Last Post of the Year

As I am sitting here cooking the first layer of my dip for tonight I figured I should write one last post of this year. I want to start off by saying thank you to my family for their wonderful gifts and cards, Teddy wants to send out a thank you to the lady who sent him a card, he really enjoyed it! I also want to thank all of my friends who made this Christmas break a wonderful experience, and made me less homesick during it.

I feel like I should write something poetic, something to always be remembered so that when I am famous people can quote me in the papers they are writing, but unfortunately that is just not quite my style! Instead I wish everyone a Happy New Year, and hope that for the coming year all of your resolutions hold, your days are filled with happiness and you are as blessed as I have been!

Happy New Year,

Tiny

I also think that this song is a pretty good one for the New Year, so turn it up full blast and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XZ12nrz47U&feature=BFa&list=PLF79E0AB0D2F730A3&lf=results_main

Paris Part Two

As was mentioned in a comment I went over my word limit on my last post, and I will be doing it again on this post, but I hope it’s broken into enough parts to follow! J

Day Four, Christmas Eve. We went to the park again, but this time before we went we stopped at this amazing Chinese restaurant, which let me tell you was sooo good we went back for Christmas day dinner! We had a totally awesome day at the park. We got onto tons of rides and had supper at the Agraba Café. The food there was amazing, but the best bit was that we got to meet Goofy, all dressed up as Santa Claus! We were able to go on Space Mountain twice, cause there was no line up which made it pretty awesome.  Also saw the Parade of Lights (or as we called it the Glimmering Shimmering Parade of Lights) and it was fantastic. Afterwads a lot of people left the park so we got on some of the rides that there had been really long line ups for beforehand!

Day Five, Christmas!! I started off the morning skyping with my family which made it pretty awesome, thanks to them for staying up so late! C(who told me I should call her C9, so I will) and S started the day of by opening stockings. The girls got me one with some candy and a Tinkerbell Key chain (she’s my fave)!!!! It was totally awesome. Then we went to do some shopping at the Disney village, after brunch at Planet Hollywood! It was so awesome to get a real burger!! (a funny thing to want on Christmas, but there you have it!) We went back to the Chinese place after our shopping, and S & C9 skyped with their families!

Last Day, We spent the day at the airport pretty much, had lunch at the airport, found a post office and got everyone to their gates with their boarding passes. S had a good book that she had finished so I got a lot of reading done! It was nice to read a real book! Then C & R from Vienna came and picked me up so I could sleep over and then the train home.

It has been an awesome break so far and I am looking forward to all of the stuff that’s going to keep happening, but for right now, I am exhausted, so I’m gonna make myself a tea, force myself to stay up later than 7pm and then go to bed!

A Tired but had an Awesome Vacation,

Tiny

Our First View of the Eiffel Tower

C9 and S with Teddy in the Starbucks.

See after the Starbucks everything cleared up.
It is a lot taller than I remembered!

This is where we got these delicious
Macaroons!!!

L'Arc de Triomphe (this was the second full day in
Paris)

In the Christmas Markets we found this stall,
we couldn't resist!

The Mona Lisa at the Louvre (taken without the flash on,
cause that's what they tell you)

Paris by night, in the giant Ferris Wheel

More in the Ferris Wheel! That's S and Teddy and me!

DISNEY!!!

Teddy and I found Pascal!

I told you we met Goofy!

The Tinkerbell Keychain!!! (I was putting it on my keys,
I am getting quite a collection now, Canada, Finnland and now
Paris)

Paris Part One

Alrighty so Paris has been amazing!!! But more on that a little later. Anyway, the first day I was freaking out because I had to get a train to Vienna, a bus to the airport and then a plane to Paris. None of the websites made it out to be as completely easy as it was! I had no trouble, and the guy at the security saw my Canada shirt and said “Canada is excellent” and pointed to the Canadian pin he was wearing! Met with C and S (some of my friends from Calgary) and we went to the hostel. We went to the most amazing bakery just down the street from the hostel, but that is all that I can say that was good about it and so we booked ourselves into a hotel near the airport, and get this it has a towel heater!!!!  We also walked around the Eiffel Tower on our first day here. It is freaking amazing.

