A Week From Today...

On this day next week, I will be heading down to Vancouver to fly out of the country!
I'm getting a fluttery feeling in my stomach just thinking about it!!!
When did I get so adventurous? I don't remember ever being anything but a homebody...and suddenly I'm spending six months on some hippy island, and then the next 8 months on an island across the world!
I got an email from the pastor last night to let me know that I will be picked up from the Belfast airport by his extended family, and that I can stay with them until I meet up with the youth group on Friday. That is a HUGE blessing because I was really quite nervous about having to find my way around after a how-many-hours??-flight and then being completely on my own for a couple days. I mean, I'm sure I could have done it...but it was just one more thing to stress about.
And now I don't have to! Hooray!
I am looking into getting my travel/medical insurance today...I still need a decent raincoat that is not outrageously expensive, and I'm waiting for an email from the SWIM (Servants Working In Missions- part of the organization that brings in the volunteers for the churches) lady regarding my visa. Those are the most important things that need to be attended to before I leave.
There are still all the little things too...but everything is coming together, which really has very little to do with my planning skills, and everything to do with God not letting my ineptitude get in the way of His plans :)

Counting down...

So now the countdown has begun and I'm starting to stress...a little...
I had a big shopping list today (it is my "Saturday" today) and big ambitions to get it all done...
But nothing seemed to go right (ie: the stores didn't have the things I needed, and things are so darn expensive!), and I only got a few things done, and I still don't have a raincoat, and I still need to get so much random paperwork stuff done, and I don't know if everything I need to bring will weigh over 20 kg, and I have no clothes (ok that's a lie...but you know what I mean! I'm a terribly vain little beastie, and I like to have new things...or at least nice things...) and....I'm stressed about $$. Which is what most of it comes down to.
Its terribly selfish and "un-trusting"...I know.

Booked!

I just booked my flight!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
I can hardly believe this is happening after talking about it for SO LONG!
WOW.
Ok....just breathe....breathe....
Whew.
Ok...
I'm good...
Ok.
Yeah.
I'm flying out of Vancouver at 10PM on Monday (the 22) and will arrive in Ireland at 2:45 PM (their time) Tuesday.
I'm hanging out in Northern Ireland for a couple days until the 26...then I will meet up with the Youth Group and head out to Coleraine for the youth rally.
So...yeah....this is it!
I am actually going!!!
This is SO weird!

Its Happening!....Slowly....

First of all I'd like to say that I am failing miserably at my self-imposed internet restrictions. Just wanted to have that out...you know...I wanted to say it before one of you did. But I AM getting stuff done...
Listen to this...it is kind of cool...on two separate occasions yesterday two different people (yes Dad, one was you) suggested that I look at Zoom airlines for my fight. I was going to look there anyway, having been referred there by my seasoned traveler friend Sarah from camp, but it was kind of neat to have it "coincidentally" brought up. Because...when I searched for flights from Vancouver to Belfast for this month, one came up on the 22nd for only $250+tax!!! Crazy, eh??
I think it is destiny :P
I emailed the pastor in Fermoy and he responded right away saying that that timing would be ideal. There is a big youth rally right up there in Northern Ireland that next weekend that the youth group will be coming up for. SO...I won't have to find my way to Cork all by myself, I will get to meet all of them and we will be staying in a big house in North Antrim...which I REALLY wanted to see, but didn't think I'd ever get an opportunity to.
What a HUGE blessing and answer to prayer(s)!!!
God is far too nice to me.

Maybe I will get to see the Giant's Causeway!

Girls' Night!!!

The Bath Bombs that Wouldn't Be

Last night us girls from the C&C had a Girl's Only night ...and it was SO MUCH FUN! Seriously, it is totally different when the females are all alone! I'm pretty sure we giggled ourselves silly over the littlest things. There would be an explosion of laughter followed by a small siiiiiigh ("Good times...")....and then I would start laughing again and everyone wouldn't be able to help themselves....it was a vicious cycle! By the end of the night our cheeks were hurting from laughing so much. Carissa showed us some expert cheek stretches, which basically makes you look like a fish...
Yeah it was a good time!
We started off by making Spa Bath Cookies...recipe shown below.
I showed off my baking expertise by immediately confusing the teaspoon and tablespoon.

