Off we go

Well, I'm off to Brazil in a matter of hours. The Brazilian Consulate wouldn't give us our visas until yesterday afternoon, so the trip hasn't really seemed 'real' to me until...now. Which is going to make it interesting. :) Our mission has been changed a few times, but I'm excited about what we're going to be doing: we'll be shadowing doctors as they work in hospital, clinic and housecall settings, and at the end we'll be presenting a report comparing the Brazilian health care system to the Canadian health care system. We're also going to be meeting the Mayor of Aquiraz and the Secretary of Health for the region, so at the last minute yesterday I was tossing 'business casual' clothes into my teeny-tiny suitcase....

I'd love to stay and chat longer, but I'm such a procrastinatrix that I still have things to pack, so I'll just say -- be safe, be happy, and I'll see you upon my return to the Northern Hemisphere.

Love lots,

~S.

Weather: I keep thinking it's warmer out than it is
Listening to: Badly Drawn Boy, "The Shining
Taking a break from: everything...heading to bed shortly....

Days go by

Things are progressing as normal here. Stuff changes fast. The plans for Brazil and summer work changes on a daily, sometimes almost on an hourly, basis. The last day of classes has come and gone. School -- as in the day-to-day business of attending it -- has not been my first priority for quite some time now and this is unusual for me. I keep pulling all-nighters. The earth turns. My computer is developing the crankiness of old age. I've developed a taste for "The O.C.", less of one for "Grey's Anatomy".

April is national poetry month. In honour of this I bought the collected works of Philip Larkin, a poet I have admired for some time now. As I think back over the past few days, this isn't the most exciting, interesting or life-shaking thing that I've done -- I've gotten a job (although not the job I thought I was getting, quite), gotten a monstrous visa application in to the Brazilian consulate, booked plane tickets, changed plane tickets, argued with and annoyed people, gotten documents ratified by the Management Board of Cabinet, bought travel insurance, gotten passport photographs, been impossibly hungover, written an ethics paper about circumcision that has changed my perspective on the whole business, been to the hospital to visit yet another person who's dying, and seen a cousin I haven't seen in several years. But this particular smooth, green, unassuming book feels cool to the touch, and there's one poem in particular from it that I felt like sharing tonight:

How

How high they build hospitals!
Lighted cliffs, against dawns
Of days people will die on.
I can see one from here.

How cold winter keeps
And long, ignoring
Our need now for kindness.
Spring has got into the wrong year.

How few people are,
Held apart by acres
Of housing, and children
With their shallow violent eyes.

-philip larkin


~SQ

I have decided...

...that the definition of "drunk" is not recognizing yourself in the mirror.

Just so you all know. :)

~s.