FINE

Since somebody *cough*sharon*cough* has been hassling me about my lack of posts, here we go. In my defense, I've been too busy talking to people in real life to put stuff on the internet, and most of the stuff I want to talk about is not the stuff I want to be stumbled upon here.

Some things:

The Welcome Home Warming party that Mark planned was great. There was lots of fun, and great people, and vodka ahoy. Some of us were the worse for wear the next day, but some croissants in Trinity-Bellwoods made our stomachs happy anyways. All of our couches have been broken in by sleepover guests and I got to spend some good times with Paula who came all the way from Windsor for the night! It was great having her, Maggie, Sharon and John (all of my London 'girls') here for the night.

Now, I'm getting ready for a potluck. I'm thinking brownies and maybe something else...

I'm getting really excited for Sharon, who may have a husband in her house by this time next week. WOOOO!

Also: Atrish is coming to visit! YAY!!! I have to think of super fun things to do this weekend, hopefully involving Halloween parties and sushi. I made myself a hooded cape yesterday - I just have to decide whether to be red riding hood, zombie red riding hood (I know, it's stupid), or some yet to be determined superhero.

Speaking of making things, you may have noticed the quantity of housewifey things I've been up to. I'm unemployed, and starting to worry about it a bit. BUT I have an interview lined up for Monday, and hopefully some other prospects as well. Wish me luck!

And she's back!

Wow. For the first time in almost four months, my feet are on Canadian soil. It really feels surreal - I can't believe that my travels, for the moment, are over. I've missed Canada, my friends, my family, for so long. It's good to be home, but I know I'm going to miss the freedom of my travels. But, now its time to find myself a job, pay off the bills, and settle into life in one place.

Tomorrow, I get to see Mark for the first time in more than two months. I'm unbelievably excited - it's impossible to sit around home but equally impossible to focus on a task for long enough to get it done. Mark has found us a new apartment and I get to move in tomorrow. Little Italy, here I come! Today, I'm procrastinating from packing, but hopefully I'll manage to at least bundle together a coherent collection of clothes - I can worry about the rest later.

I'll post a trip update later, for now here's a random image from my day: I went to Chapters to pick up a New Yorker (yay! the one Western luxury that I've missed!) and glancing out into the mall, I saw a grown man (grey hair and all) riding a mechanical giraffe, with a soother in his mouth. Way to go Oshawa, you just got weirder.

OMG I am DONE

A quick update before I head out to dinner: I have officially completed my program with Unite for Sight, and I have also just submitted applications for school next year. That is nuts. Also, I finished the applications 3 days early, unheard of for me! I am all kinds of happy right now.

I will post some thoughts on my experiences here in the near future - for now, I am going to be too busy enjoying my last 5 days in Ghana. I'm planning on traveling with some friends to a place called Beyin tomorrow - it is supposed to be a beautiful beach ton on the West part of Ghana's coast. From there, we're going to travel to Nzulezu, a village nearby built on stilts above the water. I'm excited!

I should be back in Accra by Tuesday night, and then I'll finish my preparations for leaving. And now, have a look at my Thursday:

-leave here at 01:00
-arrive airport b/t 01:30 and 02:00
-fly from Accra to Morocco at 05:15
-Arrive Morocco around 09:00
-Fly Morocco to Brussels around 14:00
-Arrive Brussels around 18:30
-Catch bus from Brussels to London (?) at 21:00
-Meet my cousin first thing Friday morning.

THAT IS NOT A FUN DAY.

But then, I get to see people who know me! And love me! And I get to hang out in England and Wales for a week with my mom. THAT IS FUN.

Akwaaba (you are welcome)

Well, I've officially been here for four weeks! I'm having a fantastic time, and am so happy that I came here. This past week and a half has been our busiest yet, hence the delay in sending the email. Our work handing out flyers around Accra has paid off, because we're seeing about double the typical number of patients at our local screening centre. Outreaches have been especially busy, with the minimum number of patients still above 100, and the max at well over 150. We were very lucky this week to have two professionals with us. One is Dr. Lotfi Merabet, an optometrist/professor at Harvard Medical School - he's here to help out with outreaches as well as to teach our ophthalmic nurses whatever he can. Oddly enough, before going into optometry, he did a PhD in vision research in the same lab as Claudine (for those who don't know Claudine, she's a post-doc at York and a very brilliant/wonderful person)! One of the other new additions to the group is Roberta, a young doctor from Italy. Having more than one person doing the actual checkups is helping things run more smoothly. I saw the monthly report for August yesterday - over the month (I was part of the program for the second half of August), we saw almost 1500 people over the course of about 20 outreaches. 150 of those people were referred for surgery.

