And I want life in every word to the extent that its absurd

Almost a week has past. My sincere apologies, but in my defense 4 out of the 6 days had me outside the service ares. Initially it had been my intention to draft a post on my plane rides but as I will explain, this was impossible.

Wednesday June 30 - Tuesday July 6

Wednesday June 30th

Wednesday was quite a day. A wonderful, totally packed full day. The morning started like many other mornings, up early and off to class. Wednesday was the day of our oral exam - in class. This meant that there was no instruction but instead a slow wait to be tested. At first I was quite excited to be near the end (as she goes in alphabetical order) because I had yet to study for the test. However, as class dragged on and my French knowledge and motivation slowly drifted away I cursed the S at the start of my name. It ended up that class ended and I had to miss a meeting in order to finish my exam. I think it went well, but it is definitely not my strongest point when it comes to French. I find that I often understand the question entirely but I have such difficulty answering it properly.

After the exam I walked to lunch - yay my last lunch there! From lunch I went straight back to the building I have class in, I was going to be taking my post test for the program. There were three of us who were leaving early. The test was the exact same as the one we took on our first day of class in Moncton but this time I understood a lot more of it. The test is broken down into two parts, a written and oral comprehension part (from a tape) and an interview. After the written section I took the interview with the program supervisor. She was really great and I got a good portion of the easy questions correct, which was great because in my first interview I knew nothing. She looked at my old scores and my new scores and it turns out I did learn some French. I doubled my score from pre-test to post-test, she said that it was clear that I knew the material I had been taught. This is all well and good, she even told me that if these were my scores she would consider putting my in level 2 if I ever went back. The only problem, I can't really speak French. It baffles me, I understand it, I can write some simple sentences, but speaking it stumps me. Regardless the results were encouraging.

After that test I had to take my class final. My prof told me I could take a break and come back and write if I wanted - and in retrospect it would have been beneficial to look over things one last time, but instead I went straight to the test. I just wanted to get it done. I think it went well although I did get hung up on a few things that I am certain I could have done better on had I studied a little bit more.

Handing in my test and being done was euphoric though! It felt great and as much as I wanted to run around and brag that I was done but everyone else was busy being studious. Instead I packed up my room, something that was more exciting than I could have planned for. I packed everything that I could and then headed to dinner one last time at the caf - I don't remember what it was but I do remember that I spoke English in front of one of the hard ass monitors because why not? ha.

At dinner I had made plans with a few of the girls for them to come visit me and maybe start the drinking for the evenings festivities in my room in a few hours. Upon returning to my room and facing the prospect of not going to bed that night and flying all day the next day I decided my best move would be to take a nap. This nap was only meant to last an hour but it lasted two. Story of my life in Moncton - napping longer than anticipated out of exhaustion. When I woke up people were at my door and so the party started.

We finished off our bottles of wine we had waiting around from past nights, listened to some tunes and headed downtown. Wednesday night is a great night to go out in the program because most everyone is already going out anyways. This may be because it is cheap drink night, but either way there were a bunch of explorers around downtown.

I wanted to go to the bar we had ended up the previous weekend: Vie. It has phenomenal music AND they were serving $2.50 martinis. This made for a cheap wonderful night of dancing with tons of great friends. What a great end to it all. By the time everyone was heading out - likely around 1:45am ish I was feeling pretty good.

I like to walk home from the bar. It was never that cold and it was only about a 20 minute walk. While most people I was out with jumped in a cab myself and one other girl walked back. I had, previously, made a promise to wake up a few people to say actual goodbyes when I got back from my walk.

The girl who I walked home with had been searching for some draft beer all night and as we walked home we passed a pub, it being about 2 in the morning we decided it would be a great idea to stop for a beer. It was a great idea. However about half an hour later - ish I got a few texts and phone calls along the lines of "what happened to you, are you coming to say goodbye?!"

We finished our beers and headed back. When I arrived at the one girls room I was greeted with quite a few lovelies who said their goodbyes and went off to bed. It was awesome although I did feel bad for keeping everyone up so late. I stayed and talked to my old roommate and next door neighbour for a little while longer before leaving her to go to sleep.

By the time I arrived in my room and finished packing I only had about half an hour before I needed to be up to shower and get ready to leave. Looking back I was still quite inebriated when I showered at 3:30am - wrote and left a few notes for some friends. I called a cab just before 5am and I headed to the airport.

I guess this makes it Thursday July 1 - Happy Canada Day!

Clearly traveling after partying all night and not sleeping anything off is a bad idea. But it was something I needed to experience, it is also something that I would do again in a heart beat.

The travel was long and my stomach and body was unimpressed with my behaviour the day/night before. Most of the time was spent sleeping on planes and being unable to eat due to nausea. Luckily on the longer flight from Toronto to Calgary I was lucky enough to have an open seat in the middle of my row, this allowed for a more relaxed sleep.

I arrived in Calgary at about 10:30am and found my brother waiting for me. It felt great to be back in Calgary, especially because I knew it meant that I was going camping in a few hours and I would get to see (almost) my whole family.

From the airport we returned to my brothers' home and my new home. I showered, unpacked some of my clothes which was mostly done in an attempt to pack a new bag to go camping. You see every July long weekend since before I was born my extended family has got together somewhere, most often the hills (aka the mountains) camped, drank, and had a blast. It was always my favorite thing as a child, and it still ranks up amongst my favorite things to do.

After packing up my brother and I headed out to do some errands - and by errands I do mean stopping at starbucks (for fuel), a liquor store, a grocery store for mix, and Arby's for lunch. Before I knew it I was off for my next adventure.

Camping was great - I don't feel like getting into details but it was great. I was proud of myself because I stayed up until 11pm that night on about 3 hours of airplane sleep. When I told my little cousin that I was tired because I didn't go to bed the night before she looked at me confused and said "are you kidding?" ha. I wish.

Saturday involved a 4 hour nap, and other wonderful camping things.

I returned from camping to Vulcan Sunday afternoon, helped my Dad unpack, we ate dinner and fell asleep on the couch.

Monday consisted of me lazily laying around my Mom's house procrastinating the drive back up to Calgary. I finally made the move, packed up some things and headed back to the city Monday evening.

Today, the 6th was my first day back to work. My day started bright and early at 5am to get to work in time for my 6am shift. It is funny how fast you fall back into your routine. It was great to see some of the people from work - always entertaining. It was a long day and I'll be honest I am less than thrilled to be back working. I just want a new fabulous job. One day I'll be done there. I think it was just hard to come back from two fabulous months of adventure and go back to the same old job. I came home and attempted to watch a movie but slept through part of it, this wasn't surprising because early nights have been a foreign concept to me this past week.

As for the rest of this week I'm going to try and see some of the great people that I know and love who live in the yyc and then Stampede starts this weekend!

Today I learned:

• They weren't lying when they said flying after a long night out is painful
• My little cousin's just keep getting more adorable!

I am grateful for:

• Family. Family. Family.
• Great movies
• A good cook of a brother