DON'T WANNA DO HOMEWORK!

i really really really really really really really really don't feel like doing homework. Unfortunately, my assignment for tomorrow is not going to do itself. and the stupid psych paper is DEFINATELY not doing itself. Heck the rest of my group isn't even doing it. BAH. it really isn't the group - its just hard co-ordinating all of our efforts. i dunno. I CAN'T WAIT FOR CHRISTMAS! if i can get this silly music unit plan done for monday AND the psych paper, i'll be done handing crap in until JAN 4th - at the very soonest!! Oh wait. AFTER i hand in my Foundations paper on the 9th. ah well. it will soon be done :)

They're HERE!

 MY FAMILY'S HERE!!!!!    Granny and Nicole arriving at the airport, 11:35 Monday Night.... wow... Granny looks OLD in that wheelchair. But turns out she's just wiley... you'd be surprised at how many perks there are to being in a wheel chair at the airport. Something to keep in mind apparently.

      This one's  
of the fam getting all decked out to face the Saskatchewan winter. (even thought it was only about -12, thank the Lord!)

UGG... Stayed up till 2:30 just chatting... this morning was a brutal experience!

BUT!! THEY'RE HERE!!
YIPPEEE!!!

More SA Christmas Carols

I was going to take Evan's advice and just post links, but i really wanted to put these up. But i put i the other way this time so you can relieve your aching neck!

I MONTH TODAY UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

Friday procrastination!

This song is a LOT bit more country than i like, but i really like the lyrics, and honestly how badly could somebody with the name "CARRIE" do? Even if she has one too many r's... ;)

Artist/Band: Carrie Underwood
Lyrics for Song: Jesus, Take The Wheel
Lyrics for Album: Some Hearts

She was driving last Friday on her way to Cincinnati
On a snow white Christmas Eve
Going home to see her Mama and her Daddy with the baby in the backseat
Fifty miles to go and she was running low on faith and gasoline
It been a long hard year
She had a lot on her mind and she didn't pay attention
She was going way to fast
Before she knew it she was spinning on a thin black sheet of glass
She saw both their lives flash before her eyes
She didn't even have time to cry
She was sooo scared
She threw her hands up in the air

Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this all on my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel

It was still getting colder when she made it to the shoulder
And the car came to a stop
She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat sleeping like a rock
And for the first time in a long time
She bowed her head to pray
She said I'm sorry for the way
I've been living my life
I know I've got to change
So from now on tonight

Jesus take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can't do this all my own
I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I'm on

Oh, Jesus take the wheel
Oh, I'm letting go
So give me one more chance
Save me from this road I'm on
From this road I'm on
Jesus take the wheel
Oh, take it, take it from me
Oh, why, oh

CRAZY VIDEO

CRAZY (Simple Plan)

Video Code provided by VideoCodeZone.Com

CRAZY?

"Crazy" - Simple Plan

Tell me what's wrong with society
When everywhere I look, I see
Young girls dying to be on TV
They won't stop till they've reached their dreams

Diet pills, surgery
Photoshopped pictures in magazines
Telling them how they should be
It doesn't make sense to me

Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something is wrong

I guess things are not how they used to be
There's no more normal families
Parents act like enemies
Making kids feel like it's World War III

No one cares, no one's there
I guess we're all just too damn busy
And money's our first priority
It doesn't make sense to me

Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something is wrong

Is everybody going crazy?
Is everybody going crazy?

Tell me what's wrong with society
When everywhere I look I see
Rich guys driving big SUVs
While kids are starving in the streets

No one cares
No one likes to share
I guess life's unfair

Is everybody going crazy?
Is anybody gonna save me?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something, something is wrong

Is everybody going crazy?
Can anybody tell me what's going on?
Tell me what's going on?
If you open your eyes
You'll see that something is wrong

Our Home & Native Land

How much of this did you know??