My most interesting day was probably last monday, when Maureen and I went with Margaret (a nurse from the Crystal Eye Clinic) to the Liberian refugee camp in Buduburam. Buduburam is home to approximately 46 000 refugees who fled from Liberia during the civil war. Most of them lost their homes and family, and likely will stay in Ghana for the rest of their lives rather than go home to try and start their lives from the beginning again. There is a full-time screening program there that is run by local volunteers, and once every two weeks Margaret spends a day at the camp to see the patients who need medicine or possibly referrals for surgery. The camp was extremely well-run and efficient. We saw well over 100 patients, with Margaret diagnosing, referring and prescribing at an average of 2.5 minutes per patient! Everybody was friendly, and it was a very positive experience.

Aside from work, we did manage to have some fun this week too. We visited the Wli waterfalls on Sunday, and it was probably the most beautiful place that I've ever seen. I waded through the water and got within about 5 metres of the falls. Apparently, you can stand right under them during the dry season, but since we've had a lot of rain, they were a bit too 'watery' to do that during our visit. Standing so close to the waterfall made me feel like I was at a spa - the wind and water coming off them felt like an intense body scrub, something I desperately needed after spending 4 weeks in the smoke and dust of Accra. On our drive back from the falls, we stopped at the monkey sanctuary and saw some monkeys. We brought bananas with us, and the monkeys peeled and ate them right out of our hands! That was a very good day.

Accra Week Two!

I've had a very busy, and very good second week in Accra. I feel like I'm settling into my life here a little bit more - feeling more comfortable with my clinic and outreach duties, making new friends and getting more confident with exploring my surroundings. As with last week, my favourite part of the program is outreach. We did a few more local outreaches this week, seeing about 70 - 100 patients each time. I also completed my training, so I'm now able to dispense medicines and feel like I'm really helping our patients.

The most significant part of the last week was our overnight outreach. While Accra has a lot of need for eye care, regions outside of the greater Accra area are in even greater need. For this reason, a three night trip was planned to take us to New Edubiase, which is about 4 hours Northwest from Accra. We left Sunday afternoon and had a pretty relaxed night - got dinner and then went back to our hotel (The 'Holliday Inn' , haha) where we killed some giant spiders (they were really, really scary) and went to bed. Other than the spiders, the place was really nice! Our two outreaches went really well - on the first day, we met the local chief and then went to a village where we saw just over 100 patients, referring 19 of them for cataract surgery. The second (and final) day was really busy - we saw more than 200 patients over 9.5 hours, referring 30 of them for surgery. That was also my first day actually dispensing medications, and it went very smoothly. It was interesting thinking that the number of patients sent for surgery just from that one day of outreach would have used up all of the money we each raise for Unite for Sight - at the time it felt like a lot of money but I'm sure that the demand for surgery extends far beyond the money we bring in. We ended up staying in New Edubiase again that night rather than drive back in the dark to Accra (we were all too tired anyways). It's likely that we'll be going back there again next month, a trip that I'm looking forward to very much.

The rest of the week has been relatively low-key. On Thursday I went to a market to hand out some flyers advertising the Unite for Sight eye camp (and picked up some cool souvenirs to bring home). We had an outreach today that was pretty successful, and we'll be going on outreach again tomorrow. Aside from work, we've got some fun plans for the weekend - we're going to a beach tomorrow night, and hopefully we'll be doing a day trip to a canopy walk and a former slave castle on Sunday! While Accra isn't the sort of place to do 'sight-seeing,' its really interesting and after all of the sight-seeing in Europe, it feels like a really unique and lively place. Accra itself is huge, and the landscape surrounding it is very dry and barren, but as you drive outside of it for any distance the land changes and you see remnants of the rainforests that used to cover the area. I'm hoping that sometime in the next month we may get a Saturday off so that we can do a weekend trip to some other coastal places that are supposed to be really nice.

