I thought I'd take this moment and share this picture with you all. It's a photo of me taken in the Vancouver airport shortly after I got back from my China trip but really, it's representative of how I felt right after I got back into Canada after my internship. I'd been raving about Tim Horton's all year long to anyone who would listen (namely the Canadian surgery resident and one of my favorite ICU techs who happened to be married to a canuck and suffered through similar Tim Horton's rants at home).

I'm currently sitting at the Calgary airport and loooooving the free wi-fi. I take this moment to give a big BOOOOOOO to the American airports and their expensive airport internets. I bet at this moment, you are all going, "But I thought she was in Baltimore! What the @#$% is she doing in cowtown?"

I have been in Calgary for two days for the sole purpose of obtaining my TN-1 visa. Without it, I can't legally work and get paid in the states. To get it, I have to leave the US and apply for the damned visa at the border when I reenter the states. This requires that I have $50 and A LOT of grace and patience since the last few times I tried to do this, I was detained in that horrid room behind the glass slidey doors in the US customs area in the Calgary airport. You know the doors, the ones that you always walk past and wonder what horrors are going on within. Well, I'll tell you what horrors are going on within: you get treated like a terrorist or mad cow that's trying to sneak into America and steal away all their jobs and punch babies. I got fingerprinted, my photo taken, got patronized, yelled at and missed many a flight due to the horrors behind those sliding doors. May none of you ever have to go through that trauma. The only delight they withheld from me was a cavity search. But I think they did that to the guy in the line ahead of me. And they made the kid behind me in line cry like a baby for his parents. He was 19.

So yeah, I'm trying not to think about that.

Instead, in my two days in cowtown, I have been trying to consume as much Alberta beef as possible before I have to head south again. My dad, who only communicates through food, has been happily cooking all sorts of beef and Chinese food for me and I can't really complain about it. Hotpot, BBQ steaks, Japanese style beef udon . . . you name it, I ate it.

Ah! my flight is boarding. I am going through US customs in the great T.O. this time.

Let's hope I don't get stuck in the Toronto airport and need to spend the night sleeping on the floor there again. That was hands down one of the worst nights of my life. And keep in mind I've spent the night sleeping in an insect-covered bed in the middle of a jungle filled with man-eating tigers before.

Till next time, if you're in Canadia, drink lots of Timmy's for me and wish me luck at the border.

As a side note, why do they always let the first class people on first? They do it and make them think it's all special when really, all that means is that they have to sit there on a stuffy plane for longer and put up with people with giant suitcases brushing past them on the front of the plane and glaring at them.

Then again, they get free booze.

Hmm, that's a tough call.