So...it might be July, oops.

Hi all!

So I have already lapsed in my blog-writing for a good 3 weeks now. I just never seemed to find the time...but here I am, back with an update! I have gotten to experience a bit more of Vancouver and we are finally having good weather! All of June was very rainy, which put a damper on my exploration plans. It is very nice out today - I even put on shorts for a bit - and it's supposed to stay nice, at least for the next week. I guess I really shouldn't be complaining, what with the 100+ degree weather all over the South. I could stand for it to be a bit warmer, but not quite that warm, hah. Anywho, I will post pics of my exploring next time and concentrate on how my project is going for now.

These next couple of weeks are going to be killer busy. For most of June, I was researching, planning, and meeting with my project team, who were recruiting potential participants. Now that it is July, we are in the midst of interviews, transcribing, and trying to figure out what exactly it is we want to glean from this evaluation project. The main team ended up being myself, the project coordinator for the HIPPY Britannia site, and a woman who participated in HIPPY years ago and has been working with a program called Practicing Citizenship that HIPPY also does. They have been great- they are both immigrants themselves, so it helps me a ton during planning to have their insight.

We started interviews last week, working in pairs, and everything has largely gone very well. It has been quite amazing to hear the women's stories of immigrating to Canada. While all of them are unique, there are parallels that run true in most of the experiences I've heard so far. We are almost finished conducting the first interviews, which I am trying to transcribe as we go along. Oh my, transcribing. It makes me want to throw my computer across the room (I promise I won't). A 30 minute audio interview can end up taking 2-3 hours to transcribe. Then analyze, come up with any necessary questions, decide what other information we need to get, and then get ready for a second interview (which I will later have to transcribe, bah). It is a lot of work, but I know in the end it will be worth every hour I've spent rewinding a recording to make sure I got it all right.

We just set a date for one large group meeting with all the participants for later July, so hopefully we actually get all of the interviews done before then. I am hoping at that meeting to discuss the themes of some of the stories and let the women come up with the indicators for what it means to them to be settled in Canada. Then it will be report writing time! But let's not think about that yet.

There have been a couple hiccups along the way, but nothing that wasn't manageable. I haven't stressed much about any changes we've had to make and just gone with the flow. It has worked out quite well for me so far. However, I am stressing a bit about asking the "right" questions in the second interviews next week. I am also waiting to hear back from IRB about an amendment I submitted, which is a bit annoying. Oh IRB.

In other news, I celebrated Canada Day on July 1, then Fourth of July yesterday, and actually went out in Vancouver the other night. Going out was a good release- we went to a dance club, which, as you all know, is my fave. Got to dance a ton, so I loved it. Hope all is well in your parts of the world!!

Peace!