Since Thursday I’ve been affectionately addressed by my boy as Clubby, after I fell down my exciting shiny new stairs (whose novelty has since very much worn off) and broke my wrist. It’s been a few days since I’ve got used to my uber-cast and felt okay enough to write, but I’m off today and figured I’d spend it with a combination of blogging, watching a girly movie, and with my current love, The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Tomorrow, at work, is the end of my 30-day probationary period. I believe this comes with some kind of Employee Review. I’m hoping my boss looks more at me showing up with a broken arm, sick, offering to redesign the corporate image and getting referrals from my old work rather than missing 2 out of my first 30 days and going home because my throat hurt so bad nobody could understand what I was saying. I’m not hugely worried – I’ve had lots of positive feedback and I get on well with everyone, I’ve just had a bit of bad luck… right?

Other than work, I’m happy to say I’ve reconnected with a couple of very dear friends who both recently took (separate) extended trips away; one to Germany, Amsterdam and Rome and the other to Egypt and Morocco. Both these people arrived back in Winnipeg in the middle of a bitterly cold winter after experiencing new cultures, new people, and entirely new ways of life that are all happening all over the globe this very second while we sit here in a city so cold nobody wants to leave their bed for 6 months of the year. It reminded me of when I got back from England and Ireland last summer – I’d gone to a place I feel at home, I’d seen historic sites, spent a day in a wonderful city full of life and colour, visited a university I spent the next few months researching in a desperate attempt to find a way to attend and live in, and saw manuscripts over a thousand years old that moved me to tears. Seeing my friends again who’d taken trips come back into the Winnipeg Blues brought it all back; I heard stories of camping out under the stars in the Sahara desert, taking trips down the Nile, standing next to enormous pyramids that defy historical engineering, and how their way of and thinking had changed entirely after seeing the value of food, of water, and of people in places so far away from the life we lead here on a daily basis. Me and the boy had a Big Talk soon after, about how badly I wanted to go somewhere and experience something like that again, and how desperately I wanted to share it with him. I admire his way of thinking and finding positivity in everywhere he goes in this little city, but I so badly want to explore and learn and just take him with me. We talked about taking a trip, maybe in a year or two, but then we talked about maybe doing a World Vision trip.

I get the e-mails every year. $1,000 – $1,500 and you can take a “Destination Life Change” trip. You join a group travelling to either El Salvador, South Africa, Ecuador, Indonesia or Rwanda. You get to see child sponsorship first-hand and really experience what it’s like out there. I think I want to go. I’ve been sponsoring a little boy in Ghana for the last few years and in just over a month I’m doing a 30 Hour Famine to try and raise money for the charity. Right now I’m sitting at $35 in donations. A lot of people are giving me their apologies, which is fine – but all I’m asking for is a few bucks. If everyone chipped in the cost of a Starbucks it would go a REALLY long way, and I just really want to not only spread awareness, but try and make a little bit of a difference too. So I’m doing that on the 3rd of April. But I’m definitely thinking about looking into one of these trips. How life changing would that be?