few weeks I have been emerged in a particular article that has to do with agency and obesity. I've been working through the article, sentance by sentance, applying it to my own thinking and research interests. The theoretical framework of this particular article provides some really interesting parallels to where my own thinking has been, but it's a very complex and dense read so working through it and figuring out how the various nuances can be worked into my own project is a very consuming task that takes up a lot of time and mental energy.

In a similar vein, there's some really interesting work being done on sexual ethics education and young people here in Australia, in Sydney. I got a chance to hear a presentation on some of the results of this research and chat with the main researcher. So there is an opportunity there for me to link my own research up with some of what she's doing, which is really exciting but adds on a whole other level that I will need to work through and have only just begun to get into.

I met with my supervisors today to discuss the theory article I've been stuck into and they were really happy with how I'd progressed with it and thought it through on my own. Now they want me to start thinking about writing up my proposal and preparing for my panel presentation.

How the PhD process works is that the first 9-12 months is spent working on a literature review, familiarizing yourself with your area of interest, figuring out what your research questions will be, thinking about what types of methodology you want to use to best answer those questions. Then you write up a research proposal which is presented to the department at a panel discussion. The panel is an opportunity for everyone to hear about your research and ask you questions about it, to give you feedback on your thinking, and while it is an experience that produces a great deal of anxiety, within ARCSHS it is a very colleagial experience and you get a great deal of support and encouragement from the centre.

After your proposal has been accepted by the panel, you are granted candidature. Then you submit your ethics application to get clearance to actually do the research. This takes about 8 weeks to get approval, plus how ever many weeks between the panel and when you submit ethics. Once you have ethics approval, that data collection can begin.

In my case, what I am planning to do is a nation wide online survey of young people. So it will be largely a quantitative project, though my survey will include a number of open ended questions that won't be quantifiable (meaning, I won't do statistical analyses on them but will look for common themes in the responses and explore what is said, and what is not said, in them).

After, and partially during, the data collection phase comes the data analysis and the actual writing up of the PhD. This happens during the 3rd year. Then once everything is written up, analyzed and put together in a satisfactory manner (there's a lot more in that than that) you submit and your PhD is marked.

So there you have it. I'm about 5 months in and am at the point where I have to start considering what I want to say in my actual research proposal. The aim is to have my panel presentation in early November, which I think is a bit of a lofty goal, but it does give me a deadline and a goal to orient my activity around, and I work well within that kind of a parameter. It's exciting and nerve wracking, but here I am, doing what I've wanted to do for so long, in an incredibly supportive environment. What more can you ask for?

Winter Wonderland

Heating's gone
We are freezing
In the house
Frost is forming
Not a beautiful sight
We're bundled up tight
Living in a winter wonderland

Gone away is our heating
Here to stay, nope it's fleating
It comes and it goes
Along with cold toes
Living in a winter wonderland

In the kitchen we can trap the heat in
Then pretend that the house is warm
She'll say: you have all the blanket
I'll say: No man
But you can get some more while you are up

Later on
We'll conspire
As we dream by the fire
To face unafraid
The beds we have made
Living in a winter wonderland

In the kitchen we can trap the heat in
And pretend that we are nice and warm
We'll have lots of fun in the warm room
Until we have to leave to go to bed

When it rains ain't it thrilling
The cold wind gives a chilling
We'll bundle up and pray
The heating guy comes our way
Living in a winter wonderland
Living in a winter wonderland
Living in a winter wonderland

4 months and counting

It appears I have been slacking off on my blogging! My excuse is that I have been busily making progress on my PhD and haven't had anything much to report on. Well, other than the inner revolution of me figuring out what it is exactly I'm researching. It turns out my interest is in youth sexual cultures and how this landscape has changed/is changing because of new electronic/communication media. And it seems my timing is either perfect or off by about 6 months.

Today I was talking to one of my supervisors and he informed me of an academic journal that is looking to do a special edition that would basically be entirely dedicated to topics of interest and relevance to my own research. I would love to write a peer-reviewed article, that would be great! Problem is, I don't have anything to write about other than what other people have written about. Maybe if I get my ass in gear I could write a theory paper (that would require me actually reading some theory though). And while the article deadline is a good ways away, it comes right when I'd be starting to get my data in. There is a possibility of co-authoring a paper with someone else from the centre, namely, my other supervisor, but she's on vacation at the moment. So, we are sitting on that one for the moment.

The other academic thing going on is that there's going to be an IASSCS Conference in Vietnam in April 2009 that has a whole range of topics also of particular interest and relevance to me. I imagine that me and every other researcher at ARCSHS will be submitting an abstract for this conference, so that should be interesting. This is the same organization that hosted the conference I presented at in Lima, Peru last year. I think this time I'll see about doing a poster presentation and focus it on what I am proposing to do with my research. So we'll see how that goes as well.

In non-academic news, we've finally got internet set up at home now. Woohoo! We are both enjoying the convenience of being able to pop online to check something out whenever the mood strikes. This also means that I will be more available on Skype (though the time difference leaves something to be desired). I will also at some point in the nearish future get around to posting some more resent pictures on Flickr. Bear with me!

