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Sonntag, 30. Dezember 2012

On Hold?

I might just put my blog on hold until something exciting happens, because all that I did today was sleep (till 11 o'clock, I hope I have finally caught up on my sleep, but judging from how tired I am, I don't think so... or my body is using the opportunity to store the sleep), read, finally settle my debt with my hostfather (got a new phone, had to pay :) ) and yeah... that was pretty much it.

Tomorrow, New Year's Eve, I will introduce Dinner For One, as a typical German tradition, to my hostsisters and their aunt - I don't know about the majority of Germans, but at least my family and I always watch Dinner For One oder Der 100. Geburtstag der Miss Sofie when we are in Ischgl, skiing, and since it is a German clip with English text, I don't see why not. The girls probably are gonna think it's totally boring, though, but I'm willing to deal with that.
Some of the exchange students are heading to a party at Big White or at least down town, but for those of you who remember me at our first Unterstufenball it might not be a surprise that I have opted to stay at home (decided to stay at home; sorry I had to use that fancy word :)) - I started shivering, feeling nauseous and got a headache, because there were so many people I didn't know and the music was so loud, so I'm kinda looking forward to just staying at home.

Can you believe that nobody here knows our chips flavour? They've never even heard of Ungarische Art, so I need my mom to include some of those in my next parcel. I think I've mentioned already that it will come a bit sooner than expected, haven't I?

Well, have a really good night,

Julia

Game Day

Okay, so today I finally was halfway productive - I finally caught up on my sleep (hopefully) by sleeping almost 12 hours, I started on my Journalism article, I ordered a few more things off amazon.de to give my mom all the more reasons to send that package soon and ... I played Rommee with Bobby and with Bobbie, Jenna and Andy. And it was really very enjoyable!
In the evening, we watched Percy Jackson - a good movie, although I missed the beginning.
I don't know whether I mentioned it yesterday already, but my lazy days will be over the day after tomorrow, so I need to enjoy them as much as possible!


Babette and I will, as I probably have already mentioned, meet up in the mall on Thursday, and she will come back to my place after, so I'll probably end up showing her a game off my Gold Standards, because we plan to attend a Rockets game in the near future, and I need to show her how awesome that sport is!

That's it for today, guys, I'll be back tomorrow!

Freitag, 28. Dezember 2012

Christmas Lights

Okay, so today was another lazy day - I have started with Biology, but I can't say I've come very far.
I will be meeting up with a German friend from Winfield next week, and I guess that sums my productivity today up pretty well.

Oh, and we went out and looked at Christmas lights. They're crazy here, guys, believe me. You can't even imagine how much some guys here decorate their houses!

Donnerstag, 27. Dezember 2012

Nothing Special

After the frenzy of the last few days, today was wonderfully lazy and relaxed.

Seriously, all I did was sleep in (I left my bed at 11 am, that is sleeping in!), read, eat, read some more, play Just Dance, answer e-mails and then read some more, and now we're getting ready to go swimming.
Exercise after three days straight of stuffing myself with food? Sounds great, don't you agree?

Germany had another Hockey game today - against the US. You don't even want to know the score, do you? Well, it's 8. For the US. And zero (0) for Germany.
Embarrassing, I know.

Mittwoch, 26. Dezember 2012

Christmas post!

I know it's hard to believe, but here I am, with a Christmas story and pictures! I finally managed to write everything up, and I was once again overcome by how amazing the last few days were.
I'm sorry I had to break my promise in regards to the pictures yesterday - but here they are! :)
Have fun!

 Christmas at Andy's parents house. It was really delicious, and as you can see, there were many people and waaay more food.

I had a really great time, even though I was a bit cold in church!

And I have to warn you: There is a bit about Hockey, but if you skip that, there are more pictures and I talk about today!
 Jenna, me, and Bob Christmas morning.

We had agreed to stand up at eight o'clock, but in wise foresight I put my alarm for seven fifteen. Five minutes later, there was a knock at my door.
Not that I really minded, of course, because I was at least already dressed, and hey, it was Christmas - even though I might not have felt very Christmassy, church the day before had taken care of that!


 So we all trudged upstairs, where the stockings were waiting for us!

Stockings are really awesome. They're like St. Nikolaus' day, just on Christmas, which is kind of.... really A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!

On the right you can see what was in my stocking - lots of sweets, peanut butter (even Santa is making fun of me!), maple syrup, more chocolate, hot chocolate, a shirt (I love it and am wearing it right now!), ball point pens, a subway gift card, shower gel & body lotion (they're really great!) and... the best of all: Two tickets to a Kelowna Rockets Hockey game!
Jenna got "Mario Party 8" and Bobby Just Dance 4 - and yesterday I danced for an hour! (Since I was jumping up and down before hand, my calves are kind of sore today...)

 Here's the tree before we attacked it!


Down below there's Jenna, me and Bob, in the middle of unpacking our stockings - I can tell you, it's waaaaaaay more fun if there are people your age (or closer to your age/younger) with whom you can share your fun. It's just not the same as unpacking it with adults, who anyway know what's inside.








At eight thirty, Andy's sister and his parents came over, and there was more unpacking. Jenna gifted a few truly amazing pictures, and I was stunned - I hadn't known she was that good, and just wow. She is really great with paint and crafts!
That sweater that Andy's wearing (you can see the
maple leave) is the Team Canada Olympic Jersey
and their Jerseys look so much better than the
German one!
We had brunch; an egg dish, a potato dish (I need that recipe, it was just really, really great), lots of fruit, cinnamon buns with icing, and coffee, and a great time.

