Wrapping Up 2007

So I was just sitting here and Richard (my roommate) logged onto my blog and noticed I haven't been on here since May!!  So here is a quick update.  I worked all summer in Grande Prairie while doing summer school and then had Jonas over a visit to Canada in the middle of August.  We had a great trip down to Calgary and drove through some great terrain.  

Of course we returned to Las Vegas at the end of August and began school right on time. The semester went well and my final GPA was a 3.85.  I am pretty happy with that (even though I was looking for a 4.0) and since I am graduating in may I am looking for all the good grades I can get. 

So now it is Christmas break and I have just returned from Sweden where Jonas and I spent Christmas.  It was an amazing trip and I wish I could have had longer to be there.  We were there for a total of 10 days but it seemed like much less.  Jonas' parents spoiled me on Christmas and made me feel so comfortable throughout the entire trip.  I could hardly believe the treatment I got while I was there.  I missed my family a lot though and I called as much as I could with the time change and stuff.  Since Christmas in Sweden is celebrated on the 24th I called my family and had a good chat on the 25th.  

So now tomorrow is my 23rd birthday and I am pretty stoked.  One great gift I am getting is Julia Dutove (a friend from GP) is coming to spend my birthday with me and hang out in Vegas until the 4th.  I am so excited for her to be here and hang out with me because right now I am living with 4 boys.  Jonas and I moved in together this year, I am living with Richard again this year, but for Christmas break we took in two freshman that got kicked out for christmas.  The apartment will be full but I will love her being here with me.

Anyways, I will try and stay more updated and definitely more frequently.

-Norah

Summer School and Going Home

Hello all! So I am halfway through summer session I and I had my midterm today. The class itself is alright but the test didn't go so well. The class is radiology and because its compacted into 3 weeks instead of 3 months I have to learn about 60 medical terms a day and the midterm was 7 classes later...you do the math. Thats a lot of terms to know. Anyways I am hoping to get an A in that class and that will help my GPA stay high. Also a little update in my education field, I am now a psychology minor. I had a dream about a month ago and I dreamt that I graduated with a psychology minor because I had so much extra time in my last year of school here. That extra time part seemed to be true enough and because of two classes not being offered in the Fall I was going to be taking more elective than core courses to help me graduate. So I figure instead of wasting my time in random classes, I could put those classes into a minor! So I am really happy now but also stressed. I am also taking two summer classes online in session II (June 4th to July 6th) that will be some work. I know if I need any help from my extremely smart family that you'll be there to help me out.

So, from my request, Mama has been very nice to organize a family BBQ for June 3rd because I really miss the family and I want to be able to have a for sure get-together sometime this summer. I would love it if you guys could come even for just an appearance! I miss you all so much lately because I have been gone for so long and now I just want some family time.

Anyways I believe that I'll have a few weekends off so that if there are anymore of these arranged I can make them! I am really excited for this summer and looking forward to seeing you all!

Second Year in Vegas Wrapping Up

So I have decided to stake a study break while I am in the library to write a small blog to clear my mind. It's finals again so I am in the library studying and cramming lots of information in my head. I am excited to be done this year because it means that I only have one more left! I will be graduating in the Fall but really I could be graduating in December if my school had been offering two classes I need...but they aren't so I have to wait one more semester. But thats okay because my scholarship take me that far anyways. So I have been contimplating what I am going to be doing when I graduate. There are some ideas but none that are solid and final. I have a lot of paths I can take and none seem to be perfect for me just yet. Thats alright I am sure I'll pick something soon enough.

So besides school I have had other things happening as well. Well since I have been officially done swimming I have been semi-training by myself just because I missed it so much. *I thought you were supposed to never want to get back in!!* Anyways I had a great opportunity presented to me a while back and thanks to my loving Mother, I was able to hook up with my home town Canadaian Club Team and go to Maui!! I had such a great time! I got to go to a Luau, Aquarium, snorkling (kinda), and learned how to surf!!! It was the greatest time and I trained hard.

Anyways I just wanted to drop a little note and let you know what I was doing. I will hopefully put in an entry soon!

