G'day, mates

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Weather: Gorgeous
Listening to: people mowing their lawns outside
Taking a break from: work, stressing about work, thinking about work...etc.

Regular updates...pfft.

If you want to know what's been happening with me in the past little bit, feel free to slog through all of this. If you're just happy to know that I'm resurfacing after several months, I appreciate your happiness. If you don't really care one way or the other, I understand.

Brazil: rocked. So amazing. After all the stress and hassles that it took to GET there, what with the Consulate being tetchy about visas, sorting out flight details, etc., things went more-or-less hitch-free once we were on our way. I love my (ex-)travelling companions and we all got along very well. As a bonus we got put up in a fabulous beach-facing house, so we could spend our hours not volunteering out on the beach. We saw a lot of stuff in the clinics and hospitals -- some of it amazingly positive, and some of it really sad. Rio is one of the most beautiful cities I've ever seen and has catapulted to #1 on my list of places to return to (with London still running a close second). Our hostel there was friendly and cheap -- really, can you beat $70CDN for 4 night's accomodation and breakfast? I like beaches. I like hang-gliding. Anyone want to go back with me? Like, tomorrow?

Work: Teaching is hard. This is what I've learned this summer. Teaching is hard, and hard on me. I think I take it too seriously, or worry about it too much...but for the first week or so, I honestly wanted to cry after every single class. The past few days have been better. I'm hoping I've turned a corner about it. But I'm not going to hold my breath...everything about it has been unpredictable so far. I'm so amused that I thought this was going to be a chill, stress-free summer, doing something I really enjoyed. Hopefully, it will turn into that soon. I can see glimmers of hope for that on the horizon. But the past couple of weeks...not so fun. Mostly because I am, it seems, a stress monkey.

Next year: Finally picked my courses today. I'm only about a week late doing it. Will be doing a "thesis" (actually just a senior project) with my ex-ethics prof...I'll be crafting the tutor's manual for the new med school ethics curriculum. Or something like that. The details are still a little fuzzy...I'm just happy to have a supervisor. Even one I spent most of last term complaining about vociferously. Also taking, in no particular order: pathophysiology, modern british lit, genetics, developmental psych, virology, canadian lit, moral issues, and modern european lit (that last being a comparative lit course, NOT an English course, which means I can't put it towards my minor, which is so weird to me, but anyway....)

Lord of the Rings: Went to see a symphonic version of its score (with Julie). Was good. Was very good. The woman with the tin-whistle-ish thing who gets to play the "Concerning Hobbits" theme gets the biggest claps and cheers at the end, despite the fact that she plays for about 10 seconds and the violins have been playing their asses off for two hours. And they bring in a double grand piano so that a pianist can play two notes on it during one of the movements (I swear!).

Alanis Morissette: Went to see her in concert, for her new acoustic anniversary version of Jagged Little Pill (with Ziz, and Sam). Was also good. Actually, I always find it interesting to go see artists who have been popular for so long (like 10 years), because they have to play the songs that made them famous...but I wonder how hard it is to perform those songs like you really mean them, ten years after the fact. Anyway, she did a good job of it, and for an encore did "Too Hot" -- that song she did pre-JLP, adolescent 80's pop. It was fun to watch her try to get through it without laughing.

Relations: There are Scottish relatives landing in Toronto in a couple of weeks. We'll be entertaining them somehow. It might involve Stratford.

Boyfriend: is in India. He has been in India since May 2, and won't be back in Toronto until July 22. After leaving India at the beginning of July, he'll be heading off to Europe to gallivant around there for awhile. I miss him, 'nuff said there. He's heading off to med school in the fall...so really, this whole trip was a brilliant idea, because I'm looking forward to him being just 1 hour away from me.

The quarter-life crisis: Everyone I know is having one, so I thought I'd throw my own into the mix. It goes like this: for the past few weeks I've had a hard time handling the 'stress' of my summer job. Which really, objectively, is nothing approaching stressful. What does this mean for my ability to handle a career in medicine? No, seriously, do I actually have the constitution to handle it?? I dunno. I feel I've been rather naive about my own abilities up to this point in my life, and I'm a little worried I'm due for a rude awakening in med school -- IF I ever make it there.

Sundry details: Am learning to cook, and enjoying it, more or less. Don't want to say goodbye to our family cottage, but we're planning to sell it anyway. Tori's coming back to Toronto, August 27th. Many of my friends are studying for the MCAT -- good luck, guys! This is a Harry Potter installment summer, so I'm looking forward to that. Will be back in res, if everything goes as planned, next September.

I think that covers the basics. No more posts like this, I swear.

~SQ