Saskatchewan is located in western Canada. It is bordered by Manitoba to the east, Alberta to the west, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the American states of Montana and North Dakota to the south. Saskatchewan covers 651,900 square kilometres. About half the province is covered by forest, one third is farmland, and
one eighth is fresh water, mostly in northern Saskatchewan.
Saskatchewan’s ecoregions include boreal forest in the north, aspen forest in the central part of the province, and grasslands in the south. The Cypress Hills in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan rise hundreds of metres above the surrounding grasslands and represent a totally distinct ecoregion.
Saskatchewan’s varying terrain means that it includes several different ecosystems and is home to many different plants and animals.
Saskatchewan is Canada’s sunniest province, averaging from 2,000 to 2,500 hours of sunshine annually. The city of Estevan in the southeast leads the country with an average 2,540 sunshine-filled hours each year.

Saskatchewan’s Emblems of Nature –

Provincial Bird – Sharp-tailed grouse
Provincial Animal – White-tailed deer
Provincial Tree – White birch
Provincial Flower – Western red lily
Provincial Grass – Needle and thread grass
Provincial Mineral – Potash

Superman's song

i realized yesterday because of the wise words of a smart friend (and maybe a little prodding from Our Heavenly father) that maybe I've screwed up yet again. Wow, its been quite a week. Without going back into the whole journey mistake, i realized that maybe some of the things i said were more a reaction to feeling attacked than an honest emotion. I also realized that while i believe strongly in the freedom of speech, and i try to express myself honestly here, it is a public forum, which has the power to make people see things from certain angles. This effectively can be one sided gossipping - shouting out to the universe to take my side in a debate which is not about sides or right/wrong, but about listening to what God tells us to do. i was not listening, i was a little kid who was annoyed cos i got a talking to. So I'm sorry for spouting off that way. it most definitely was not a Godly way to behave, REGARDLESS of any of the issues involved.

Here is a song i heard driving on the way home from school... sometimes there's nothing but to keep on going, doing the right thing even though it involves thankless, payless work and dirty phone booths...
Being shaped - ALLOWING God to shape us is sometimes not a fun endevour, and i think he must shake his head at how thankless, payless and unpleasing his work with us is, but then every now and again we get it, and glimmer in the darkness and please him...
We're called to the same thankless, dirty work - putting aside ourselves and what pleases/angers/saddens us and just be obedient. [ESPECIALLY when we're in the wrong ;)]



Superman's song - Crash Test Dummies

Tarzan wasn't a ladies' man
He'd just come along and scoop 'em up under his arm
Like that, quick as a cat in the jungle
But Clark Kent, now there was a real gent
He would not be caught sittin' around in no
Junglescape, dumb as an ape doing nothing

[Chorus:]
Superman never made any money
For saving the world from Solomon Grundy
And sometimes I despair the world will never see
Another man like him

Hey Bob, Supe had a straight job
Even though he could have smashed through any bank
In the United States, he had the strength, but he would not
Folks said his family were all dead
Their planet crumbled but Superman, he forced himself
To carry on, forget Krypton, and keep going

Tarzan was king of the jungle and Lord over all the apes
But he could hardly string together four words: "I Tarzan, You Jane."

Sometimes when Supe was stopping crimes
I'll bet that he was tempted to just quit and turn his back
On man, join Tarzan in the forest
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home

Blessings,
Carie

We three tourists

AH YES... the trials and tribulations of visiting the beautiful RSA...
                (sorry once again for the craning of neck... but its the only way possible.)

went hottubbing tonight. it was  a good relaxing evening. (much needed) Now to tackle the monster load of homework... uggg. goodbye world.

but in the spirit of advent which i somehow neglected right after my first post, here's a M&E Christmas carol. (You have to turn your head, otherwise it ends up too small.)