Well, we're settling into a chilly winter here in Melbourne and I keep getting to hear about the beautiful summer weather in Canada. I guess the fact that it's winter and the temperature is averaging 12-16 degrees is pretty sweet though. I do think that my mind will be completely blown come summer here....when I get to hear about all the snow and sub-zero temperatures back home. I may even come to miss the snow. But I wouldn't hold your breath on that.

Tipping, Cartels, and Extreme Poetry

Life on the Melbourne front is continuing on rapidly. I feel like I've been here forever and am always quite surprised at how short of a time I have actually been here for. I take that as a sign that I have settled in nicely. Speaking of niceties, our heating mysteriously started working shortly after it stopped, and has actually been working better than it did before it broke.

I seem to be making progress on the academic front. I'm not sure in what direction, but there's definitely movement. These things are not straightforward and linear, so I choose to believe I am progressing in some sort of potentially meaningful way. I've started my Research Assistant job and that's going along at a steady 7 hours/week, as per my scholarship requirements. My RA job keeps things interesting and helps me distract myself from the perils of my own academic scholarship (a good thing, to be sure).

I want to share some of the more humorous happenings of my academic surroundings, particularly, my involvement in the ARCSHS footy tipping pool. My colleague Geoff and I got a late start into the season, and neither of us knowing anything about the AFL, quickly found ourselves floundering at the bottom of the tipping ladder. Well, Geoff, who is notoriously proactive, suggested we get together with a third, also floundering, party, Henry, and workshop our tips in an effort to improve our standing.

This tactic has been working quite well for us, though we were quickly uncovered by the Head Girl and our newly formed cartel duely reported to the rest of the centre. Not that our tactics have been stopped, they continue quite fruitfully. The cartel cannot be stopped.

A proud tradition of ARCSHS footy tipping is submitting your tips in poetry form. I do not think that my colleagues were aware of my notorious submitting-answers-in-mad-poetry skillz, but I am well seasoned in aggressive statistical poetry writing. Let me share with you the fruits of my poetry and cartel labours, as per round 8.

The new cartel of Henry, Joni and Geoff are really working on this together and have begun their ascent up the ladder with two 7s and an 8, that’s looking like a system that works and they even did some poetry writing. Joni gets top billing for tips in verse:

Perhaps I should be reading and writing
Instead of tipping on sweaty men fighting

But as a part of my acculturation
I am learning the sport of this great nation

I may not be a statistician
But I work on my tips in the hope fruition

Conclusions on these were not easily made
Predicting the future is not why I’m paid

Collingwood and Hawthorn will win their match
While Richmond and Brisbane go down the hatch

Kangaroos and Adelaide surely win the game
While Essendon and Fremantle feel the shame

Now, having gotten my tips out of the way
Finally I can get on with my day!

And so it continues...

I am not so happy to report that after about 2 weeks of having functional indoor heating, our heating has once again stopped working. We will be without heat for at least another week and are negotiating (or trying to) with our landlord for a reduction in rent so we can purchase firewood. And things were going so well.

The bugs continue to take residence in our home. I believe I've now seen 3 separate species of cochroaches, and several scary looking spiders. I've also seen a large centipede and a bug that can only be described as what I imagine the devil would look like if the devil was a smallish insect. Not that this bug was particularly devilish in behaviour. It was too high up for me to do anything about and then it was gone.

Joining the bugs are some furry friends. Mice, possums, rats, who knows. I'm not going to be the one to open the cupboard while I can hear them violently trying to chew through the tupperware container the dog food is in.

Aside from the continuing adventure that is my housing situation, things have been going pretty smoothly. I've been making progress with this whole PhD thing and am not, at this moment, feeling particularly lost. I may even know what I'm doing. Maybe.

The weather here hasn't been too bad, although now that our heating is gone unless it's over 20 I'm probably going to bitch about it. We're getting a bit of rain, which is good considering the water crisis. I got laughed at today because I am wearing a warm sweater, a scarf, and a wool hat. Our office tends to get chilly, especially since I'm sitting right by a window, and I'm fighting off a cold so I feel totally justified dressing like it's -10 instead of +16.

I have officially gotten my work visa and will be starting my 7 hour a week job as a Research Assistant to Dr. Gary Dowsett (who is largely responsible for my being here, so it seems fitting that I should be working for him) next week. I am looking forward to having the extra money and actually being able to get ahead a bit.

Mostly it's business as usually for me right now. I don't have anything special or exciting happening at the moment, though, like most days, I am planning vacations. I'm hoping to go to Tasmania in the summer (whenever it gets too hot in Melbourne) for like a week, and I am planning a trip to India with my friends Laura and Jeff for next year. I promise nothing, but I may also be planning a trip home. You will all have to wait until, oh, October, to find out more about that! Mwahahahaha!

ALSO ***I have posted my Melbourne pictures on Flickr now*** so if you click on the "Travel Pictures" hyperlink on the side of the page it will take you to my pictures. There's an album called "Melbourne" and that's got all my Melbourne pictures in it. I will keep updating that as me and my camera keep exploring the city.

