Amazing.

It is still the AM hours on Victoria Day. I should be sleeping, or at the very least propped up in my bed watching Bollywood movies and eating pineapple. But instead I'm sitting in my office, procrastinating frantically putting the finishing touches on a presentation that I am giving here in about one week's time. I am expecting a miserable experience, frankly. Somehow spending four days in a remote mountain village talking about sport history doesn't sound like a particularly good time. That, and I'm terrified of public speaking. I wish that every time I said "uh" or "um" or pause awkwardly during my presentation a food trough in a Burmese village filled with millet. Because then there would be lots of heaping food troughs in Burma.

On my way to Lake Placid, I'm going home for a couple of days. I'm going to eat Schwartz's, drink Boréale and snore happily on Kim and Renée's couch. Also, I'm going to pick up some olive oil, and hopefully learn how to use my camera properly.

I still haven't really thought about my upcoming travels. I blame my blasted conference presentation. By the time I get back from Montreal/Lake Placid, it'll be about a week before I leave. Do you think a week is enough time to learn how to speak Portuguese? I may be able to understand it already. I could understand large parts of this movie but I'm pretty sure the Mozambiquan accent will be 100% different from the Brazilian accent.

At least I have a piece of paper certifying that I don't have yellow fever.

I need to get a yellow fever vaccine or else South African Airways will not let me board my flight. All right then!

I was injected with my Hepatitis A on Tuesday and my arm felt like it weighed 50,000 pounds for about a day and half afterwards. Shockingly, that's the vaccines I need - maybe. Mozambique and Malawi aren't yellow fever countries, but Brazil is. I need to contact Air Canada, South African Airlines, and the embassies of Malawi and Mozambique to figure out what their policies are about travel to/from Brazil. It's conceivable that Air Canada and SAA won't let me board their flights without proof of vaccination (despite the fact that I'm leaving the Sao Paulo airport, which is hardly a yellow fever zone), or that Mozambique and Malawi might not let me enter their countries. Or, says my doctor, they might put me into quarantine and then administer the vaccine themselves. I've kind of always wanted the experience of being quarantined, but not on this trip.

Also, I'm learning Portuguese.