The great confessional

Much has happened since my last post and I make no apologies for not prioritising writing about it, since I've been too busy living it.

I mentioned, almost in passing, a while back that I'd been accepted into the International Midwifery Preregistration Programme (IMPP) in Toronto. I went to the orientation day back in July and began work on a series of distance modules prior to the official start in September. However, I was chatting to my lovely friend Megan, who you may or may not remember had been my student back in London when she was training to be a midwife before coming home to Canada, and she told me that her midwifery partner Gaelyn and her had decided that I should come and work with them in Edmonton, Alberta. For those of you unfamiliar with Canadian geography, that's around 3,500kms away from where we live in Ontario. The idea of working with Megan certainly appealed to me (as did living only a 3 hour drive from Banff) I looked into what would happen if I completed the IMPP and then moved - long story short it was a bureaucratic nightmare. The Ontario system is set up so that you don't become a fully fledged midwife until at least 6-12 months after you finish your training and so you're effectively tied to the province until then. Since it was going to take 6-9 months to complete the course itself, this would delay any move for at least a year and quite possibly more. Hmmm.

I decided to look at what the requirements for registering directly in Alberta were instead. It turns out the only things that Alberta required was a midwifery qualification (a UK one would do) minimum of 60 births in the past 5 years and to take, and pass, a practical and written exam. As luck would have it, despite not having practised for 3 years, I still had over 60 births in the previous 2 under my belt. This wouldn't be the case for long so I had to get on it asap. I got all the required paperwork together - oh it sounds so easy but really it wasn't! - and applied: I was accepted to sit the exams. A quirk of the system meant that if you are judged eligible to sit the exams, you can actually begin practising on a restricted licence with a named Supervisor straight away. Crazy but true.

Having by now dropped out of the IMPP, I packed up all my stuff and Isaac and I drove across Canada - staying, by some miracle, ahead of the winter weather - we arrived in Edmonton two weeks ago. We actually had a brief stop off in Banff, which was a fabulous trip down memory lane and even included meeting up with friends, Andrew and JK, who were back for another ski season working at Lake Louise. We made a quick stop at Sunshine Village, which was not yet open, to pay homage to where it all began for us. It was a lovely interlude, but sadly I got ill on the second day there and spent a rather hellish couple of days shivering and puking while we headed north via Calgary.

We immediately launched into looking for a place to live and found a lovely 3 bed house very close to Megan and her husband Craig in Leduc, just south of Edmonton. Isaac flew back a week ago to Ontario where he'll remain, looking after our house and Tiger the cat, until after Christmas. I've remained in Edmonton, staying with Megan and Craig, preparing to move into our new house in a week's time. I've spent the last week calling and arranging to meet my new clients, and even attended my first birth in over 3 years as back up for Gaelyn. It was a home waterbirth, which will happily be the large majority of my work here. I'm flying back to Ontario to spend Christmas with Isaac's family and my sister Jenny and her boyfriend James, who are flying out from the UK to visit. I'm flying back here at the beginning of January and Isaac will drive back out with his friend Matt and his brother Reilly, so we have both our cars out here in Alberta, then Isaac will be joining me here permanently.

So that's pretty much where we are up to now. I'm loving living in Alberta again - I like living out in what amounts to suburbia but close enough to a city to have access to all a city has to offer: I'm 15 minutes from Ikea and the South Edmonton Common retail park, including the Gap Factory Store (where I indulged in a spending spree when I got my first paycheque the other day). I'm really enjoying being back in midwifery (bit nervous too) and I'm excited about our new house! I can't wait to see Jen & James at Christmas and I'm really looking forward to having real money to spend on people's presents for the first time since 2006. Such a relief.

So apologies for once again just having a 'I did this, then I did this, then I'm doing this' kinda post. I'd rather just be musing on ideas and throwing around the one liners, but I don't get to do this as often as I'd like and blah de blah de blah. Which brings me on to...

While I'm spilling my guts about things I would also like to admit a rather shameful secret: I've been Twittering for a few weeks. At first I told no one and happily tweeted just to myself. Then, the other day, my nephew Benj found me - not sure how - and began 'following' me. A few more people (strangers!) followed suit. So I thought I'd come clean and if you feel like following my random thoughts then look for @midwifemia. No obligation though, it is of course merely the whitterings of a madwife.