Learning Australian

Today marks my 2 month anniversary as a Melbournite, and I have to say, I'm feeling right at home. People are always asking me how I'm settling in and adjusting and I feel like there are no seams in my transition from my life in Canada to my life here. Of course, I didn't feel this way at first. But on the whole it has been a very smooth transition. This is in no small part because I was very much ready to take on this challenge and prepared myself well for it. I came armed with technology that makes it quite easy to stay in touch with friends and family back home, and I came with a great deal of enthusiasm to get back into academia, and I had very few expectations about what life would be like down under.

It turns out, life down under isn't so different from life in Canada. There are a lot of odd similarities that make me feel much more at home here than I probably would in any other country. To be quite honest, I could see myself staying on here permanently (or as permanently as I could stay on anywhere). I feel very much at home.

I'm also completely in love with living in Melbourne. I realized the other week that this is actually the largest city that I have ever lived in, which threw me because I think of myself very much as an urban girl. Spatially, Melbourne is very much like Calgary. It sprawls and sprawls and sprawls. But there's a much larger population here than in Calgary, and it's a huge cultural centre (versus Calgary being a huge corporate centre, which, eww).

There is a tone of diversity in Melbourne, and never a dull moment (as my housemate Kirsty said, there's a new festival on every week). One of the things I love most about being here is things like that a sizable chunk of the dancers on So You Think You Can Dance Australia are from Melbourne, and I can vote for which one I want to win. I can see why Melbourne is considered one of the most livable cities in the world.

So I'm setting down roots here. It's a slow process, since I'm a PhD student and that is an isolating and intensive experience, and means that I am poor. It's harder to go out and meet people when you're head is being sucked into the academic vortex and the money being doled out to you isn't enough to support brain cell killing activities. I don't know what the bar scene is like in Melbourne because I can't afford to participate in it (well, I can it just means that I can only drink beer since a cheap cocktail goes for about $12). The cafe culture here, now that's something I can tell you about! Melbourne is a coffee city, actually, it's more of a coffee mecca. (If I ever get a chance to bring a Melbournite to Canada I am going to have to take them to Tim Hortons just to show them how lucky they are.)

Back to what I was saying, meeting new people isn't easy when you're a PhD student period, let alone a PhD student in a new and far away country. Fortunately, the people in my department are incredible. And I have an amazing house mate. We get along great, and she's a huge support for me. I get to practice my Australian on her!

I've learned to use "thongs" and "budgie smugglers" conversationally, and the other night at dinner I said tom-AH-to. I think it's going to take a lot longer to get "G'day mate" in there, but I'm starting to get the hang of "how ya going?" and "ta". I've learned that it's just "koala" and I'm down with "no worries," kinda. Then there's "brekkie," "trackie dacks," and "plats". My vocabulary is growing....but I still can't be asked to make a proper cup of tea.

Struggles, Acceptance, and Kangaroos

AHHHHH! I am settling back in at my desk after a trip to the Queen Victoria Market (conveniently located literally across the street from my campus) and am enjoying my lunch (freash, organic pizza, strawberries for dessert). It is a serious luxury to have the market so close. I now have a bag full of freash fruit and veggies, cheese, and a loaf of sour dough bread.

The market is huge and there's always something new to discover, and not just because the vendors aren't consistently the same. I am seriously looking forward to having some visitors to take on a gastronomical and shopping tour! *hint*hint*

I have been living in my place for a bit over a month now, and yes the bug problem continues. We've recently had another moth hatching and we can't figure out where they've hatched from. The battle continues. Another continuing battle: getting our landlord to fix the heat! We have no heat, and it's been this way for about a year. My housemate tolerated it last winter, but after having the rent increased and nothing repaired, we're preparing ourselves for war. Or, more accurately, renters court. Hopefully it won't come to that, or, if it does hopefully we'll get some serious action this time.

I am pleased to report that I have, finally, won over the affections of my housemate's dog, Bella. It was a bit of a slow process since Bella isn't a very affectionate dog, but seeing as she's replacing 4 dogs for me I wasn't about to let her off easy! It didn't take her long to realize that I'll play with her when she's hyper. Soon after she would count me (she goes around the house and counts how many people are in it, and I became worth counting). But what really won her over was when I sat beside her while she faked being tortured in her harness on a car ride. The next day she was all cuddles with me, letting me hold her and coming over to disrupt my studying. When I came home last night she even got excited to see me!

Over the weekend I went up to the country with Kirsty (my housemate) and we did some shopping. That was a really nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Afterwards we went to her partner's parent's place, which is a chicken farm. I got to see all sorts of chickens and ducks and geese running around, and some really cute and fuzzy baby ducks...

Then, as we were leaving to go home, I spotted a bunch of kangaroos munching away on the hillside. I got out of the car and took a picture, and discovered the remains of what may have been a marsupial. I decided not to take the still together spinal column home with me, tempting though it was.

As far as my actualy uni studying stuff goes...well...I'm actively avoiding it by writing in my blog. It's a challenging process and I don't really know which way is up at the moment, but I'm assured that this is how I am supposed to feel and that I will probably feel this way most of the time. So I guess I'm right on track!

