The following is not a blog reflecting my journey with MRH, but rather an unfortunate, but slightly humorous sequence of events that resulted in a sleep-deprived me:
In the days leading up to a big trip, you want to be sure that you have everything in order - Bags are packed, passport is in a known location, and especially on the eve of an early morning flight, that you have slept well. Unfortunately, the days leading up to my departure weren't as simple as I had hoped for due to a wonderful bout of food poisoning.
Not to turn anyone off of a particular fast-food chain, but Fat Burger and I no longer are friends after I spent all of Thursday evening doing little sleeping and instead evacuating everything I had eaten just hours before. Although this is preferable to E.coli setting up camp in my system, it was highly undesirable as it made my entire Friday completely useless as a prep-day for my trip and resulted in accumulating several hours of sleep debt. The thing with making up for lost sleep is that you always anticipate you will be able to catch a few winks here and there, and almost plan it into your schedule. The other thing about it is that you are almost always wrong, or at least I am. Saturday night evolved into late-night packing rather than an early-evening before my 6 a.m. flight to Toronto. Further, the flight which I believed would be an excellent venue for repaying my sleep debt turned out to be secondary in importance to the movies available on Air Canada's in-flight entertainment system. But, I told myself, it wasn't an issue. I'd have a nap and get a good sleep that evening to be ready for Orientation bright and early Monday morning. Well, despite an excellent nap in the middle of the day, my hopes and dreams of a blissful sleep on Sunday night were far from realized.
Rooming with another MRH participant from outside of Toronto, I was privileged to a brand-new experience which I hope to never replicate. After struggling to fall asleep, I finally found rest around 2 a.m. Toronto time (Midnight for myself back in Regina). However, my roommate came back to the room from a visit with friends at around 2:45. Not a problem, I figured. I'd fall back asleep in no time! How right I was! What I didn't anticipate was that this roommate was a particularly powerful snorer who, at around 3:45 awoke me from my sleep and, despite cotton in my ears and pillows over my head, drove me to do something I had never done before. Sleep in the bathtub.
Although the Delta Hotel in Toronto is nice, it isn't "Big-bathtub" nice. So, cramped in with my duvet and pillows, I tried desperately to find comfort in the ceramic box. Unable to fully stretch out, I fell in and out of consciousness for the next 3 hours, continually reminding myself that my chances of getting sleep were significantly better without snoring, even if I was physically less comfortable. I cannot be certain if "sleep" is an appropriate descriptor, though. Finally, around 7 am I drifted back into consciousness and realized that the snoring appeared to have ceased. Eager to make the most of the last hour of potential sleeping time, I relocated to my bed where I blissfully fell into a deep sleep. If only it had lasted more than 60 minutes...
Sufficiently exhausted, I questioned how the next few days would unfold. With the knowledge that we were going to be engaging in orientation activities throughout the whole day until we departed from Toronto at 6pm for Frankfurt, I knew that a nap was out of the question, and sleep aboard the plane was questionable. However, my excitement for the trip trumped my desire to nap and provided me with a second? third? fourth? wind that gave me hope that I could survive the day! After-all, I'd sleep on the plane... right?
Next post: Details on Orientation
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