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.

Anything But Ordinary

10 Random Facts about Canada:

1. They drive on the Right Hand Side of the road (okay so I already knew that!)

2. The water sits higher in the toilet - this is actually true, I thought I'd blocked it the first night!

3. Their 5c coin is bigger than the 10c coin.

4. Canada doesn't have a 2c, 20c or 50c coin.

5. A 1 dollar coin is called a loonie and a 2 dollar coin is called a toonie. (Excuse the spelling, it's probably wrong!)

6. They don't have signs for elderly people crossing.

7. 'Eh' means 'isn't it?' or 'don't you?' or 'aren't we?'.

8. Their roads are unbelievably straight.

9. Canada is a surprisingly multicultural society - foods introduced to me as typical had their roots in many different countries.

10. Many parts of northern Manitoba (don't forget this isn't even as far north as the Yukon, Northern Territories or Nunavut) cannot be reached by road.

Tuesday

Yesterday I omitted to mention the wildlife which I saw, so I can now add to my list a chipmunk, gopher and a monarch butterfly & dragonfly (at the ruins) to my list. Today we travelled north of Winnipeg. It was the first time I had been out of the city properly and I got very excited about grain fields, prairie grass, flattened houses and GRAIN ELEVATORS (Rebecca - "Yay - ANOTHER grain elevator!")!! The first place we visited was the Lower Fort Garry heritage park. This was a fascinating opportunity to see life as it was for the early settlers in the times of the Hudson Bay Trading Company. A first for both Rebecca and me was trying a Buffalo Burger - I was proud of myself for trying it, and very impressed with the flavour which was similar to beef.

Next stop, further north, was Winnipeg Beach, a small town at the lower edge of Lake Winnipeg. I really liked this town - it felt like we were on a beach near Florida! We spent some time lazing by the water, and then Rebecca introduced me to Slurpees (like Slush Puppies). A very interesting thing to note about Canadian roads (especially in the prairies) is that they are very, very straight - in fact so straight that every bend has to be marked in case you miss it! I think we hit a maximum of 5 curves on our travels today! Travelling further northwards again we saw a storm brewing ahead. I was quite excited at the prospect of seeing a tornado, but I guess it was a good thing I didn't! We didn't stay very long in the next town of Gimli because of the storm (by this stage there was lightning, wind and a bit of rain) but I was fascinated by its Icelandic culture. The storm didn't come to much, or else we beat it driving down south again.
At night I had the unique opportunity to participate in some Metis square dancing, something Rebecca is learning. Metis culture is a mix of Aboriginal and European. We also drove throught the North End (dodgy area) to get there!

[PS Apparently I was quite good at the dancing!]

Monday

Today we moved out of the city limits a little. We started off the day by having lunch in the Prairie Ink cafe in McNally Robinson, a bookshop which is a Winnipeg institution. The bookshop was lovely and the children's section upstairs was dubbed the '100 Aker Wood' and had various references to Winnie the Pooh including a forest where they could read books.
You may or may not know that Winnie the Pooh was inspired by a real bear called Winnie the Bear, from Winnipeg! I visited the zoo in Assiniboine Park solely to take a picture of the statue. On our way out to visit the St Norbert ruins, we passed a heritage park and decided to go in for 15 mins. It reminded me of the Ulster American Folk Park and there were lots of interesting things to see inside the houses, although it must be mentioned that we ended up just chatting to the French Canadian tour guide as he was very cute! The St Norbert Ruins were also lovely and it was here that I had my first glimpse of prairie grass.
Tonight we met Rebecca's Grandmere for dinnner and then coffee. She is a lovely woman of 92, who acts and looks like a 65-year-old! She heard I hadn't had tea all week so she made me some back at her house, and then we made a funny video about the uses of tea and the proper way to make it! I still can't get over how youthful she is, she is also really trendy (probably due to her being an artist long ago!)

Sunday

This morning Rebecca and I went for brunch in a revolving restaurant which was pretty awesome, to use a Canadian term! We were able to get a 360 degree view over the city and make out some of the important landmarks like the Provincial Building, the Golden Boy (yep, that's actually the official name for the statue on the top), the Forks (meeting of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers) and the St Boniface Cathedral. It's a pity I can't put video up on this thing because we had a very interesting commentary from Rebecca on the sights below! I did however take some pictures, here is one that shows the Golden Boy...