Harbinger of the Apocalypse?

As anyone who has ever stepped out into the great outdoors (and I mean that in the most liberal way possible) with me will know, I don’t do bugs. It’s like the rational part of my brain just completely shuts off and the most harmless of insects send me running for cover. It’s not all about fear, and it’s not all insects that have this affect on me. I’m fine with spiders, provided they aren’t actually on me. The way I figure it, it’s basically bugs that fly and bugs that are crawling on me that cause these melt downs.

Since I’ve moved into my current place, I frequently find myself feeling like I’m camping. For one, we currently have no functional heating other than fire. This hasn’t been an issue, especially since I bought a quilt. But this Indian summer should be coming to an end and we’ll be moving into proper autumn weather, and then, winter (and I thought I was escaping it).

The other thing that makes it feel like camping is that we don’t have screen doors, except for on the front door. Our back doors are screenless, as are the doors to the little side area that doesn’t really serve any function other than a toilet facility for the dog. Since it’s mostly been ridiculously hot since I’ve moved in, we tend to keep at least the front and the back doors open to get a cross breeze through the house. This has resulted in some of the outdoors violating my indoor sanctity.

The first violator that made me, literally, hide under a blanket was a fly that sounded like it was the size of my fist. It’s actually about half the size of my thumb. This fly has a habit of buzzing into the house, taking a look around, and flying away. It started to do this on such a regular basis that I decided to name the fly “Dave”. Dave still comes by to visit, and sometimes he brings friends. We had another fly that decided to move into our house during the heat wave (it was between 37 and 40 degrees pretty much every day, we didn’t even have the energy to shoe the fly away, let alone do the dishes). So we named her Daisy, and when the heat wave ended, so did my patience with her. She’s either in hiding or has moved out, after escaping many close calls with death.

The barrage of mosquitoes seems to have ended. I guess they were satisfied after eating the entire left side of me. But now we have an epidemic of cupboard moths. We can’t find them in anything in the cupboards, but yet, every time we open one, they come flying out. Over the Easter break I discovered what may have been the source of all this. We have a huge, dead moth lying by the fireplace. Possibly it met its end with a spider and has now fallen out of a hidden web, I don’t really know. All I know is that this thing has a huge body and I don’t care if we’ve proved it’s really dead, I’m not touching it. For all I know it’s a zombie moth just waiting for me to go pick it up to throw it out so that it can eat me alive.

But this is just the beginning! When I went to change the garbage in the kitchen I found, at the bottom of the bin, what first appeared to be mouse droppings. Upon closer inspection it was clear they were some sort of eggs, moth eggs we suspect. Unborn bugs I can deal with. I took that garbage can outside and disposed of all the eggs, making sure to give the bin a good wipe down before bringing it back into the house.

A few days later we started to find these little white crawly things making their way through the house. On the counter top, on the cupboards… I’m pretty sure these little dudes are what come out of the eggs – proto-moths, moth caterpillars (Kirsty is having caterpillar issues in the garden right now too). This has been a less than pleasant experience. But on Sunday I saw something truly horrific.

I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating my lunch, when I noticed the shed skin of one of the proto-moths. Completely disgusted, I left the table to get something to clean the bug shed up with. That’s when I heard it. A rattling sound not unsimilar to that of a rattlesnake. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this noise; I had heard it coming from, so I thought, the garden a few times over the weekend. But this time I saw it!

Sitting on the blinds of one of the back doors was one of the biggest bugs I have ever seen! I don’t know what it was, but it was like a cross between a beetle and a dragonfly. Like most days, I was home alone and now I was having a panic attack. This thing had wings and could decide to fly right at me at any second. It was obvious, since it was trying to figure its way through the glass, that it wanted to go back outside. We have French doors, and the particular door this bug was on was the closed and locked door. I went into the bathroom and got the mop, hoping that I could use the handle to unlock the door from a safe distance. No such luck. I was going to have to go into enemy territory if I wanted to get this bug out of the house.

Mop in hand, brain knowing the mop wouldn’t do anything except potentially knock over and break something, or worse, anger this mystery bug that I can only assume possessed lethal capabilities, I approached the door. Adrenaline rushing through my blood, I had that door unlocked and swung open in a fraction of a second, and just as quick I found myself running back to the safety of the other side of the kitchen, mop outstretched in front of me in case the bug got any funny ideas. The bug, for its part, remained clueless to my anxiety and shortly after I got the door opened, figured out how to get out. It flew straight out of our yard and over to the neighbour’s yard, hopefully never to been seen again.

Kirsty swears she’s never had problems with bugs in the house before. We’ve come to an agreement that the bugs are probably a sign of the impending apocalypse, although we are in disagreement over my moving in being a trigger for these events. I am slowly recovering from the trauma of this most recent experience, wishing that my bedroom spiders, Dandy and Dot, would come back and provide me with some peace of mind that at least some of the bugs invading my space are getting eaten.

Currency Confusion and Tram Assassins

Sorry I haven't been updating about my time in Melbourne much. I've been here a month now and I'm finally settled enough that I'm able to relax and reflect on my time here. And so I present to you some stories about my early days in Australia.