Paraded out

SO we survived the parade, and only lost 1 kid. (Sorry Carissa). It was a good time all around - not sure i'd want to do it again any time soon, but you know. We had 20 kids show up instead of the 6-8 that we were expecting, so we had a whole schlep with taxis, etc. The most unfortunate part about it all (apart from it being pretty cold) was that we had to sing Christmas Carols for like a whole hour. Don't get me wrong, i like Christmas Carols, but usually only when i'm christmas caroling the week before christmas. a whole month and a bit before christmas is a bit much. ESPECIALLY WHEN ITS "SANTA CLAUSE IS COMING TO TOWN" AND RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED RAINDEER 6 bagillion times.
Anyway, now i'm wiped.

Ugg. This weekend has been WAY too fun and WAY too little work intensive. Gonna be a busy week...

PS: in the spirit of impeding christmas cheer, i thought i'd add some Madam & Eve Christmas cartoons in a sort of advent calender kind of way. ENJOY!
(this one as you may notice is about that stupid damned raindeer. i might scream if i have to sing that song again anytime soon!)

I'm in a parade :) Come check it out!!

Midtown Plaza proudly presents the 15th Annual Santa Clause Parade Sunday November 13th at 1:00p.m. This year's theme is 'A Pioneer Christmas' and is expected to capture the imagination of all ages with a wide variety of colourful and festive decorated floats ranging from musical marching bands and dancing entries to horse drawn entries, from days gone by, bring out the creativity with this year entries. Listen for Santa Claus shouting Ho, Ho Ho as he makes his way through the parade route and settles in on the 2nd level of the Midtown Plaza for photos. The parade route starts on 19th street and Third avenue, winding its way up Third avenue to 23rd Street, over to First Avenue back down to First Avenue to 20th street.


Should be fun.. hope its not TOO cold.

Hazel Eyes

i love this music video...

Watch Video:

BEHIND THESE HAZEL EYES (Kelly Clarkson)

Video Code provided by VideoCodeZone.Com

The madness of it all

In the last little while i've watched two very moving films about vetrans - coincidentally they tied in with Rememberance day today. Last night (or this morning actually) i was walking down by the river looking at the monuments and thinking about all the people who have sacrificed for us. A couple things really stood out to me as i stood and thought about memorializing these unknown heroes.
1- the madness of war. The old 16th century mental asylum in London, called Bedlam Hospital, is now the British War Museum. Coincidence? I think not.
2- How easily we forget. The slogan "lest we forget" is there because we ARE forgetting. It seems so long ago already. It may have been a little exagerated by the one movie, but they pointed out how bemused Veterans would be to watch us play a game of paintball.
Without being soppy or anything like that, in this moment, i give them thanks.

Ramble? Me? Never.

I was surfing around blogworld, and read Scott's latest post "Monday, November 07, 2005 - The Only Sure Thing". Check it out. its pretty thought provoking.

Man - i've wanted to post for quite a few days now, and the most enthusiasm for anything that looked like constructive anything was to post yesterday's pic.

Tuesday was awesome. We did our first teaching experience at school. With Leanne, i taught a lesson on heroes to a group of 9 kids from a gr3/4 split class. WHAT FUN! it was very affirmning, because, somehow this college has a way of scaring all the spirit out of you. WHAT IF I MESS UP AND SCREW UP SOME LITTLE KID'S LIFE FOREVER??? (etc, etc, etc)
I'm also feeling a lot more capable in this college now that i've realized that i do (somewhere) inately understand what it means to be a teacher, adn i actually do want to be that person.
Yesterday i had to do the 10 min teach (that i wrote about the other day) on South Africa. It went really well, adn everybody actually seemed interested. Mostly in "Madam and Eve" which is to be expected, since it is one of the best cartoons in the entire world. But anyway. Its all done now. So that's a relief.

