where to start with the last month of my life?

Here are some things I've done in the last 30 days of my life:

1. picked huckleberries in the Kootenays
   
2. went hitchhiking on Salt Spring Island, BC (don't tell my mom)
   
3. recorded interviews with 15 different community radio broadcasters in 28 days
4. got to see a real life pirate radio station
   
5. went to a nurse/zombie/fetish night at a queer night club in Vancouver
6. drank bubble tea in Kerrisdale, BC
7. ate a Nanaimo Bar for the first time
8. went to the city of Nanaimo for the first time
9. went swimming at a nude beach in Nelson BC
   
10. played the ukulele on the radio, twice

Canada is my first stop on this trip, and I've spent the last month exploring British Columbia, "the most beautiful place on earth," as all of the license plates say. And it is really beautiful here:


[this photograph is in all ways completely representative of all of British Columbia, of course]

In between adventures, I've been working on a framework for the project I'm doing, figuring out what exactly my focus is, what it is I am doing, anyway. I've visited seven or eight stations (if you count the pirate radio station), exploring differences and similarities between the physical location, programming schedule, the DJs themselves. I'm starting to type up transcripts and send copies of interviews back to the folks I interviewed, and next month I'm going up north to Arviat, Nunavut (for those of you back home, think tundra) to do some more sustained research there. Hopefully I'll be hanging out at the community radio station there for a month or so.

One of the highlights of the last month was a weekend camping trip on Salt Spring Island, BC with my two friends from school who are from Vancouver, Beth and Emily. I stayed with both of them & their families, which was really nice. Shout out to Beth and Emily & their families. Yeay for pictures:

Once opon a time, Beth and Emily went swimming and Aliza was too cold to go in the water, so she documented the event.

And then Beth agreed to a post-swimming interview at the Saturday morning market.

The end,
Aliza