Australian currency is similar to Canadian currency in the breakdown of bills, and to some extent the coins. They have $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 bills and they have $2 and $1 coin. But they also have 50 cents, 20 cents, 10 cents, and 5 cents. Apparently the metal some of the coins are made from is worth more than the coin itself, so I'm thinking of doing some metal melting. They don't have 1 cents here and the stores round your purchase total off (it’s actually a really handy way of doing things, they do this in Holland too.)

But there are some funny differences between the money here and the money back home. The coin, for instance, is very different in shape and size. The bills are where I’ve had the most difficulty. When I first arrived in Australia I exchanged my Canadian cash to Australian dollars, and it worked out to about $88. So I was very confused when I was handed back a bunch of red bills. Here $5 is purple, $10 is blue, $20 is red, $50 is yellow, and $100 is green. It’s taken a bit of getting used to.

Tram Karma
In Melbourne there are 3 ways to get around the city via public transport: by train, by tram, or by bus. The tram is generally the most convenient and most used mode of transportation, especially for travelling around the Central Business District (CBD, or, downtown). I am fortunate enough to be living close to a tram stop and a train station, so I have my options for getting around. The tram line that I’m near though is my best bet because it stops just a couple of blocks from my campus.

Now, I seem to have developed a bit of bad tram karma and I don’t know exactly what brought this on (the bad bank karma I can understand). You see, whenever I’m on the tram or planning to be on the tram there’s an increased chance that something will happen in relation to the tram. In my first 3 weeks here, I have been on trams where tickets were checked more than most people probably encounter in a year. Needless to say, I’m not hopping the tram! But, that’s just the light side of my bad luck spell (and it's more bad luck for the other people on the tram, because frequently someone gets a ticket, or, escorted off the tram).

In my first week I was on a tram that hit a car. Now, the trams are the reason why I don’t think I will be driving in Melbourne any time soon, if ever. They go down the middle of the road and they have the right of way. Their presence has inspired some unique traffic rules, like, the hook turn. If you’ve ever felt nervous making a left turn at a busy intersection, multiply that by a hundred and that’s a hook turn. When a tram hits a car it is almost without question the car’s fault, as it was in the case I witnessed. The car was pretty smashed up. The tram was fine.

But even that is pretty pedestrian compared to my next story! I was on my way back to my hotel after wandering around in the city, minding my own business, listening to my music, when suddenly a bunch of people at the front of the tram started shouting “Stop the tram! Stop the tram!” and the tram came to a screeching halt. I thought “oh, maybe we hit a puppy this time” but no, we hadn’t hit anything. Now, since I didn’t actually see what happened I don’t know how this all got started, but according to the police witnesses a fight broke out between 2 men, an older one and a younger one, at the front of the tram. Apparently the fight had something to do with someone being drunk and someone sitting in priority seating, but all the possible combinations of who was who could fit with the story so I can’t get into specifics.

What I saw, shortly after the tram stopped, was the 2 men in question running up the street while the younger man attempted to punch the older man. He did manage to get some hits in before the older man got away (rumour has it he hopped in a passing cab). A couple of other guys from the tram were trying to separate/restrain the younger guy, but to little avail. Our tram, for its part, kept going after the guys had ran off. But, the younger guy seemed to have gotten it in his head that he wanted back on the tram and came chasing after it. And that’s when things got really interesting.

He ran up to the tram, which was now stopped at Separation Street (a place forever etched in my mind as having a yellow building and a waxing parlour offering a discount on brazillians) and the people at the front yelled “Don’t open the doors! Don’t open the doors!” And the dutiful tram driver did not open the doors. Well! Our young man with the fiery rage burning in his eyes was having none of that! He started screaming and cursing at the tram driver to open the doors.

He stood in front of the tram so that it couldn’t move. He came back to the middle doors, which I happened to be sitting beside, and started shaking them with all his might, still yelling and cursing at the driver to let him on the tram. We had a would-be hero on the tram who came and stood in the door way, ready to fend off the beast should he succeed in opening the doors. The angry guy then started shouting at our would-be hero, who happened to be black, to get out of his country and go back where he came from. Which was ironic because our aggressor was clearly of immigrant decent himself.

Eventually he tired of shaking the doors and this time he went over to a garbage bin and pulled out a broken umbrella, which he used to start bashing on the drivers windows. He did, in fact, succeed in smashing one of the windows. Of course, by this time the police had been called and he gained enough sense to flee the crime scene, though it didn’t take terribly long for the cops to find and arrest him. The police came, took statements from the passengers sitting up front, we all had to get off the tram so it could go to the depot for repairs (which, incidentally, is not too far from my new place). Normally having to get off a tram and onto another one would be a huge pain, but by this point there were about 8 more trams stuck behind us.

Let’s just say I’m glad to not have to take that tram route anymore. The biggest problem I seem to have with my new tram line is delays. I can handle delays.

Waegook Wanderings Part Two

As we soon found out, Samcheok is a city full of very pleasant surprises. We stayed in a “love motel” right beside the bus station and took off to find ourselves some kimbap for dinner. After wandering a bit, we found ourselves in the midst of a good sized market, still open in the evening. It mostly was selling various fruits, vegetables, and fish. I’ve never seen so many anchovies in my life!

