!!!

There are some exciting things going on in my life right now, and duly, I am excited. I've finally found a volunteer program that makes my heart race with how perfect it is for me. I have travel plans. I have new books. I'm officially working part-time. I've been to the new Whitby Hooters (with old Whitby friends).

First things first: Unite for Sight. It's an international NGO that aims to provide vision health care to people in developing countries - and I've just spent the past 3 years learning about & working in the field of vision health. They have so many choices for placements - the ones I'm considering are in Chennai, India, and in Accra, Ghana. Amazing. I'm really excited about this - I have my letters of recommendation lined up and will be applying either tonight or tomorrow.

Another bonus with the program is the flexibility - they have a ton of different dates to choose from, so it will be really easy to work in my volunteering plans with other travel plans. Mark and I are almost certainly going to head over to Poland sometime mid- to late June, and spend as much time as possible getting to know his family. The family side of our relationship is currently unbalanced - he's met absolutely everyone who shares some significant portion of my DNA, and I've only met his immediate family. I can't wait to see grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Books: I now have a complete collection of Salinger novels. I'd read Catcher in the Rye years ago, but was recently re-convinced (Kurt tried once before, it didn't work) by Jaime to read Franny and Zooey. I plodded through it, and was won over a few pages before the end, and left with a feeling of love for absolutely every person in the world. It takes a good book to do that. Now, I'm starting on Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters.

Other: 1st weekday off is tomorrow: studying will be done. In a week and a half, I'm headed off to Ottawa to do some micro-g experiments, hopefully studying will be done there, too, but it will be dicey as my travel companions are some of CVR's funniest people. Hooters was great - we (4 girls: me, Kathleen, Andrea, and Molly; 1 guy: Anthony)had a fun time with our bouncy server who made plenty sure to only pay attention to Anthony. I guess it is the one place where you can't really complain about that kind of service ;)