In the afternoon/evening, we went to Tanya's parents' house, since we'd been to Andy's parents house the day before, and I got mittens (Olympic mittens) from the grandparents and a shirt and Lindor from Brenda, Tanya's sister, and we had another Turkey dinner - after the girls had unpacked their other presents:













Lego Hogwarts Castle and Lego Hagrid's hut.
They were really awesome - we already built Hagrid's hut and are almost finished with the castle!

Before dinner, there were of course Christmas crackers; afterwards we all had to wear the ridiculous (but fun) crowns that had been in them and played with the toys.

The Turkey Dinner was also really good, and I can say that I have honestly never seen so much food at a table that wasn't a birthday party with buffet; it just seemed like the supply of carrots, gravy, turkey, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes would not end!

We ended up playing Shangri-la afterwards, similar to the German Phase 10, and even though I came last by a huuuuuge margin, it was maybe the most fun game I've had in a while!
You wouldn't believe me how many games I have been playing lately.
I'm almost daily playing Rommee with Bobby, and then there was the Shangri-La yesterday, and ... well, more later (more on today, I mean)

These are my presents, a lot of knitted things from my mom (two awesome pairs of socks, two scarves - the girls got loops, and they LOVE them, Bobby was wearing hers today!), a knitted owl (I am an owl, school mascots are taken serious here, so Who's house? Owls' house!), black gaiters [Stulpen] and, best of all - does anybody recognize him?
The guy sitting there with my headphones? - Eleven. The eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, from Doctor Who. Then, of course, new headphones (I was looking forward to them sooooo much, and they're just as awesome as my old ones. Could be because they are just like my old ones....). There is Kinderpunsch, children's punch, from Lara, and Christmas cookies and a mug, and more soap and my new fountain pen (although not very well recognizable) and my mittens and the wallet Bobbye made, and the bookmark Jenna made, my new jacket (also awesome and really nicely warm) and a shoulder bag, which is really handy. And of course the Calgary shirt!

Here's all the chocolate from my Stocking. I really hope I don't have to eat it all by myself, you would be able to roll me if I did!
This morning, I woke up at eight thirty, not because I couldn't sleep anymore (I couldn't really go to bed last night, so I was tired), but because ... of the Hockey game!

Germny had really ugly jerseys, black with the ugly, ugly, ugly eagle on the front, and I knew all of two guys - Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, #9 for the Canadians, and Tobias Rieder for Germany. The former because he was (as far as I know, I'm not sure about the German team) the only NHLer in this game (as I said, at least on the Canadian side) and is a pretty good player for the Edmonton Oilers, of which my hostfather is a huge fan of, and the latter because of two reasons: Andy had been telling me about him, that the Oilers had drafted him but put him in the minor league (the not so good team) and that he was German, and because he is German, in the NHL (well, almost), and since he is from ... Bad Abbach! Talking about that town, best regards to Katrinle and her family! :)

Well, unsurprisingly the Canadians wiped the floor with the German's, and even though I had said I wouldn't cheer for the German's, in the end if was impossible.
I'm kind of glad to know that I still regard Germany as my home country.

The game was ... kind of disappointing. I mean, I have only seen one game in its entirety, and that was the rockets game, but in this game today there were so many passes that didn't connect, and once the Canadian gave the perfect assist on a goal... it was just really bad (for the Canadians) that it was a goal for the Germans!

So yeah. We lost 3-9, but hey, we got three goals against the Hockey Nation out there!

Afterwards, Jenna and I played Just Dance, because Bobby was at her friend's and we couldn't start the Lego without her, but she came back quickly enough and assembled Hagrid's hut.

Then we started on the castle, interrupted when we went for dinner to family friends, and even though I wasn't hungry in the least - Jenna had made Hot Dogs, and I of course couldn't say no - it was a really enjoyable time.

I talked to the older son (first year college), which was really interesting, and then the middle son (my age, tenth grade) and I had to team up for Sequence, a board game which we lost spectacularly against Andy and the other father, Jim, and Tanya and Leslie - we didn't took the rules the wrong way, which is why the former team would have won, but the latter team did in the end:
For sequence you have cards on your hand, put one down and place a playing chip according to it on a board. Aim: Have a sequence of five.
We assumed you needed two sequences of five. Andy and Jim were the first to have one sequence of five, and Tanya and Leslie the first to have two sequences of five.

Jim and Leslie gave each of us a hot chocolate mix, a mug and bath salts, which was kind of the end of Christmas and Boxing Day.

We ended the day by finishing assembling the Lego, but it's not yet completely finished.

And here, as per request, pictures of our Lego adventures. Jenna and Bobby on the floor of the playroom, with Lego all strewn over the place. There were three seperate parts of the Hogwarts castle, which is why each of us took one of the instruction booklets (you can see my part below), and as it was to be expected considering that it's 8-14 and I have a lot of expertise at building Lego houses, I was the first one finished.
So, that was today.
I hope you had an equally fine and enjoyable Christmas, and I have to say that this might well have been the best and most amazing Christmas I have every had the pleasure to celebrate.
Magic Cube

There was lots of family, meeting nice people - Brenda's partner Shane and I bonded over Jenna's magic cube - she disassembled it and left it to me to put it back together, which was harder than I had thought - I failed, then Shane failed, and then we managed to put it together with our combined prowess of mind (and then it only took us like... ten minutes). Here's a step by step walk through - I took it apart again after we had managed it, because I wanted to try it on my own but was afraid that I wouldn't be able to put it back together, so I snapped a photo of each step, showing which part I took off in which direction. You can see it on the right!

So, have a great second Weihnachtsfeiertag, guys, for me ... I have to man up (haha) and do some school work tomorrow!
Enjoy your holidays!