Eventually we found a little place that had kimbap. Now, kimbap is actually made with ham, so we’ve been ordering it without ham. This place had their kimbap premade, so we had to pick the ham out (which isn’t particularly hard if you have good command of chopsticks). This gave the ladies running the shop quite a laugh, but they came over and helped us remove the ham. Between the 2 of us we had 2 rolls of kimbap and 4 red bean pastries. The total for our meal came to a whopping $3.

After dinner we decided to see what kind of a jimjilbang this Samcheok place had. And then our minds were blown. We caught a cab, and happened to get a female driver, which Laura tells me is extremely rare to see in Korea. We told her what we were looking for and she excitedly took off exclaiming that we were in for a treat! (Okay, I don’t know what exactly she was exclaiming, but from the tone of her voice I could tell she had something special in store for us.) We pulled up in front of this huge building, which we were told housed a pool and a karaoke room, along with the jimjilbang. Clearly Samcheok has more to offer than giant wooden phalluses! (And a cave, but we didn’t have time to see the cave.)

The jimjilbang was incredible. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that it alone was worth the 7 hours on a bus. And we didn’t even check out the pool and karaoke room! We slept very well that night. So well, in fact, that we didn’t wake up until after 10am. We had to leave that same day to go back to Seoul, so our intentions had been to get an early start to the day. Instead we threw our stuff into our bags and threw on some clothes, and headed out to catch the city bus out to Penis Park.

Penis Park is exactly what you except it would be, well, it was exactly what I expected it to be. The story goes that there was a young virgin who was due to be married and she was collecting seaweed (or something) on a rock out in the sea. Her fiancé was supposed to collect her at the end of the day, but because of a storm he was unable to and she drown. After her death, the village experienced a shortage in fish. Then, one day a man was attending to “nature’s needs” (I’ll leave it to you to interpret what that means) and exposed himself to the ocean. That day, the fishing improved. And so the villagers began erecting giant wooden phalluses in order to appease the dead virgin girl’s soul.

The park is actually situated between the sea and the mountains, so the scenery is quiet beautiful in and of itself. All in all it was a very enjoyable trip and we were both sad that we didn’t have more time to discover all that Samcheok has to offer. It was now Feb. 13 and we had a tour scheduled of the DMZ for Valentine’s Day, so after we took in the penises we were back on a bus to Seoul.

The DMZ tour starts very early (like 7:30am early) and we were running a bit late. Fortunately, the start time we were given was a big earlier than the actual time the bus leaves Seoul, so we didn’t really need to run from the subway to the USO (our tour guide was actually on the subway with us and watched us run to the USO, he informed us of this after our bus got underway). The DMZ is about an hour or hour and a half’s bus ride from Seoul. On the way you drive alongside a river that is heavily watched by the South Korean army for North Korean submarines.

When we arrived at the DMZ we were inspected by an American military personnel, who then provided us with a tour. We had to wear UN visitor badges for the duration of our tour and were told when and where we were allowed to take photos. First we had a presentation on the history of the Korean war and the DMZ, and then we were taken to the boarder, where we were instructed not to point, smile, or make any attempts at communication with the North Korean military. Since it was a cold day, there was only one person outside from the North Korean army, and he was way up on their building. There were others inside the building, you could tell because he would go stand beside a blacked out window and talk to them. (You couldn’t hear him talk, he was a ways away.) We got to go into one of the UN buildings that straddles the boarder and is used for peace talks, and inside this building we were able to cross over into North Korean territory. In this room there are microphones on the table and everything is recorded, so you know whatever you say will be listened to by the North Korean military. It’s a very weird feeling.

Afterwards we were taken to a lookout point where we could see both Propaganda Village (NK) and Freedom Village (SK) off in the distance. We were taken to the bridge of no return, though we weren’t allowed to get out of the bus because they believe that the North Koreans guarding their side of the bridge don’t obey the rules on allotted weaponry within the different sectors of the DMZ. We were also shown one of the caves that the North Koreans dug underneath the DMZ. The North Koreans claim they were mining coal, though it is very clear that there is no coal to be mined in these tunnels, and that the South Koreans dug them anyways (but it’s obvious from the way it was dug that it came from the North’s side). There are several of these tunnels, and they are all intended to end at point near Seoul to facilitate a surprise attack. While this is unlikely to happen, they still haven’t found all the tunnels that have supposedly been dug.

That was quite an interesting experience, and if you’re ever in South Korea the DMZ tour is not to be missed. I’d like to take it from the North Korean side one day, but as it stands right now it costs about $10,000 to go on the government controlled tour of North Korea.

Well, that about concludes my trip to Korea. My last day was just spent relaxing and doing a bit of shopping and then Laura and I parted ways at the bus station and I headed on to Singapore (for about 2 hours) and Melbourne, where I am currently getting myself set up and established. There will be much, much more to come on that!

