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We finally found out our fall and spring hospital placements. I got what I wanted (St. Paul’s Hospital for fall, and Surrey Hospital for spring) so I am pleased. I will be the only student at both of those hospitals, which is OK I guess?…. more attention for me at least.

I am not looking forward to this upcoming school year though. We have 33 hours of class a week this fall!! OMG. And while I will get to see the other half of the class every Friday in the fall semester, we won’t see the other group AT ALL in the longer winter semester and that bums me out a lot. :(((((((

I think that entire last paragraph is why I’ve been having terrible insomnia for the last week or so. :(

ALSO! I finished my time at VGH (did I say that already?). My last performance evaluation was pretty good so I guess it went well there. I hope they remember me next fall when I’ll be looking for a job!!

Now I will spend the next two weeks at the Children’s Hospital and that is going to be intense/interesting. I have no clue how I am going to do with the children. And the parents. At least I will not be expected to do any injections. Whew!

Last thing, Joe Fresh school supplies are sooooo cheap!!! Packs of paper for 17 cents? Cool looking spiral bound notebooks for 15 cents? 6 highlighters for 50 cents? WHAT IS HAPPENING! I bought all my back to school stuff for like $3 at Superstore. SWEET.

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OOO the pillow I used for my latest crafty project is on the cover of the new IKEA catalog!

ikea eivor

On a trip to IKEA about a bazillion years ago I begged Scott to let me buy this Eivor cushion. We had no need for it at all but I was drawn to it (pun intended). IT SPOKE TO ME. And it said “COLOUR ME KATRINA, COLOUR ME NOW.”

So I did. Slowly over several sessions I coloured it in with Sharpies. Mmmm fumes.

About half way in I really wasn’t sure if it was actually one of my best ideas (it looked kind of horrible?) but when I coloured in the very last section I was really really pleased. I think it looks awesome now. And it doesn’t smell like Sharpie any more.

Upgrade?

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It’s been a pretty quiet week/weekend. Scott’s been working on a puzzle and I’ve been reading and cooking and watching Olympics.

Have you noticed that there is almost never lemon or lemonade flavoured bubble tea available? Well since lemonade is pretty much my favourite beverage OF ALL TIME, I decided to go about making lemonade bubble tea at home. With pearls, of course.

The recipe takes a while, but none of the steps are complicated.

1. That’s not my picture but that is the exact kind of pearls I bought from T&T. The bag was something like $2 and has enough pearls for about 6 generous servings. They come dried.

2. Boil a big pot of water (the pearls need lots of space to move around). When the water is boiling, dump in some pearls. Stir them immediately if they are sticking to the bottom of the pot.

1 serving of cooked pearls is ~1/4 cup dried pearls

3. When the pearls float up to the top, reduce the heat to medium and let the pearls and water simmer for about 20 minutes.

4. At the same time you can prepare your sugar syrup. I use a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water (disgusting, I know). I use half brown sugar and half white sugar but I don’t think it matters what you choose. Simmer that on the stove until the sugar is totally dissolved.

5. Put the sugar syrup into a container and use a slotted spoon to get all of your pearls out of the boiling water. Put the pearls in the syrup and let it soak in there on the counter for at least 15 minutes.

6. The pearls are ready to be eaten! If you have extra pearls you can store them in the syrup in the fridge, but they will definitely need to be heated up again before you can eat them because they turn rock hard again when they are cold. The pearls are nice and chewy when they are still slightly warm.


My gross looking homemade lemonade bubble tea. Looks yuck but tastes YUM.

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On Saturday I made Thai green papaya salad with shrimp for dinner. One of my new favourite recipes ever!! I made it a bit too spicy though… next time I will definitely put less red chili. Underneath all the heat though it tasted fantastic, and it’s nice and healthy!

After dinner we met up with Zsofi downtown for more fireworks.

The show was from Italy. It was good!! Definitely better than Vietnam the week before, although we heard that Brazil’s show on Wednesday was the best. Shame we missed it. Scott even won tickets to sit in the bleachers for that show but we ended up selling them for $50 because I can’t stay up that late on a weeknight.

I give Italy +10 points for those cool fireworks that looked like arrows going upwards that I had never seen before, but also -10 points for putting off those lame-o smiley face fireworks that I HATE.

Also the smoke from the fireworks was really thick and sometimes it blocked out a lot of the fireworks (like in the above picture). I don’t think that is really their fault though, I guess it just wasn’t breezy out.

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We had a really nice day in White Rock yesterday. It took us over an hour to get there by public transit but once we were there it felt like we were on a mini vacation. It was warm and sunny and quiet and so nice. It didn’t feel like we were in Vancouver at all.

We read our Kindles in the shade, waded around in the water, listened to live music, ate fries and drank cider, and just relaxed. It was a really good day.

Occasionally the train rolls through White Rock.

Me in the pub.

Mount Ranier?