And on a completely unrelated note, I managed to get a care package from my parents! I've been pretty close to running out of a few necessities (contact lens solution etc) thanks to some bottles opening in my checked luggage. Mom and dad came to the rescue, and with my boxes of fancy granola bars, twizzlers, cookies (although apparently mom thinks that I need a diet, she gave me oreo 'thinsations,' with only 100 cal per pack and none of that great oreo taste!) I'm now the envy of the other volunteers. I also have some tea and a flashlight c/o my awesome neighbors Don and Colleen who arranged the shipping :) Thanks so much guys!

Hi again

It's turned out to be quite a slow Saturday in Accra. We were up bright and early and ready by 7:45 to head out, but as sometimes happens, the driver was late to pick us up. I used the bonus time to: go to the bank (all by myself! go me!), do my laundry (by hand, go me!) and make my first hot chocolate (from Belgium, yumm. And the hot chocolate wasn't all by myself, I offered Atrish, my food soulmate, a sip, and he had three, but it's ok since he shares his spicy food with me). Finally, we headed to the outreach, only to find out that it hadn't been publicized at all and thus there were only 4 patients. Packing stuff up at noon, we headed back to the guesthouse where I am taking full advantage of the lack of power outages and internet outages to write this down.

Tomorrow we're headed off to parts unknown to do a three-day outreach. I'm a little bit apprehensive about where we'll be staying, what we'll be eating and that sort of thing, but I'm trying to not worry and just be excited. I'm really enjoying hanging out with the other volunteers, so really, this will be just like a road trip with friends where instead of just getting somewhere and drinking, we will get somewhere and be useful and helpful and make people not blind before we drink our box of $1.25 wine. Did I mention that we found wine, 1 litre, for 1.25? It's really bad. BUT: 1.25.

Also, I had a dream last night where I got married. I had on a really pretty lace dress, and I took a limo to the ceremony, and the next thing I knew I was waking up the next morning at home and telling people I couldn't remember what happened after I got out of the limo and nobody believed that I'd forgotten my own wedding so soon.

I'm feeling a little bit silly today, can you tell?

PS: OGC hahaha.

In Africa!!

First things first: Congratulations to Sharon, Rafa and Talon!!! I am so happy for you guys! I can't wait to come home and have a celebratory mojito with you.

Ok, long time no update!!!

I'm not sure that I'll get much better at updating, but I wanted to let everyone know that I'm finally here! And also, Tai, the package I sent to you got returned to my home, so if you want, you can email me a new address :)

AFRICA!

I arrived here on Tuesday morning at 3am. After a little airport mix-up that left me hanging out by the taxi stand until 6:30, I finally was picked up and made it to the guest house that I'm staying at by 7ish. I pretty much slept the whole first day!

The next day was my first day working with Unite for Sight, and man do they ever throw you right in there! I went with some other volunteers to a village called Choechoe where we were running an outreach program. I went with another volunteer to set up the visual acuity tests, and after a few patients I'd gotten the hang of it. The only difficult part is that there is often a language barrier. We have translators, but they've been known to wander off at times! The day wasn't too busy (so i was told) - we only saw about 50 patients.

Thursday wasn't quite as good - I went with the other new volunteer (my roomate) to the Eye Clinic to watch surgeries. Well, it was pretty much just like the last time I watched surgeries, except it was after a questionable lunch and followed by a bumpy ride home. I went to sleep for the rest of the night. I think I am definitely going to lose all of the weight that I packed on in Europe.

Yesterday was uneventful, except that I ate a bit and wasn't sick :)

Today, however, was awesome. We had another outreach, and ended up seeing 140 patients. I did registration all day, which means that I did a basic interview with each patient to find out what their major eye complaint was. There was a bit of a lull in the middle of the day so I played frisbee with the kids that were hanging around - so much fun!

Now I think I'm going to have myself a shower. And by shower, I mean fill buckets of water and dump them over my head.

Wien!

Sorry for the random writing style of this email, I only have a few mins before dinner!