Adventures of a Waegook (aka my trip to Korea)

After a long month of packing and stressing and preparing to leave, the day finally arrived. I headed off to the airport with my family well before the sun came up and we had a tearful goodbye. I managed to hold it together to make it through customs. Plus, being excited to see a friend I hadn’t seen in about 4 years helped distract me from the whole leaving home for a really long time thing.

I flew Singapore Airlines to Seoul, and let me tell you! I was impressed from the get go. When I walked into the plane I saw a flight attendant in a glamorous uniform that I remembered seeing often during my numerous layovers in Frankfurt. I never knew which airline these women were with, but I always wanted to fly on whatever airline they worked for because I knew if the flight attendants looked that glamorous that the airline would follow suit.

And I was right. The plane was big and the seats were roomy. That ended up not even mattering because the plane was nearly empty and I had a row of 3 seats to myself. The thing about Singapore airlines is that they combine the glamour of airline flying of the 60’s with the technological advancements of today. Every seat has its own entertainment system. The meals were served with real glass cups and actual metal knifes. Even the plane washrooms were nice. All of this made the 13 hour long flight a pleasure.

Once I got into Seoul I had no problem getting through customs and collecting my bags. I got some weird looks as I piled my massive suitcases onto my cart, but no hassle at all from customs as I wheeled them out of the baggage claim area. Laura met me at the airport, and thank god she did because I would have struggled without her. Laura has developed a pretty good command of the Korean language, and can read the alphabet fluently. (And by the end of my trip she had even taught me a bit of the alphabet, enough to not be completely lost when I saw something written in Korean.)

I just happened to be coming into Seoul on Lunar (Chinese) New Year, so Seoul was basically a ghost town when I first arrived. This at least made it easier for us to navigate the subway with my luggage. Of course, carrying my heavy suitcase up all those flights of stairs was not so much fun. Once we got out of the subway, we had to find our hostel. By this time it was around 10pm and neither of us really had a clue where we were. So obviously we got a little lost. But eventually we got ourselves to the hostel (thanks to Laura’s cell phone) and by the next morning we had mastered navigating our way between the hostel and the subway (which involved going through a narrow alley for a few blocks). Laura had booked us a double room at a hostel, so it was quite cozy. In Korea they use floor heating, which resulted in us having very warm clothes when we got dressed and a lot of melted chocolate.

Because of the holiday, most of Seoul was shut down for the first couple of days I was there. This made it easier to adjust to being in Korea as the pace was slower than normal, but it also meant that most things were closed. On my first day Laura took me to one of the Palaces, which fortunately was open. We got there just in time to witness the changing of the guard ceremony.
This Palace was a summer Palace and was decorated in lots of vibrant colours and flowers. I found it quite beautiful and enjoyed wandering around the grounds, imagining what it would have been like to live there. We saw lots of little kids dressed up in traditional costumes and many of them smiled and waved at us foreigners (waegooks). We checked out one of the museums, where they had some very realistic plastic models of Korea food dishes. It was an interesting museum.

Afterwards we headed off to Itaewan, the ex-pat district, where fewer things were shut down. We had lunch at a nice Indian restaurant then went to, oh the shame, Starbucks and chatted for hours. Then we went to a Thai restaurant for dinner.

On my second full day in Seoul we set off to find the USO to pay for our DMZ tour, but were unhelpfully (and very incorrectly) informed that we would not be able to find it from our location near the war memorial. So we went to the war memorial and museum instead. There I got a history lesson on the Korean War. I also got to get hands on in the Emergency Experience Hall. And what did that entail? A foam helmet and a tarp like cape! I wish I had a helmet and cape for when I was volunteering on the crisis lines and/or working in fraud squad! This was definitely a high point in the trip for me. ;) Afterwards we decided to wander around in Insadong, a cool and large market near our hostel. I fell in love, and now have the coolest fish earrings ever.

We were originally going to leave Seoul on the 9th, but opted to stay an extra day to meet up with some of Laura’s friends for dinner (we were supposed to on the 8th, but I succumbed to jet lag). During the day we continued our adventure to find the USO, and were eventually successful. That night we returned to Itaewan for dinner with Laura’s friends…eventually. That was not the highlight of my trip, not that Laura’s friends weren’t good people!. I actually got to meet a woman from Melbourne, so that was a good connection to make.

The next day we took off for on a bus to Jinju, the city where Laura has been living. The nice thing about taking inter-city buses in Korea is that there is usually a bus leaving every 15 minutes. After getting ourselves settled in at Laura’s, we met up with another of her friends for dinner (Korean food this time). We ordered a whole whack of mandu, which is like tofu dumplings. It was pretty decent. Afterwards we went to a teahouse for, obviously, tea. In the basement was a shop filled with various handmade ceramic products made by the owner. We went and had a look around at his work before settling down to a nice cinnamon tea. Afterwards we got in a cab and headed to E-Mart for my Korean grocery shopping experience! Kid in a candy store, that’s what I was.

On Monday Laura took me around Jinju and gave me the proper Jinju experience. We started off with a crazy bus ride, then went for a walk through the market. Afterwards we found ourselves a little kimbap place (kimbap is like a California roll and was by far my favourite Korean dish) for a light lunch. After lunch we went for soy ice cream. Yum!

