Back in Blogging Action....God provides!!

We're back in business!! The lovely folks at blogger.com helped me to sort out my problems! Hooray!...back to blogging goodness.
A lot has happened this past week and I've learned a lot, I'm not really sure where to start blogging! I guess my big news to report is that God provided a job for me this past week!! hooray!! I am very grateful for this and the perseverance and trust I've developed throughout the process.
Welll....I guess it all started Wednesday, what a great day it was!! I had two job interviews: 10:00am at St. Joseph's Children's Centre(picture, right) and 1:30pm at the YMCA. Both went fantastic! I was able to arrive early at St. Jo's which gave me ample time to properly prepare myself for the interview (including finding a comfortable limp-free way to wear my shoe which conveniently sits on a sore spot from walking to church wearing them last Sunday..)...the interview was with two very nice and professional women directors of the centres. The questions were nicely mixed between developmental ( all those classes I'm taking at school are finally coming into use!) and situational. God really blessed me with clarity of mind and I was able to articulate myself clearly. They both seemed quite pleased with how things went and offered me a position! Unfortunately, it was just as a Substitute Teacher so the hours weren't guaranteed; I told them that although I would love the opportunity to work for their organization ( their mission statement/outline was fantastic! I really appreciated everything they stood for.), I needed to make a wise decision in concern to my financial situation...so I told them I'd let them know after I knew how the YMCA interview went....they were very understanding of this.

...in between interviews I was able to partake in what I've discovered is one of my favourite pastimes: exploring/travelling by myself! As much as I love people and being in groups, I really love venturing and exploring new things by myself and finding my own way!...I find a great deal of satisfaction from successfully navigating the city transit system, or just reaching destinations on foot using a map...maybe it's me overcoming my long history of having a bad sense of direction (when I first began to drive, I wasn't sure how to get to my grandma's house...about a 15 minute drive away that we drove weekly...)....or maybe I'm just weird...but over the past few weeks I've discovered that I love discovering Halifax and exploring all the cool things it has to offer!...included are a few pictures from my journeys...I went into this really random yet cool bookstore...there was books everywhere!...stacked on the floor, stairs..it was a unique experience. I also window shopped at all the little stores downtown, I'm looking forward to discovering them more when time permits....Anyway...moving on to interview #2!

...After finding my way to the YMCA ( okay, so my sense of direction is stilled minorly flawed and I had to do some backtracking..but I got there...that's the point!) I was greeted by a lovely lady named Rhonda. The interview was facilitated by her and another woman named Barb. This interview was alot more laid back and casual, which was nice. It went quite well and, while leaving, the women seemed delighted that I had applied and told me that they'd notify me by Friday.

Welll.....Friday came......the phone rang.....and I got the job! YAY!

I'm going to be working at one of two YMCA centres here in Halifax. It's at Purdy's Wharf (if you care to google), which is right on the waterfront (yay, ocean view!). The centre is in a business building (the employees bring their children to the centre)...it doesn't have a pool and fitness centre like most YMCAs, but apparently we take the children across town to the other centre for those types of activities. It sounds as though I will be helping out in the day camp/care, wherever I'm needed. Although I think it would be nice to be placed in one direct room/age group for the purposes of building relationships with the kids and other staff, it will be nice to mix things up and maintain variety. I'm excited because I'll have the opportunity of working with a large age range of children (who am I kidding? I'm excited and thankful to be working with kids this summer period! :) I'll be working with Rhonda as my supervisor(one of the women from the interview), which I think will be fun, our personalities seemed quite similar during the interview so I think we'll get along well. What else...the job will be full time (40 hours/week) which is great!....the walk is about 30-45 minutes, which will be good exercise everyday...and I'll be by the water everyday, which I'm looking forward to. The job starts May 28th, however, one bittersweet aspect of this job is that it requires my presence until August 31st. This is bitter in the fact that I won't be able to spend much time at home with my family before heading back to school; I've talked to Rhonda and she said that there's a strong possibility that I'll be able to book off the last half of the week to be able to head home early(yay!). The advantage of this is that I'll be able to explore Halifax in August after the official program of our missions project has finished, so there won't be scheduled events in the evenings...I'm looking forward to this time because there are lots of festivals and touristy things to check out in the summer and I'll be able to experience Halifax at its finest!