Belated Frohe Weihnachten!

Yes, once again, Merry Christmas.
Even though it is already the 26th here, too - Boxing day, and the first day of the World Junior Hockey Championship.
I'm mentioning that because of two reasons:
One, it's why I won't be writing up my awesome day until tomorrow noon/afternoon, and two it's Canada - Germany!
Well, basically they have already finished, as it is in Russia (I think), but Andy and I will be watching the replay at nine a.m.!

Well, let me just say this day has been awesome and I have gotten like a huuuuuuge lot of presents - thanks everybody who has helped make this day so great and amazing and unforgettable!

The reason this post is so late? I was taking pictures of my presents, and the lighting was really off, so I had to improvise, which took its time.
I really won't be able to post before afternoon, because I promised Bobby and Jenna to help build the Lego Harry Potter Castle and Hagrid's Hut they got - and Lego is way better than editing pictures and writing my blog, sorry guys!

And now my head is collapsing on myself, and I'm going to bed.

Good night!

Dienstag, 25. Dezember 2012

Merry Christmas!



Merry Christmas Everyone!

So I was looking through my pockets today, and guess what I found - my flash drive!
So you will be getting those pictures - they are at the end of the post.

Today was a really nice day and I am finally getting into the mood of Christmas.

I had trouble sleeping - while I went to sleep at midnight after going to bed at half past eleven,  I woke for the first time at three and for the second - and last - time at half past five, so I checked my mails, checked facebook and did all my Christmas-mail, and then went to watch the Canada-USSR game of 1982.

When I finally ventured upstairs, Bobby and Jenna had already unpacked their first (and only) gift of Christmas Eve, both getting dresses.
I also opened my first present: lovely earrings from Lara. Thanks honey!
I'll upload pictures tomorrow, I promise!

The rest of the morning/noon I helped Tanya prepare the Salad for dinner (Broccoli salad, and I still can't understand why anybody would eat Broccoli raw, but apparently that's a quite common salad) and then doodled a bit around, until we dressed up for Turkey dinner at Andy's parents' house and Church.

The Turkey was delicious. There was Turkey and gravy (Sosse) and peas and Brussel sprouts (Rosenkohl) and sweet potato mash with pecan nuts and mashed potatoes and coleslaw (Kohlsalat) and Broccoli salad and it was just sooooo wonderful!
Andy's mom is a wonderful cook.

Afterwards we went to Church. It's a united Church and it was really laid back, and I almost started to cry when we sung "Ihr Kinderlein kommet" in English ("Come ye faithful") and "Silent Night". I mean, I haven't been to church in ages, but it was just so reminiscent of home and Christmas during my childhood, that I finally got into the right mood.
The biggest difference between this service and the one at home? One, there was no priest. At least I don't think the guy in the suit holding the mass was a priest. And two, when we got the body of Christ (Leib Christi) we got actual bread and dunked that into juice. It tasted kinda gross, because believe me, you don't want white bread soaked with berry juice, but it was also awesome - everybody tore off their own piece of bread.

And now we're back, and I'm really tired. The sooner I get to bed, the sooner we can relieve the Christmas tree of it's crowd of presents. And trust me, there are a lot.
Christmas tree

Presents

From Bobby (sign) & Jenna, for Santa & his reindeer

Decorations

Stockings!

More decorations

Advent calender

 
Gingerbread house (Jenna's side)

Fish! In the Vancouver Aquarium!

Something... I'm not quite sure what it is!

Frog!

Qualle

More Jelly fish - they're like seriously gross

Star fish

More fish

Me in a bubble... Kinda gross, too

There is something in this picture - can you find it?
[I can't]

Dolphin! Isn't she adorable?

More dolphin

And both of the lovely dolphins in mid-flight

That's me, of course. Like my mis-matched greens?

Grouse Mountain. Not Gross Mountain, as I said in my
E-mail to Pascaline.

And here are the reindeer when they're not in Santa's
employment. She's awesome, right?

That's me from behind, filming for my parents!

And... a water fall!


And that's me, too, in my favourite sweater.
I LOVE that thing!



The inside of the Omnimax!
The outside of the omnimax!


One of the traditional thingies - remember it
from the Olympics?

Capilano suspension bridge

Vancouver skyline

Our hotel room on the last day

And Frozen Yoghurt. That stuff seriously is awesome!

And of course a HUGE THANK YOU to Dorothea, who has kindly given me the photos!

Sonntag, 23. Dezember 2012

Two nights left

Okay, seriously short post, because I hurt my wrist pushing myself off the floor just a moment ago and am typing with my left hand now.

Today was really lazy; I slept till ten (9.5h! Yay!) and then read, watched a few videos, played wii and Rommee with Bob and then wrapped my last two presents.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve!
And we had the grandparents and Tanya's sister with her partner over for dinner, and it was really nice.

I had said Dorothea would give me Photos, right? She did give them to me, yesterday, but apparently I lost the flash drive in one of the Sears shop when I frantically searching for my phone. I've kinda given up any hope of finding the stick again, but I will look for it, okay?

Well, have a good night! And if you want to, you can leave what you got for Christmas in a comment - I'd be very interested!

Julia

Samstag, 22. Dezember 2012

Three nights left

Yes, it's only three nights left!
And Doro and I got to look at all the shoppers hustling along, trying to get their shopping done in time...