Vienna (Wien) Day 1!
Arrived early in the morning after an interesting sleep on a night train. Vienna has a lot of free/near-free bikes that we signed up to use. Our couchsurfing host Martin (who, btw, is very nice) took us on a short bike tour of the the ring, or first district. When it started to rain too much, we ducked into buildings (had a great juice in the cafe of a museum). One of the buildings we went to was the Austrian parliament, where we ended up getting a 20 min video history of vienna/austria. Went out for a good, cheap meal, and then back to Martin's where we watched "The Third Man" for another taste of viennese history.

Day 2!
Mark and I had a fantastic time today. We got up pretty early and walked around the main district. We visited two museums: the Leopold, and the Secession. The Leopold was fantastic, they had a great exhibit of Kolo Moser's works, and a few other really great artists. We also went to Cafe Central, which is a very famous old coffeehouse (Wien has a great coffeehouse tradition, it's the perfect city for me!!) and had some great coffees and shared a piece of their signature cake (this was breakfast #2, after breakfast #1: gelato). We then walked to see the famous (and old) Ferris wheel from the movie 'the third man,' and then it was back to Martin's for an amazingly refreshing shower. We're just getting ready to go out for sushi now - hooray!!

Guten Tag!

Hi from Berlin!

This is by far them most beautiful city that we've seen so far, which is saying a lot. Mark and I rented some bikes today and biked around the city (and for a few hours, joined a free bike tour that gave us so much info). There are so many incredible places here. Despite biking around for about 7 hours, I feel like we've only had the most cursory tour of the city. Tomottow we're hopefully going to see more places in more detail.

It's a bit incredible to be in a city that has been around for such a long time, but feels completely new. Even the buildings that look really old are new - most had to be rebuilt after the war. Also, it hasn't even been 20 years since the fall of the Berlin wall (of which we've seen many fragments), and you can feel the rebirth that is still occurring. The weather was fantastic today, but is supposed to be a bit rainy tomorrow so we will likely hit up some museums, and our favourite cafe. We'll be here until Monday night, when we catch our first overnight train (we splurged for the couchettes rather than the upright seats) to Vienna. I've found us a place to stay (couchsurfing again!!) and I'm very excited!

Dzien Dobry!

Wow - loads of internet access here in Slupsk!! I'm trying to upload some photos now, if it works then I'll share them here or post a link :)

As with pretty much every trip that I go on, I leave updating until I've done so much that it's overwhelming to think of putting it all down. I think that the last time I wrote, I was in Krakow. Since then, Mark and I have been to Zakopane (in the South of Poland), on a farm near Wroclaw (aka Breslau) - with massive food poisoning from an ill-conceived idea to eat kebab from the basement of a train station, in Gdansk and many surrounding areas, and now in Slupsk.

Gdansk was really, really nice - mostly because Mark's family there was amazing. We spent almost the entire week with his cousin Bozena's daughter Weronika, who was our faithful guide and co-mischief-maker. We managed to see (I think) everyone on Mark's dad's side there, which was no small feat. A lot of time was spent on the coast of the Baltic Sea - testing the water, swimming a little, a lot of walking, and some amber-hunting (I found some!!) We also toured around the Stare Miastro (old town) where we snuck onto the roof of the famous 'Golden Gate' and had a beautiful, exclusive view of Gdansk's most famous street.

As for family, wow. We spent one day with Mark's cousin Ella's family, where we got to celebrate the double birthday of her son and daughter. While we were there we also went to see Stuthoff concentration camp, which was just a few minutes away. We spent a day on Mark's uncle Stachu's (sp?) farm, where we picked raspberries (Maliny) and cherries (Wisnie) that I turned into a crisp for the aunt and uncle that we stayed with. Bozena and family took Mark and I to see Malbork - a famous castle about two hours from Gdansk that dates back to the 1200s. It had been destroyed completely during the war, but was restored in the following years. I'm feling a bit of old, beautiful building overload, but I'm going to soldier on because I know I have many, many more to see! After the castle, we went to a rented cabin on a lake, where we swam, kayaked and grilled kielbasa to our hearts content. Mark's aunt and uncle were wonderful - I will probably be full until Africa from all of the amazing food that his aunt made for us. Most of it was made from fruits and veggies from their garden and the farm! They also gave us some wonderful gifts - to Mark, a ring, and to me, an ambernecklace. I was blown away. And completely rivalling Rafa's grandmother for 'most adorable woman ever' was Makr's babcja Kowgier. From when she held my hand the whole way home from the train station the first day that we met, to the goobye hug today, I felt nothing but love from her. Awww... I miss her so much already!! It was so sad to leave them today, but we were looking forward to meeting Mark's mom's side of the family which made it a bit easier.