That afternoon we wandered around the Jinju castle, which is the site of a heroic act on the part of an entertainer woman named Nongae. The Japanese had invaded Korea, and the general was quite taken with Nongae. She was able to lure him out to a rock in the river, where she linked her hands around his back and threw herself, and him, into the river and to their deaths. By doing this she saved Korea from the Japanese invasion. Nongae is now considered a heroine throughout Korea.

An important part of Korean culture is the jimjilbang, otherwise known as the public bath house. Laura happened to live right across the street from one (lucky!) so after dinner we headed over for some R&R in the saunas and baths. It was a lovely experience, and despite Laura’s concern, I didn’t get physically assaulted because of my tattoos.

Our next adventure had us on a 7 hour bus ride up the east coast of Korea, from Jinju to Samcheok. Now, the only reason we decided to go to what we figured would be a quite small city whose main industry would be fishing, was to see the infamous Penis Park. Boy were we in for a surprise!

To Be Continued...

In Melbourne Now

Okay, so I'm in Melbourne, got in yesterday morning, things are going decently. My visa, obviously, went through without incident. I managed fine with my 3 massive suitcases and have even developed arm muscles that I previous did not have! (Okay, maybe they aren't really "developed" but still, I lifted those suitcases like no one's business.)

So I'm going to do a huge blog entry about my trip to Korea, which was awesome. But right now I'm hungry and not having a cell phone is driving me crazy, so I think I'm going to head into the city to do something about both those problems. (I unlocked my Canadian cell phone, so I'm hoping I can just purchase an Australian SIM card and get a pay-as-you-go dealy going.)

A few things about my time here before I take off:

I figured out where I am, I'm staying in the suburb of Coburg in this tiny student apartment with an insufficient kitchen. I thought my room wasn't being cleaned, so I hope the cleaning people didn't mind the tripping hazards that are my suitcases. It's been...interesting. I'm hoping tonight I won't attempt to give myself a concussion again.

I'm a registered student now! Complete with ID card and horrible ID card photo. Horrible! Okay, so how's this. The administration people at La Trobe are super pleasant! Especially the people at the Research Graduate Office. They made me feel so at home, I know I'll have no problem contacting them about anything I need. Seriously, I could just take these ladies out to lunch they were so lovely.

I'm living on chocolate and peanut butter, neither of which customs had any issue with me having. I promise I will go get some real food! I have to anyways, I'm almost out of chocolate and I don't have anything else to scoop the peanut butter out with.

Apartment hunting is horrible. Mostly I have no idea what I'm doing and I think my life will be a lot easier once I have a phone. I'm dubious about using this hotel phone. I guess I could just use skype, but, it's really weird talking to my computer. (I'm sure Laura's laughing to herself saying that I prefer to talk to my make-up.) So I'm considering the whole roommate option. There's this website that matches people up quite nicely (much better than, say, online dating sites do) and today I messaged someone who I actually have quite a bit in common with and who I think I'd do fine with. Wish me luck! Although, I'd still be homeless until some time in March. So I may end up living in a hotel for a little while. Maybe not this one though, depends how long it takes me to get into the city.

Google maps lied to me! The result? I took a 2 km walk and got to know Melbourne's industrial side. Which oddly contains a lot of flower shops. Did I mention it's 34 degrees out? At least my little coffin-sized room has A/C. Plus, there's a pool...

Counting Down The Hours

It's hard to believe that in under 48 hours I'll be leaving. I haven't quite come to the point of comprehending the magnetute of this yet.

I had a good, relaxing time in Banff with my Mom. I'm glad we did the trip because it was nice to just hang out together, get a little spoiled, and spend time in the mountains (which I will miss).

As for my visa...well, fingers crossed that that actually goes through. It turns out that there are only 2 doctors in Calgary that do the medical examination, so I was fortunately able to get into one tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be a crazy day. The doctor appointment is in the morning, and I'll have to tell the doctor to RUSH my results or whatever off to wherever it goes. After the doctor I have to go back across the city to the radiologist for my chest xray. I've also got an appointment with the lab, but I'm hoping that they got me to make that appointment just in case. The documents I have seem to indicate that lab work isn't really necessary. Hopefully the doctor will concur. I do not like needles.

The packing fiasco is mostly under control now. I shipped (literally) a box of stuff off to myself and I have 3 suitcases. Today I am going to go through the one suitcase and see what I can do without for awhile since Mary kindly offered to bring me a few things down the next time she's in Australia. Of course, I probably won't find too many things I'm willing to take out, but the fact that if I get there and am missing something I can have it sent out to me is a great relief.

The past few days have been all about goodbyes. Last night was my goodbye party with friends and the night before I had a goodbye party with family. It hasn't been easy, especially at 2:30 this morning when I finally had to say goodbye to my best friend. :( Saying goodbye to my pets has been sad too. I know they won't all be here when I come back. But I am looking forward to showing people pictures of my dogs and telling them I have a pet polar bear and a pet black bear back in Canada. ;) And, of course, saying goodbye to family is the hardest. I'm really not looking forward to that at all.