There is much going in my my life.
My Uncle Andrew is having severe (debilitating) headaches. His twin died of an undefined brain degeneration (like a tumour but not) about 5 years ago, and now my Uncle has been incapacitated with blinding headaches and very similar symptoms. My Uncle Tony went through years of testing, and medications, etc, etc and eventually just wasted away. Andrew refused to have any sort of testing done on himself at the time, and now we're wondering.
I have had headaches as a part of my life since i fell on my head when i was 12. These things freak me out like nothing else. I should go to the doctor and MAKE him do some sort of test or something.

I'm also developing some awesome friendships with people i've sort of known for a long time and am getting to know better. I'm excited about that.

There are many other things too... but i have to get to class in the next 6 mins.

have a good day!

pray without ceasing

Rainbow words

For one of my classes, i have to do a 10 minute oral presentation on something i'm passionate about or find interesting. Now, i am a fairly boring person, and do not have any interesting talents or skills, so i decided to resort to the standard old "what's interesting about you" ice breaker question... My retort after hazardly scrambling through the mind-fields of my brain (get it, haha... its a pun.. MIND fields). ANYWAY.
I was trying to find a little mission statement i had written for myself a couple weeks after moving to Canada, in order to try and remember exactly how i felt. Isn't it odd that i can't really recall exactly? time definately dims emotion i guess. But i found this little list of words i found funny/ weird and my description of each one, which i obviuosly wrote to somebody in SA. And then i found that i had apparently emailed it to Daniel at some point, and he "RE-TRANSLATED" it for me... so here goes the unabridged retranslation of "WIERD CANADIAN STUFF".

*** PLEASE NOTE: i do not hold myself responsible for how condescending or sarcastic i sound in this post. Please keep in mind that i have done much "CANADIANIZING" in 6 (wow, 6 already) years. ALSO: although immigrants are generally nostalgic about the "homeland" - where ever that might be, we all made the choice to be in this great country, and we would go back to where ever if we really didn't like it. So for all of you true -blue Canadians... I REALLY DO LOVE YOU :) ***

Daniel's retranslation of English....
(I hope you don't mind but I took the freedom to "re-translate" some of your words back into REAL english)

WEIRD CANADIAN WORDS…
Traffic light - robot - one of those machines that does your work for you
Christmas orange - naartjie - some wierd spelled SA swear...
Band-aids - plasters - drunks...
horn - hooter - boob
trunk - boot - cowboys wear these
sweater - any form of jersey (or so it appears, I’m still not clear on the issues of bunnyhugs, sweaters and cardigans…. ) - jersey is what sports teams wear
turn lights - indicators - indicators are signs... and they're called signal lights in the first place...
hockey - general word to describe violence in Canada. Seriously talked about and very competitive (heck the country’s under snow for 6 months a year, you have to find a descent winter sport. I’m still (very slowly) getting into it) - GO OILERS GO!!!
Binder - file (with spaces for 3 hole paper, not 2) - something you hang in a filing cabinet
Crap - trouble (considered normal language [even used in church] whereas “damn” is considered to be of the 4 letter list à different cultures, different swear words.) - also what comes out of your "ice"
Diapers - nappies - when a little kid has a nap
Pacifier/soother - dummy - YOU... hehehe (couldn't resist)
Flashlight - torch - indiana jones uses one in the cave...
Trolley - foofey slide (trolleys here are called shopping cart) -foofey is a dumb dogs name... not sure how you make a slide out of it...
Teeter totter - seesaw - underwater animal like a seahorse...
Beef jerky - stuff that looks and acts like biltong, but smells and tastes vile!!!!!! Avoid at all costs. - you have no clue what's good for you!
Mail - post - long vertical thing (usually used for fastening signs and lights)
Zero - naught - you tie knots (learn how to spell!)
Elevator - Lift - brings you up the ski hill
Truck - lorry - it's spellt Lorie and is a girls name
Van - combi - short for combination
White out- tippex - you only know one brand? why pick on tissues vs. Kleenes then???