Slupsk, whie a bit more low-key, has been so nice. We've sat and talked (as best as we can with Mark's pretty good Polish, and my terrible Polish), ate, and went to their garden. They are so nice and I'm really looking forward to spending this week with them. Tomorrow, Mark and I are going to go to a beach, and possibly again on Wednesday. After a lot of rain during the first week in Gdansk, the weather has turned absolutely beautiful.

Ok, so if all goes well, I'll put up some pictures tomorrow. I'm off to bed now, and I'm sorry if there are too many spelling/grammar mistakes. I think the Polish spell check won't be of much use and I'm too tired to proofread :)

Love,Jen

In Poland!

I can'tbelievethat I'm finally here! Mark and I flew out of Toronto sunday evening and after spending 3 great days in Glasgow, we'vemade it to Krakow. We met up withour couchsurfing host, Craig, in Glasgow on Monday morning. After dropping off our bags athis flat (after noo sleep on the plane) we wandered around the city until he finished work. We went to a few beautiful parks, ate some fish and chips, and Igot us lost on theway back to the flat - actually ending up back at the fish and chips shop an HOUR after we'd left it. On Tuesday we wanered around the city again, visiting the Botanic garden and having a great vegan lunch (Mark had Vegan haggis!!). That night, we went outwith Craig and his friends to a great back alley vodka bar, and later to the student pub for some dancing. After the pub, we had some true Scottish street meat: the Scooby Snack. It's a bun enclosing a potato scone, hamburger patty, a sausage patty, cheese, and a fried egg. Toronto need them - they're truly the perfect afterbar food! Needless to say, we had a good sleep-in on Wednesday (yesterday) morning and then Craig took us up to Loch Lomond for some countryside. To thank him for everything, Mark and I took him out for Indiam buffet, and then he dropped us at the train station so that we could get out to the airport, where we spent a very uncomfortable night. Poland has been great so far, but there'll be more on that later :)

For Bookish People

I just got an email from McSweeney's, which is my favourite publisher due to it's consistently awesome releases (their Quarterly, The Believer magazine, as well as some swell books). Apparently they're having some tough times due to losing about 130K when their distributor folded:

"As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000 -- actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big."

I don't usually get advertisey, but I seriously love this publisher and a) think more poeple should know about them, and b) would be sad if they went under. Anyway, since it's summer, and most people like to get summer reads, maybe you'll order them from McSweeney's? I highly recommend The Children's Hospital by Chris Adrian (except that it appears to be out of stock so maybe you're interested in The Secret Language of Sleep instead?) and Mark highly recommends What is the What by Dave Eggers.

PS - I'm done Chemistry! Physics ho!

Quick Update

(my mom - queen of the sale, on her throne :)

Our garage sale was a fantastic success!! Between people dropping off donations, and selling our junk, I managed to (I think) meet my base fundraising amount! Everything else is gravy (and by gravy, I mean cataract surgeries - don't serve them with turkey). I had a great time talking to people all day, which meant that not too much studying was done, so I've been cramming like crazy to make up for it. I think I'm in pretty good shape - I should finish up with Inorganic Chem tonight, which only leaves me with Physics to cover. Then, I'll hopefully have a day for review and practice tests.

I also happened to win an awesome contest hosted by an awesome music blog!! Hooray!! Tomorrow (eep! I'd better do a ton of physics before then) night I'm going to check out Pela (not, as I originally thought, Pele). To win, I had to make the best musical suggestion that Connor hadn't already covered. I knew if I suggested Basia Bulat, I'd be a shoe-in, and I was right. So thanks should go out to Basia and Co. for making such incredible music. At least its going to be not too long of a night... I think I'm only interested in seeing Pela due to the actual headlining band destroying my ears when I tried to listen to them.

PS - both Pele and Pela are great and deserve a good listen (as does Basia)!!

PPS - In other music-y news, YMG, I've finished your cd and hopefully will hit up a post office tomorrow!

