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Woke up this morning to an offer of admission to Michener, for xray. Hooray, kinda. Michener is Plan C at this point. Nice to have something though, as long as they don’t force me to decide yes or no too soon.

As promised I have some food to talk about.

“Mexican Lasagna”

We had a bunch of tortillas that we needed to use up so I invited some kind of mexican lasagna. Mexican food amuses me, because it’s pretty much always the same ingredients, but in different combinations and formats.

For this one I stir fried some red onions and garlic, dumped in a can of rinsed black beans, and a tin of diced tomatoes (not ideal, but I was feeling too lazy to use fresh tomatoes), some frozen corn, and cumin and chili powder.

When that was cooked a bit I layered it with some tortillas and cheese in a baking dish. From bottom to top: mixture, tortilla, mixture, tortilla, cheese, tortilla, mixture, tortilla, cheese. Then I baked it at 350ºF for about 25 minutes, then topped it with some green onion and avocado. Delicious!

Homemade Strawberry Daiquiris

Our local grocery store has big boxes of Californian strawberries on sale a lot. Last time I bought one I ate all the ones that looked decent (three years working for Shouldice has turned me into a total strawberry snob) and then cut the top off the rest and froze them.

To make the daiquiris I tipped a bunch of frozen berries, a couple tbsp of sugar, a couple shots of rum, and a little bit of lemonade at a time into the blender. I always end up making too much though because you have to use a fair amount of liquid to get the blender circulating. :/ Anyway they were delicious and I like the all natural bright red colour!

Black Bean Burgers

Ugh WORST PICTURE EVER! This was the leftover patty. We devoured our burgers too fast to get a good picture!! Anyway these are really really delicious and I highly recommend giving them a try if you want to have something other than a beef burger.

  • 1 can rinsed black beans
  • 1/2 large green pepper, diced really small
  • 1/2 onion, diced really small
  • 2 cloves garlic, diced really small
  • cilantro, optional if you’re one of those who hates the stuff!
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tsp chili powder
  • 1 tsp cumin
  • 1 huge squirt sriracha
  • 2 pieces toast, chopped up

Preheat the oven to 375ºF. Mash the beans in a bowl until they are pretty demolished. Add everything else, and mix. Form into patties, then bake ~20 minutes. Be careful when you pick them up, they sometimes crack.

Use in a hamburger bun with mayo, spinach, tomato, cheese, and/or whatever else you like on a burger!

Vegetarian Sushi

So I had my first go at making sushi with no supervision. It only had avocado, cucumber, sweet potato and marinated tofu because there was a bit of a seafood shortage that day. Well they tasted good but I don’t understand why all my fillings ended up on one edge and all the rice on the other! I need a sushi lesson.

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Hello everyone! I’m Rosemarie (Katrina’s sister). If you don’t know me, I go to school at Simon Fraser University. Since I am at school for most of the year, I won’t be posting as often (studying is not very interesting to blog about).

I had been feeling antsy this year to see more BC nature, but had been finding myself so busy with school and other things to be able to do anything. When my friend Adam from SFU offered to let me stay at his place in Squamish for a week after exams, there was no way I could refuse.

Day 1: Mountain biking up to Alice Lake. This was the first time I’ve tried mountain biking…my verdict is that the uphill trek is definitely worth the ride downhill! It is kind of like playing MarioKart but in real life!

Day 2: The second day we hiked the Chief, which is a really big rock face that people normally rock climb on. We had amazing weather, but I’m not too sure about the whole ‘hiking mountains’ thing. Every time you think you see the top, and then you get there, I realize there is a another huge part that I have to go up to to get to the peak. Errrghhh. The top part was really cool though, they have ladders and chains set up to help you up the last part. Real-life high ropes course! (I AM SO LAZY)

Day 3: Wednesday was mostly reserved for letting my shaking calves recover (I am weak), but we still managed to go swimming at the public pool and go in the hot tub.

Day 4: Skiing at Whistler with Adam’s other friend and a few others. Even though it was almost May, the top half of the mountain was exactly the same as when I was there in February. We were lucky enough to have the whole mountain to ourself and be skiing through knee-deep powder! It was even snowing in the village.

Day 5: A quick trip to tour Quest University and what every good trip has to end with, SUSHI. Mmmmm. (FUN FACT: I turn on ‘face detection’ on my camera when I take gnome pictures… ahahaha it recognizes the gnome’s face.)

I’m looking forward to exploring even more of BC in the fall. My friend has invited me to visit her house on Salt Spring Island and I hope to try outdoor rock climbing with the Outdoors Club. I’m really looking forward to another study semester and then a co-op term in the spring.

I had a great year at SFU this year; I think this summer will be good as well. I’m going to be working this summer at Statistics Canada. I’m looking forward to BluesFest and riding the Aqualoop (!!!).

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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.