....Speaking of home, I've realized while here that there are a few distinct things that remind me of Ontario(either Guelph home or Courtland home):

• Country music...there aren't many Country fans out here! Fortunately I was able to find a station on my radio in my room so I can wake up to the sounds of home every morning.
• City Transit - public transit buses look and feel no different here than Guelph...although I think that the drivers are a bit nicer! (everyone out here is super friendly for that matter though)
• the small town atmosphere of Halifax
• (Strangely..) the air freshener in the bathroom (Lauren!...I told you it would!)
• Laughing and being silly with roommates
• The significant amount of green space Halifax has to delight in
• The recycling system!! I was pleased to discovered that it's very similar to Guelph's.
• I know there are others...but I currently am having a lapse in memory...

Conversely, I've also discovered a few things unique to Halifax some that I love..some I could live without:

• the people here are extraordinarily friendly!
• the houses here are uniquely beautiful
• the names of the streets are stamped in the sidewalk!
• the weather is very unpredictable!...it gets very foggy sometimes...and then we hear the fog horns roar from our room! (we have a nice ocean view...it's pretty cool!)
  
• unique towers and parks
• the city is rich with culture and history

Well, I think that's a wrap for me tonight. I hope you enjoy my exploring pictures, some of them are from the Public Gardens, which I was able to delight in after the YMCA interview...it's a lovely little park in the middle of the city. I hope you all enjoyed your long weekend! Ta ta for now!

Apartment 704!

Some of you might be wondering what life is actually like here on project, you might be saying "well sure Nicky, you blog about everything under the sun lately except what's actually happening in Halifax." Well, those updates are on the way...they just take a little longer to write. Coming soon is one entitled "Heartbroken for Halifax" which I hope to be gripping and powerful. (haha..I sound like a movie critic or something...bear with me.)

In the meantime, I'd like to let you in on the fun that happens here in Apartment #704. I live with 3 other lovely ladies, named Erin, Amber and Veronika. Veronika is my roomate ( see picture ) and we get along wonderfully as we both tend to be quite silly and love to laugh. Veronika attends York University and is enrolled in the Kinesiology program there. We have been able to keep our room quite tidy (for now, we'll see how that goes once the jobs are underway!) and enjoy laughing about random things. Our room is often the site of visitors as we are currently blessed with accessible wireless internet (others are not). We are laptop twins often carry on conversations sitting at our desks back to back facing our computers.
Residing in the room adjacent to ours is Erin and Amber. Erin also attends York and is in the Design program there. Erin is a very talented artist and has blessed our quote board(a collection of paper taped to the wall where we write down funny things that people say) with a beautiful drawing of a lighthouse. Amber attends the University of Saskatchewan(!) and is enrolled in the pharmacy program (which I also find very cool; I used to work in a pharmacy and so I love understanding some of the random lingo she says sometimes. I also run to her with any medical related question which she finds quite amusing...she's taught me a lot about the pharmaceutical industry and some cool Western Canada lingo; for example, out west they call hooded sweatshirts "bunnyhugs"...cute, yet it doesn't make sense...bunnies don't have pouches!)
We are all different but it's a delightful mix and we are enjoying living with one another. We have coordinated having "apartment time" during some meals and spend time getting to know one another more, which is nice. Pictured is our first apartment meal! (from left: Erin, myself, Amber, Veronika)

One particularly adventurous event we have encountered was the recent explosion of our toilet. Water was spewing from everywhere! We quickly discovered the quality of our apartment's construction as the water flowed under the wall and into our front entrance. After a flurry of reactions, Erin quickly had the janitor sent up, I had stopped the source of the water, Veronika had a handle on mopping (see picture for hilarity). This nice little mess took me a good while to clean up and as a result I was a half hour late for weekly meeting; we were reminded, however, the importance of having a sense of humour on project!

Hope you're all having a great start to your week!

Testing 1...2...3

Hello to my blog-readers!
Thank you to those that have commented on my blogs, I just wanted to encourage all of you to do the same!! I really love hearing your thoughts and comments. Please feel free to mail, email or call me as well, I have the internet here in my room and am able to check my email regularly! I'd love to hear how your summers are going and what's going on in your lives!

This is a silly picture of me I just included for fun...it was taken during one of our games night. I was playing Dutch Blitz which is, as many of you know, one of my favourite card games! If you look closely you can see that we're playing on a stack of telephone books because there were no more available tables to sit at and for some reason our lounge has an abundant amount of telephone books sitting against the wall...so we decided to put them to use!

Ode to moms.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers that are reading this! Thank you for pouring out yourself and making sacrifices to invest in the people we are today. Your hard work and love are extremely appreciated! As I reflectively look at family photos nearby I am proud to be my mother's daughter; to have inherited many physical characteristics such as her smile and eyes, as well as many of her amiable qualities, sense of humour and story telling to name a few. I love you Mom(aka. Marmy)!

Happy Mother's Day to all!