It's not as though we didn't get anything - Doro got a Cardigan (I think?) and I got a DVD set about the Canadian team in the Junior World Championship of Hockey, with the 2007 game Canada - USA on it (my favourite players played against each other, Jonathan Toews for Canada and Patrick Kane for USA), because it was reduced to $10 and it's five DVDs with more than 12,5 h of film and seven full games (1982 Canada-USSR; 1985 Canada-Czechoslovakia; 1988 Canada-USSR; 1991 Canada USSR; 1993 Canada-Sweden; 2005 Canada-Russia; 2007 Canada-USA) plus highlights from 2007s Canada-Russia Series, Team Canada's Best Goals and Highlights of the 1982 Gold medal game. All these games of course were won by Canada :).
And I got fresh shampoo, but I don't think anybody's interested in that...

Well, I came home by four forty-five, so we ate pretty quickly (stir-fry) and then went skating!
I didn't want to come, at first, because I don't have skates, but Tanya said I could use hers, so I came along. The girls' uncle, who was a figure skater in his youth, also came along, and first Andy and I only watched them skate (Andy hurt his ankle), before I joined them.

Figure skates and hockey skates are so very different, it's hard to describe. Since my last encounter on ice ended with hockey skates and on an indoor rink, I was a bit wobbly with the figure skates and almost fell a couple of times - but I did remain standing, in the end.

Stopping like skiing (Parallelschwung) is easier with them - or maybe it's just me getting used to ice. But anyway, I hadn't been skating for a long while, chatting with a girl I knew from my bus, when suddenly a girl comes up to me. I didn't know her, she didn't know me, but she invited me to join her and her sisters in a game of tag-on-ice. Bobby and Jenna came to see who I was talking to, and not five minutes later we all found us in a game of freeze-tag. It was really so much fun, even though the out-door rink wasn't empty, and we had to leave all too soon. But we did swap e-mails ;)
Afterwards we had hot chocolate at the grandparents house, and of course ended up chatting with everybody - okay, I was really quiet (which everybody immediately noticed... My talking problem has gotten worse), because I was really tired, so I only listened.

Well, that's it from me. I'm going to bed now.

Good night!

The Lockout

So, about the lockout....
Warning: 
Under the cut, you can find me being crazy about this one sport Canadians seem to love so much. Read at your own risk.

Freitag, 21. Dezember 2012

Final Friday

So, now we finally have holidays, too!
And the world didn't end - who is surprised? Nobody at my school.
And yes, I will be sure to wear flowers in my hair ;) (Anybody else know that song? About San Francisco?)
The lockout continues - have I told you about that? Well, I am making a new post about that right now, you can find it later on - I tried to put as many pictures in as possible :)

About school, though:
School was a total waste of time today:
English: Day After Tomorrow - I can't say much about it, as I was reading :)
Biology: I met Krysten at the water fountain and we walked to Biology together, only to realize that hey, there is a sheet hanging on the door proclaiming
Block 4
Biology 12 students
Go to Mr Strachan's room
So we go to Mr Strachan's room - and are the only two. Since I need to drop my things off at my locker, Krysten follows me, and we end up in front of our classroom again, because, hey, we're Block 3 and not 4! But Mr Strachan found us and sent us to his classroom, where we were still the only two people from our whole class!
Apparently everybody else had pulled an all-nighter at the grad sleepover from yesterday! We finally left the class maybe 10 minutes later, Krysten going home and I sitting in the hallway, reading. Lunch I spent reading, too, and exchanging gifts with Laura - everybody was very happy about the owls, by the way, Mom! - and then Japanese I spent ... who can guess? ... reading, correct! But seriously, I have seen the middle part of Castle in the Sky already, although I don't know where.
In Spanish we continued with our projects, and yeah...

Afternoon... nothing special. Just hanging around, enjoying the first few hours of HOLIDAYS!!!!
Oh, and Lara's package finally arrived today! I was so happy! It took exactly 12 days, which is rather good - especially since it was a surface parcel, if I'm not mistaken.

Donnerstag, 20. Dezember 2012

Nothing special

Today seriously was nothing special - I finally took my Spanish quiz (19.5/20, which bumps me back up to 99.5%; formerly 95.1%), I missed my Biology quiz but found my missing notes (I have to ask my teacher tomorrow why I didn't get any marks on them; the marks usually are for completion and not content, and they were stapled to the back of the Lab report - the lab report is signed off, but the study guide apparently wasn't even looked at :/) and we had a cooking demonstration in Japanese - I mostly read through-out it, but the result was surprisingly good!
As for English ... We had to write an essay comparing "The Green Mile" and "Of Mice and Men", and while I am not fully satisfied with my two page double-spaced thing, I couldn't do any better in the 60 minutes we have. And I finally have stopped caring (so much)!

Maybe I  have told you already, but I printed out the first Math test my German classmates have written - and honestly? I almost cried. It's so complicated! But then again, maybe it would help if I took a look at the stuff they did first... ;) Sinus Funktionen... No idea what the English term would be. Sinus- functions?

I made my last Christmas present; now I only have to find something for the grandparents, as I will be staying with them come January.

And I might be going to the mall with Babette sometime during the holidays! I would definitely like than. She's one of the fellow German students, living outside Kelowna, though. Her hostsister (or one of them, at least) is a very good student of Mr Derksen's and I've seen her a few times around the classroom during lunch.

Talking about Mr D and Media Arts: Today the first 2012 episode of Muse, our school production, aired in the school - the Media Arts and Drama classes work together on one of these episodes, and it's mostly student driven. This episode was - of course - about the alpacalypse apocalypse (does anybody get the Joke? It's stolen from Muse, I have to admit) and it was pretty good!

By chance I went to Mr Kletke's office, the teacher in charge of our San Francisco and asked him ... about Stanford University, as it is a destination on our itinerary - and he told me, that there was a meeting on Monday!
I didn't know that, since I wasn't there the week before, so he handed me the final itinerary.

