Category Archives: Getting ready to go

Sustaining myself on the people

As I enter into the final 24 hours of my work at UBC, I am just so touched by the people I have worked with over the past 3 years. They have made my final week brim with expressions of warmth, friendship, encouragement, and support. This both reaffirms my belief that people are the centre of any great community AND that community is an opt-in, choose-to-belong experience. If you choose to be “in” then belonging never really leaves you, regardless of where you are. I will always consider myself a member of the UBC community and feel incredibly rich in spirit to have been allowed the opportunity to work with such a talented bunch.

Thank you to everyone who has made my final week at UBC simply amazing. I leave full of gratitude, hope, and boundless inspiration from all of you.

Finding home…

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So, I crave information about where we will live when we get to Nepal – I just really want to know what our new home will look like!  For about the first 6 weeks Rex and I will be in training with the VSO Nepal office and what I do know is that we will be staying in the Pacific Guest House.  It looks just lovely 🙂  So, for now, this will have to be enough (and at least I have some pictures that will last until we arrive).

I need rabies

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I feel like a human pin cushion.  It is rather strange to imagine that floating through my blood stream right now are the following diseases:  Japanese Encephalitis, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Meningitis, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Amazing that the human body can fight all these diseases at once!

Now what I find totally amazing is that the rabies vaccination is currently almost impossible to find.  I did some quick research and discovered that the lack of supply is based on two things.  One, the manufacturer of pre-exposure vaccine is renovating.  Two, the supplier of post-exposure vaccine doesn’t produce the pre-exposure vaccine.  Amazing to think that there is one company that has the corner on the entire rabies market…

Community

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I will be spending the next 4 days in my final Canadian training session which is focussed on skills for working in development.  Today we discussed what our meaning of community might be…which raised a question for me.  Is community optional?  Is the idea of community predicated upon opting into the community or can you belong to a community without wanting or choosing too?

seeking inspiration in words…

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“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” – Freya Stark

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe” – Anatole France

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

Found in a BraveNewTraveller article written by Lola Akinmade.