The Banff Chronicle w/c 15th October 2007

I've not been able to upload new pictures to facebook or my blog the last few days, because although I get free wireless here at the hostel, it's a bit on the slow and unreliable side. I'll do my best to get pictures up here today and the rest on facebook as soon as I can.

Here's what I've been up to:

The first night I was here I went out with my new BFFs: Kate (Aussie, from Perth), James (Aussie, from somewhere near Canberra) and Chris (English, from Woking!). We went on a pub crawl and they didn't mind one bit that I wasn't drinking, in fact, James wasn't drinking either, thought that was because he was broke. Still, we had a great night and ended up back at my hostel bar till around 1.30am (I'm a dirty stopout!)

Next evening we met up again where I persuaded everyone to come up to the hot springs, and we stayed till 10pm getting very warm, while the air around us got very cold. It was excellent.

Wednesday morning I had my job interviews for Sunshine Village at their hiring clinic (along with basically the entire transient population of Banff). You have an initial screening interview where they decide what sort of positions you'd be suitable for and then pass you on to the supervisors of those departments for more specific questions. I had 3 interviews, one for Food & Beverage Server, one for the Ski School and one for Guest Services. I got the one I wanted, which was Guest Services, which basically involves working for the ticket office doing ticket sales and season passes, that sort of thing. I asked for part-time, so I'll be working there weekends and I plan to supplement the rest of the time with 2-3 nights working in a restaurant/bar in town, giving me the weekdays to learn to ski. I've been provisionally offered something at a restaurant called Saltlik, which looks nice, but I'm going to have another look around tomorrow to see what else is out there.

So job is kinda sorted, but still have somewhere to live to find. Accommodation is a nightmare to find here - I know people who are sharing double beds with near-strangers for an extortionate rent in order to get something - so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my lead from back home - my friend Cindy's brother-in-law who's living and working out here - comes off. I'm meeting him on Sunday to discuss. If that falls through, I'm a bit buggered!

Today the groovy gang and I headed out to Lake Louise and Johnston's Canyon for a day trip. Annoyingly, despite a beautiful blue sky this morning, by the time we arrived at Lake Louise the cloud had come down so I couldn't see much more of it that I could when I want there with Darrell a few weeks ago. Still amazing though, and at least this time we had snow so we could all get a bit excited!* Chris got a bit over-excited in fact, and decided to go for a paddle in the glacial waters. They were 'pretty cold' apparently.

Hostel life is a mixed bag. I quite like the social element - even though it's a bit 'party party party' for my tastes - and it's so easy to meet people you feel like you have a ready made group of friends, which is handy when you're alone in a strange place. We've all pretty much been doing the same things - going for jobs at Sunshine or in town, looking for accommodation - which has lent a certain camaraderie to proceedings. But I'm struggling with sharing a bedroom with 5 other girls, lovely though they all are. I've had no more than a handful of hours sleep since I've been here, because someone is always coming in late and/or drunk, trying to open doors and bags quietly and falling over when trying to climb into their bunks. Sometimes it's me. And there's always people wandering up and down the corridors talking loudly at 4am, while I lie there, imagining sticking something very sharp into their eyeballs. I feel can't really relax, hate communal bathrooms and am mistrustful of other people's washing up in the communal kitchen. Oh and pretty much everyone is so much younger than me I feel like an old mother hen at times (though it's nice when I get carded in the bars and everyone so far has been amazed at how old I am - Chris demanded to see my driving licence and still maintains it's a clever forgery. Bless him.) And as if to prove my point, it's Friday night and I'm sat in my bunk playing on the internet because everyone else is out on a pub crawl and I couldn't face it tonight. I'm just so tired from not really sleeping, I thought I'd sit this one out.

So that's me so far. Banff is really really beautiful and I literally can't stop taking pictures of the surrounding mountains, because I almost can't believe they're real. I'm excited to be living here, looking forward to starting work and learning to ski (oh I get a free ski pass with my new job - did I mention that?) and have met some lovely people. But I get lonely and homesick too at times, so it's nice to hear from home if you have a moment?

*Snow = skiing/snowboarding = jobs starting = money