I just sent in my first two grad school applications to U of T and SFU in Resource Management!
Bam.
Next, an article I've been commissioned to write in exchange for taking a Mediation training at CIIAN (ciian.org). Life is pretty amazing!
About Me
- Em-J W
- For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move. The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. My world is the never-ending story and I expect to continue reading as long as I breathe!
1/30/12
1/23/12
1/14/12
Looking forward
When I came home, I told myself that I would take some time off and not think about my next adventure until the New Year. Sure enough, three days after returning home, I was already researching options of what I want to do next. My 2011 was so incredible and productive, that I need to follow it up with an even more wonderful 2012. I accomplished the three personal goals that I set for myself last year:
-Live abroad
-Improve another language
-Do something towards my career goals
Now, the internship wasn't exactly the most useful career oriented use of time, but it did teach me a lot about the kinds of environment I don't want to work in and opened my eyes to many of the realities of international development.
I'm currently trying to decide if I want to keep working and try to find some interesting projects, or if I want to go back to school and learn some technical skills. As always, I'm torn between all of my interests.
-Live abroad
-Improve another language
-Do something towards my career goals
Now, the internship wasn't exactly the most useful career oriented use of time, but it did teach me a lot about the kinds of environment I don't want to work in and opened my eyes to many of the realities of international development.
I'm currently trying to decide if I want to keep working and try to find some interesting projects, or if I want to go back to school and learn some technical skills. As always, I'm torn between all of my interests.
Being back
I haven't yet written about me re-entry into North American society because to be honest, I still don't know how to put it into words. And, I'm not positive that I have re-entered yet. But here goes.
It's weird.
After a year of traveling, being away from Montreal, hopping around, living out of a suitcase/backpack/plastic bags, it's strange to arrive back where I have more than a few clothing outfit options, have my family to depend on and understand the culture. (Mostly...)
I came back home at both the best and worst possible time. My mother very kindly offered to pay for my flight change to come home for the holidays. Actually, the way it happened was that I mentioned that it might be nice to come home for the holidays and within 24 hours, I had received an email from her advising me of my flight change. Yay for moms!
After six intense months in a communist country, where consumerism is viewed as the devil, advertising is basically non-existent, and people survive with the basics, coming home to the hyped-up version of what Christmas has become was quite a shock. Just the drive from the airport to the cozy nest my mom has created in the Laurentians was enough to overwhelm me. The sides of the road are littered with visual pollution in the form of billboards and signs. The most shocking part, was that I had never quite realized how much visual distraction there is here. I was on an instant high from overstimulated retinas and I don't think I stopped talking from 8pm, when my mom picked me up, until 1am, when I finally crashed. My brain was just trying to process all of the bright, flashing, colourful visual cues that I was seeing, while processing the fact that I was home.
The holidays flew by in a haze of warm family moments, lovely friend re-bonding and the tastiest, most beautiful food and wine I had seen in months. Throughout all of these wonderful holidays, I kept having massive jolts of culture shock. One particular jolt was when I first opened my mother's fridge... The amount of food, condiments, drinks and just the excessive amount of pure choice and diversity nearly drove me to tears. Not from sadness or happiness, just the absolute alien-ness of it. Something that used to be so normal now feels completely foreign.
There's nothing like traveling to come home and realize how incredibly spoiled and absolutely lucky I am to have been born where and when I was. At a holiday party, I was approached by a old acquaintance who sat down next to me and immediately began to verbally unload all of her pre-holiday stress onto me. I sat and nodded and made several sympathetic comments to comfort her, while she explained; how stressful her cushy-high-paying job is, how she never knows what to do with all the free stuff she gets, how she doesn't get the exact swag she wants, how her boyfriend had yet to give her a very expensive Christmas present and how her new Michael Kors dress had a faulty zipper. Not to say that these aren't all very valid concerns... I love when stereotypes are proven to be true. I was imagining sitting her down in front of the girlfriends I had made in Cuba and the hilarious conversations that could come out of that clash of cultures and values.
So I've been hopping back and forth between the country and the city, settling in slowly and yet, still feeling like a visitor to where I live. It helped that a friend of mine who was also an intern, though in a different country, came to visit a few times. We were able to compare stories of disillusionment.