After eating, we crossed the esplanade (spiky bridge) to St Boniface (the Francophone area of the city) and visited the Basilica Cathedral and Louis Reil's grave. Louis Reil is famous for something, but I can't exactly remember what. Back at 'The Forks' we toured the markets which sold all kinds of everything and got our portraits taken by this crazy-looking guy who only asked for donations. Rebecca said he had been doing that for as long as she could remember. It must be about 35 degrees. I am currently sitting in the shade of a polar bear (sculpture) and sunbathing ... After the sunbathing we went to get our pictures taken with some of the bears.Tonight I experienced the Winnipeg edition of Maud's - the BDI - and had a very delicious ice-cream. There is a funny video of me asking for a flake in my ice-cream and the girl looking a little confused. We crossed another bridge into a very quiet neighbourhood and sat for ages on the swings talking about life, love and music. On the way back over the bridge we encountered some racoons, but only from a distance. Apparently they bite. These creatures were very stereotypically rummaging in the garbage!

Saturday

My first experience of flying over the Atlantic ... an endless expanse of water, as far as the eye could see. When i got bored of everything else on the plane, I just stared out of the window, mesmerised by the vast scale of nothingness.

9.15 (Toronto): The thing I have found most hard to get used to in Canada is how weird my accent sounds. You never notice it so much, say in France, because everybody else is speaking another language most of the time, and it is very obvious that English is their second language. But when everybody is speaking English and you're speaking it differently, that's when being from Northern Ireland really sticks out. It's not always a bad thing though, guys in the airport were flirting with me because of my cool (cute?) accent!

I am really pleased that even though I didn't get into Toronto, i saw the CNN tower from the plane, and I like to think i flew over the Niagra falls, but I didn't actually see them. Canada is a big, big country.

Twentysomething

I haven't been around for the last wee while hence the lack of blogging! So let me update you...

A week ago on Friday was my graduation from Stranmillis. I am officially no longer a student (my student discount even expired on 1st June) - I felt pretty identityless until I realised that I now belong to a new group - the twentysomethings! I even bought a Christian book aimed at the age group to start off this new era of my life. Graduation itself was lovely, it rained in the morning, but the hair was saved and it cleared up well for the afternoon tea party. Here are a few of the photos:

Me and Jo

Me and the Girlies

Me and Jen

After graduation I went off to CCSM for a week and then Coleraine Camp. I had a great time and made loads of new friends. Here are some of my new friends. I also acquired a few friends for my fridge door thanks to Kyler (Miffy rocks!)

The Explorers

Mark, Tanya, Ali, Elaine, George and Laura K

Jo P painting a Bee for the Bee-Attitudes!

Me and Laura K!

Sarah, Jo W and Someone Who Doesn't Want To Be Seen!

Superman

Wow! You da man! Impressive! Miaw

If you haven't got a clue what I'm talking about listen to the Scott Mills show.

All That Jazz!

Tonight I went with the girls to see Chicago at the opera house! It was very entertaining, all big band stuff and showbiz dancing. We inadvertantly got front-row seats which was a good surprise! At the end they were throwing out flowers and I got one [see below for how I used it!]

Before the show, we went out for dinner in Bourbon. I took some photos while we were waiting on our dinner:

Dessert took so long that we had to cancel it and go to the show, but we got a bit bored waiting on it and so I took some 'interesting' through-a-glass pictures (sorry for stealing your idea Elia).

Just to brighten up the blog - a little picture. Enjoy.

Park Güell in Barcelona

I Got Rhythm

or not...

Days until piano exam: 6

Number of pieces to fix: 6

Days I'm supposed to be doing something else: 5

Days it will take to fix my pieces: 100

I'm actually playing the above piece but if you've ever heard Gershwin playing it, then mine sounds nothing like it!

Generator

This is one of my favourite songs at the moment - it's just really upbeat and I suppose I also like the harmonies. If you don't know which song I'm on about it's really fast, it's by the Holloways and it goes like this:

I can get a record player and a generator
Generate the music to make you feel better
I can get a record player and a generator
Generate the music to make you feel free
So you'd better get a record player and a generator
Generate the music to make you feel better
I can get a record player and a generator
Generate the music to make you feel free

I don't live in poverty, got a little bit of money and I've got a healthy body...

and so on.

The lyrics sound a bit silly on their own, but the song's pretty catchy!

(That was cheating a bit, wasn't it? Actually talking about the song I used in the title? Oh well!)

Challenge

Maybe it's because I've left Uni and have no more challenge left in my life (yea right - teaching and a music exam isn't challenge?) Anyway I've decided to try to title all my blog posts for a while with an existing song title. And try to make it relevant. So let's see how I get on, and how many song titles you can place! :)