more closure

so now i'm back in kingston, my birth city, looking for jobs and opportunities and basically trying to fill my days with interesting, fulfilling activities.

it's a tough haul at times. there are a few jobs out there, but fewer than a year ago when i was last looking and managed to stumble across the ecuador internship. back then i had things lined up, a few jobs seemed tailor made, like they were plucking qualifications from my resume, but now doesn't appear to be the same case. jobs are more scarce, although right now there are a flurry of internships being thrown about and so the jobs might come later. one such opportunity that i have my fingers crossed for is out of ottawa and involves organizing education campaigns and advocacy around mining and certain mining corporations. we'll see... the deadline for applications is the 30th so i'll be sitting on my thumbs till then (got mine in over a week ago).

apart from that i'm fine - a little sick of the election talk going on and don't really see any palatable way out of this mess that doesn't lead to one disaster (the conservatives) or another (the liberals). precious little has come out of the green party, although the media has a tendency to look past them at the best of times anyway. i have been impressed with jack layton over the past couple weeks. an article in the paper today echoed my feeling that he's toned down his smugness a notch or two and really worked on sounding dignified. i never did like him much but he's actually making some progress in my books. not that i'm gonna jump out and paint my lawn orange, but at least he's growing as a politician while martin shrivels and harper blimps up from his now self righteousness.

back in k-town

to anyone concerned about the lack of posting i'll try and fill you in on the past few weeks...

i did indeed make it back to canada safe and sound. i dropped in on classic kim from dal in calgary and we had a fun couple of days although i was pretty pooped after an 8 hour all-night bus ride and 9 hours of plans... calgary is an interesting city, very spread out and the train service is wonderful (although upon my return to calgary a week later the trains were down in the city centre which was a huge disappointment) but the lack of trees is very disorienting. and the bow river is only like 2 inches deep! that was pretty out of the blue. but kim showed me around and i was able to have thai and indian food for the first time in a long while (like 7 months) so i was pretty happy.

then i flew back to cranbrook for a week of debriefing with the rest of the interns. the little jaunt from calgary to cranbrook is neat - a 12 seater that barely made it high enough to get over the mountains. they made a call out that we were making our approach into cranbrook and would be on the ground in 6 minutes... that was kinda funny.

tracey met me on the ground, a few minutes late because she had forgotten about the time change (good thing i hadn't), and whisked me away to kimberley and the good ol home hostel... the place was as comfy as ever and the other interns (except for alec who came a bit later) were still sleeping, but woke up when i announced my arrival.

anyway... skipping ahead we took off for this cabin in the woods that was really quite beautiful but far from pretty much everything and required a 20 minute drive to get to the nearest phone. we did some hiking, some reading, some game playing and such, but mostly we just relaxed and did not much of anything.

i will say as well that i don't have rabies... that must come as a relief to all who were worried... i got back to calgary and phoned the people there who had not replied to my email (to the health hotline thing on their website) and they were busy so i had to wait a couple of hours to get a response which basically said that i would have to wait till monday to start treatment - that nothing was available on the weekend. they also said that i should take responsibility for my situation as rabies was life threatening, and cancel my trip to cranbrook. i told them that they had a lot of nerve telling me to wait three days and then criticizing me... the coup de grace was when they asked me to fax over the form that i had from the hospital in guayaquil that listed what vaccine i had been given down there... when i said that i didn't have a fax but could scan the slip and email it to them they put me on hold... then said that they couldn't accept that... i said ok, how about i put it on the internet and let you take it off of there... they were mystified by that, but said ok (after again putting me on hold and then having someone phone me back later on). they never did get back in touch with me.

in kimberley things were fine and i got the first of the shots i needed (because the ecuadorian shots are not recognized by canada health or the world health organization - one person, in response to an email about what i had been given, reported that i had been given vaccine that had been cultured in the brain of a lactating rat, and then put an exclamation point beside it... nice). the very first shot is the worst because they inject it into the wound site... and they have to put in a lot of stuff based upon your weight... luckily i'm not all that heavy but they still had to inject 8.2ml into my lower leg. this wasn't exactly fun, and the main incisor mark that wasn't fully healed was jabbed, and then the doctor slowly moved the needle around in a circle to inject as much as possible without taking the needle out. after that was done (they could only fit 6.2 mls in my leg - 2 had to go in my tush) i got a shot in my arm, the same shot that i've been given three more times in kingston.

ok... more news later.