The first time we mixed it, it was too crumbly to mold, so we added another egg.
Which might perhaps have been the biggest mistake ever.

But the extra egg made it stickier, that's for sure.

Seija put them in for 10 minutes, while we did our Bible study.

This is probably my favorite picture of all time!!!!
Carissa was smelling them.
They did smell more like cookies than bath bombs...

And they were awfully hard to get off the pans...

In the end, they didn't fizzle in water like they were supposed to....BUT....they did provide many a belly laugh, so it was all worth it in the end! We even almost got Dave to eat one when he got home, but when he reached for it the room went quiet and we all stared (hopefully), and I think that probably tipped him off....
Too bad!
Maybe Dana succeeded in getting Kurtus to eat some....
heh heh heh....

Complete

I've been journaling since I was like...six. But I think this is my favorite journal (center picture behind the cat cartoon). It started out as a regular coil-bound book from superstore, probably $5...but it was transformed into the patchwork of pictures that you see above, by me(click on the picture to see the random stuff better). In the last year I have grabbed scraps and bits of paper that made me laugh, I thought were cool, or had something to do with my life.
Among these random things are an Mac sticker from my iPod, the Chinese character for Dragon (my year), a licorice spice tea bag (its my favorite tea), a Mars bar wrapper (My favorite chocolate bar), the Irish flag, my favorite cartoon of all time, and a Billabong tag because I thought that promoting name brands was cool at the time, and now I realize that it is just lame. Anyway, this is a tribute to that book, because it is complete now, with no more pages to hold my over-abundance of thoughts. I must move on to a different book now, which makes me kind of sad...

So True

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!
(Translation: No blogs til Monday at the soonest)

Addicted to Wasting Time?

At work I have a lot of time to waste.
Its usually pretty slow, so I read, write, think...
And at home I have few responsibilities, and when I DO go to work, its usually for a max of 6 hr shifts sooo...there is a lot of time to be had.
And I've been wasting it.
Mostly on the computer.Email, Blogs, Facebook...mostly computer stuff. (Ok, maybe I don't consider all that stuff a waste of time....but I don't need to check them all every five minutes...THAT is a waste of time!)
I was thinking about it at work today...and I've decided that I've gotta cut back on the computer stuff and attempt at being productive. I can be SO bad with time management.
So for now I am limiting myself to 2 hrs on the computer a day. I'm not really sure how much time I do spend on the computer, so I'm going to see how hard/easy this will be. Maybe eventually I will trim it down to 1 hr. But for now: 1 hr in the morning, and 1 at night.
Let's see how it goes, and how much I get done because of this!

Why I Never Wear White

My hand-mouth coordination sucks big time.
Especially when it comes to chips and salsa.

The Strathmore Trip

Matt & Alicia's wedding was beautiful! My cousin Matt has always been such a quality guy; strong in his faith, mature, and really, really fun! I had never met Alicia until this weekend, but she seems like such an awesome girl I am excited to get to know her more in the family reunions to come! The two of them looked SO happy to be together, it was really sweet.

I don't know if you caught what the pastor said there....I actually video'ed it by accident. I thought I was taking a picture! haha...anyway, the pastor started off the ceremony by quoting the Impressive Clergyman in "The Princess Bride" ...which I thought was HILARIOUS! The whole wedding had a good sense of humor about it which I enjoyed.

I snapped this on the way up to Alberta.....mom falling asleep at the wheel?? (Sorry Mom, I couldn't resist putting this up)

It was raining hard when we left, and when we reached higher altitudes, it began to snow! CRAZY!

The hotel we were staying at turned out to be right next door to The Station- where my friend Angela from camp works! We surprised her...unfortunately it was Friday night and she was too busy to talk much. Luckily we managed to snap some shots of her to use as blackmail heh heh heh! What will Irwin say!

Mountain Goat things on the side of the road.

Lake Louise! So beautiful!