It looks like this:

Tuedsay, April 30, 2013
  • 11:00 p.m. - leave KSS parking lot on chartered bus bound for Vancouver Amtrak Station
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 [Travel Day - train]
  • 5:30 a.m. - leave Vancouver on Amtrak bus bound for Seattle
  • 9:45 a.m. - leave Seattle on Amtrak train bound for San Francisco
Thurday, May 2, 2013 [Alcatraz/Fisherman's Wharf]
  • 9:10 a.m. - arrive at Fisherman's Wharf (Pier 39) in San Francisco
  • 9:30 a.m. - arrive at San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf Hostel - secure luggage - freshen up
  • 10:30 a.m. - group split into two
    • Group A proceeds to Alcatraz (walk) - return by 1:00 p.m.
    • Group B proceeds to Fisherman's Wharf (walk) - return by 1:30 p.m.
  • 2:20 p.m. - groups stay split 
    • Group A proceeds to Fisherman's Wharf (walk) - return by 5:00 p.m.
    • Group B proceeds to Alcatraz (walk) - return by 5:00 p.m.
  • 6:00 p.m. - group dinner at:
    • In N' Out Burger OR
    • Other Fisherman's Wharf area eatery
  • 8:00 p.m. - hostel check-in
    • 'chill' time
    • Explore hostel grounds
  • 10:00 p.m. lights out
Friday, May 3, 2013 [Silicon Valley Tour]
  • 7:00 - 8:00 a.m. - breakfast at hostel
  • 8:00 a.m. - 5:15 p.m. - Silicon Valley Tour
    • 8:00 a.m. - bus pick-up at hostel
    • 9:00 a.m. - Facebook Head Office (15 minute picture stop)
    • 9:30 a.m. - Stanford University (guided 60 minute walking tour)
    • 11:30 a.m. - Google Head Office (15 minute picture stop)
    • 12:00 p.m. - Apple Head Office & Apple Store (30 minutes pic and store stop)
    • 1:15 p.m. - Gilroy Premium Outlets (shopping) - leave by 3:45 p.m.
    • 5:15 p.m. - arrive back at hostel (pack away shopping) - leave by 5: 35 p.m.
    • 6:00 - 10:00 p.m. Professional baseball game (San Francisco Giants vs. Los Angeles Dodgers) AT & T Park (game starts at 7:00 p.m.)
    • 10:00 - 10:30 p.m. - travel to hostel (public transportation)
    • 11:00 p.m. - back at hostel - lights out
Saturday, May 4, 2013 [Golden Gate Bridge, downtown San Francisco]
  • 7:00 - 9:00 a.m. - breakfast at hostel
  • 10:30 a.m. - ferry to Sausalito
  • 11:15 a.m. - 1:45 p.m. - travel to Amoeba Records (public transportation)
  • 1:45 - 2:45 p.m. - visit Amoeba Records
  • 3:00 - 5:30 p.m. - visit downtown (Union Square & financial district)
  • 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. - travel back to Fisherman's Wharf (public transportation)
  • 7:00 - 9:00 p.m. - group dinner at Hard Rock Café
  • 10:00 p.m. - lights out
Sunday, May 5, 2013 [Travel Day - plane]
  • 7:00 - 9:00 a.m. - breakfast at hostel
  • 9:00 a.m. - leave hostel for airport (airport shuttle)
  • 12:50 p.m. - Westjet flight to Vancouver (arrives in Vancouver at 3:05 p.m.)
  • 6:30 p.m. - Westjet flight to Kelowna (arrives in Kelowna at 7:21 p.m.)
I'm seriously so looking forward to this trip, I can hardly describe it.
But it's not yet sure whether we can actually go to the baseball game, as you can't buy tickets yet! :o I wouldn't care if we didn't go - I don't think I'd like baseball, and honestly? One new sport is enough!

Take care, guys, I'm going to bed now.

Julia

Mittwoch, 19. Dezember 2012

Snow Flakes

So, it's been pretty much snowing since sometime last week (I wasn't here, so I don't know), and it's nicely chilly outside. Not so much that you'd be actually freezing, but if it gets a lot colder, I will need to search for my mitts and touque, but with -6 they're not quite necessary :)
Well, a few boys at Doro's school (if I remember correctly) are still wearing shorts!

Anyway, Bobbie had a concert today - she's in the school choir and they had a musical today, and all the tunes were so catchy that they're still stuck in my head -_- and they keep reminding me of something, but I just can't put my finger on it.

There was a small girl sitting next to me, and god was she spoilt. Seriously. It's so unbelievable how many children are really spoilt - none of them seem to have heard the word "no" before. :/ She just didn't accept her cousin's "no"!

What I did like about the performance was how relaxed everybody was - I never realized how much pressure was put upon us by our teachers until the kids were acting up, talking and nobody cared. Good, the teacher did try to shush them, but to little to no avail - they just kept laughing and chattering.

Afterwards, we were at Tim Hortons, and I got a blueberry muffin and a small hot chocolate. Memo to me: Next time, take a xtra small one.

So I'm skyping with my parents right now, so I'm signing out again!

Playing the Piano

I just have to share that right now - chances are, there will be another blogpost, but that doesn't mean I can wait that long to tell you that:

I finally jumped over my shadow and asked the music teachers at KSS whether I can use the piano when it is free. And they said yes! I also had a nice conversation - in German! - with one of the teachers, who is actually Chinese :) He even could say München and not Munchen or Muncen :D

So I got to play the piano. And it felt seriously wonderful - I almost cried because it was such a relief after 1 and a half month of no playing... The teacher said I could come in any time, as long as the piano is unused. I'm so freaking happy right now!

