Nomad's Pub

A Book you should buy...

For any of you who may still check in on this part of my blog once in a while... Here is a fantastic book you should buy. It's about Marsabit, where (if you recall), I spent some time back in 2007. Wonderful place, great book. :)

posted by Lada @ 8:46 AM 0 comments

A Farewell

This is a post to say goodbye. I am not travelling for a while and this blog is making me homesick for homelessness. Since I am starting a new venture--that of staying and working in one place for a year--and being now graduated from uni, I'm subsequently starting a new blog for the year. This can be found on my profile as "The Old Bentley." It's named after my new and very first flat.

I hope to see you over there, and maybe after a year or two I'll be back here at the pub.

Cheers!
~Lada

posted by Lada @ 4:54 PM 0 comments

the Ides of March...

It's been a long time.

But here I am, still alive and much better. I was not back from the hospital more than two days before I got sick again, and then really sick. They thought I had pneumonia and sent me back to a different hospital, but I hadn't quite gotten it yet. I missed many days of classes and spent more time lying down than I usually do in an entire school term, I'm sure. Once I was well enough, I then had hours and hours of make-up work & exams and catch-up work, and thus... no blogging.

But here I am, still alive and much better.

It's the middle of March, as you already know. What that means for me is that one dramatic production ("Our Town," by Thornton Wilder) for the semester is done, and one left to go in about a month--Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. It means I'm knee high in costuming and skin deep in make-up right now. It also means lots of night rehearsals.

I'm working also on my bachelor thesis as well as completing an independent study in media productions. Those two alone are more than double the work of all my other classes put together.

There is so much going on.

But I am having fun, too. It's a good semester, and good friends I have many of. :) Here are some random pictures from these last few weeks as I end this post...

Sumo-wrestling at a fair one day to "relieve stress"

trying on my cap for size... :) graduation is almost here...

loving Lake Ontario :D

driving...

and skiing.

posted by Lada @ 11:26 AM 1 comments

2 Nights in the Hospital

Ok, so the scoop for those of you who have questions about my hospital visit...

I did indeed go to the hospital on Wednesday night. I'd been kind of sick (again!) since Sunday, but thought that was mostly gone as of Tuesday. So when I woke up with an upset stomach on Wed, I just figured it was something I'd eaten.

So I went to work and classes and somehow just kept feeling worse. But I somehow still thought it was just a reaction to some good old American food I'm not used to. But when I got a fever during my afternoon class, and could barely drag myself home, I started to think it was something different and I wouldn't be making my evening class.

Now one of the things that I'm coming to appreciate about my family is the amount of medical expertise contained therein. I mean, I remember my mum diagnosing just about anything we kids could get from her big old trusty medical book. or dictionary. or something...And now, of course, I've got a sister who is a nurse; a sister who is studying to be a nurse; and a brother who wants to be a doctor. I guess Ayme and I are all set. :) So I called my dear sister-who-is-a-nurse, because while i'm not overly fond of medical personel, i'm awfully fond of her. And she told me I needed to talk to the doctors or nurses here.

Now that took a long time, because it was around 6 (health centre closing time), and it involved lots of phonecalls and the info-centre and no-good numbers, but success in the end and my doctor here is awsome.

And what else but that by around 8:30 or 9, my fever was up to like 102-point-something and heading to the ER about an hour away for concern for appendicitis or some gall bladder infection or something.

I figured that for sure I'd be out in a few hours, right?Yeah. About that. Blood tests, hours of waiting, and a cat scan later the doctor told me and Chaustin (my housemate, who also took me to the ER, fyi) that they were going to keep me over night. I've been to the hospital before, lots of times. But I never spent the night in one before, and it really is an awfuly lonely kind of experience. On the other hand, there were lots of amusing differences to note about the hospitals I've been to before. And I had an interesting room-mate in the bed a curtain over, and some of the nurses had really cool stories (like, one was a UN peacekeeper in Haiti in '94!)

I'm pretty sure I didn't actually get admitted to the hospital ward from the ER until between 4 and 5am, but by that time they had me well drugged up and long since on an IV, so who knows? And then somehow the nurses on the floor didn't actually know that I was there til about an hour later, when they woke me up from my drugged sleep to do a ton of paperwork.

