Thursday, March 31, 2011

A Check-in

Can anyone believe we're three months into the year? I can, but it still seems pretty unreal sometimes. I thought I would do a bit of a check-in because a lot is happening in and around my life lately. Vita and Rena, if you would like to follow this sort of format and let us know what's going on in your lives at the moment, I would like that as I'm most curious.

Calgary
I just got back from visiting my Katima-sister in Calgary. Have I explained this? Katimavik is basically a government sponsored program wherein youth from 17-21 from different parts of Canada and social and economic backgrounds go to a different province and live in a house with 10 other participants. They volunteer in the community. They practice their second language. They do stuff.
I visited the Katima-house during their 48 hours off and had a generally swell time. Calgary is cold. My sister is very cool. That's all I have to say on the subject.

Canadian Politics
I'm not sure how savvy you guys are with our political system but in a nutshell, our federal government operates by having geographical ridings elect a MP (Member of Parliament) and whichever party has the most MPs elected forms the government whether it is a minority or majority government. Since 2006, the Conservatives have held a minority government which basically means they have more MPs than any other party but (largely because there are more than two parties) they do not have more MPs than all the other parties combined.
Hopefully that's not too confusing.
On March 26, Stephen Harper, despot of the Conservative Party, called an election for May 2nd. I am going to be taking part in this election with a larger role than usual, as the Youth Coordinator for my riding's Green Party representative. I'm not sure what exactly this job entails and I'm pretty politically jaded but I'm doing it and it's going to be a bit of a commitment for the next month. So I thought you should know.

BEDA 2011
I'm not sure what Maureen Johnson's stance on Blog Every Day April 2011 is but I am in. I'm not doing Script Frenzy this year, mostly because it was an unenjoyable nightmare last year* so my time is freed up. Well, not really, but I'm willing to set aside the daily quota of each day to write a blog. Most of these will be at my personal blog, The Corner Notes, but I will be trekking over here on Sundays and Thursdays as per usual. I'm also going to try to be more active on other blogs, reading and commenting. ¡Viva la revoluciĆ³n comentario!
Is anyone else participating? Let me know in the comments and I will try to follow along with support! Let's do this!

The Writing Scene
Still working on my novel. Slowly. I'm writing a bit of poetry these days, too, but most fresh and exciting: SONG WRITING. Yes, I have indulged in the studied art and I'm loving it. My songs aren't good but they exist and I think that is too cool. I don't really have anything else to say about this; I just wanted to share.

The Future
I'm pretty stoked about it.

*As opposed to those enjoyable nightmares, of course.

1 comment:

Vita said...

Wow.... that program actually sounds incredibly awesome and I'm sort of jealous of your sister right now. Is that something that you might do in the future? (Although perhaps not in Calgary; you don't seem too keen.)

To be honest I'm still totally confused about how your government works (much to my shame and despite my affinity for most things Canadian) but it sounds like fun times lie on the horizon so good luck with that!