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The West Edmonton mall was very very cool. It really had every retail thing you could think of, except maybe IKEA. Although they did have The Brick so you could still furnish your house, do not worry!

It had a pirate area, a Chinatown, a Bourbon Street, an ice rink, an aquarium, a sea lion show, and SO MUCH MORE.

Check out this water park! It looked so awesome, but I wasn’t in the mood for going in by myself. It’s really really heated inside so that would be a lot of fun in the dead of winter I reckon.

On the other side of the pool, you can go rock climbing, and then bungee jumping!

I also saw a wicked high ropes course.

The looping roller coaster was probably my favourite part though. I liked that it is indoors yet has three loops. It goes right up through the ceiling rafters too, which is neat. Unfortunately it would have cost $10.50 to go on it if I just bought tokens, so I didn’t go on it.

I didn’t shop too much. I finally found a certain cheap H&M skirt that I’d been looking for for a while (and saved $0.90 because of cheaper tax rates in Alberta) and I got some new underwear. I had Taco Bell for lunch. Haha I still love that place and we don’t have it in Vancouver. I think the further away Taco Bell is from home, the more I want it.

The rest of the time I window-shopped and people-watched and rested my sore feet on benches.

Finally I could check in to my hotel room so I went back to the hotel. After a bit of a hassle I got my room and did not come out until the next morning, fully rested and feeling a lot better.

The NAIT interview went well. It was very similar to Michener. I messed up one question pretty bad because I didn’t read it properly, but everything else was fine. We also had to a little career investigation report and I felt quite confident about that part.

The interview didn’t take near as long as I expected so I was out of there pretty quickly. I went straight back to the airport hoping to get on an earlier flight home, but they wouldn’t let me switch for free. Instead I sat there and read my book and watched the election results start to come in. Flight back was uneventful and then FINALLY I was back in Vancouver with Scott. What a trip.

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I really should be studying biology right now. :/

On Saturday I slept in and then TTCed out to near my aunts house to meet my two aunts and my uncle. We drove out to see mom’s urn thingy, which was good, I guess. I hadn’t been there before. (Dad, Rose and I did our own thing at the cottage with our portion of the ashes.) Then we had dimsum. The restaurant was kind of in a weird location (there were fields around it??!) but it was the best dimsum I have ever had. Plus they ordered all of my very favourite things (ta siu bao, ha gao, fried white carrot thing, shu mai, rice noodle thing with bbq pork, and so so so much more). It was all really nice quality with no skimping on fillings, and it all arrived HOT. YUM. They forced me to eat basically everything.

After lunch I went with one of my aunts to her apartment and we went swimming and chatted.

Near dinner time I headed back out to Janine’s place where her and Steve had prepared a mega mega bbq (in size and deliciousness). Another couple came over and it was really nice and we all had a lot of fun.

We watched a bit of the Canucks game but when regulation time ended I had to go to bed because I had to leave for my flight at 4:00 AM the next morning.

I didn’t sleep very well (probably because I was digesting, and also stressed) so the next day was a bit rough. Also my feet were really hurting because my shoes were not that comfortable. I arrived in Edmonton at 9:00 AM and took the airport shuttle to the cheapest hotel. I really needed a good nights sleep so I decided to spend a bit of my pocket money to not have to stay in a hostel. Probably was the right decision, although the hotel was pretty dodgy.

I couldn’t go in to my room right away so I went to the West Edmonton Mall for the day…… details of which will have to wait for the next post!!

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I’m back! What a trip!! 7,000 km, two interviews, two nights with less than 2 hours sleep, tons of public transit, tons of food.

I’ll just start with Friday for now.

My flight to Toronto was not great. WestJet seats are tiny, do not book for overnight flights!!! Also it seems like you can pick your seats ahead of time, which I did not know about, so when I got to the airport there were only about 5 seats left and they were all middle seats!

When I was boarding the plane I got stopped by a body builder in the first row who was wedged in beside a rather fat guy. They both looked very sad and uncomfortable and the body builder somehow convinced me to take the window seat next to him and for the fat guy to take my middle seat a couple rows back. Woohoo, then I was only squished on one side, instead of both. Unfortunately the body builder stayed up all night teaching the girl on his other side about protein powder and I barely got any sleep at all.

I arrived in Toronto at 6:00 AM and my interview was not until 2:30 PM so I had a lot of time to kill. I was so tired I just stayed at the airport and lay down on a bench, occasionally watching bits and pieces of the royal wedding. Eventually I left the airport and headed towards Michener where I got some lunch and then took a nap in a study booth in the library.

The interview was quite intense, but went well I think! This one had 8 stations and even had one with an actor, and one where you had to work with another interviewee.

