First Week of School

Filed Under Wedding, friends, micaela, thoughts, university | 5 Comments

This week marks my first week of teacher’s college. So far it is very reminiscent of elementary school - I have classes with the same 30 students all week, and my subjects are things like art, science, math, religion, gym, and so on. Being with the same class all the time is really nice - or it will be once I actually make friends with everyone. Basically by the end of the year all of these people will be like brothers and sisters, and I won’t know anyone else on campus, which is kind of funny. I am taking twelve courses at once, which is a definite increase from the five that is required in undergrad. So that is a little overwhelming.

The University of Windsor is a lot different from the school I attended for my undergrad, as far as I can tell so far. I don’t find myself homesick for my home (although I do miss Kent a lot, obviously - but I will see him every weekend so it’s doable), it’s more that I miss Laurier - the university where I did my undergrad. I keep comparing the two schools in my head whenever I notice something new about Windsor, and it always ends up falling short. I don’t know if it’s just because Laurier is the campus I’m used to and the only one I’ve really spent a significant amount of time on, but in my head it is exactly the way a university should be. The campus was much newer and prettier, I never had to walk through a slummy area to get to campus… and so on. I suppose this might change once I get used to Windsor. Maybe. There is one good thing about Windsor - you don’t have to line up for EVERYTHING. Laurier’s full name is Wilfrid Laurier University - or WLU, and there was an ongoing joke that it really stood for “We Line Up.”

My living situation is going well. I’m living with my friend Jen who I’ve known since junior kindergarten - since we were three! - and two other girls, also in teachers college, that I have just met. It’s always nice to live with someone you are totally comfortable around, that you feel comfortable borrowing things out of each other’s rooms, wearing each other’s clothes, eating each other’s food… I think it just makes a house feel like home. That probably has something to do with having four sisters. With my roomate and best friend from Laurier, Amanda, it wasn’t uncommon for us to come home from classes and find the other taking a nap in our bed, even in fourth year when we didn’t live with each other. So it’s kind of fun to be living with a close friend before I go and get married and live with a boy forever.

Speaking of the wedding - which I will talk more on later - I won tickets to the bridal show in London this weekend. Erica told me that her wedding photographer was having a contest, all you had to do is write a little something about what you love about your spouse. Here is my winning entry on The Last Forty Percent blog.

Finally, a picture of Jen and I in junior kindergarten - I’m the one third from the right in the middle row (if you include the little one in the rocking chair) in the Couturesmith dress. Personally I think I was the best dressed in the class. Jen is the teacher’s pet, sitting on the teacher’s lap! The cute girl in the very center in the white dress was my very best friend up until grade one, when she moved away. And a picture of us a year ago (her in the centre, me on the right) with our friend Michelle.

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Jul

29

Gone Fishin!

Filed Under summer, thoughts | 10 Comments

Kent and I both have every Tuesday off of work together and we always try to do something fun and interesting. Now that it’s summer, this usually involves going to the beach. Last week we met a fisherman at the beach and decided that this week we would go fishing too. Kent has loved fishing since he was young, and I learned what I know from him when we worked & lived at a summer resort two years ago. In fact, the day we started dating was the day that he taught me to fish and I caught one in the first two minutes (good way to impress a fishing guru, I definitely recommend it!) A few of our friends wanted to take pictures of me kissing the fish because this is what you are supposed to do the first time you catch a fish. So I did, but in all the excitement I got the fish hook stuck in my hair! I was so scared that it was going to get stuck in my head (fish hooks are scary scary objects) that I didn’t want to move, so Kent, always calm under pressure, got it out for me. Good way to impress a girl who is afraid she is going to puncture a hole in her skull! Here are some pictures of our day on the river, and see it was a successful day!

My summer is continuing along splendidly, and I still have lots of things to look forward to and quite possibly blog about! Speaking of which… I am considering getting my own blog but I am not sure how it will work for the whole “five blondes” thing. I have always had my own blog (that I eventually grow tired of and delete!) and I just find that I am far more motivated to write in it and post pictures and love it when it’s my own. Maybe I could post the entries in both blogs or write special blogs for fiveblondes.com.

Here is one last picture, Katelyn took it of me after we went for dinner at Kent’s restaurant on Saturday night. After that, I had my first “party” at my apartment! Okay, so it was very very very spur of the moment, and on a Saturday night in July, that means that not many people can make it, but I still had lots of fun and I hope everyone else did too. Note the Lauren Conrad braids I have been sporting (and loving) the last few weeks!

