charlottetown

after visiting erica in halifax, i took a shuttle bus to charlottetown. levi picked me up and drove me back to his place. we had lunch at some italian place near the harbour, and i spent the afternoon talking to cassidy on skype while levi worked. in the evening, levi cooked a really incredible meal on the barbecue: wings, ribs, asparagus, red peppers, corn on the cob... delish.

the next afternoon we left on a mini vacation. levi takes forever to get going in the morning, so we didn't leave charlottetown until 3:00 or so. we stopped at a gas station restaurant in new brunswick for supper (i had whole wheat blueberry pancakes, because they seemed like comfort food since i was super sick with a cold), and then drove to a little place in nova scotia for the night. i won't mention the name of the place or the town, but it was pretty brutal. the signage marking out the directions to the place was terrible; their pillows were the plastic kind they use in homeless shelters; and - this is the craziest part to me - they put the dust ruffle on the bed as the quilt. good lord. i went to bed as soon as we got there, because my cold had gotten so bad (there was mucus accumulating in my eyes) and my skin ached and i was exhausted. levi stayed up and drank with the owners.

the next morning, again, we didn't get going until much later than i would have liked. we visited peggy's cove, mahone bay, and lunenburg (see here also). i had been to all three last summer but levi hadn't been to any, so i think he liked seeing them. the drive was nice and felt comfortable. we went for supper at a place overlooking the harbour in lunenburg. the food was good but the meal was a little tense, thanks to my companion's dislike for our server. yikes. we had hoped to find somewhere to stay in lunenburg, but it turned out that there was a seafood festival on that weekend, so everything was totally booked up. we ended up staying in bridgewater or something, about 20 minutes out of lunenburg. i was just happy to go to sleep. still sick, but getting better.

the next day was rainy. we had hoped to go bike riding - levi had even bought a bike rack before we left charlottetown specifically for this trip, and we had bikes with us - but neither of us felt like riding in the rain. we drove back to charlottetown, taking the ferry this time instead of the bridge, which i love. i wrote letters on the ferry while levi napped. when we got back to charlottetown, i tutored cree on skype and wrote letters, and levi went out to music trivia with his staff. i went for supper by myself at a place that caitlan and i had had some incredible rice dish at last year, but found that the restaurant had changed their menu. boo. i had butter chicken instead, grumpily. later on in the evening, i went for a barefoot walk in the rain and mailed some of my letters and had a nice texting chat with jessica.

the next day i just bummed around the house some more and wrote letters. i also skyped with hao and cassidy, and both conversations were really fun. levi took me out for supper and convinced me to try lamb, which i for some reason had never tried before, and i loved it. this was the second time in my life that i had meat with blueberries, and both times were within the span of a month. it's something i'm going to put together more often. in the evening, levi went out with his staff for a going-away party for one of them, and i stayed home to tutor cree online and write letters. i liked the arrangement just fine.

the next day, i packed up all my things, wrote some letters, and borrowed one of levi's bikes for a quick ride along the harbour. i wished i had done that every day i was in charlottetown, because it was lovely. i also wished levi and i had had a chance to bike together, and to play catch in the park like he had promised. oh well. just before i had to go, levi surprised me by getting his staff to pick up a birthday cake for me (it was my 26th birthday on the tuesday). we ate very, very sweet cake very, very quickly, and then levi drove me to the airport.

the whole visit was strange and if you ask me about it i'll tell you more about it, but i won't write about it on here because i know that snoops make their way onto here occasionally and i don't feel like indulging them. it left me feeling strange with a lot to think about, and i was shocked to find myself tearing up as i was saying goodbye to levi. summarily, i don't think i'll be going back to charlottetown for a long time, if ever, and while most of me is okay with that, there are parts of me that are... sad? confused? angry at myself? i don't know. i like doing this sort of emotional exercise, but it's sometimes difficult to sort through. oh well. i got what i needed out of the trip (and it's not what you might think), so i'm glad i came. i love learning, and i definitely learned a lot.

i spent three full days and four full sleeps at erica's in halifax. this is what we did:
september 7th: we made friends with history at the Halifax Citadel, a national historic site of a neat stone military fort. we tried to buy groceries on quinpool but everything was closed. it turns out haligonians are very serious about labour day. as a result, i had to buy canned soup (to help with my cold) and a bag of plain chips (to fill up my stomach) from a convenience store. also, since erica had just moved in to her place, she had no pots or pans, so i had to cook my soup in a little enamel cup. we watched "bottle shock," which i had wanted to see for a little while but which ended up being sorta mediocre.
september 8th: erica needed to go do some things for school so i went to a tea shop and put together a puzzle while drinking an iced tea on their patio. my friend julia sent me a neat letter earlier in the summer that was written on the back of a puzzle, and i had to put the puzzle together to read the message. fun!!! so during the day i put together three puzzles (with erica's help) at various tea shops and wrote letters on the back of them. i bought some food on spring garden (erica was doing a cleanse so she didn't eat anything) and we walked over to citadel hill so we could sit in the sunlight and i could eat. i also ate a blueberry pancake cupcake. mmhmm. it was white cake with blueberries, and two layers of icing: maple and blueberry, both buttercream. hopefully edmonton will pick up on that flavour before i get back. erica went out that night and i stayed in so i could tutor cree and talk to cassidy, both over skype.
september 9th: when we woke up, erica and i watched tokyo! because we are both in love with michel gondry. he didn't disappoint. you should watch it too. i also ate a nice breakfast of strawberries and yogurt and raspberry whole wheat muffins while we were watching the movie, and that all felt good because i like to eat good things in the morning. in the afternoon we went down to the harbour so i could get some soup, and then we took the ferry to dartmouth and went to the value village. that's pretty much it. oh, and i was super sick with a cold pretty much the entire time. boo.

