Late Night

Once again pretty late post ... I just can't help myself.
I have so many excess words, I can't even describe it (isn't that ironic?).
And I don't care what Mr Derksen says, in this case I have to fall in love with my own words, just because I have to get rid of them.

 Today started out pretty uneventful - I had planned on waking up early, but I slept through Tanya, Andy and Bob leaving for Bob's soccer game.
Might be because even though I went to bed right after my post, I couldn't sleep and instead got inspiration for my article. I have that one typed up now, sent to Mr Manderioli for approval/changes and sent an e-mail to Mr Wishlow, because I need clarification on a couple of points.

No, I didn't send the e-mails last night - at least not the second one. That I sent today just after noon, which was basically morning for me.
After waking up, I finished up the birthday present for Claire - a wristband as I have undoubtedly mentioned - and then ... read. A lot (again).

Claire and her mother picked me up at half past five, so I had enough time to shower and send that e-mail to Mr W.

(I had thought Tanya or Andy would have to drive me to the Old Spaghetti Factory and Claire's mom would only drop me off afterwards, but obviously I had been wrong. Good thing I was ready to go!)
We had dinner - delicious dinner - at the aforementioned Old Spaghetti Factory (the very same restaurant that Doro had her last dinner with her family in Canada if I remember correctly) which was pretty healthy. At least for my standards, not gonna lie:
I had a Caesar salad, about half of the portion of Spaghetti with meat sauce (nobody calls it Bolognese here :/) and a scoop of ice cream. It was really good.
In attendance were Claire, her parents, her little sister, her sister's BFF, two friends from fourth grade (they've known each other since forth grade, I mean. They're all in grade eleven) and the little sister and mother of one of the two friends. I didn't feel like I was intruding though, and I had a great conversation with Claire's and Gavin's mothers.
Unfortunately, that conversation ended up being about the KZ, because ... I don't know what we'd been talking about, but the mood went back to good pretty quickly.

I followed hockey with one eye, because in every restaurant there are TVs mounted up on the wall, and since it's hockey season, it's not surprising that they always show hockey.
And the Maple Leafs... well, they were known to be the worst team in the whole NHL, but they beat the Senators (Ottawa) 3-0. (I asked Andy: Didn't they have a goal tending problem? ... Oh, no, it's not that they have just a goal tending problem, it's more like the Maple Leafs are a problem... but they seem to be turning around. And Ottawa just lost it's best defenseman - Achilles tendon cut through 70%, season is over for him)

And then we went to the Bowling Alley, which looked more like a club. They even played DJ Earworm's State of Pop 2013 :D Amazing song!

I came seconds in both games we played - the first time two points behind Claire and the second time one point behind Gavin, but over all, I was first by a pretty great margin.

We had ice cream cake and I was kinda watching the Oilers game on the TV mounted up on above the bowling thingies, seeing as Andy is an Oilers fan and I kinda like them - their "kid line" is rather cute and really fun to watch off the ice (Taylor Hall & Jordan Eberle are living together and made a tour of their home, which is great to watch, and are generally pretty awesome about each other - going on ice cream dates the night before a game, "when are you going to part ways?" - "When Ebs falls in love, I guess. It'll definitely be before me", "How did Jordan react to being named best player in all of 40 years of Team Canada for the World Junior Hockey Championship?" - "He scrawled at the very bottom: And where's Hallsy?"). On the ice, it's sometimes a bit painful, because so many of their passes don't connect or go just that tiny bit wide, and there you can see the advantage the Hawks have with having the same team as last year and being so "seasoned" although their core isn't that much older than Hall and Eberle (Toews & Kane 1988, Eberle 1990, Hall 1991, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins 1993), so I wasn't even so surpised when it was 3-1 at the end of the first and 4-1 seven minutes into the second, but then the Oilers seemed to pick up speed and by the time we left the bowling place it was 4-3 and when I got back home they managed to tie it at 4 just when I came in, and then they actually managed to make it 6-4. It was pretty unbelievable - and the Colorado Goalie was first star of the game (honouring the best players of the game) [although I'm seeing right now that they changed that apparently], even though he had let in 5 goals (the fifth goal for the Oilers had been scored on an empty net) - do you know why? Because he might have let five in, but he saved 50. The Oilers got a new franchise record for shots on goal in a single game, with 56 shots on goal.
That's a lot. Seriously.

And I really had to laugh yesterday, even though it's maybe a bit mean, because I saw that the EVR Schüler Mannschaft (that's the teams where the Rockets for example could draft from) lost 0:15. And that, my dear friends, is quite a feat. That wasn't just bad goal tending, that was bad goal tending and bad defense and bad offense.
Seriously. The last time I'd seen such a high score was the Champs for Charity game and the NHL All Star game, where you have the best player just playing for fun.

Well, anyway, since I still have so many words over, I'm gonna go back to writing that one AU (Alternate Universe) for the fandom I am currently obsessed with, which (the AU, not the fandom) can be basically summarized as "Character A and Character B get sent back in time into their high school selves and are the only ones who can remember." Now I only have to figure out how to make them realize that the other one knows about the future, because technically they meet for the first time when A is eighteen and B is nineteen... And before that? Oh... I might just have figured a way out...