Day two was better, cause we’d slept a whole lot. We had a slowish start to the morning, but once we made it into the city it was amazing. We went to the Champs D’Elysee and had breakfast from a Christmas market. The lady was wonderful because she took my French/German in stride and then answered all of our questions in English! I say French/German because I can’t seem to speak French without some German sneaking in any more, oops. J We walked up the Champs D’Elysee to see L’Arc de Triomphe, which was only slighty amazing, and we also stopped at the Macaroons store that a friend of C&S told us we had to go to. We were going to walk to the train station and get to the Louvre fast, but unfortunately the ticket system for the metro is ridiculous here and we couldn’t get back on, so we walked! I remember the walk being a lot longer, but I think that is also because we didn’t have the markets to look at as we went. By the time we got to the Louvre we were all ready to see the paintings and sculptures. If you remember there was this whole crazy business about my residence permit earlier on this year, and for the first time it came in handy. (Yes I realize that me not getting kicked out of Austria is helpful, but this is better) You get free entry to the Louvre if you are between an EU resident, with a card!!

Day Three we went to Disneyland. After the first real sit down breakfast (which we missed by an hour, but they still served us like it was all open, so we didn’t know till after we’d eaten) we got to the airport to catch the Disney shuttle! (The joy of having a hotel right near the airport). It was completely awesome. We went to Frontierland, and let me tell you that the Haunted Mansion isn’t quite as scary when you don’t know what they are saying! But the rest of the park was amazing. They made it snow on command! (Ok they were bubbles, but it looked like snow!!!!) We had a great time and Disney is of course Disney with all of the amazingness and details and just everything!!

I’ll do another post with pictures when I get home.  Merry Christmas everyone, I hope everyone’s having a great time!

Tiny & Teddy

Pimp My Ride

So I have been a really good girl and not opened any of my gifts so far! Pretty good considering that I could and no one back home would be any the wiser. But my mother and Aunt told me that I needed to open my Aunt’s gift before I went to Paris. Well that is coming up quickly so I opened the gift last night. Now I want you to look at the video and tell me what you think.

My ride is now the jealousy of all the other stundents in our dorm!! Oh and of course you will notice that this time it was a video, instead of pictures. But what is really cool is that the video was made on the other gift that I got in the package!! I want to really supremely thank my Auntie C, Uncle S, and cousins S & C.  You guys rock and I can’t wait to see what else comes from this new device!!

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful season and that you have fun whatever you are doing.

Merry Christmas,

Tiny and Teddy

PS Yes after watching the video I did force M to give me a haircut, so I should look presentable to the French boys in Paris and EURO DISNEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so excited for this holiday!! Once again Merry Christmas everyone and I’ll talk to you when I get back!

PSS Thanks Daddy for the wonderful idea for the video!

Singing in the Rain

No it is not raining today, but it was on Monday when we had our practice!! Today though was the second concert that I had with my choir, the first was on Sunday. It was totally awesome! Lots of people came and I want to thank you for all of your support, it was totally awesome.

We sang lots of cool songs some in English, German and then there was one in Russian. I didn’t pick it, but according to everyone it was really obvious when we sang the one in Russian, because everyone was doing the head bob trying to read the words. It was a great concert and the Glühwein afterwards was pretty awesome too.

Last night C & R invited us for a real New Mexican supper, tacos with corn tortillas and Green Chilli Peppers!!! My Auntie C brings those from New Mexico sometimes, and they are super tasty. We had a great time then too and things are winding down nicely. Now I just need to get everything organized for my trip, make sure everything is peachy and hopefully all will be well!

I will post once more before I leave I promise,

Tiny

PS I dont have any pictures of the concert, because ... well ... I was kind of busy, but I promise I will have pictures when I get back from my Christmas adventure!!!

Laundry #6

Saturday, a wonderful day! It’s the day that I have laid aside to do nothing. And by nothing I mean I get to go up and down the stairs (or elevator as the case may be today) and do a massive amount of laundry. No matter how hard you try there just always seems to be more to do, kind of like dishes!! J Any ways I know I haven’t been very good at updating this week, but it has been a little crazy. But the joy of telling everyone, including yourself that you aren’t going to do anything at all is that even when you get little things done you feel so accomplished!

More on the week. We got home from Vienna on Monday, on Tuesday I was obediently in class, wishing I could get some more sleep, but then S(from the states) and I went for a kebab, that makes the whole day better. After classes I went to the Finnish National Day party and needless to say after that I wasn’t doing any work on Wednesday! (Thanks A, M and N!! J)

As I mentioned in an earlier post I received the most wonderful package of pancakes and syrup, and what do you do when you have pancakes and syrup? Well you have a massive pancake breakfast, of course!! On Thursday we had a day off so we invited a ton of people over for pancakes and it was awesome. So much fun!! Then Friday I was over at E & P’s and we made Nanaimo Bars!! We had to substitute lady finger crumbs for graham cracker crumbs, sugar overdose (just like they should be!!)

