Wonderful Week of November

Ralph had his reading break this last week and was able to come spend a week in 3 Bumps with me! :) This was the most time we've had together since we started dating 4 months ago, so it was wonderful! (We've had 2 other 1-week stints but we were both working, so we could only see each other for an hour over lunch!) He wasn't working so he was able to hang out with me every morning & afternoon until I worked. Some days he did homework over here, and other days just in the evening while I worked. Don't worry, I helped him get some of it done. :) It was just so great to have him around even for normal, everyday things. His brother also came along, so it was good to hang out with him too.

The weekend he got here, I had college friends over to meet him, since they had only heard about him or seen pictures! That was pretty fun.
Then Sunday after church we went to Calgary to shop a tiny bit, eat at Olive Garden, and go to a Brazilian church. The wait at the restaurant was ridiculous (one hour), so we missed the service and got there for the fellowship (food) time at the end. It worked out ok though; we had good talks and made some memories, and Ralph still got introduced to a bunch of my Brazilian friends. :)

One day we also shot Sterling's pellet gun at some water-filled milk jugs. I was getting pretty good at it after a few shots, if I may say so myself! ;)

Thanksgiving

Ah, fall in Three Hills... it's beautiful, at least for a couple of weeks. I must admit I don't really like it when the leaves start to turn, because I know it means winter is on the way! I'd much rather have summer. But it is beautiful, especially the yellow-poplar-lined streets, until all the leaves are gone and everything is dead, ugly, and brown. :(

The only red colors we get are from sweet hedges like the one below, and mountain ash trees. I wish we had maple trees! Thankfully now, even tho it's ugly, it's still been very warm and sunny. We haven't even had a real snow yet!

The other great thing about fall is Thanksgiving! And this Thanksgiving was especially looked forward to by both me and a certain boy. ;) Ralph and I were able to be in Edmonton together with his family, and we saw my brother a couple of times too. (These first pictures are while we were still in Three Hills - he came to pick me up and see a few friends.)

In Edmonton, we visited my bro at Starbucks and dropped stuff off at their house quickly, then went down to the AB Legislature with Ralph's brother and one of his sisters.


On Sunday, we went to the Muttart Conservatory, a plant conservatory in 4 glass pyramid greenhouses. There were temperate, arid, tropical, and show pyramids. Of course my favorite was the tropical because I saw many plants I knew from Brazil!

This huge leaf had some kind of weird shadow on it.

Two of Ralph's sisters and his brother went with us, and my bro met up with us there too.


Kudos to Em for taking this sweet shot. :)

Monday we slept in, got pictures developed, had the big Thanksgiving meal, did lots of dishes, and went for a walk before I had to go meet my ride to come home. It was wonderful to have 3 days off work, get away from Three Hills, see Mike & Julie (briefly), and be with my Ralph and his family! :)

the joys of being an MK

I found this article in a magazine that I get called Among Worlds. It's a magazine for adult TCKs (third culture kids) and I love it. There's always so many good articles that I can really identify with. This one, a somewhat scattered journal-like article entitled "Where is Home?", comes from the June 2007 issue on Farewells. When I read it, I felt like I was the one writing it! The author is an MK from Congo, but pretty much everything she says describes my life away from Brazil. :) So I'm not weird or a pack rat, I'm just taking my "home" everywhere I go!

(Click to enlarge and make it easier on your eyes! :))

good to be home

Well, I'm done school & back to work. This last week seemed so easy after the stress of schoolwork! :)

It's been a crazy week outside of work tho - I got back last weekend & after unpacking and doing some shopping, I went up to Edmonton with Ralph to visit his family. It was a fun time. His bro was in a bad accident and has been in hospital for a few weeks, so we went to see him (he was the only one of the fam that I'd met before). I love Ralph's 4 little sisters. :) No pix of them yet tho, sorry. (welcome home flowers from Ralph - they matched my outfit! ;P)


Then on Thursday my mom & brother came to town!! They spent 4 days with me and we had fun hanging out with Ralph (so they could get to know each other a bit) and other friends who they haven't seen in a while. Today they were off to E-town to settle Mike and shop and look for a job, etc. I hope to go up next weekend (b/c I have Monday off) to visit with them and probably help the siblings move. :) Julie has found a job & also a place for them to live, thank God. (I just realized we didn't take any pictures together... oops! Well, except some Photobooth ones w/ my bro...)