So, I'm off!

See ya later,
Julia

Short Free Day

Yep, I totally wasted my free day.
First by sleeping insanely late (I woke up at around eight or so, went straight back to sleep, was woken by Jenna and Bob at half past ten, had full intentions to stand up in, like, a minute, and then it was suddenly half past twelve and I was alone at home... Full 11 hours for me!) and then doing a bit of homework and finally starting on the birthday present for Claire - I'm at her birthday party tomorrow, I might have mentioned it.

Something else that was great today:
I finally had my first full-on English dream where I was sure afterwards that they'd spoken English in my dream - in the past after a dream, I could never tell whether it'd been English or German once I'd woken up, but this time I am certain that it was English!
And  of course it involved hockey :) What else did you expect?

And now it's half past ten and I'm super tired, so I'm heading off to brush my teeth now.

See ya all again tomorrow!

Help

EDIT: Before I start, here have a picture I enjoyed very much:

(From the tumblr post Shit WHL Players Say. Also features one of the Rockets and great thoughts on food, bubble wrap factories and The Hobbit... The WHL is the Western Hockey League, which is where the Rockets are playing.)

[EDIT: More laughter. Seriously, check it our, there are some gems!
For example:

And plenty of Rockets, too! All of that, here!

I can understand]




Help, fellow Germans!
I have a huge problem:
Do we actually say "Der Hund bellt"? I never realized how weird this sounds, please tell me I'm getting it wrong! Why would we say "bellt"?
"Bell" isn't a German word, is it?
...
I think I should go to bed. I'm making no sense, am I?

Anyway, today was pretty awesome - I interviewed Rourke during lunch, and even though it was a bit awesome and stilted at points, as neither of us had any idea how to do an interview, he was surprisingly forth-coming - at least considering how unenthusiastic he's been the first couple of times I saw him.

They're playing Everett tomorrow, and guess what?
I got tickets!
I know it's Valentine's day, but what do we say in Bavaria?
An gschenktn Gaul schaut ma ned ins Maul, which sums it up pretty neatly. (Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I won't elaborate further here, but I'm sure you can guess/deduce what that means)

Although I had a pretty lengthy list of questions, it took me about half an hour - most of the answers I got were pretty unsurprising, but very interesting!

School itself was okay - not great, a bit boring, and I still haven't done my Math homework - but I got more than halfway through it during Math itself, so I think I'm gonna do it tomorrow during lunch. Doesn't make a difference whether I'm reading or doing Math, y'know?
In Spanish we finally held our presentations, and I think it wasn't too bad. Not great, but for the effort I put into it, it's gotta be awesome (I mean the relation of effort to outcome. VERY little effort :) )

And remember me bitching about those irresponsible teammates of mine in Entrepreneurship?
Well, let's just say I've been disappointed once more.
Our group was three girls - me, a Chinese international student (she finishes her education here) and a Canadian girl with whom I was at the OC [Okanagan College] for lunch - I might have mentioned it. And I really should learn to listen to my gut, because my gut was telling me "this is not perfect, Julia, this isn't what you were looking for". But since the Canadian girl already had an idea and kinda an outline for the business thingy, I shoved that down. - Not that I didn't really like the idea, I said I was indifferent about it, remember?
Well, today I missed the first part of the lesson because I had to go and squeal about the tickets and stuff, so I went to see Mr M, and when I came back, the girl was nowhere to be seen and CiCi also didn't know where she'd gone. When she finally did come back, she informed us: "I dropped the course."
I'm of course like WTF?! but well... nothing to be done...
CiCi and I asked to join a couple of boys since our teammate had bailed on us, and while they said they had to talk it over with their third teammate who wasn't there today, they believed it wouldn't be a problem.

Well, and that was about my day...
I'm invited to a birthday party on Saturday evening, with Claire, my friend from English, and that's it...
(I bailed on the gym because my right knee was feeling like there was a needle being jabbed repeatedly into the Hoffa's fat pad - like between the kneecap and the meniscus or what do I know, it hurt like hell; and my left knee felt like it was falling apart. I hate my knees, I seriously do.)

So have a great night/day!

Super Sunday!

I'm in a really good mood - and need to kill some time because my pyjamas are still in the drier :)
Actually I'm skyping with my mom, but she just got a call so I can write for a bit :D

What I didn't tell you about yesterday is that I skyped with Dorothea!
And she told me the funniest thing - she was on the plane to Vancouver and there was this dude where she immediately thought "Hockey player". She didn't recognize him and of course didn't ask him, but she said he looked suspiciously like Duncan Keith (although she wasn't sure anymore, just knew he looked "like one of your Blackhawks").
How I got to the belief that it was Duncs? Well, I knew two things: It was a flight from Kelowna to Vancouver, and it was (maybe) a Blackhawks player. And the only Blackhawk that could have any business in Kelowna? Duncan Keith, because he has family there, and the Hawks had a game in Vancouver on that same day and a day off the day before... So duh.

Enough of hockey (for that part at least) - except: the Rockets beat Everett 3-2 and the Hawks the Predators 3-0 (Crawford's first shutout since March 23, 2011!)...

