Photo Exhibition!

Hey, if you're down in Victoria you can go check out the exhibit at the Black Stilt. It's all photos from Nepal and all the proceeds go to VSO!

ottawa ROCKS!

this morning i was skating on the Rideau Canal. woo!

and so, my weeklong dream of becoming an internet celebrity will have to wait, although i know my roomie caught me writing my name in the snow on the Parliament Hillcam (props to Kathryn). i had to break away from dinner and sprint up the hill to do that! if you look you may still be able to see a bit of the M from Mitenko. i stood on the dot in the i and held my hands in the air for something like two minutes. parliament security is remarkably lax.

anyway, although i didn't really know what to expect i was pleasantly surprised by the weekend. it actually helped me get a lot of things sorted out and articulated a lot of the things that had been floating around in my head but i hadn't actually realized. y'know, stuff like reverse culture shock, where to go from here, etc.

hung out with a bunch of returned vols from bangladesh and laughed, laughed my ass off. i haven't laughed that hard in a while. we all went out drinking and dining and had a great time, and there was an abundance of wrongness in topics.

small world facts:

• one of the Bangla vols is from Winnipeg, my hometown. She lives in River Heights, not far from where I grew up. On top of that, she's from a small town in Manitoba that's across the river from the town of Petersfield, where my grandpa lives. ok, not amazing for you but pretty neat for me.
• while i was dragging my sister through the himalayas, one of the other Bangla vols was actually in Kathmandu. And she ended up going out drinking and karaoke'ing with a bunch of people I knew as well as one miss Ciara Casey. i never even knew until this weekend. now come on, that's an interesting small world fact!

and i'm putting up a picture of my old program manager, Purna, displaying his awesome dancing skills just because that came up over drinks. and when i saw this picture i had to laugh.

The Madness of Catan

Strange thing, this little board game. When Christmas rolled around I didn't have enough money to buy everyone in my family a present, so I opted for a family present of Settlers of Catan. I'd never heard of it until my roomie suggested it as a present.

However, once the game was known, closet Catanites began creeping out of everywhere. There's expansion games, multiplayer versions... it's all madness. Catan has become the game du weekend whenever there's enough people around.

Last Saturday we had a games night. I took this opportunity to make some buttons to celebrate people's personalities when it comes to Catan (or any game, for that matter). And yes, I realize this is a sure sign I have too much time on my hands, but what can you do?