Ben Picture Update

The guys got their guns last night at BOTC. Apparently it was a bit of a Rambo-fest! Here are some new pics that Ben sent me. The badge on their berret signifies that they are done the indoctrination period. They now have to address/greet/salute people properly and a whole bunch of stuff. Apparently it's a bit stressful!




 

School's going at full tilt.

School is crazy! I can't believe how much studying I do for 3 classes. I would hate to have 5 classes when 2 of them are languages. It would be almost impossible - or at least I would be really frazzled. I've been studying Latin (and a bit of Greek) for hours on end. It's insane. I think I'm doing so much because I'm scared to death of my class - I feel that if I don't study a lot, then I will never catch up. I's probably not true but, it's good motivation for me. It's put the fear of God in me!

So, on saturday I studied Latin ALL DAY, then watched 2 movies: Tristan & Isolde and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds. They were both good but Tristan & Isolde was really sad - it's like a super depressing version of Romeo & Juliet. I highly recommend it, but make sure you have a box of kleenex with you. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds is a great animated movie by the same guy who did Porco Rosso (awesome movie), and Howl's Moving Castle. I love his movies - entertaining, thought provoking, and with amazing stories. I cried alot watching those 2 movies.

Sunday started off with my favorite show - CBC Sunday Morning! Yeah for being able to watch it! Then I got ready to see Phantom of the Opera! Mum got 4 tickets for Grandma's birthday (on the 27th of September). I remember the first time the show came through Edmonton - our family had a choice between getting Emma (our dog) or going to see the show. We wisely chose Emma - she was an amazing dog. It was cool to finally see it though. The Northen Jubilee Auditorium was renovated and it looks beautiful now. The only frusterating part of the afternoon was that Ben texted me around 1 pm letting me know that he had access to his phone for 3 hours - the only three hours that I was busy the whole weekend. GRRRR - Murphy's Law Strikes Again. So, the show was awesome - it was a huge production. I can't imagine trying to do that more than 7 days a week. It would be exhausting. There were innumerable costume changes, and it lasted for 3 hours. It seemed to fly by in like 1/2 hour, but it was a really long show. I totally recommend going to see it (obviously). The singing was astounding.

After the show, we went to Yianni's Taverna on Whyte Ave for some tasty Greek food. Yum. It was awesome, of course, and we all ate too much, of course! It was an awesome way to end the afternoon. Once I got home, I phoned Ben, but we were only able to talk for 10 minutes. It was just before his bedtime and he had lots of stuff to get ready. I found a few recent things from Ben - he went to the Royal War Museum in Ottawa this last weekend as part of their training and he thought it was very interesting. This weekend he's going to Vermont to do some sort of training class with the US armed forces that the Canadians aren't offering for a while. That should be interesting and the crazy part is that Vermont is only 40 minutes away while Ottawa was 2 hours away! It seems like Vermont should be farther away!

Today I also got a call from Ben! He was phoning me from the payphone on base. That made my week! I totally wasn't expecting it. Everything's going well for him, and he's hoping to get a new pair of boots sometime this week because his current ones really hurt his feet. Hopefully he'll get his phone back this week and he'll be able to phone me again! I can't wait to hear how this last week was for him!

I survived my first Latin quiz today. I nearly died of stress before, but it seemed to go well - I know I made a few mistakes but I think I did ok. I'll find out on Wednesday! In other news, my current mark in Greek is 100%! Awesome! I hope I can keep this up!

I'm trying to post a new picture of Ben and a few pictures of Jen, Stacey and Mark 2 weekends ago at O'Byrnes. I'll try to get them up soon.

TTFN!

Ben Update

Last Wednesday he texts me letting me know that his instructor is taking away all cellphones and laptops - the guys are supposed to be somewhat isolated during the 'indoctrination' period. Last Thursday he texts me letting me know that they aren't going to isolate them like that - if the Canadian Armed Forces stores all of these electronics, then they will be liable of something goes missing (if something goes missing while in an officer-cadet's possession it is their fault). This Monday he texts me letting me know that they are going to take away all cellphones and laptops. It really sucks, especially when you've been on a mini-emotional rollercoaster for nearly a week about it. Ben mentioned something about a payphone or something but I'm not sure how that's going to work. Hopefully it can recieve calls so I can phone him!

Whew...until next time...

The End of Work, My Trip to Saskatoon, and School Again

Whoo-hoo, Kirstin the Student is back! As different as this year will be (I'll explain later on in the post), I'm still really glad to be a student. I LOVE the student life!

The last week of work came and went surprisingly fast considering that these sorts of things usually crawl by. It was a flurry of payroll chaos - mostly fixing up the temps boo-boos, then letting Barb know where I was, saying bye (Mei stopped by to see what's up as well!), drinking bubble tea (yummy!), and then leaving. My last day was fun - I ran around like crazy writing manual cheques, organizing my lunch, and not following up on stuff because I was leaving. It was great to get some phone calls and inquiries and not have to worry about them! Whew! For lunch we went to the Urban Diner - http://www.urbandiner.com/urbandiner.asp - I had their super tasty Salmon Burger with Mango Salsa. YUMM. Super tasty. It was a nice dinner - there were a few people there, including Excel's President (which was a HUGE compliment!) - there were so many we had to have 2 tables! I didn't get out of there until 5pm, which didn't surprise me in the least. After the insanity that was my summer, I would have been shocked to find a payday-friday so organized that I could leave early. As it was, I only got 30 minutes to let Barb know what was up! That was frusterating.