But else: I slept in again - okay, I woke up at half past seven but decided it was too early and went back to sleep and dreamt I was on a ranch and riding and there was mind-control involved (don't judge, I was dreaming) and yeah, I woke up at around half past ten. Have I mentioned my dreams have been really weird the last week or so?

I had breakfast, went to do some homework (which I of course didn't, or at least not very much; but it's just so repetitive -_-), was interrupted by Bob who wanted to play some Rummy - and I really don't know why she's so obsessed with this game - and then we went to the park. We played a bit of tennis with a racquetball racket, and I was pleased to notice that I didn't forget a lot of stuff!
An acquaintance of Tanya's stopped by there with her dog, and it was so gratifying to see a big dog again and scratch a dog's fur ... I can't even describe it.
She's a children's librarian, too :D (Although Frau Gröschel is way more awesome; sorry but with her nobody can compete I am afraid!)

Tanya and I watched Bob and Jenna play on the new playground a bit, before we headed back.
While I was in the shower, Tanya made smoothies for us, and I almost didn't get anything! But it was really delicious. I've come to love smoothies!

Well, I went to dry my hair, and then it was already time to leave for Jim and Leslie's, Tanya's friends (we were over at their house after Christmas once already, and Jim was the one to give Tanya and me the tickets to the Rockets game!). Andy and Jim were watching the Edmonton Oilers - Columbus Blue Jackets game, and it was close - although the Oilers should have been able to pull out a comfortable win.

But this funny gif came out of it, just as I walked into the living room:

"Well, that's one way to get out of the way"

 But seriously, look at that:

I was kinda laughing :D
And it was even better when the Oilers pulled out a win!

For dinner, there was meatloaf - and it was so freakin' delicious, I can't even!
With some mashed potatoes and peas and baby carrots *-*

After dinner, I chatted for like two hours or so (more like one and a half, but who cares?) with Dylan, their oldest son. He's studying at UBCO, and he made himself waaaaay too much of a smoothie, so he shared it with me. And it was so awesome... He put some protein powder into it, and pure, that stuff tastes exactly like Vanilla icecream, so the smoothie was a mixture of vanilla ice cream and berries (mainly blueberries and some strawberries and a couple of raspberries), and that was almost to die for. Seriously, the vanilla adds something really great to it!
So that's one thing I'm bringing home with me for sure: Smoothies. They're just so great!


Anyway, I'm really tired now and my clothes are dry, so I'm signing off and heading to bed now!

Good night!

Semester Two

I honestly can't believe that Semester two starts tomorrow already ... and that Dorothea is flying home. It just seems so surreal...

I still need to clean out my binder, get rid of all the old papers...

I'm glad to be back 'home' here :D
But the parcel I was talking about? It's not the one I was waiting for. It's not for me at all.
But then again, small parcels usually take longer than big ones, for some reason. And it might be caught in customs...

So, here have a gemstone from the LA Kings twitter:

The "box" they're talking about is a glass cage also know as the penalty box where a player has to spend two minutes if he violates the rules :D


And the Oilers just lost to the San Jose Sharks in a Shootout -_- That means the Sharks are league leaders now - I'm now just hoping for a Hawks win tomorrow and a Sharks loss in regulation in the next game - then the Hawks are league leaders again! (But it's not as though that really matters - as long as the Hawks stay on top of their conference, it's the Stanley Cup final when they have to concern themselves with the Sharks - if ever ... so I'm crossing my fingers. They'll manage, I hope!)
I had a most ugly experience on tumblr today:
People tag their hate against other teams, so I was looking at the Blackhawks tag and it was really ugly. The stuff some of the 'fans' are sprouting there is beyond nice and fair. Things like "I would crash this player's flight" are a no-go, seriously, especially after the plane of a Russian team crashed and most of the players (or even all of them?) died. Marián Hossa, Hawks forward, for example wears a 37 sown onto his glove to honor his friend who died.
So I was kindly (and I was really nice) asking a few of them to remove their hate or at least not tag it anymore, and see the response I got:

Yep, isn't that a lovely reply? (The 'I know it's a bit late' is in regards to the game in question having been played yesterday)
But what was I expecting with that url?
Another guy replied something along the lines of "Don't take yourself too seriously it was only a loss you're not that important", totally missing my point (I sent exactly the same message).

From now on I'm staying away from the team tags, because it's really ugly what's going on in there. Another girl, however, replied with

Thanks I appreciate the sweet way of asking: )
Had anyone else come at me this way I would have had no problem..
It’s not that I hate the hawks.. it’s that they are my teams biggest rival ever… so you know.. it causes so much emotion…
I can’t promise I won’t tag anything but I’ll try… might get heated tomorrow night but we will see!!
Good luck to your team.. although they don’t really need any luck! Haha

And I've been messaging back and forth with her.
And one more girl was complaining about "Bandwagon fans", so fans who only came to the sport after the Hawks won the Cup, so I asked her what those fans were, and we had a nice conversation (she's the first American born in a family from Bavaria :D)

So it wasn't all bad.

Good night!

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!

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!