Flickr!

Well, most of my Canada pictures are now up on flickr and the rest are going up tonight. The link is down the right hand side of this page. Enjoy. And follow the instructions below.

Ain't that a kick in the head?

After saying to Cara last night 'no it's okay I didn't GET West Nile Virus', I woke up today with a really really bad headache and I felt really sick until about 9 o'clock. Fortunately I don't have the virus as per the symptoms on the web though so I'm really glad about that. Don't be careless about insect repellent as I was (mosquito bites didn't really bother me that much...) and then you'll not have to worry about such stuff.

No, I haven't put the flickr photos up yet but I will I promise. I'll link to them when I do. I'll also finish the travel journal (below) hopefully tomorrow. Which reminds me - don't forget to keep scrolling down until I do, because I'm dating the entries on the date they were written, not the day they were posted.

Nite :)

Picture

Update to this post - I couln't change my profile photo for some reason, so you're probably wondering what on earth I'm talking about, especially since the latest experiment to try to change it showed me with brown hair. But how's this for a question - should I go back to blonde or stay brown (my natural colour)? Leave a comment as a kind of poll. PS thanks for the Comment Dermo, and you were right it was Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock and it's one of my favourite songs.

My new profile photo - don't worry I haven't dyed my hair again, this was taken 3 years ago when I was actually blonde - I just thought it was a cool picture - and I love swings!

PS to Dermo - I'm still using song titles and that is actually one. Can you tell me who by?

Is it because I'm White and Nerdy?

Have you ever watched the I.T. Crowd? It's hilarious. I wonder if that means I'm a nerd? ... oh forget it, I don't know enough computer stuff to be a nerd! But I DO have a blog, not just a Bebo or MySpace or Facebook or whatever other social networking sites exist (not that I'm knocking them, I do like Bebo).

A note about Flickr ... I'm going to put up my Canada photos on my Flickr site - Laura's Life - becuase Blogger is still not that great at displaying photos, more like putting images into a word document than into publisher or powerpoint! However Flickr sometime messes up the order of photos which are not in a 'set' (and I'm only allowed 3 sets which I've already used.) This is how to view the pictures in order: you will automatically go to the thumbnails page, but you'll proabably not want to view the pictures in that like that, so click on the first photo and then to the right, click view as slideshow. You will see all the Canada pictures from start to finish, then all the previous ones (Barcelona) etc. The only problem is that you can't see the titles. To do this in order, just view the thumbnails page.

You gotta go there to come back

As Elia very kindly reminded me last nite, I also have been neglecting my blog. I blame jetlag. For everything that happens this week.

As many of you know, I've been in Canada for the past week, visiting my friend Rebecca who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was really great to see her because we went to school in 6th year together, but I haven't seen her in 4 years. She's going to be a doctor just like Lisa, who I can't link to because she hasn't got a blog (bad Lisa!). I started a travel journal while I was away, with the intention that I would transfer it to my blog also, so below are my experiences in Canada in date order. Enjoy.

Thursday

Today was our big day trip into Kenora, Ontario. I think I want to name one of my children Kenora so if you object to this, please don't ask me to marry you. We stopped just outside the city to have some pancakes and syrup (well it had to be done!) and Perogys which are Polish or Ukranian and which Rebecca has been wanting to introduce me to all week!

After driving through the prairies for an hour, we finally hit 'Canadian Shield' which is much more hilly and has rocky outcrops and pine trees (it felt a lot more like what I referred to as 'real Canada' ie the stereotypical landscape!)

Gradually the pine forests gave way to small lakes as we drove through Whiteshell and into Ontario. The larger lakes were dotted with holiday cabins. We stopped at a service station in Clearwater Bay to have ice-cream (I had Rolo and Rebecca had Algonquin Canoe).

Kenora itself was very maritime and we had a nice walk by the marina.On our way back we had a picnic in a random campground. We also followed the sign for East Braintree, only to discover that it had a church and 4 houses. We were not impressed.The day we nicely finished off by watching a video. Funny story about that. Rebecca didn't have enough I.D. with her so I JOINED A VIDEO STORE IN CANADA - isn't that hilarious? So far I have accumulated an American Eagle loyalty card and a Rodgers video card.

Wednesday

I slept in really badly this morning - I think it was a mixture of being up till two last night, and the jetlag I've been ignoring all week. I feel much more refreshed now after a good sleep! Today was our shopping day and we hit the St. Vital Mall, rather a huge shopping centre. I seem to be getting quite excited about a load of things that Canadians take for granted - like prairies and ... AMERICAN EAGLE ... where I spent the most money! I also had the chance to try poutine (not to be confused with poteen) which is a gravy chip with cheese curds. All I can say is ... YUM! After dinner we headed out to Rebecca's friend's birthday party which was at an Ethiopian restaurant (evidence of Canada's varied culture). I tried some of the Ethiopian food, I'm not sure what it was but it was quite nice! I am really enjoying the experiences like these which you wouldn't have if travelling independantly.


WILDLIFE UPDATE: we saw some Canadian geese at the side of the road today.



This is me trying to make chemistry googles look sexy. As you can see, it was not overly successful.