Well, what are my plans for the holidays? People keep asking me that.

Here's a lost (also makes it easier for me to keep track)

  • go skiing
  • meet Ashley
  • finish Biology work booklets
  • learn Japanese
  • finish Spanish presentation
  • read
  • celebrate Christmas
  • celebrate New Year's day
  • get caught up with my Journal
  • look at universities and scholarships (yes, I am seriously doing that. The counselor here are just really great, so I intend to make full use of that)
  • write two Journalism articles (NHL Lockout and Bilinguality and its benefits)
Wow... that's kind of a long list... Well, I still need to do two more Christmas presents, so I'm singing out.

Tired Ramblings

It's 3 a.m., I'm tired, my head aches, I can't breathe through my nose and my left ear feels weird. Why can't I sleep?

My room looks like a bomb detonated in it. But how can my room be tidy when my mind is utter chaos?

We have a Japanese test tomorrow, which I totally forgot about.
I don't want to. No, seriously, I'm just not feeling well.

Gah. Why do I always have these downs after having such a good time with the girls, or anybody?

Dienstag, 18. Dezember 2012

Life Savers

Wow. I seriously haven't been on the computer at all today. Sure, I've been reading on my kindle (Spanish teacher ill again and the substitute didn't care), but I didn't even open Thunderbird this morning!

Okay, so I don't have to write the Biology test till after the holidays - I missed last week where they were working on the first workbooklet, and while we did have a bit of time yesterday, we were mainly talking about the new pack of notes, and then I missed today's lesson, too, because I am the only grade 11 in a grade 12 class - which means I was the only one gone when all the grade 11s had to go to the gym for a presentation.

It was pretty interesting. Life Savers want to raise awareness for suicide, and it was really good. And emotional. And everybody paid attention. And it wasn't uncool to actually care and participate. This also answers my questions, why we aren't doing such stuff in Germany: Everybody would just mock those standing up and actually doing something, so I'm guessing it's better we're not doing anything at all. Nobody would take it seriously. But students here ... they are so much more serious about such things! And it feels great to be part of such a community.

What else... My English test is way better than I thought it would be - I thought it would be okay, but okay means... 40 out of 46 - and I got 44/46!
Jep, I'm definitely satisfied with that.

I beat Bobby and Jenna at Rummy today (which is one of the reasons I wasn't on the laptop. Mum, you can be proud of me): I had, at the end 53 points minus on my hand - and still beat them 332 to 93 to ... Bobby didn't count hers. I took the whole stack of cards, right up to the last one, after we'd been playing for ... 20 rounds?
It was a lot of cards :)

And everything outside is covered in snow, we have about -6 to -2 here :) It's great. And luckily, I don't have far to school.

Have a good rest of the week! (Three days left! Then HOLIDAYS!!!!)

Montag, 17. Dezember 2012

Bursting

Okay, I guess I'm bursting ... but the Chili was just delicious!

Anyway, today was school, I took my English test, Biology wasn't overly demanding (except that we have a test on Thursday which I will be hopefully taking after the holidays, because I just missed a bunch of lessons in which they were working on the assignment we have to hand in), but we've finally started with the nervous system, Japanese was okay, too, and Spanish ... well, our teacher was ill, and the technology didn't want to work with the substitute, so that's that.

After school, I went to Tanya's parents' house and let myself in, as they were still at the service, and then the whole family came home.
I would have expected it to be pretty gloomy and depressed, as it was a funeral, but everybody was really nice and there was a lot of talking, sharing stories and lots. of. food. 
Tanya'd made Chili, and I couldn't resist getting a second helping, even though I was almost full, and then there were treats from a German baker and I just had to take two brownies... and now I might well burst.

No chocolate for the next week, seriously!

I hang around mostly with the grown-ups, since the other children (okay,  they're one year younger and older respectively than me) were in front of their iPhones...

Okay, I'm almost falling asleep sitting here, I hope I actually will be able to sleep, so I'm saying good night right now!

Sonntag, 16. Dezember 2012

Family Time

So, I didn't meet up with Dorothea today, but I did finish the Christmas presents for the girls - only to decide that it would be better as birthday presents, so duh.

And I have to make at least two more handcrafted things (you Germans know what I really like to make, and the Canadians I can't tell, sorry!), and I need to have them by Friday and I really don't know whether I'll manage that plus catch up with Japanese plus write a Journalism article about the Lockout (why did I volunteer for that again? No idea.) plus catch a decent amount of sleep. Well, scratch that last one, I know I won't be able to sleep.

Today I met Tanya's extended family - they're in town for a funeral, but it's a really nice crowd.
I'm just feeling right now like I had my social dose for the next months between Vancouver (88 Internationals in two buses, we didn't have much alone time - actually, none. I managed to grab two hours or so before sleeping when everybody else was already in bed, but that doesn't really count) and meeting the family today. And then again tomorrow.
I just ... need a bit time for myself? To work through everything I've learnt?
I'll hopefully be able to grab a few alone-hours on Tuesday, and I really hope this is over soon.

There is a reason why I spend time around people in carefully measured doses (and don't believe everything I'm saying the way I am saying it. I am totally melodramatic and able to cope, I just like to whine. I'm feeling only slightly overwhelmed, but I have my kindle, so it shouldn't prove to be too much of a problem.).

Well, that's it from me for today. I need to take another look at English; Spanish I'll learn during my break ;)

Samstag, 15. Dezember 2012

One Hundred!!

Okay, I know I already made a post today, but here is a second one.
And this is a special post:

This Is My 100th Post!!!


