Certainly. It wasn't just because of the winter that it was a shock to come back to normal life. To elaborate a bit, I came back December 5 and on January 5 I was back in class. The last day of my technical contract as a Class C reservist was, I think, January 28, and then I was back to Class A service, temporary part-time contract work with the military while concurrently pursuing my studies.
It wasn't an easy one just because of the condensed timeframe, as you can imagine. Within 35 days I went from patrolling in southern Afghanistan, which is quite different from walking to school in the middle of January. Obviously, the transition itself was ushered along by my reserve unit, the Governor General's Foot Guards at the time. Generally speaking, it was a smooth transition. However, there are always things that kind of get in the way administratively, and prolong that transition. There were a lot of challenges with regard to medical documents, outstanding pay issues, and other things that were carried over from my time in Afghanistan, which had an impact and obviously caused a little bit of stress in my reintegration while I was just trying to get back to my life as it had been before.
Within about a year or so, everything was taken care of, and I would actually define that full transition, me really getting back into my life. When you're a reservist, it's a little bit different. It's not the traditional, regular-force experience. I did volunteer and kind of got plucked out, and then I came back and had to find an apartment, because I'd gotten rid of my apartment and sold all my furniture. That's challenging, but at the end of the day, it all came together after a little while.