Jul

26

chiquitita tell me the truth…

Filed Under review, summer, thoughts | 8 Comments

Okay, the truth? Here goes:

Mamma Mia is an amazing movie!!! Mom and I went last night and let me tell you- it was like one big party. We’ve seen the play in Toronto, but that was too long ago to remember, and I’m so glad they made a movie! From the set, to the actors to the costuming (ESPECIALLY the costuming- simply amazing!), this movie had me and mom going from laughing hysterically and singing to almost crying. I was pleasantly surprised by Amanda Seyfried’s performance though. I remember her from Mean Girls and Alpha Dog, and in those movies she was acting as kind of a (excuse my language), slut. haha. In this movie she was the cutest thing ever! You can probably see this from the picture though. Mom is a huge fan of Meryl Streep also, and said it was nice to see her in a happy, mom role, instead of a serious role, like in The Devil Wears Prada.

If you are planning on going to see it, you HAVE to stay to watch the credits! They are HILARIOUS!

Jul

11

Redeeming myself after a month long vacation from blogging

Filed Under friends, life, micaela, personal, summer, thoughts | 10 Comments

You may have noticed that I have not written in here for a LONG time! Well I have good reasons… well sort of. I have had a crazily busy spring and start-of-summer. I have been away about 7 out of the last 10 weekends, I’d say. But don’t feel sorry for me, all of those weekends, aside from Brownie camp and a training weekend for a camp in Toronto, have been strictly for fun purposes - for example, a concert in Toronto (Leonard Cohen - AMAZING SHOW), a musical in Toronto (Dirty Dancing - also an amazing weekend!), visiting Kent’s family in Toronto, a weekend at my friend Rebecca’s cottage at Turkey Point, and I spent this past week at my best friend Michelle’s cottage in Muskoka. An excellent week of lots of boating, sunbathing, ATV-ing, waterskiing, tubing, campfire-ing, eating, and reading. I had a wonderful time hanging out with my two longest best friends and our boyfriends. And I will admit it - I was not one of the ones doing the waterskiing. Tubing I am okay with, but waterskiing just seems over the top scary to me, weirdly enough, considering I grew up snow-skiing and snowboarding just about every day in the winter. I have tried surfing while I was in South Africa, and I am not afraid of things like roller coasters or high diving boards. This week I decided it was probably because, while I swam in lakes and oceans tons as a child, I didn’t spend any time on boats (besides canoes) and I think I only have one memory of tubing as a kid and it does not end very well! We definitely were not deprived children, don’t get me wrong, but my parents preferred vacations (trips out west to visit family, camping trips everywhere, road trips through the States and Canada, trips to Disney World, Europe, ski vacations in Vermont…) to cottaging. I think I’ll be the same way when I’m a parent. Cottaging is relaxing and all, but I definitely prefer the excitement and culture that you get while travelling.

Anyways back to my point, today I visited Katelyn at work and I asked her if she had ever been waterskiing, and she answered “NO! I’m scared of it!” So I’ve decided that this is one thing we can blame on our childhood! Unless any of my sisters would like to prove me wrong… but I am okay with the idea that I will never be a waterskiier. Kent is naturally good at every sport he tries, he even tried waterskiing with one ski this week, and he will randomly pop out with facts like “Did you know I won the grade 11 athletic award in high school?” and “Did you know that I won an Ontario doubles tennis tournament when I was a kid?” So he has no fears about sports and is convinced that I HAVE to try waterskiing by the end of the summer, and I would be great at it, and why don’t I just try? I’m not so sure… my answer is MAYBE.

Now I am back home for the next few weekends, until Kent and I head to Toronto (again! We should really just move there…) for his friends’ wedding. Which is fine with me.. I am a social butterfly but I am also a homebody. Hence the fact that it is Friday night and all of my friends are out having fun and I am sitting at home waiting for my boyfriend to get home from work and listening to an outdoor concert that is going on in my town. Although I’m not sure anyone actually has to go to the concert because it is such a small town that everyone must be able to hear it from their decks! I love being home as long as I know that I have other options, then it seems more like a choice than simply my own loser-ness showing though. Tomorrow night I am heading to an outdoor Rascall Flatts concert with two friends from work and a few others.

I admit that I have not been taking any pictures this summer that I can post, well actually that isn’t true, I have been but they are all on my best friend Michelle’s camera. She lost her camera cord and so they haven’t made their way onto facebook yet, so here is a picture of me at her cottage from last summer!