Newfoundland

Once again, my apologies for the drought. I have been in Newfoundland.

Here are some things I learned while I was there:

It is a serious pain to get there from here. Long bumpy flights, stupid connections, airports under construction.

Newfoundlanders are seriously fun. Seriously.

Newfoundlanders speak some dialect of English that often requires translation for us westerners.

There are 1000 varieties of chowder. Most have extremely large scallops in them. Fresh out of the ocean. Nothing like it in the prairies.

A partridgeberry is a tart berry and is in everything in Newfoundland, as is Screech.

Newfoundland is a rock with many different kinds of elevation, most of it steep. The little shape on top of that rock is Signal Hill. I tried to run up to it but got half way there and found myself gasping for air in someone's yard so I turned around and went back down. Turns out you actually have to go through someone's "gairden", complete with laundry on the line, to get up to the monument. And they don't recommend the tourists walk it - too steep for the flatlanders. They don't like calling the ambulance up there to resuscitate the heart attacks. It tends to get the laundry all dirty again.

It is really hard to run up hills. Pretty sure my car would end up backwards in the ocean if I had to drive it anywhere on that island.

A puffin is a cute little bird with a beak that turns orange in mating season and which makes little burrows in the hillside. It also mates for life and gets about 10 seconds of lovin' a year.

I do not seem to be one of those people who has the anti-seasickness gene. Something that it takes a prairie girl 37 years to find out. Fortunately, I also lack the puke-the-second-I-step-on-a-boat gene.

1 metre waves, called "calm" by the locals, are as nasty as a roller coaster ride that never ends. People go out in rougher seas for weeks at a time? What a way to make a living!

I also learned some interesting things about being a better oncology nurse which was really the whole point of the trip, at least for the people paying for it. I made some new contacts. I took home some good ideas. I might actually be ready to go back to work Monday.

I learned my family is capable of ticking along just fine without me... which is a very good thing to file away for future reference.