One month down, five to go.

This past weekend was packed with birthday celebrations and turkey dinners. My cold has finally gone away after two weeks. AND I managed to extend my free gym membership another two weeks.
We found out all the CWY participants will be helping out with a conference in Toronto on October 25-27 and Annu and I will be staying with a close high school friend, so I'm excited to see her and get out of Hamilton for a couple days.
I'm still loving my volunteer placement. On Tuesday Chip took me with him to Parkview, a small (300 student) vocational school where HIFY runs the Risk Reduction program as a scheduled course for a small number of students. On Wednesday I again helped run the internal (at HIFY) Risk Reduction program on STIs. Today (Thursday) we had six girls from a local youth home in to see the clinic and ask questions. It's really interesting to interact so frequently with a demographic of the population that I have had such little exposure to, especially in this context, and I really appreciate the challenges it brings.

Settling into HIFY

So I've had a cold for about 9 days and it SUCKS. I haven't blogged because I've been sick and tired, and I've also realized that a lot of what I have to say is not appropriate to put on here, so if you want the real deal you will just have to email me.

I'm FINALLY getting established at my volunteer placement. I've been doing everything the nurses working there do, like pregnancy tests (so far all negative), STI screens, and just recently starting girls on birth control! It's really different from anything I've ever done, but I really like it. It's really frustrating to see some of the things that kids out there are doing, like sex trade and trying to get pregnant at fourteen. But you do what you can.
I've also been helping out with the workshops run through HIFY. Last night I co-facilitated a session on 'Safer Sex' for nineteen youth aged 14-18, many of which are street-involved. It went pretty well for being my first time doing anything like that, and I look forward to helping with a few more.

Tomorrow I'm going with Sharon (my host mom) and Annu (my counterpart) to Niagara Falls. Saturday dinner will be with the all the CWY participants, and Sunday dinner will be with Sharon's family.