Hola from Kingston

I'm at the downtown public library, day two here in Kingston is finished and so far everything has been going swimmingly. Yesterday was a pretty long travel day - at the airport for 6am, didn't get to Kingston until 6pm after a 2.5 hour drive from Toronto - but it was exciting all the same. Once we all got settled into the hotel (I get my own room!) we were taken over to the Vimy Mess at CFB Kingston for dinner. This is where we will be eating breakfast and dinner everyday and does it ever remind me of being at cadet camp, except the food here is better than we ever had at Penhold or Cold Lake. It's been really warm the last two days (32 yesterday, 29 today) and very humid. Last night after everyone arrived we hung around outside of our rooms and chatted. People came from all over the place and it's interesting hearing everyone's motivation for coming. It seems that on the whole everyone was looking for some adventure. Even though I was pretty tired yesterday it took me a while to fall asleep. I watched some TV (finally caught an episode of the final season of QAF) and went to bed at about midnight. Call time for breakfast was 7am but it seems that when I was trying to hit snooze on the alarm at 5:45 this morning I turned it off instead. Finally woke up at 6:55 and managed to brush my teeth and throw on some clothes. At least I didn't get left behind like two other guys did! Today was spend completing paperwork, getting vaccinations, having a general orientation to Camp Julien and SNC and getting fingerprinted. Tomorrow should be an exciting day - we are doing the nuclear, biological and chemical warfare defense training with gas masks. We've been told to wear long sleeves because we have to put this decontamination goop on all exposed skin while our eyes are closed and we are holding our breath, as well as get the mask on and apparently we only have 9 seconds to do everything! And, it's one of those drills that if you don't get it right the first time they make you do it again and again.

I haven't seen much of Kingston yet but what I have seen looks really nice. After we are finished here Meredith (one of my fellow PDTers) and I are going to take a walk around and check out the architecture. There are some amazing gothic limestone buildings in the downtown area. I guess you can't expect any less from one of the oldest towns in Canada. At some point, I also want to walk down to RMC and check it out. Our nights are free so I'll have plenty of time to do some exploring.

Anyway, it seems like it will be a good week and so far I've met some really cool people. I'm going to take some pictures and hopefully post them when I get home on the weekend. Looks like I will probably be leaving on the weekend of the 18th depending on when the flights go out, and, I've heard that there is usually a stop-over in Amsterdam so I might get a chance to take a ride into the city and check it out!

Wish me luck with the gas masks! :)