Interaction with inanimates.

Last weekend was the sort of weekend that I'd love to save up for times when my plate is empty. It was so full of wonderfulness that I even stopped worrying about studying for hours at a time! Seriously, why can't I save it? Why did it have to be right then? Oh well, at least it's pushed me into full-on panic and get stuff done mode!

By weekend, I mean weekend starting Thursday, which technically was my last day at York. I got a significant chuck of paper written (still have some brainstorming to do about the discussion, but that'll have to wait till post-exam), and was picked up by Mark in for our super-special anniversary dinner spectacular. Foregoing our typical fancy restaurant, we headed to a pretty sweet chinese supermarket where we split up and secretly gathered ingredients for our designated parts of the meal (me: appetizer, dessert, mark: main). We then headed back to his place and cooked in relative secrecy, and then feasted. Like crazy.

Course one (I really wish that I'd taken pictures): I made yaki nasu, which is one of our favourite things to eat when we go out for Japanese. I found the recipe through a google search, but it led me to a wonderful foodie blog, which I've added to my list of daily reads. It was sooo good, and will probably become one of my staples.

Mark's Mains: This is where it got crazy. Mark made a different dish for each of our four years together. And he made full portions of each. 1) Sesame-five spice grouper steaks. 2) Soy-ginger Mushrooms. 3) Asian pears poached in white wine. 4) Most delicious chicken that I've ever tasted. All of them were damn good, and we had a TON of leftovers.

After dinner we were getting kind of sleepy (like after thanksgiving, but worse) so we had some coffee and waited a while before dessert. I'd made a Shortbread-Blackberry pie (also inspired by tea&cookies), to try and recreate the magic of our BC trip. And then we basically exploded.

Happy 4 years, us.



Friday was mostly uneventful, except for the lovely lunch I had with, and courtesy of, Olivera. I'm going to miss working with her - I've honestly been so lucky in my lab to be surrounded by such warm, caring and intelligent people.

Saturday is when things really picked up: I dragged myself out of bed bright and early (ok, 9, it's still early for me) and made it into Toronto an hour and a half later. I met up with Paula at the ROM around 11am, joining the already-massive line to reserve tickets for the opening of the new addition. After an hour and a bit stationary, and another 45 minutes inching towards the front (past David Suzuki!!), we scored tickets for 2:30. In the morning. And then, we walked down to Travel Cuts and picked up my Brussels-->Accra ticket (by way of CASABLANCA).

OK now I am getting excited:



We finally headed over to Sharon's for some backyard relaxing (and guacamole eating). It was so good to just relax and hang out with Sharon and Paula, along with a few other characters who showed up along the way. We got ready without hurry, and at around 10 headed downtown to meet up with Maggie and possibly join a group of old friends from Western who were out for a pub crawl. I'm getting a bit overwhelmed thinking about recounting everything else that happened that night, so I think that I'll just link to Paula's post about it. And upload some pictures. And go to bed. Mmmhmm.









PS - going to be after the museum? 6:30 am. Paula and Sharon made it till about 3, but Mark and I wandered around until five, and then walked our way back to Sharon's. It was amazing - right before we left (maybe 4:30 am?) we headed down to the lowest floor, where there was an exhibit of Japanese art. It was probably the nicest exhibit in the museum, but aside from the security guard, we were the only ones in the room for the longest time. It was surreal and I loved every minute of it.

It's raining me, watch out!

I really can't wait until I am on a plane and everything that needs to be done in the next three weeks is either done or I've at least moved past worrying about it. I am starting to feel like a little ball of stress, and its showing. My hair is falling out! And I'm falling over! Damn. Don't pity me though, I'm starting to feel a little bit more in control of my to-do list, and I'm not going to let any of it fall to pieces.

And speaking of falling, I watched my first surgeries the other day. For part two of my eye training, I watched my ophthalmologist perform 4 cataract surgeries. My two major impressions: 1) Oh wow it is so amazing that we can do this! Your lens got cloudy? No problem! We will just suction it out and insert a new one and by the way, you also won't need to wear glasses anymore because it fixes that problem too!; and, 2) There is no way to wrap your brain around the idea that suctioning out part of the eye can be a good thing, therefore, it conks out on ya.