I'm slowly starting to catch up on all the things that we as North Americans take for granted; news at our fingertips from sources around the world, easy and fast internet access (I missed youtube!), the ability to openly protest our government's policies and decisions and food. Lovely, diverse, tasty food.
Catching up with friends is wonderful. For the most part, we pick up right where we left off, fill each other in on the past few months of adventures. I feel so fortunate to have such an incredible network of friends that I can not see for over a year and still feel such a deep connection to. Everyone I have seen has been so supportive and patient with my constant Cuba-talk.
The downside of having access to news is the frustration at how small-minded and incredibly stupid our current government is, with respect to environmental issues. I missed the entire Keystone Pipeline protests, the withdrawal from Kyoto and have come back just in time to learn about Fracking in Qc and Pipelines through B.C.
Things like that make me almost miss the censored news in Cuba.
It's weird.
After a year of traveling, being away from Montreal, hopping around, living out of a suitcase/backpack/plastic bags, it's strange to arrive back where I have more than a few clothing outfit options, have my family to depend on and understand the culture. (Mostly...)
I came back home at both the best and worst possible time. My mother very kindly offered to pay for my flight change to come home for the holidays. Actually, the way it happened was that I mentioned that it might be nice to come home for the holidays and within 24 hours, I had received an email from her advising me of my flight change. Yay for moms!
After six intense months in a communist country, where consumerism is viewed as the devil, advertising is basically non-existent, and people survive with the basics, coming home to the hyped-up version of what Christmas has become was quite a shock. Just the drive from the airport to the cozy nest my mom has created in the Laurentians was enough to overwhelm me. The sides of the road are littered with visual pollution in the form of billboards and signs. The most shocking part, was that I had never quite realized how much visual distraction there is here. I was on an instant high from overstimulated retinas and I don't think I stopped talking from 8pm, when my mom picked me up, until 1am, when I finally crashed. My brain was just trying to process all of the bright, flashing, colourful visual cues that I was seeing, while processing the fact that I was home.
The holidays flew by in a haze of warm family moments, lovely friend re-bonding and the tastiest, most beautiful food and wine I had seen in months. Throughout all of these wonderful holidays, I kept having massive jolts of culture shock. One particular jolt was when I first opened my mother's fridge... The amount of food, condiments, drinks and just the excessive amount of pure choice and diversity nearly drove me to tears. Not from sadness or happiness, just the absolute alien-ness of it. Something that used to be so normal now feels completely foreign.
There's nothing like traveling to come home and realize how incredibly spoiled and absolutely lucky I am to have been born where and when I was. At a holiday party, I was approached by a old acquaintance who sat down next to me and immediately began to verbally unload all of her pre-holiday stress onto me. I sat and nodded and made several sympathetic comments to comfort her, while she explained; how stressful her cushy-high-paying job is, how she never knows what to do with all the free stuff she gets, how she doesn't get the exact swag she wants, how her boyfriend had yet to give her a very expensive Christmas present and how her new Michael Kors dress had a faulty zipper. Not to say that these aren't all very valid concerns... I love when stereotypes are proven to be true. I was imagining sitting her down in front of the girlfriends I had made in Cuba and the hilarious conversations that could come out of that clash of cultures and values.
So I've been hopping back and forth between the country and the city, settling in slowly and yet, still feeling like a visitor to where I live. It helped that a friend of mine who was also an intern, though in a different country, came to visit a few times. We were able to compare stories of disillusionment.
I'm slowly starting to catch up on all the things that we as North Americans take for granted; news at our fingertips from sources around the world, easy and fast internet access (I missed youtube!), the ability to openly protest our government's policies and decisions and food. Lovely, diverse, tasty food.
Catching up with friends is wonderful. For the most part, we pick up right where we left off, fill each other in on the past few months of adventures. I feel so fortunate to have such an incredible network of friends that I can not see for over a year and still feel such a deep connection to. Everyone I have seen has been so supportive and patient with my constant Cuba-talk.
The downside of having access to news is the frustration at how small-minded and incredibly stupid our current government is, with respect to environmental issues. I missed the entire Keystone Pipeline protests, the withdrawal from Kyoto and have come back just in time to learn about Fracking in Qc and Pipelines through B.C.
Things like that make me almost miss the censored news in Cuba.
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