Other engigmatic canadiana:

foyer (pronounced “fooyeeeaa”) .:. unrecognizable
aluminum- pronounced “alooominum”
about - pronounced “a-boot” [not really. but its a fun stereotype]
bunny-hug - a jersey type thing with a hood and big pocket in the front (like a nun) where you can clasp both hands together in the pocket (nobody knows why it’s called a bunny hug.)
Bannock - flat, tasteless (in my experience, but I’m no cook) native bread
weather - the most discussed subject in Canada -> it’s practically a national pastime
toque - a beanie (who knew?) apparently a beanie has some difference (like ear flaps or something… another grey issue for me, and generally somewhere I don’t go…. Makes you look intelligent not to ask questions about other people’s (often odd) headgear.
Crazy carpet - piece of plastic with cut out spaces to hold onto as you hurtle down a snow covered hill. Haven’t’ experienced this yet, heard reports of concussion. Still under deliberation. (similar concept to tobogganing)
Snow boarding - surfing on snow (except you’re tied on, and it’s generally a recipe for visits to the x-ray dept of the hospital. (another sport under deliberation…. Umm , no) [NOTE: I wrote this a couple weeks after arriving... SNOW BOARDING ROCKS!!]
Spitz - edible sunflower seed (can be flavored… put the whole thing in your mouth, extract the seed and spit out the shell [takes practice, I end up gobbing:- seeds, shells and all]
Loonies, toonies, quarters, nickels and dimes - Canadian currency. Respectively - $1, $2, 25c, 5c and 10c (the loonies are named after loons (birds) not mad people, and I have no ideas about the toonies.)
Santa clause - father Christmas
thank goodness they pronounce it “zed” not “zeee”

SOME OTHER WEIRD STUFF...
> You don’t see the same stars (this may be obvious to the seasoned astronomer, but I never thought about it before)
> The toilets/ drains etc flush the wrong way (someone told me this and I investigated, I do have a life)
> The lights switches go up to turn on, not down
> You drive on the wrong side of the road (and in winter the govt sprinkles salt and sand on the roads until they look (and feel like) dirt roads
> They don’t have such thing as spray deo. When we eventually found some (in some tiny chemist) it stinks and feels like hairspray
> They have no idea about shaving cream/ water fights… what a sad life!
> Social introductions include: “lets go for coffee”
> People that have bicycles have special spikes in the tires to stop them slipping on the ice
> O henry, jolly ranchers, and gummy bears are need to know kinds of sweets (refer to the point on avoiding very intellectually damaging stupid questions)
> Living on the prairies provides you the opportunity of the lifetime to learn all there is to know about agriculture. Unfortunately, I’m a heathen… don’t know, don’t care.
> All the doors and windows have screens on them for summer, if you venture out without bugspray, you’re likely to be carried away by some huge mozzies
> Country music is accepted as the norm… they have only ~ 5 decent (local) stations, and country is one of them (damned people have my dad hooked, so guess what we have to listen to in his car………..)
> Foreigners (such as I) have to watch how we say words like "ice", "birch", etc... as they sometimes have some negative reactions...

Anyway, this turned out to be quite a long post!
I mostly just procrastinating to avoid homework. I'm not sure WHAT exactly i should be doing... more to the point, i don't know WHERE i should start with all the work i SHOULD be doing ;)
MEH
i think i might just go read a book instead. Ostrich style. Pretend its not there.. maybe it won't see me.

tata.

tag, you're it

I got tagged by Anna, so here are the 5 Things i totally don't get:

> How this place can be +35 in summer and -400 in winter
> How i can be doing everything i like and still not be happy some days
> how i can EVER be ready to be a teacher! Ah! Scary! so many things to think about!
> how i can spend hours analyzing other peoples/ character's emotions, but the thought of doing this indepth makes me a little uncomfortable...
> how relationships and friendships can bend and turn in such wierd and irrational directions

And now it’s my turn to tag. I tag Marlene and Beth. What do you just not get?

hope you have the bestest day yet!
C