I was watching (through a high-res microscope no less!) the first surgery, thinking about how absolutely amazing it was, when I started to feel funny. So I went to go sit down. And then when I started to get up, I realized that I wasn't on the chair like I thought I was... I was right out on the floor. Beside the surgery-in-progress. I had absolutely no recollection of not being on the chair, just of things being a bit woozy. Yikes. The other ones that I watched went a lot better (for me - for the patients all of the surgeries went extremely well). It really is incredible.

Also, I'm officially done at York. I still have more things to do there, and they'll get done, but at least for the next few weeks I can focus on studying and getting other stuff done that I've neglected for far too long! Tomorrow, I study, and see Paula, Maggie and Sharon all in one place, and see the opening of the new ROM crystal. Amazing!

PS the other faint was more of a close call - I had a funny reaction to a needle and went all woozy on the nurse. Buck up, body!

Thank yous!

Damn... sorry for not posting for such a long time. Excuses: I'm finishing my paper, studying for the MCAT, and trying to sort out many things for the big trip. All of it is giving me stressy tummy aches and an acne'd forehead.

My main reason for posting now and not just forgetting about it until things calm down a bit (like, October) is that I want to express how floored I am by the generosity of my friends. Firstly, to Yellow Mustard Girl and to Phronk: you are amazing. While I've never met either of you in person, I enjoy your writings immensely and am quite convinced that you are super-cool people.

Megan: man, you rule. I've not been able to get you on the phone yet... but when I do, oh boy, there will be many squeals of gratitude and I promise that if I ever get to plan a blind date for Bryan Webb and Derek doesn't mind, I will hook you up.!

Seriously, you people are great.

PS: I shadowed an ophthalmologist this week, and learned how to use an ophthalmoscope to check for cataracts and corneal ulcers. Super cool!

PPS: Mark has a new blog! YAY! You should read it!

The Sales Pitch

Not sure if I've mentioned it here or not... but... I'M GOING TO AFRICA!!!! After hanging out in Poland with Mark's family (we're heading over there on June 24th! Flights are booked!) I'll be going to Accra (the capital of Ghana) for 7 weeks! I've volunteered with Unite for Sight, an international non-governmental organization that aims to cure blindness and provide eye care to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. I'm going to be conducting visual screening tests, and getting glasses for people who need them, or referring people for (free!) eye surgery if they need it. I'm so excited - after spending three years at the Centre for Vision Research, I'm finally going to be able to put the knowledge into action.

Ok, now this is the part where I ask for your help. I've committed to fundraising at least $1400. This is in addition to paying for my accommodations and airfare - that part has already come out of my pocket. The money is going directly to Unite for Sight and will pay for eye surgeries (mostly cataract surgery). Each surgery costs $50, so I (WE???) will be restoring vision to at least 28 people! I would be so grateful if you would be able to help me out, even if its just a couple dollars or what you would normally spend on a coffee! I promise that I, and definitely the people who have their vision restored, will be endlessly grateful to you.

I've created a fundraising page that you can check out. It allows paypal donations, and also has the address for sending cheques if you'd prefer to donate that way. I can also forward any cheques to Unite for Sight directly.

Click HERE to sponsor me!

Any fundraising ideas would also be greatly appreciated :) Let me know if you have any questions!

Flume Tunas.

I just got back from a great weekend in Lake Placid with Mark, Ryan, Matt, Jenny and Jen. We stayed in an awesome little cabin and did an amazingly huge hike. It was stunningly beautiful and I can't wait to go back there, or somewhere like there. The weekend made me want to go live somewhere beside a river on a mountain.

We're going to Europe!

I guess it's hard to top a post about experiencing near zero-gravity.

The last week has been insanely busy, what with moving out of the love apartment (including the house-cooling party), visits from Paula and Megan, hoboing around Toronto, travelling to/from Whitby, working, and going to shows (two today, and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone on Friday). Also, Mark and I booked out tickets to Europe!! We'll be flying into Glasgow (so exciting!) spending a few days there, and then heading to Krakow where our Polish adventure will begin. Maybe we will come back from our trip cultured and polished?