you may or may not know about my mildly epic train trip across canada at the beginning of september. here it is:
september 2nd: my parents took me to the viarail station in edmonton around 10:30 p.m. i boarded the train at 11:30, and my parents have a hard time letting go, so they walked me all the way to my car and then snooped around my cabin before each hugging and kissing me six or seven times and saying goodbye. after putting all my carryon stuff into my (tiny! but cosy!) single cabin, i snooped around all the nearby cars for about half an hour as the train pulled away from edmonton. i fell asleep pleasantly surprised by how comfortable the bed (which folded down from the wall) was.
september 3rd: we passed through saskatoon and winnipeg. prairie, prairie, prairie. i love the prairies the best but i was a little tired of seeing them. in the dining car on this train, they insist that everyone eats in groups of 4s. it was mostly non-canadian seniors on the train, so conversation was easy enough, although i would have rather eaten alone. the food was incredible. really. between meals i either napped (my first night's sleep wasn't fantastic - the noise of the train was hard to deal with. plus i was too excited.) or went up to the dome car to watch the scenery and listen to my ipod/read "conversations with god"/write letters. i also had some nice conversations with one of the only non-seniors aboard the back half of the train (the front half apparently had a lot of student-aged people sitting in coach, but i didn't go up there because i am not a big visitor in the first place. however, if i HAD gone up there, i would have seen a girl i know through caitlan (we all went to cathedral grove together last christmas). i ended up seeing her as we got off at the stop in montréal (she was staying, and i was heading on to halifax).
september 4th: northern ontario! lakes! forest! quiet! maybe i will spend more time up there sometime. maybe jessica and caitlan and i will build our introvert cabin up there. i worked on my cree books (which are coming more slowly than i had hoped) and i think they are pretty cute. i talked more with the non-senior citizen boy i had talked to the day before, and it turns out that he is preeeetty interesting. his high school activities were football, choir, drama, and the robotics club. he once made a giant venus flytrap robot (16-foot moving jaws, that could apparently pick up a human!) for a high school play. he invents things and has patents for them. he kind of reminds me of stéphane in "the science of sleep," just in the way that he creates things. neat. i think his spirit is gentle and good.
september 5th: i disembarked from "the canadian" (the train between edmonton and toronto) and took a less comfortable commuter train to montréal. there, i bumped into carly, one of caitlan's friends who i had met last december when caitlan and a few of her friends and i went to cathedral grove for a day. apparently we had been on the same train for the last 3 days, but i had been in the back and she had been in the front, so we never saw each other. funny. in the evening in montréal (which easily had the nicest train station in the country, as far as i could tell) i boarded "the ocean," the train that would take me to halifax. my room was considerably bigger than the last train, and had its own shower, but i didn't find it as comfortable as the first. that may have mostly been because: a) the blankets weren't as cozy, and b) the bed was set up so i had to sleep perpendicular to the train's sides, rather than parallel (like the first train). i didn't get much sleep the night before, so i pretty much just ate supper and went to sleep. i slept through most of québec, which was kind of a bummer but i hope to spend some time there sometime in the indefinite future, so i'm not too worried.
september 6th: my train arrived in halifax shortly after lunch. i took a cab to erica's. i'll write about my time in halifax in my next post.

one of the best parts about my last week of work had nothing to do with work at all. i had a 2.5-hour phone conversation with a boy i went to high school with, who texted me out of the blue with big life questions. i think our conversation was healthy for both of us. i hope we'll hang out/talk more in the future. i also had some super nice skype conversations with nathan; the same boy from high school; and hao, the boy i met in guyana. i am glad for skype. it helps me stay on the good side of the fine line between solitude & loneliness.

i had a three-day weekend on august 26th-28th. i spent the first day of that in vermilion, and the second two in edmonton. i:
-ate breakfast with shannon at café mosaics
-bought black tennis shoes from urban outfitters & underwear from american apparel
-bought Opa! for lunch & met Jordan at the park near the farmers' market
-napped for a bit at my sisters' condo
-went longboarding with nathan. we didn't longboard for long, though. we didn't feel like it. instead, we bought our respective favourite drinks at our respective favourite coffee shops, and then walked around the legislature. he showed me some of his drawings, and i really got a chance to appreciate his intentionality. in his whole sketchbook (i don't know if he calls it that or something else, but whatevs. his book with drawings in it), there is not a single scribbled out part or page torn out or anything. it seemed remarkable so i asked him about it and he said that he sometimes spends hours planning what he's going to do, and very intentionally makes a decision about what he's going to do before he does it. that's neat. and not the way i operate at all. at the end of the night i sort of forced him to let me copy a bunch of his music onto my external hard drive. i got a ton of great stuff, most notably including 300 billboard hits from the last 6 or so decades. so good.
-ate breakfast at high level diner with dr. e
-met with a professor at the u of a (to get help with my sshrc application)
-tutored cree
-went for vanilla cokes with jessica at dadeo