On Saturday morning I went to Saskatoon on Westjet. It was an uneventful trip over - I had no problems with baggage because I didn't put any gel/liquid products (including lip balm) in my purse. All I carried were 2 books (I almost finished Both!) and my tickets. It was nice to see Dad and Pat again. It had been a few months. Saskatoon's a cute and sleepy town and they've got a very nice (and quite large) house. Their Labradoodle Osito is cute as well! He's 11 months old and he's still very much a puppy. My whole stay there was a power trip on his part - though I didn't mind much. He kept pushing boundaries and trying to boss me around - it didn't work well. The first evening there, we just vegged around and went to get groceries and wine. On Sunday we started the day with fresh ground Argentinian coffee - OH MY GOD! I love Argentinian coffee - I'm tottaly going through withdrawl even though it barely has any caffeine in it - it just tastes sooooo good. I spent the whole time there drinking ~2 cups each morning! We went downtown and walked from Broadway Avenue (the Saskatoon version of Whyte Ave) to the downtown mall across the river. Dad and Pat bought me these 2 really cute sweater/shrug things from Smart Set! Yeah! Then we went to this place called Wanuskewin - http://wanuskewin.com/ - it's a native museum with a lot of interactive programs to experience and some amazing walking trails. We went on the blue trail and the views were amazing! It was a good day, but did we ever walk a lot! The funny thing about Saskatoon is the small-townishness of it. We tried to go to the McNally and Robinson bookstore - http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/ - near their house. It's a fairly large bookstore and it was closed Sunday and Monday! So funny! On Monday Pat left for Las Vegas with some friends to spend a week vacation their. It sounds like tonnes of fun. Dad and I went out to this little retro-dinner thing for lunch - it was super tasty. Then we went home and just relaxed. On Tuesday Dad worked so I walked down to the bookstore (how many people would be crazy enough to go on a 6 km round trip to visit a bookstore) - I got Blindness by Jose Saramago and This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jalloun. They both sound amazing. I've read Double by Jose Saramago before and I loved his writing, but I've never read anything by Tahar Ben Jalloun. I'm excited to start them! That afternoon I caught my flight back home. It was equally uneventful and much shorter (no connections in Calgary). Mum picked me up from the airport, we went to the Whitespot for supper, and then tried to go grocery shopping but it was INSANE. Between all the students and 10% Tuesday or whatever, it was impossible. She dropped me off at home where I met Serena, my roommate, for the first time! She seems very nice and funky. It doesn't feel too weird having her in the house (considering I still think of it of our house). After chatting with her for a while, I ran over to see Jen and Stacey at Stacey's house. Busy, busy.

Wednesday was the first day of school. I have Greek 101 at 9 am, then Latin 301 at 11am, and Classics 480 from 2 - 5pm (only on Wednesdays). I was excited about starting Greek. I heard it went at a much slower pace than Latin - very true. We do about 1 chapter a week maximum while in Latin we did ~3 chapters a week. It was mind numbing. Althought our prof did give us a quiz for friday, it was good. I felt a bit odd with the greek tattoo though - I look like a total Classics Geek! I was scared shitless of Latin 301. My Latin is a bit disorganized, but we're going to review 101 and 102 for a month, so that makes me feel much better, though I'm going to have to work really hard to stay on top of things. My Classics 480 class seems cool - it's about Roman Africa. I don't know much about it yet, so I'm not sure if I'm interested, but it appears to be a really interesting class with a neat prof, so it should be great!

I ran into Tim and Tessa as well. I ran into Tim on purpose. It was his first day of University! I think it went fairly well. It was nice to see him - I haven't seen him since last semester! We both ran into Tessa on our way to the humanities centre. It was super nice to run into her as well! We all sat on the grass and chatted until my last class.

Thursday was an odd day. I had to go buy books because of my Greek Quiz. I usually don't do that until friday afternoon because the bookstore is dead, but I couldn't wait that long this time. It wasn't too bad there - I went at 9am. I then spent the next few hours studying the greek alphabet in SUB. I ran into a guy I sort of knew from Lister, though he didn't know me and approached me to talk about my tattoos. That was weird. He was definately trying to hit on me, but we had a great conversation, so I'd like to stay friends with him if he's up to that. I'm off limits for dating :) !! That evening I had a BBQ at Stacey's house with Mark and Jen as well. It was super tasty - we watched Big Brother, at tonnes of food and drank really tasty wine! Yummy!

Today was great - school is definately a lot slower (so far) with only 3 classes! I got to school, breezed through the quiz, then we continued with the introduction to our textbook! The pace is great! Latin 301 wasn't too bad. We reviewed some stuff, then did translations which were a bit stressful. We read them aloud in Latin, and then we had to translate a bit of a sentence or a whole sentence each as the prof went around the class. Not too bad, but my Latin is definately a bit rusty. We got some homework, but I'm done it - I have to look it over.

I met Anita after Latin! I haven't seen her all summer - we both had crazy summers. She's debating whether to continue with her 6 classes (insane) or to cut it in half and do 3 each semester. 6 sounds a bit evil, but it all depends on her travel plans!

TTFN!

More Pictures of Ben At BOTC

Here's a formal picture of Ben the Soldier.
Here's a more informal picture of Ben the Soldier.














Both of these were taken while he was at Basic Officer Training Camp in Quebec.