I didn't end up taking nearly as many pictures as I wanted to, and some of them didn't turn out...which I think had more to do with me being inept with the settings, than it had to do with the camera itself....hopefully I have more luck in Ireland!

Updates, Updates...

1. Mike and I zipped up to Vernon yesterday around 2:30 PM, picked up Katie at her work around 4 PM and then spent some good times over at her parent's place. We met her family (really cool people!) and toured the sweet acreage and house (built in the 1930's *sigh*), not to mention got assaulted by their ridiculous pug dogs, Molly and BooBoo. It was a real treat.
We spent the night, and left early this morning. I ate a Tim Horton's bacon breakfast sandwich on a cinnamon rasin bagel for the first time in over six months!!! (when I worked there I ate them a lot...it was very strange eating one again)

2. My passport arrived today!
...
I got really nervous all of a sudden.

3. I got my hair cut! It was in desperate need of pruning. It had become an overwhelming mass over the summer, but since it was up all the time I didn't notice until I got home. I got SO MUCH chopped off, it looks much more under-control now.

4. We are leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for Strathmore! We're gonna go see good cousin Matt get hitched on Saturday! It will be fun to see all the family again, but I'm not looking forward to the drive! I'm not sure what time we get home on Sunday...

Anyway, that's all my updates at the moment.

More Exciting News!

Aw, isn't it cute???
This is my baby: Sony Cybershot DSC- H3.
I picked him up from Staples this afternoon. He was so happy to come home for the first time.
I'm very proud of him. He has 8.1 MP, 10X Optical zoom, and lots of very exciting features.
I feel confident he was the right choice for me, and when we venture to Ireland together he won't let me down.
And you, my friends, will benefit as well, because the essence of that wondrous place will be captured more accurately and PJ will be happy to show off the fruits of my labor. Assuming I get internet access there.

In other news...its off with the old, on with the new I'm afraid.
Good ol' Pentax Optio (who took the picture above) is on the market now. Optio is happy to forward the funds he raises to my Ireland trip, so if you're interested in a nice, basic camera let me know :)
He's going for a very reasonable price!

Surprise!

My brother Mike made a surprise appearance Sunday night! Paul and I had just got home from C&C and suddenly there he was! Its been great having him "home" (is that a correct use-age of quotation marks?? Now I always question it...thanks a lot Ryan!).
Last night we watched the last few episodes of "the Office" (season 2) together which was so fun because.
1. The Office is hilarious!
2. Its sooo much funnier if you are watching it with someone else who finds it just as funny!
And tomorrow we are planning on taking a little trip up to Vernon...because....well Vernon has such a charm around this time of year....heh heh heh....

(To Be Continued...)

Preemptive Eating?

They say you should only eat if you are hungry.
Ok, so let's say you are not hungry at supper time so you don't eat supper.
Then at let's say....8 PM you get hungry so you eat.
Does that really make any difference to your body?
If you ate at dinner time with everyone else wouldn't that be a "preemptive" meal, and therefore you wouldn't be hungry at 8 PM? Is it better to eat at regular intervals even if you're not hungry, if you know you will be hungry later anyway?
Its the same amount of food, but you just consume it when your body is in a different state of hunger. Doesn't it all even out in the end?
Is this a dumb question?

My Brain Hurts

Math was NEVER my favorite subject in school. In fact it is safe to declare that is was my LEAST favorite subject of all time. My mom would let me skip one subject on my birthday and every year it was math. She didn't even have to ask.
Somehow my brain refuses to understand numbers and logical math concepts. In fact logic of any kind is hard for me to absorb. I don't know why.
Today at work was the first time I had to close up alone.
Which means I had to count the till....alone.
It wasn't fun.
I don't like numbers.

New Job

I started my new job today!
Admittedly I was only there for about 4 1/2 hours...but still, it has begun.
I'm working at a little cafeteria inside the Convergy's call center called "K's Korner". They have prepackaged sandwhiches, subs, samosas, quiches, and lots of baking. And soups. And coffees of course.
I learned how to operate the non-Tim Horton's till and did some inventory and cleaning. It was very slow today, but my manager Sharon says that it will be a lot busier on weekdays, which will be good. When its busy your shift always flies by so much faster!
So this is how I will fill my days until I leave for Ireland. It will be nice to keep busy, that's for sure.