Well, when I finally woke again later, I figured it wouldn't be long before I was out... but no. I had to have another blood test, and now I was not allowed any medicine and also not allowed food or anything to drink until the latest bloodwork results came back. I never really got to talk with the doctor himself that day, but I did find out that basically, I got a bad virus and got it badly, and that my appendix was twisted and inflamed either as a result of, or as well as it. And eventually the word came out that they were keeping me one more night. Which considering that I wasn't able to eat or anything was probably good. But yeah.

To make a short story shorter, I stayed another night and my blood counts got better and they finally decided nothing was going to explode and I was aloud to eat clear liquids (i.e., chicken broth and ginger ale), then full liquids (i.e., tomato soup and tapioca pudding and ginger ale), and yeah. And finally they made me eat a horrible full meal (of FRIED fish and heavy potatos and cheese cake and squash of all things!!!) before I left, releasing me only if I didn't get sick on that food. I didn't eat much, kept down what I did, signed the papers, and got out of there thanks to Chaustin picking me back up.

And so I'm back home, not quite well yet, but quite, quite happy to be back. The end.

posted by Lada @ 8:13 PM 1 comments

Going on a road trip

It's the 31st of January, and I left my cozy home in New York this morning before the sun was up to catch a bus out to Michigan. To Grand Rapids, actually, and the beautiful flat of dear friends.

And to a "big" conference on "faith and development," actually.

We had our first plenary session tonight in a freezing hall, and I found myself nodding off to sleep despite the bone seeping chill. Granted, I had stayed up all but 45 minutes of the night before to finish up papers and several articles (ah, the life of a full-time student and journalist!), but the fact is, the subject held very little interest to me tonight in the meeting.

I appreciated what the speaker had to say, and I certainly appreciated her willingness to share it. But I also appreciate the fact that I have found one thing on my list I can truly conclude I do not wish to take a career in. Development--community, sustainable, or otherwise--is not the life for me.

It is needed, and desirable, and excellent and admirable when acted out appropriately, but it is not needed of me nor desirable to me personally.

And that is good to realise. Good to free myself of, without twinges of guilt. It is not, after all, that I am not interested in "caring for the world," but rather that I choose other means by which to care for it.

Leaving home this morning, I was so happy and excited that, despite a practically complete lack of sleep, I was bubbling over with energy. Literally. Flurries were floating on the air, and the ground was splattered with black ice every now and again, causing, of course, and occassionaly short-circuited shriek. To the disgust of those around me as well as myself, actually, I found myself chanting "we're going on a road trip; we're going on a road trip!"

After all, it has been such a while since I've been out somewhere--almost a whole month now, and I was ready to get moving again...

But the fact is, I find that chant rather an adequate description of my life over all right now. I am going on a road trip. Perhaps I have been on one for a while now without particularly noticing it--or rather, perhaps it has been the same road trip this whole time, where I thought it a series of smaller ones. I am on a road trip.

Self discovery? I should hope so.

But I should also hope, not only so.

Perhaps it is a road trip, simply, of discovery itself. Of wonder.

Certainly this final term in university is a trip! It is the final stretch of "assumed" student-hood; any studies here on out are entirely of my own accord, battle, and desire. No one "expects" me to continue on for an MA of PhD. But I do intend to...

It is also, perhaps, the final stretch of my life in NY, although, I am considering staying on longer. Considering, mind you. Who can say where the road will lead?

I would like to know a little of just where I would like to go. I would like to walk this road feeling a little less...lost.

But perhaps I can set the challenge to myself to view this journey with all the excitement I view a road trip; a trip where, while I know I may get lost somewhere or another, I will eventually end up where I want to be with everything all worked out for good somehow.

It is the Eve of February, and I am on a road trip.

posted by Lada @ 8:44 PM 1 comments

Wedding Dress...

posted by Lada @ 1:24 PM 1 comments

Winter Winds

It is January of 2008, and I return to my dear blog...

Back in New York, back in school, hanging on for dear life. It is going to be quite the semester, me thinks...

This week I have the international banquet; next week I'm off travelling for a conference and visiting friends (yay!!!).

I'm sorry I don't have much to say right now; I'm just tired and busy and trying to get on my feet. But don't give up on me. I will have valuable things to say eventually.

Meanwhile, there is much snow up here to wander through; the land is white and wonderful, enchanted and absolutely frigid. We are all thankful for heaters that finally work.

posted by Lada @ 12:13 AM 1 comments