I’ve now snagged both washing machines, and I’m going to try to do some vacuuming (but maybe later, cause it’s not fair to run the vacuum at 10 on a Saturday). Oh and the water for tea is boiling time to go.

TTYL,

Tiny
PS After typing this all up, M went and checked the mail and guess who's parents package just arrived!!!!!

This was the meal for the Finnish dinner,
Moose, potatoes and other veggies, that I cant remember!

This is Finnish bread, it was delicious!

Ah pancake mix!! How you make it so much
easier when you are making massive
amounts of pancakes!

Half of the table. (We moved one of the desks into the
middle of the room and people sat on the beds/chairs,
notice M has finally put her Canada quilt on the wall!!)

The other half of the table. (Can you guess what the
wall of inspritation is going to be? And can you see
Teddy? He is in there!)

This Weekend... Vienna?

I love how in this country you can say that! This weekend we went to Vienna. We arrived really late Friday night, but it was a direct train and I got to sleep on the way so it was ok. We were picked up by friends of my Auntie B, C & R who were totally awesome the whole trip!! We got to their house and pretty much went straight to bed! The next morning we went to the UN Christmas Bazaar where we volunteered for the Canada booth. It was soooo cool. They had typical Canadian baking and you could tell the Canadians when they would walk by and go “WOW Nanaimo Bars, I haven’t had those in forever!!” We got to walk around after that for a little while. We had food from Armenia and Kenya, the most amazing thing I’ve eaten in a while! After the bazaar we went back to C and R’s where I had a nap then we got ready for the Opera. We went to see La Boheme and it was just beautiful!

Sunday we walked around Vienna with R and another exchange student who was staying with them K. It was awesome. We got to see churches and also eat in the restaurant that was an underground cellar! But one of the coolest things was the Café Central. It was supposedly the place where the spies would meet after the Second World War. I just had a hot chocolate, but it felt cool to be there.  Then for supper we went to this place where they had collectables everywhere. I couldn’t stop staring at the axes over top of the table across from us!

Monday we had a tour of the UN building. It was really cool to see everything. We got to go into one on the translators booths! That would be a pretty cool place to work. The train ride home was nice, got to see the landscape. Then choir, then home to write this up. (So if it sounds a little tired, that’s because it is!)

There you go P is that fast enough for you?

Had an awesome weekend! Now I really have the travel bug!

Tiny

Ride to Vienna

Armenian food! The meat balls were Turkey!

Kenyan Food!!!

The Canada booth!!

One of the girls we worked with and
Teddy!

Oh how I missed my Ginger Ale!
I think I've had my fix now
for another 8 months!!

Teddy said that he really enjoyed the Opera!
You'll notice he's wearing his
'Good' Maple Leaf Shirt

St Steven's chuch, it was massive!!!

The Hot Chocolare from Cafe Central

Teddy was an Official Visitor!!

Perfection and Pancakes

Today is supposed to be inspection day. I say supposed because they said they’d be here between 7:30 and 8:30 and I am typing this up at 10:00. You can understand that last night M and I were up late just making sure everything was in order (I had a late class and then choir practice). Then we woke up early this morning just to wait for two hours and no show.

But am I upset? No I am not, because I owe a huge massive thank you to Mr. A! (yes I realize at home I call you J, but Mr. A sounds really cool!) Oh yes. You see at 9:30 the bell rang and we thought it was the inspectors,  woot woot, we could go back to sleep! But it wasn’t. It was the post man! Bearing gifts!! I want to take this moment to apologize, cause the Christmas card was at the bottom of the package I opened it all before realizing that I should have probably waited a little longer. However I am really happy that I didn’t, cause I was thinking that the only thing that would make up for needing to be up so early was if I could make pancakes. And there was the most amazing pancake mix in the box, and MAPLE SYRUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Stamps bag is already on my wall and I have been dancing around the room like a 2 year old since I got the package! Thank you Mr. A! (I should also mention that Mr. A is also the one whose mother made me Teddy!!)

Pancakes anyone!

Tiny

PS YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!! ;)

PSS If you are the one who sent the silver box, could you post in the comments whether or not it is a Christmas gift? It's driving me crazy!!

Teddy's ready for breakfast!

The Christmas Card! It is really beautiful!

I am also ready for breakfast!

Supporting the team all the way from Austria!!

Notice how clean the kitchen is. I think it's perfect!!

No the lump in M's bed isn't that it's messy, she's
gone back to sleep!