Also yesterday Ralph left for school - he's driving up tonight. It's been kinda brutal to date for a week, be gone for five, be together for another week, and then have Ralph leave for six more till I can hopefully see him at Thanksgiving! :( But God knew it'd be that way and He'll help us grow stronger through it. Your prayers would be appreciated too. :) We did have a good Saturday together.

"I'm goin to the chapel and I'm..."

...just playing with your minds!! HAhahahaha.

But I do have a boyfriend. :) I haven't been blogging much but I thought it was rather important to say that I have been dating a wonderful boy (that I met this summer) since July 6. We had one great week together before I left for ON & MB, and will have about another week or 10 days before he has to go back to school. :'(

He is:

• good-looking (obviously ;))
• a committed & mature Christian who challenges me constantly (most importantly)
• studying for Christian ministry, hopefully to work in the area of counseling, mentoring, discipling, or teaching
• funny, outgoing, friendly, sarcastic, spontaneous, sometimes loud
• serious, deep, a thinker, sincere
  
• not a fan of movies & video games (yaaay!)
• a great friend who loves people
• sweet, kind, thoughtful, sensitive, emotional, a gentleman
• so easy & fun to talk to
  
• interested to travel and open to living outside of North America (even though he hasn't been anywhere else yet)
• a bit younger than me ;)
• musical
  
• American & Canadian
• a tea drinker
• a hard worker (he's doing construction this summer)
• committed to his family
• strong
• a leader
• optimistic
• assertive & confident, never awkward or shy :P
• overall amazing
  
• Ralph and he is taken! ;)
  

it's been a looooooong time!!

Hey out there, to whomever might read this blog ... (I know of a handful ;))

I haven't updated in forever, mostly because a LOT has been happening! And that's precisely why I should update.

3 weeks ago I left home to go on a little trip--well, a kind of big trip. I had planned on doing a TESOL course at my old school last May, and that fell through at the last minute. Thankfully, I was still able to continue with my job and wasn't floundering for those 4 weeks. It was a bit of a let-down though, since I had been excited for the change and break from work, to have to go back to it just like normal.

However, God worked things out for me to go to a school in Manitoba to do the same course in July/August, and that is where I find myself today. There have been a lot of twists and turns in the road to get here! After getting the whole application process done, I had to wait to find out if I was accepted. Then more waiting to see if my LOA for 5 weeks off work would be approved. Praise God everything was, so I booked my flights. I planned a week of vacation in Ontario first of all, to visit relatives I hadn't seen in 3 1/2 years. That was fun. I was in the Toronto area (college friend HT)

and Owen Sound, mostly. There's so many other people in Ontario that I would've loved to have seen (in Ottawa, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie...) but one week just isn't enough time. As it was, I got to see representatives of each family except for one aunt. I was really disappointed about that, but she was really sick and couldn't come see me. :( Actually, she's still kind of sick. You can pray for her. :)

my 2nd cousin Hayden!! :)

Hayden w/ his parents

me, Grandma, Aunt Dorie

F fam, minus Matt
little (as in 'short') cousin Kari at WOLBI camp

cousin Val & I on a hike

While I was in ON, a friend that was also going to take this course wrote me to say her car had broken down that week. She had been planning on driving out and we were going to house sit on an acreage near the college. So a car was slightly necessary for the 10-minute drive each way! All week I was praying and waiting and hoping, but nothing happened. We contacted people at the school to see if we could still get into the dorms, and indeed we could. So my friend's aunt & uncle drove us out here, and we had to bite the bullet and pay a whack-load of extra money for room and board that Monday. :( That was the whole reason I had looked for some other place to stay, because I didn't want to pay it! I'm still paying rent at home! And I was excited to live on an acreage for a month. :) It had worked out so perfectly, it seemed, until the car died. Besides the money aspect, it has been great. The dorm is more like a house and much nicer than Prairie's, and the dining hall food is really good. Plus it's nice to be close by for doing homework, getting to class quickly, etc. I don't mind that at all.

our dorm in the back - me, Tracey, & Steph in front (classmates). The joke is that it looks like a Jehovah's Witnesses' "Kingdom Hall" with the columns and all. :P

having fun on our 1st weekend of semi-freedom... I don't know that girl on the right though, hmmm.

