Cafe Culture

About a month ago I read a story in the paper about Cafe culture, and how it is disappearing. Instead of going to cafes to be social and converse with others, the modern cafe is now a place to do work and sit on your lap top for hours. I must admit, I am currently sitting in Starbucks with an Americano blogging on my mac book. Cliche? Extremely. But sometimes you just need to get out of the house. ( I love my roommates, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad news bears.) I think one of the things I like most about Charlottetown is it's sense of community. This translates into it's coffee shops, and maintains "cafe culture." Very rarely will you see more than maybe 2 laptops at a time in a coffee shop, and no matter who is here and who comes in, someone in the back of the line will know someone in the front of the line who knows someone in the middle of the line who is waiting for someone who knows the barista's brother. It's a lot more exciting going for coffee knowing you will probably run into someone you forgot you knew and haven't talked to in ages. It helps that this particular Starbucks is Charlottetown's first and only, and has only been here since October so the place is still buzzing with excitement and filled with perplexing looks on the faces of new comers as they try to decipher the menu.

I went to see the internship coordinator a few days ago to discuss placement options because I was stressing out big time. I am so glad I did, she is quite possibly the most helpful person I have ever met. Here I am, wigging out and a bit frantic barging into (well I knocked...) her office talking a million miles an hour about all my conflicting ideas about what placement I want this summer and the pros and cons of each option and spazing out hard core. Meanwhile, she laughs at me and calmly asks me what I would want in an ideal world, regardless of the pre-set placements we were given, and proceeds to figure out how to make my ideal possible. Just like that. I left her office feeling a lot better about some new placement combinations she created for me and feeling extremely high maintenance. But on the bright side, this summer is looking better and better everyday; mostly because it's getting closer and closer.

So as of right now, I think I'll be doing a normal 2 month placement, finishing June 25th and then going home. BUT I think I'll be coming back to the island a month later at the end of July for one week to do the Diabetes Camp that I really wanted to do. I love camp, camp is great. I suppose it means I'm doing one extra week of free interning but it'll be worth it to get to be home a month early AND go to camp. I'm crossing my fingers that everything works out.

The hardest part about this whole internship thing is having to compete against all your friends. First we were competing to get an internship, now we're competing to get the placements we want. If two people pick the same one, it'll come down to luck of the draw, and I don't want to be the person to take away someone's first choice.

Last night, I got home from work in time to catch the men's Skeleton finals. Oh man, so exciting. First of all, the idea of sledding head first down a giant ice ramp at 140 km/hr is awesome, and something I really want to try. The Canadian Jon Montgomery, was in second after the first two runs, but was slowely chipping away at the lead with each run. When it came down to the leaders last run, he slowely got further, and further behind but it was hard to tell until he actually crossed the line that Canada was going to take it. Jon Montgomery quickly became my new favorite person. Mostly because his helmet has a giant turtle on it, but I suppose winning a gold medal doesn't hurt either. Skeleton in general was pretty intense this year, with Mellisa Hollingsworth falling short in her last run. My heart broke a little when she gave a tearful interview after her race worried about letting down her entire country. But like she said, she made a mistake that could have been made anywhere; in practice, at world cup etc, and it was just unfortunate it happened at the Olympics. My next blog post will likely be from either New York City or on route to NYC. So stayed tuned!