(yes I know that was a terrible joke)

Things deserving more detail: Leaving the love apartment. We had a really great last weekend there - the housecooling was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the camping feel of the last few nights. By the end, all that remained were candles, records, and blankets, and the simplicity was beautiful. On Monday, I cleaned that place SO well, partly because I loved living there and partly because I really liked the supers and didn't want to leave them with a lot of work. Taking a last look before closing the door on that space was pretty sad, but Mark took me out for a lovely sushi dinner and reconvinced me that our trip will make it all worthwhile.

Megan-visit! Megan came with me to Whitby for my first night back at home to make the transition a little bit easier. We met up in Toronto and had some Vegetarian Haven with Bronwyn and Maya (Bronwyn's friend/roomate) and then walked down to the Go Train and took it back home. It was awesome to have some good girl talk, sleepover styles. We made some strawberry rhubarb crumble pie, and went and picked up crazy Mark so that he wouldn't have to walk 10K to my house.

Hopefully, I'll write a bit more this week and post some pictures. Now, Mark and I are headed downtown for some Mount Eerie and some PB&J (that would be Peter Bjorn & John).

Edited to add:

Fun with Sharon: We had dinner a bunch of times and painted our nails in the sun on her porch and had wonderful chats AND THEN SHE DITCHED ME TWO HOURS BEFORE THE PETER BJORN AND JOHN SHOW and I had to sell her ticket. But seriously, we've had fun.

I'm a survivor.

Well, I've successfully made it through my first set of mini-gravity flights!! I've been in Ottawa for the past 4 days, subjecting myself to crazy tests all for the love of science (and, the love of doing cool things involving big planes).

Our plane, the Falcon 20:



Day one of flying was absolutely terrible - I was so sick on each of my two flights, and I had absolutely no idea why ANYONE would want to do this sort of thing:



This is our plane, doing its thing:



Basically, we do that rollercoaster part between 3 and 5 times in a row, loop back, and do another 3-5. And by rollercoaster, I mean a rollercoaster that rises and falls 10000 feet. This is only fun when its perfectly smooth, which on Monday, it wasn't. We finished flying Monday in the early afternoon. I felt sick until about 10pm, managing to consume about 12 grapes, a pickle, and a ginger ale over the course of the day. I dreaded going to sleep, because I knew I'd be waking up to another day of flying.

On Tuesday, Rebecca had the BEST idea ever: Gravol. I took half of one about an hour before the flight, and OH MY GOD it was so much fun. I got to sit in the jump seat between the pilots for take-off, listening to the going over the pre-flight checklist and chatting away calmly.



Jump-seat Mona-Lisa:


We did ten parabolas (two sets of five in a row) and I loved every minute. It was such a rush to look out the window and see sky... then ground... then ground rushing up to meet you... and then the rise up to sky again. So cool.

We celebrated the good day with some Keg, some sauna & mojitos, and some pie. I was afraid that maybe we celebrated too much, and prematurely, but today was also wonderful. During my flight today, I decided to take a parabola off from data collection and just enjoy it. So, I watched the earth shift in ways that its not supposed to shift when you're looking out of a plane window. In the mini-G phase (1/6th Earth gravity - about what you'd feel on the moon), I tossed my (empty! yay!) sick-bag up in the air and watched it hover. I floated off my seat a bit. During the 2G (twice Earth's gravity) phase, Jeff took an amazing video of dropping a piece of foam - it fell like a stone! Its funny - nobody will ever lose or gain weight as quickly or as effectively as they do during these flights. Over the course of a minute, I fluctuated between weighing about 20 pounds up to 260 pounds!! At 260 pounds, I did NOT feel like moving.

Aside from the flying, we did a lot of other fun things. We spent a lot of time out eating (from fantastic thai to one of Ottawa's three kosher 'restaurants' - actually a cafeteria in a fitness club) and drinking. Phil, Mike and I spent a ton of time in the hot tub and sauna. After the flights yesterday, we went and explored a decrepit plane on NRC grounds - apparently they're using it for materials research and examining how its body and wiring deteriorate.

NOT our plane:


Trying not to fall:


And after we wrapped up today, we headed into downtown Ottawa to see the parliament buildings. We brought the frisbee along, so we spent about 45 minutes tossing it around and I got to feel spring grass under my bare feet.




The whole trip was wonderful, and I would so do every bit of it over again (but, always with gravol for the flying bits).