Back at the mine

Last week was a complete whirlwind. I flew to Nova Scotia on Tuesday with Mom, spent wedesnday through to saturday running around visiting Grandma at the hostpital, helping Mom get our stuff out of her house so she can sell it, playing video games with Megan at the Labyrinth, visiting everybody down at l'Université Saint-Anne, fixing Grandpa's computer, etc. etc. Sunday morning I flew back to Yellowknife. A completely crazy trip, that was a complete rollercoaster ride of emotions; happy I was able to be there, sad to see Grandma in the hospital, tired from the trips, thrilled to get to the shore for an afternoon, sad I wasn't able to spend a little more time with Dad, worried that if Megan goes travelling I might not see her for over a year... by the time I got back to Yellowknife sunday night I was completely emotionally mixed up (spending 10 hours in the Edmonton airport probably didn't help). Monday wasn't much better.

Now that I'm back here at the mine I've been able to sort of set my head straight again. It's been great today to have tasks to concentrate on, things to do other than just think about everything that's been going on and getting back into a regular schedule. Even though I had only been here once before on my last rotation, there's a familiarity here that is comforting too, especially with Mom still being in Nova Scotia, Yellowknife felt pretty lonely yesterday.

I've recently realized a few interesting facts. Firstly, once I'm done my current rotation, I'll have completed half of my work for the summer! I'll only have two more two week rotations here at the mine to complete, and then I'm back in Nova Scotia to get ready to go back to school. If I take into account my trip to Alberta on the 25th of this month, I've really only got one more set of two weeks in Yellowknife too. It's weird, because I had felt up until now that I was going to have lots of time over the summer to get to know the city a little better, to start to really make it feel a little like home before I left; but it doesn't look like I'll be around long enough for that to happen. It's been cool to spend what time I have in the city though, I certainly never thought that I'd be living in Yellowknife even for a day, much less for a long as I have been.

The mine still amazes me. About once a day I look around me and think "WOW! I'm working at a DIAMOND mine! How cool is that??" It's pretty awesome to be here knowing that just a few hundred metres from where I am they are pulling diamonds out of the ground. When I first got here one of the vice presidents did a little presentation as part of the site induction meeting, and during that he pointed out that when we see on TV the shows about extreme mining, they are talking about operations less extreme than what's happening here at Diavik. The operation they (we) are running here is as extreme an operation as they come. Not only is it being done on an enormous scale, and with mind-blowing amounts of resources, people, and equipment, but it's being done over 300 kilometres northeast of the closest town, which is itself extremely isolated! The entire operation is completely insane, and absolutely amazing. The more I learn about what is happening here, and how it's being done, the more flaberghasted I become. It's unreal. I'm not going to talk about it any more here, but if you're interested, the Diavik Website has lots of information and photos of the mine site.

Anyway, the experience is still awesome, life is still going on, things are good. Please leave comments, even just a 'hello' so I know that someone is still looking at this site! Thanks,
-Liam