Operation: Passport

Thursday afternoon: Mom and I head down the Coquihalla hwy in the ultra hot blue Toyota Rav-4.
Destination: Passport Canada office, Surrey.

Its a long story. See, my passport is good for another year, and since I plan to only be in Ireland for 8 months that should be fine, right?
Apparently not.
I'm going with a program called SWAP (Students Working Abroad Program) and in order for them to get me a working Visa for Ireland, I need to have at least 18 months left on my passport. Grrr.
So I need to get a whole new passport before I can go! And if you go through the regular route of sending it away, it will take until January before you get it back!
I can't wait that long!
So Mumsy kindly offered to go with me to Surrey and drop off my application directly at the Passport Canada office. This means that IF we get in, I will get my passport back in up to 4 weeks.
So there we were.
7:30 AM, shivering outside the office building that opens at 8 AM.
We were the second people in line by minutes. The lineup behind us grew steadily.
Finally the doors were opened and about the first 9 or 10 of us were herded into an elevator which was activated by the guard's key. Apparently if he wasn't able to control the elevator there would be a mad rush?
We all nervously shuffled around and a few eagerly stumbled out when we stopped on the wrong floors.
When we arrive on floor 9, we were in line again. It wasn't long before we were called up, quickly diagnosed as a "complicated" case (because my passport still had a year before it expired) and sent to sit down, carrying a little tab with 'D 713' printed on it in blue ink.
Then we waited, alongside a hundred other people, for the screen hanging from the ceiling to flash our number.
'D 705' was up there FOREVER. I thought I was going to scream.
By this time I was tired (hadn't slept), stressed (I don't like beeping offices, guards in uniform, or the possibility that this whole trip could be a waste of time if there is too much glare on my picture, or something stupid like that), and hungry. This equals a shaky Jill.
I nibbled at my granola bar and felt a little better.
When the screen had reached about 'D 710' one of the guys in uniform started telling everyone about a 'faster' way to get your passport if you weren't such-and-such, and you were such-and-such. Just follow him over here and you could be done in 20 minutes.
I was keeping one eyeball on him and one eyeball on the screen that was now flashing 'D 711'. Should I wait or go?
Mom and I got up and asked him a few questions...seemed like we fit the criteria.
'D 712'
Just as we were about to follow him out of the room...
"Bing Bing" D 713!
"We're up mom!"
That decided for us.
We were done in 10 minutes. The lady didn't think our case was so complicated after all.
So now hopefully I will have my new and improved passport in my hands in 3-4 weeks.
Hurrah!

Made Me Laugh

So I was looking around the Internet for some fun t shirts (since I can't find any in the mall grumble grumble) and when I was browsing through one site I saw "Christian" as one category.
And I thought to myself, what would a funny Christian T-shirt look like? Would they all be really lame or cutesy?
Admittedly, some/most of them were...
But there were a few that made me laugh! Check them out...







I think those last three were my favorite!
ps. please don't be offended...its all in good fun!

I'm All Alone...There's No One Here Beside Meee!

I discovered something new about myself these past few days.
I don't like being alone!
Maybe that doesn't seem weird to you, but I always thought I was someone who liked, or at least could handle, being alone.
And I can enjoy being alone...as long as I'm not completely and irreversibly alone! I like knowing that if I so choose, I can stop being alone and go talk/see/hang out with someone.
Camp was nice because I could creep off to my house and be "alone", but there was always some activity going on if I wanted to stop my solitary ways. But with my mom and little brother gone camping these last few days, and myself being somewhat car-less, I was kind of stuck at home with the cat. And I thought I would go crazy!
I had to turn up my music really loud so that it wasn't so eerily quiet, and I read a whole book (which turned out to be fairly depressing...just the pick-me-up I needed), and a I played a whole lot of piano. Yesterday I 'stole' Paul's car and went shopping...by myself...which was not fun at all.
I was not meant to be alone!
Which brings me to my fears of traveling alone...