It was the same format as the Calgary interview but SO much better because instead of the interviewer just staring at you, even when you finish talking, these ones had follow up questions and actually smiled and stuff. That makes such a huge difference… it’s really hard to have a ‘conversation’ with someone when they are not providing ANY feedback cues. Very unnatural.

Anyway we all left smiling and they said we could start hearing from them this week.

After the interview I did a little wandering downtown and then I took the subway to meet up with my aunts and my cousins. We had thai food (I had thai basil mango beef and shrimp with rice) and then I headed to Janine’s where we chatted for a bit until couldn’t hold my eyes open any more.

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I voted today! Since I will be in Edmonton on election day I had to do advance voting today after work. There was a bit of an issue with my name, but I just had to fill out an extra piece of paper. Weird that Elections Canada somehow knew my new address, but didn’t know my new name, when I changed everything all at the same time. Anyway– sorted now.

We had a very nice long weekend. I relaxed on Friday and worked on party planning while Scott went to Metrotown with his aunt. She bought six Quatchi’s!!

(That isn’t Scott’s aunt!)

Then we watched two movies. Nearly finished our movie alphabet. Will post soon.

Saturday was a big day. Scott made hash browns, then we went up and did laundry and groceries. Then we stopped by Scott’s work so he could check on some servers, went to T&T, and then to Costco. They have SO many samples at the Costco here. Best one was the cheddar jalapeno sausage (for me). Mmmm. I ate half a poutine (was not as good as I remember) and then we bused up to SFU to help Rosemarie move out of residence. Funny that the only times we went to SFU this year was the very beginning and end of the school year. It really is quite far away.

After dropping her stuff at our house we got back on the bus and went back to that ice cream place with 200+ flavours. It was such a nice sunny day we thought it would be a good School’s Out treat for Rosemarie.

This time I tried CURRY, BALSAMIC VINEGAR, Go Canucks Go (?), and Bailey’s chocolate cheesecake. Eventually settled on a Ferrero Rocher cone, while Rosemarie got Toblerone and Scott got White Chocolate Cranberry.

The rest of the evening was spent playing lots of board games (Agricola, Settlers) and dinner (Rosemarie and I made spicy eggplant and pork).

On Sunday morning we made a yummy breakfast with beans, eggs, toast, hash browns, bacon and then tried to digest it for the rest of the day. It made us all SOOOOO tired! We met up with Scott’s aunt and went to the Granville Market but didn’t stay long as other people don’t seem to be as interested in looking at vegetables as I am, haha.

We came home and relaxed and played more games and I made salad and black bean burgers (recipe to come soon).

Rosemarie is off to Squamish now and I won’t see her again until the party in Ottawa. :( I miss her already!

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Just a quick update post before I have to get out of bed and actually start accomplishing things.

My epic 2.5 hour BCIT interview went really well. The first hour the guy gave me a crash course on nuclear medicine, and asked little questions all the way through that sort of tested your thinking skills. I got all of them right and he seemed quite impressed. I felt clever. For the second hour I followed nuc med techs around and watched them scan patients. It was neat to watch them deal with the patients and also ask them questions about the job. I really enjoyed it, and was glad to see it was more relaxed than I pictured the job before. Then finally I had to write a quick essay.

Anyway I could tell by how the guy was responding that I did pretty well. Then the next day I called the department head to follow up like I was supposed to and she was really really positive! She asked if I thought it would be a good fit (I said “YEAH! I had a lot of fun yesterday, I’m glad I got the opportunity to do that!”) and she said she had a chat with the dude and he thought I would be a great fit as well. She still wants me to write the bio challenge exam, and take a physics refresher course, but she said once I’m registered in that they can give me a provisional acceptance pending completion of the courses.

…..

YAHOOO!!!!!

Anyway, in other news:

– the Canucks suck now. Poo-ongo let in 5 goals last night and Scott cried as the Canucks chance at the cup slips away in the first round. The series is 3-2 for the Canucks at this point.

– Scott’s aunt is in town for a week, which is neat. We’ve gone out for dinner with her and had her over to our place. It’s the long weekend now so we’ll take her around to the Granville Market and things like that! Next week she leaves on an epic 3 week trip from Vancouver to Victoria to Whistler to Banff to Jasper, then on a train, and then a cruise all the way up to Alaska and back! JEALOUS!!!

– Scott and I booked our flights to Ottawa for the party. Air Canada had a sale so we decided to be optimistic about BCIT/NAIT and buy the tickets. If we end up having to move to Toronto I guess we will cash the flights in for credit and fly to Mexico in a year or something.

Anyway, still a lot of waiting to do. I won’t hear anything definite from any of the schools for another month or two, so we still can’t make any definite plans about this summer or next year. Cross your fingers for me though, we’d like it if I got in everywhere so we can just sit down and make the best decision.