Greetings from the Nation's capital

Hello faithful readers (haha, I made a funny!),

Okay, you deserve an explanation as to why there hasn't been a post in ages. Well, there was nothing to post about. I went about my normal life at school, studied, got stressed, and convocated! Yes, that means I have my expensive piece of paper...aka my degree. I went home for the summer, to spend time with the fam, and get more stressed by working 2 jobs.

As you may tell by the subject line, I am now in Ottawa. I chucked my job contract out the window and am now doing a one-year volunteer position with a non-profit organization and charity (so, if you want to become a financial supporter, you know how to contact me).

I've been here for a month or so, and I'm really enjoying myself. My job is great and I'm finding the city really beautiful. Ottawa has the most efficient transit system I've ever seen. I'm also looking forward to popping up to Montreal every once and a while, being that it's only a couple hours away. I am getting brave!

Last night I met up with a friend from university who took me out for supper. I wasn't hungry because of how late I had lunch. I got an appetizer. It was delicious...and expensive. Half of a tomato, sliced, with goat cheese between the layers, 2 spigs of asparagus, and some balsamic drizzled over it. All for the bargain price of $13! I'm glad he bought!

I will leave it at that today and go and get some laundry done. I look forward to fascinating you with my exciting adventures in Ottawa.

Current Music = Give me Jesus - Greystone Singers

Who says Saskatchewan is boring?

Okay, so remember in the last post I said I wasn't the most culinary adventurous person ever. Well, I am now! Because I ate sushi.....in Saskatchewan! Haha! I'm funny. Actually, it was rather tasty. My roommate and I are going to make it a weekly, or bi-weekly tradition. Mmmm....now I'm hungry.

Current Music = Let my words be few - Matt Redman

God is good...All the time!

So here I am, back in the Toon, back to school, and back from Vancouver!

That's right peoples, I went to Vancouver for new year's. I went for a Catholic conference. It was awesome. There were great speakers, great p&w, and great fellowship. I don't know what else to say about it. It was intense!

I can't say I was overly adventurous when I was in Vancouver. I did go to Granville Island and the aquarium. We didn't have tons of time off, just enough though. I did, however, try calamari. Now, I know for most people it's not a big deal, but for me it's huge. I don't really like trying new things. If you can't tell, just pay attention to how often I order chicken fingers at a restaurant. Actually, the calamari was pretty good. I wouldn't eat it all the time, but every once and a while it would be a nice change. Some people tried sushi. I'll have to leave that for the next time I go to Vancouver.

Other than that, Christmas was nice. Grandma got to come over for supper for a couple hours, so that was awesome. We got to play cards, and just generally hang out. It was nice not to have been super busy. After supper, my sister and brother-in-law started teaching me how to play Texas Hold-Em poker. I'm not very good. I don't have a good poker face, people can read me like a book. But it was pretty interesting. No huge bets, we only played with pennies...but I won!

Current Music = Agnus Dei/Worthy - Third Day

I love friends, chocolate, and Saskatoon berry pie....

So, the school work is starting to pick up. Kind of suits me right because I feel like I"ve been slacking off for so long.

On Thursday a whole bunch of high school kids came to watch us rehearse, and I mean there's nothing like singing: "bdflmnptv" and going faster and faster to entertain the little children...After they had to go for they're next information session, we noticed one member staying behind...with a hood up...and not moving. Well, since we were so thrilling and relaxing, they decided to take a nap. After singing random notes in unison, and very loudly, we sent our in-class work placement person to go check and see if they were still breathing, and if so, to wake them up. Man, I've never seen such a deer in the headlights look. That poor guy was freaked out, and had 54 choir members staring at him at the same time. It was very entertaining!

Current music = How Great - David Crowder Band

Free Guard Zone here I come!

So, I joined a curling league! I haven't curled for 3 years, so I decided maybe I should get back into it. I love curling! I'm a lead, which I love, but our games start at 8:40, which I don't love, considering I have a pretty strict, and early, bedtime these days! I was so expecting not to curl again this year that I had to get the parents to mail me my curling shoes. They would have done the same with the broom, but it's not really feasible, plus it might be considered illegal as it could be classified as a dangerous weapon!

Okay, so I'm not into competitive curling or anything, it's a social league. If people haven't curled before, and they want to, that's the league their put in. You wouldn't have expected it by looking at the team we were playing against, they had stop watches, were playing bumper and normal take-out weight, and their skip stood behind ours to judge the curl. That's not social people. After one end it looked like they might kick our butts, so in the second they conceded a point (even though they were counting) just to be nice, I guess. My third joked "Man, they're going to be sorry after we win". Well, I've never been in such a close game. We were having fun, they were looking serious. It didn't help that our Plan Bs tended to work out, when theirs left them nothing. But we didn't need Plan Bs too often. And sure enough, we won! 8-5! It was nuts. I guess the one guy's daughter was watching our game and wasn't impressed that we won.

We were totally shooting awesome, not missing much. My first curling game of the season is like my first golf game of the season: no lost golf balls, no bushes, no misses, no water, and a few bogeys (which is an awesome day in my books), and then it's all downhill from there. I'm hoping I can keep this up though (my weight was awesome!) because I think I've gotten my team's hopes up that they have an awesome lead.

Man, I'm going to hurt tomorrow!

Current Music = Our Love is Loud - David Crowder Band