Prepping in Kimberley

It's sunday, a gorgeous B.C. end to the weekend. I'm looking out the window of the hostel right now, watching the leaves drift about, catching a breeze as they fall. About 14 degrees out, in the sun of course, and nary a cloud in the sky.

Been here a week now, soaking in the B.C. air and such, partaking in the various 'training' assignments on offer from the College of the Rockies. It's a tiny building at the bottom of the hill, about a two minute scamper from the hostel.

So far the training has consisted of a half day of spanish mixed in with meeting with previous interns and going over the mountain of paperwork that's required for this thing. the spanish is coming along, if slowly, and the teacher is pretty relaxed and fun to be around. she has this fixation with beans, always using her childhood in El Salvador and her love of beans as examples of various past tenses. fun stuff - good times as lauren would say.

yeah, the other interns are a motley bunch, mostly from out west here, and pretty hyped about the opportunity to travel once again. the aforementioned lauren is from, um, well not really sure although i think she calls b.c. home (ominous start eh?). jane is from vancouver and will be working with me at the ecoclubs office in guayaquil. meagan is originally from somewhere else but now calls whitehorse home. that's pretty cool. sasha and alec will be headed to mozambique and are from oakville (the outskirts of the t.dot) and kelowna (?) respectively. anyway, they're all pretty gung ho about the opportunity, travelers all who have already traversed much of the planet.

went rock climbing on the weekend (friday and sat). first time doing that and didn't freak out from the height which was a welcome relief (had thought that i wasn't afraid of heights but wasn't positive...). it was particularly cool to hang free from the rock ledge and just sort of hang there, overlook the valley and such. we were already about thirty metres up the hill when we started so the views were impressive.

if i remember i'll write a bit about kimberley - the bavarian city of the rockies (i'm not making that up!) and happy hanz the beer chugging coo-coo clock guardian.