Well, and we have only 10 days left till Christmas! Okay, you guys in Germany have only eight (seriously, you're nine hours ahead of us and celebrating a day sooner, so you have two days less!!) to count towards, and that's like really unfair!

Okay, so that were enough exclamation marks for a full post, I guess.

I'm feeling like bursting - I ate so much chocolate, it's hard to believe.
The girls and I were fetched by family friends, and we went to Boston Pizza, where I had Chicken Bites - I had pizza for lunch, and pizza once a day is really enough. It was delicious, though.
Afterwards, went to another friends house in Winfield, where we got pop - I settled with Pepsi, and the caffeine isn't letting me calm down now, although it at least didn't have any sugar - caffeine and sugar is always a dangerous combination for me.
Then we went up to yet another friends house, taking a look at his display of Christmas lights - impressive, I have to admit, and I was a bit miffed that I hadn't taken a camera, but I can't change that now.
We got Candy Canes, and went back to the friends of the friends' house, where the girls and I got sweets, and then the former went to watch a movie (Santa Paws) while I stayed with the grown-ups.
I ate waaay too much chocolate, seriously. Who is gonna clean the mess of me from the walls?
We got back to the house by 10 o'clock, and now I am tired, but also hyped up.
Bwah.

And since Christmas is fast approaching, I have something to get you into the right mind set - aren't hockey teams adorable?

Belfast Giants: All I Want For Christmas Is You



Chicago Blackhawks: Sing-Along Holiday Album

Aaaaand: Last but not least the
Edmonton Oil Kings: All I Want For Christmas Is You (again)

But it's all just HILARIOUS!

Have a very good night, and of course, a laugh, too!

Vancouver

So, let's see. It was a pretty long week, and I'm still really tired (my sleep was fitful rather than restful, but let's start from the beginning).

So, 5 o'clock is an ungodly hour, I'm telling you. But, I stood up, had a toast, got my bags and left with Andy by 6:10 a.m.
Doro had saved me a seat on the bus, but unfortunately, we were split by schools - KSS and RSS (and I think all those others) on one bus, and Mount Boucherie and OKM (or something similar, don't ask me, I don't know. I only know that Doro was on a different bus than me!) on the other.
At least our bus was more comfortable than theirs!

Ms White (our coordinator) and Ana (Doro's coordinator) were each on one bus, with one hostparent accompanying them each.
The bus drive was long, but I think I even managed to sleep for an hour or so. After two and a half hours we stopped at a mall and went shopping for two hours or so, and I got a few more Christmas presents and ... toothpaste. Mine ran out.

Then we went for two and a half more hours by bus to the Vancouver Aquarium. Doro has pictures, but I fear I won't get them till tomorrow. Well, those of you in Germany will get to see my Scrapbook when school starts again. (Yes, it will take me all of my summer holidays to simply compose it, because it is like a lot. And when I say a lot, I actually mean verdammt viele. Like, something along the lines of 1000? Well, 700. But I only spent a third here, so you can do the maths. And I haven't yet been to San Francisco, so duh.)
The Jelly fish were really ugly, but we watched a dolphin and a Beluga whale show, and even though it was really cold, I enjoyed it.

Afterwards, we checked into our hotel and went to a nearby mall to get dinner and spend some more money (according to rumors, one girl spent more than $500!).
Dorothea and I shared our room with one Brazilian girl, and we went to bed at a halfway decent time.

Second day started with us going to Grouse Mountain for snow shoeing. It was a nice thing, but it's not my favourite - it was kinda boring.

Entry way to a house; native style

View from Grouse Mountain

A 'small' Christmas Tree

And the Lobby



Reading this, my mom will probably have the urge to strangle/throttle me, but this lobby is the place I left my wallet at - with more than $300 in cash and my credit card and all my papers...
Since I anyway had the feeling of having forgotten something since we left Kelowna, I patted down my pockets when we were waiting in line to get down from the mountain, I fortunately realized I had forgotten my wallet before I was back on the ground, so I hurried back and - 'lo and behold, it was at the information. All my money and everything was still there, too. Canada is such an honest country!

Afterwards, we visited the "Telus World of Science" and we even watched a movie in the round sphere thingy!


It was pretty cloudy, but at least we were inside. Unfortunately, one boy hadn't wanted to come to the snow shoeing, so by the time we had him convinced to come we were already considerably late (half an hour? A full hour? Something like that), and we were another hour late when we left Grouse Mountain, so we only had time for the movie (About polar bears, it was quite nice) and a bit of looking around - I don't believe we've  seen everything there was to see :(

That is an iglu out of milk cartons. Since the ice is melting, and there are Canadian stereotypes to uphold, right?

I spent some money at the Souvnir Shop, and after that we drove to Granville Island, which is absolutely boring.
Christmas Decorations




But at least the view was nice!

After that we had 15 minutes at the hotel, and guess what? We went to the mall.

This time, it wasn't just Doro and me, but Doro, Josy (who had joined us the day before already), Jonas (German boy from Doro's school) and me, and Doro and Josy deserted Jonas and me while they were in 'Pink' (and don't laugh, but it's a lingerie shop... and it was called Pink, so I said, Thanks, but no thanks, and while Jonas did look like he would have liked to accompany them [I'm joking, btw. I think], he stayed outside with me. And then they ditched us. Claimed they didn't see us, while in fact we were sitting right in front of the shop.). When it became clear that neither of them was anywhere in the vicinity, Jonas and I went to Qoola - Frozen Yogurt Bar and got a frozen Yogurt each until it was time to leave.

