howdy everybody! And happy Canadian Rememberance Day! For those who don't know, we celebrate Nov. 11 every year (Rememberance day) as a reminder of the courage and bravery of those Canadians who fought in the two World Wars... We all wear red poppy pins (read the poem "In Flanders Fields" if you haven't already) and go to ceremonies and stuff... Anyway, this holiday is the reason that I am sitting in front of my computer right now instead of working today, so I am very thankful! This is the first Saturday I've had off since I started working here, and I really need it today. Things have been really crazy for me lately, thus why I haven't been blogging as much as I should. Sorry about that everybody; I really should be better at keeping in touch with you all.
Anyway, I've been working the same part-time minimum wage job at the Salvation Army Thrift Store (basically it is a used clothing store, run by a Christian Social Service agency) since I moved here. It's been an okay job, but unfortunately it just doesn't pay the bills. So last week I finally found another job, a full-time gig at a "pizza cafe", paying just over minimum wage (which is $7.15 Canadian dollars here) . I started there for a couple of days last week, and it's definitely a crappy job as well. After four years of university I'm back to fast food, baby! It's kind of disheartening that I can't seem to find anything better than this at the moment, but at least this job allows me to work only Mon-Fri, from 10am- 6pm, which is really the ideal shift, very hard to find around here. No weekends or evenings for me! And it is just enough money for me to live on comfortably, so things aren't too bad. And I did get a call from a bank about working a call center job, so hopefully something more lucrative will come from that...
I've been reminded of the island a lot lately, not just from reading your blogs, but from other things as well... Do all of you know about the show "The Amazing Race"? It's an American game show where the contestants do a race around different parts of the world, and apparently one of the shows was recently shot on Mauritius... I didn't see it myself, but a friend of the family's caught it on TV, so I heard about it after... My parents advised me to watch it the next week, which I did, and indeed, they started from Mauritius!!! I was so thrilled to see even the arial shots on TV: the beaches and landscape so familiar, but yet missed so much... Unfortunately, the contestants were only in Mauritius for the first five minutes of the show, as they moved on to do their challenge in Madagascar, but even that five minutes was enough to send me reminiscing about the good old island days... They showed all the racers arriving at the airport in Mauritius, and booking their Air Mauritius flights over to Madagascar. And even seeing the airport made me teary! I had so many horrible experiences in that airport! And oh, I miss it so!
I also got an email from Seeven the other day. Apparently he has graduated from the uni of Mauritius, and has just landed a consulting job with a business magazine. Can you imagine!!! He says he doesn't see much of the other guys these days, which was kind of sad to hear. I wonder what they're all up to... ?
Outside of work, my life is still good here. As always, I'm enjoying the music and cultural scene of Halifax... Sadly though, I do feel like I have lost a lot of the spirit that I had when I got back from the island... My confidence is definitely not where it was, and as much as I struggle and try to get back to that place, I can never quite seem to do it. I guess I just need to give it some time, to build back up slowly... At the end of the year I'm hoping (as I think I've mentioned before) to do an internship in Africa somewhere, so I really think that would be good for me. I think traveling again, getting away and experiencing a different reality would be a big help. I guess I just have to wait and see. What perhaps depresses me most is that I feel like there is no way I can ever live here, in Halifax, permanently, as I think I want to. I really love this city, but Nova Scotia is one of the poorest provinces in Canada, and though it may sound strange given that Canada is a rich country, we just don't have the infrastructure and opportunities that are available in so many other Canadian cities. All the best people are taking off in droves to live on the west side of the country, where the jobs are so much better, and you can get more than double the pay for the same job. So it's a major challenge, and it gives me a better appreciation for the situation in developing countries, which face the same problems on a much bigger scale. This world is such a sad place sometimes.
Anyway, I hope you're all doing well and are happy out there. It's really nice to hear from all of you. Keep blogging.
Love and miss you all.
Heather
