You can almost hear the Celine Dion in the background, can't you...? The song they used for that god awful Air Canada commercial? Yeah, yeah, that one. *shudder*.

So, I got on the train, made it up to Durham, then the train stopped. I was worried. A train in front of us had broken down and was waiting for a tow. I was a little concerned. I gave myself a shitload of time to get from Waverly to the consulate (ie: about an hour for a walk that only takes 15-20 mins), but was nonetheless concerned. The last bloody thing I needed after all the fucking hassle to set this damn thing up was to have my train be late and me miss or have to reschedule the bloody thing. Luckily the delay was minimal, and I made it to the consulate with a ton of time to spare.

I was stuck in a small room (although they fed my sparkling mineral water!) that was unbelievably FREEZING! I curled up in the chair and I'm sure the people that walked by wondered who the hell I was and what I was doing huddled in a little ball in their office room. Esp. since I decided to be all classy and stuff and was wearing nice officy-business-y clothes in spite of the fact that the peeps in Canada definitely couldn't see me (you never know, could have been a video conference... it's happened before...). Then, they were late. Not too long, but late nonetheless. The phone call came about 10 after 3. It was fairly straightforward, the set of questions, although when they asked about a tough decision I'd worked through and how I did it, I foolishly decided to use the example of coming to England for my masters. I nearly started bawling in the middle of the interview, as I'm homesick to begin with, and describing the trouble I had leaving everyone behind to come over to this random country where I knew no one, etc... Oops. And this was right after I'd had to tell them how capable I was of being a cold bitch (yup, seriously... "sometimes the things we do are hard, heart-wrenching, but we have to do them anyway. Can you give us an example of a time when you've had to do something that was extremely hard, even though you might not have wanted to...?"

I'd prepared kick-ass answers for 'what is your greatest strength' and 'what is your greatest weakness', and they didn't ask. Argh!

But anyway. It was over by 4 p.m., including my questions about the selection process (which has changed since I last worked for the department), so I wandered around a bit, had dinner, and am now on the train back home to York. Yay WiFi! Yay GNER!

I Am Reading
Academically: My dissertation
For Fun: Suite Francaise/Plain Truth (by Jodi Picoult - I didn't bring Suite with me on the train so bought Plain Truth at Waterstones.
Pile of Books on my Windowsill: Unchanged