We heard about the news of the Austrian Cab Driver finding 390.000€ while we were sitting in the mall eating - and isn't that funny, because Doro was sitting with her back to the News TV and going like "Have you hear, I don't know whether he was Austrian or German, but there was this Cab driver and ..." so she told us, and I look up, over her shoulder, and on the screen it reads Austria, Cab driver finds €390,000 ($500,000) and returns everything to police. Just at the moment she was telling the story!

Well, sleep didn't come as easily that night, and I am positive I wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep - I could hear girls laughing at midnight!

The next morning, we all got a dressing down; the boys' was way worse than ours. We were only reprimanded for not being in our rooms but in the boys' rooms (one of the chaperones had caught girls leaving the boys' rooms at 2:30 a.m. - seriously, what were they doing up still at that time? Even I was exhausted enough to be asleep!), but the girls had managed to destroy an elevator door, so. Well.
Ms White just said something along the lines of "We trusted you, but you abused the trust, so we will enforce the curfew rule stricter this night ..." Not that she did. I could hear girls running around at around eleven o'clock on our floor, and if I could hear them, Ms White could, too, because her room was directly opposite ours.
But, well. I think that at least all the girls stayed on the fourth floor, so maybe that was why she didn't say anything.

That day ... God, what did we do? Right, we visited the Capilano Suspension bridge, and drove by the Canucks stadium. Too bad the NHL is on lock-out (labor talks. And they're not getting anywhere, so the season might well be cancelled.). I mean, they would have been playing in Columbus on Friday anyway, so they wouldn't have been in town, but ... gah.

All their players decorated the walls

and their banners were hanging off the building.

Sorry for the bad pictures, they were taken out of the driving bus! :) And this is also where Canada beat the USA in the 2010 Winter Olympics, claiming the gold medal for the second time in 8 years. Hockey is a Canadian Sport, after all.

At Capilano, Doro played tourguide (she crashed my English video as I was "showing my parents around", saying "Und ich ruiniere jetzt hier das schöne Englische Video, indem ich Deutsch rede..." - And I'll ruin this beautiful English video by talking in German... and then proceeded to give my parents the tour, and my mom thought it was HILARIOUS, so, duh.) and we spent some more money in the tourist shop, and it was really nice. I even got a "I made it" certificate, allowing me bragging rights for the next two years.


There was a lot of tribal stuff

And the bridge itself

Looking down from the bridge
At least this time I didn't have to stifle a laugh looking at the established in - usually it's like est. in 1946  and I'm thinking, baby, we usually only write that when we have at least 18-hundred something! But Capilano suspension bridge, est. in 1889, isn't so bad!

Well, that definitely was fun, although it was raining like hell - oh, no, hell is dry and hot. It was cold and wet, and I was wearing my skiing jacket and freezing!
But it still was on this side of zero, while it has been snowing in Kelowna for the last few days (maybe my wish of White Christmas will come true?).


After the Bridge, we went to the Olympic cauldron.

View from Burrard Inlet Waterfront

The waterfront mall



Canada Place! That's where the winter Olympics took place!




wouldn't it be awesome to be living in that black box?

And here is the Olympic Cauldron!










The next stop was Stanley Park, where I already was with my old host family, but we were in a different spot this time.
It was still really foggy and damp, but well.





After that, we visited the UBC, University of British Columbia, but we actually only had a pee break.
But it's basically it's own village, looking awesome and ... omg, I seriously could imagine studying there, because it's just that amazing!
A friend of mine (I don't really know whether I can call her that, but well, acquaintance sounds so weird...) from my Journalism class was accepted there, and I guess it's not the worst choice.

That evening, we ... didn't (surprise! I know it's shocking, I'm sorry!) go to the mall, because we saw a play in a theatre called "Hotel Bethlehem".
And we were all like "Oh, no, it's gonna be so boring!" but it wasn't. They took all the Christmas/Bethlehem/Nativity-Tropes and turned them around, and it was really funny.

That evening, sleeping was even worse, and as I have mentioned, nobody obeyed the room-rule.
 Yesterday, we went Ice Skating in the morning, and I guess I wasn't so bad for maybe having been on skates a whole four times, yesterday included. The only problem I have is slowing down. And then I watched some Hockey and realized how little I actually can do.

We boarded the bus again, Dorothea was bleeding (she cut herself on her blades, and I have to admit, she was one of the better skaters, easily in the top ten, maybe even in the top five - I didn't pay that much attention to others.) and one German girl who is a figure skater had  shown us all up (she's really good, and she even showed me a few moves to slow down) and we went to ... the mall! (how'd you guess?) One girl forgot her wallet at the Frozen Yogurt place, but luckily she recovered it - the people behind the counter found it, discovered the red emergency card, called the emergency hotline, told them there was a wallet found, the emergency person called Ms White, Ms White told the girl and the girl run. Otherwise she wouldn't even have noticed it until we arrived in Chiliwack (which is pronounced "Chilwack" and not "Chili-wack", as I was told), but she got lucky.
In Chilwack, which is two and a half hours outside of Vancouver, we had a twenty minute break, which managed to become 50, because some people (I don't know who, seriously) simply can't manage to be on time, and then we had another 3 hours till we were in Kelowna again.

And I'm still tired. I couldn't sleep on the bus and had trouble falling asleep yesterday; I went to bed at 8:30 p.m., but deep sleep only came by ... 10:30? and then I woke for the first time at 5 a.m. and then 7 and finally gave up on sleep at 8, but I didn't actually leave bed until... something closer to 9?

Well, I actually had planned on doing my Christmas presents today, but between writing this and catching up with everything, I simply couldn't find the time!

And since people are always asking: The best thing about this trip? The total absence of homesickness. Like, literally, there was no homesickness at all. It was really nice!

Well, have a good rest weekend, guys, I'm leaving with the girls now!

Julia