Oh, and check this out... we paid up on Monday, because we figured we kind of had to and that nothing else would work out. On Tuesday, I get an email from the house sitee saying "oh, I just remembered we got a car before we left that's sitting in the garage at home, on a lease, and you girls could drive that back & forth if you want." OH MY WORD... the irony of it kills me. That was what I was hoping to hear the week before but didn't, and she thinks of it after I tell her that we've decided to stay in dorms.

Anyway, God has a plan for it somehow....

Now I've been in school for 2 weeks... I'm half done! Yay. :) It's been really good and really busy. I'm learning a lot and most of the time it's fun. A few days in class I've been so tired that I'd rather not be there, but they give us lots of variety and we do quite a few activities to keep moving and awake. :) The homework load has been bearable so far and I'm still ahead or on top of everything. I'm grateful for that. Tonight I just have to finish up a lesson plan and print it, and then my projects for Monday & Tuesday are both done, and Wednesday - almost! Woot.

our 2 lovely teachers, Amber & Cathy

Me & Steph practice our aspirate stop consonants with feathers. ;P

Yup that's right, studying hard... we got to go to the beach our 1st Sunday here!! Who knew MB had beaches?!

me, Kristie (friend from PBC), and 2 new friends - Felecia & Rhonda.

Thanks for your prayers!

Camp pictures

Alright, here are the pictures from camp the last week of June. I can't really put up pictures of the clients, so I'm putting ones of staff, the location, some stuff we did (bowling, horses, playing games, etc.), and some super cute girls that I hung out with for the last couple of days (camp director's kids). Btw, the camp was not only for our region but there were clients and staff from Calgary, Coaldale, and Edmonton.
We went out Monday, and that was a lazy day with a craft & snack & supper, but otherwise not much. (I was quite bored, actually.) Tuesday the morning activity was bowling, Wednesday we went to a ranch in Red Deer to ride horses or ride in a wagon, and Thursday we went swimming. In the afternoons it was rest time, free time to play with balls or cards or make crafts, not to mention eat (it was pretty much breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-supper-snack). There was also a chapel time everyday. The last night we had a campfire which was a blast - singing campfire songs. :) Staff stayed up later a few nights too to play games or talk.

Overall it was fun & I was glad I got to go. It was nice to have only 2 people to watch but also to not have to be with them constantly since there were lots of other staff around. I got lots of sleep (which was unexpected!) but still came back tired and then caught a cold right away too. :(

Birthday

I turned 23 almost 2 weeks ago and wanted to post some pictures of my party. My day started veeeery early with 2 phone calls that woke me up. I was happy to be able to talk to all of my family later in the day too, and received a lot of birthday wishes over the internet as well (Orkut, Facebook, random e-cards from my siblings....). It makes me feel so special when so many people remember me! :) Oh, and I loved the collage my sis made for me.

Besides the early calls, I was at church in the morning and then had a bunch of friends over in the evening for a BYOB barbecue. It was lots of fun and I felt blessed to be able to have them all come. I think we were 13 in all. I have been hanging out with most of them every weekend but for this party invited some other people as well who haven't been around as much. So it was good to chat and catch up with them. We had a big supper, played games, talked, laughed, and took pictures. I was blessed with some sweet and thoughtful gifts from dear friends (and some funny gifts). My sister had even left me a gift 5 weeks earlier since she wasn't going to be around! :) And the week before I got a massive cheesecake and visit from out-of-town friends, which was sweet of them.


Thanks, everyone! :)