Late Update

Alright well I totally forgot that I had this blog and I haven't made an entry in a while! So I will quickly give you a run by on the last year of my life.
So after school was finished I went back to GP and worked for the summer. I had 2 jobs that kept me insanely busy but I made it and as a reward towards the end of the summer I flew for the first time to Europe and visited Jonas. I got to spend about 2 weeks there with him travelling around Sweden and Jonas also brought me to Paris and so we were there for 4 days. After that amazing trip it was time to go back to school here in Vegas. This would be the beginning of my final year of swimming. The season didn't go amazing but I did have a lot of fun. We got to travel a lot and for Christmas Training camp were went to Florida. After that second semester began and time seemed to flew. Two months later was Conference and my Mum flew to Oklahoma to see me swim my final swim meet ever. Things have been going smoothly since but the lack of swimming has made me re-think my options in life. I may keep swimming for leisure or I could start running. Running isn't is my favorite thing to do but I could learn to love it. Anyways, I will be returning home again this summer to GP and will be coaching and maybe something else. I will begin my final year of school in August and after that I will be graduating. I have semi-decided on going to Grad School but the biggest decision is where. There still is no solid plan on where I will be going after I graduate or what I'll be doing. There are lots of different plans in the works so things are complicated. So this is my year up-to-date and hopefully I have included everything.

Christmas 2006

So I am sitting in my living room next to my tree while my mama and Dad are cooking supper in the kitchen. My sister is once again absent this Christmas because her and Kenton (her husband) went to Vancouver for his family reunion/anniversary for his Grandparents. We phoned them this morning to wish them a Merry Christmas. We then headed over to my Auntie Marg's and Uncle Don's where we eat Christmas breakfast. Everyone was there too, auntie Trish and Cal along with Little Cal and his girlfriend, Mama my Dad and Auntie Barb, Uncle Bill Auntie Janice ant the three kids, and even my Auntie Susan flew down for a surprise visit! Tonight we are all gathering here for supper and games. I bought "Scene it?" for my parents which we will break out and of course we are going to play Charades and make asses of ourselves. I have been happy to be home even though nothing ever goes right all the time. Families make you crazy but I would never trade them for anyone else. Many Christmas' are never perfect, the black sheep family member who we handle with kiddie gloves, the burnt food we pretend to enjoy on behalf of the chef, and the fights we ignore because we don't want to wreck anyone else's mood. They are never good situations but where else would you want to be? So enjoy your days if you're home for a short time and appreciate the craziness that goes along with it.

Never too late to try

So yesterday I finally made a decision to finally go snowboarding. I have grown up in Northern Alberta my entire life and I have yet to ever go skiing or snowboarding. I'd like to blame the adults in my life and the path I chose to take. I have been swimming more than half my life and due to that I have never been able to do anything that could risk me getting hurt. I only have a few months left in my collegiate career of swimming and I decided to go for it. So I asked my friend Julia to go with me and teach me. She was probably the best person to go with because she had only gone twice in her life and so she knew what to do but wouldn't leave me in snowbanks. So we arrived at the hill at 12:50 pm and we had practice at 4 so we figured we had tons of time! When we went to purchase our lift-ticket the lady at the front desk informed us that the hill closed at 2pm. We decided to still go and give it a try. The hill, Nitehawk, is not anywhere near a good hill. The snow is hard and frozen, the people are mean and it's apparently small (not to a beginner though!). So on my very first attempt I actually went quite a ways but I got scared at the speed I was gaining that I fell hard just out of fear. Julia told me that the bunny hill was not a good place to learn because you have to walk up every time you make it down so that was out of the question. I instead had to learn on the real hill...but taking Easy Street. Easy Street took me 40 minutes to get down my very first time. I think I fell over 20 times, got stuck and helped out by others twice and almost cried from pain once. Finally the last turn was there and the chair lift was in sight. I was so happy that I took off for the lift and got caught up with pros swerving around me because I fell smack in the middle of where all the runs merge...I thought I was going to die. Julia saved me and then the next challenge was upon me....the chair lift. I was not impressed with the whole system and I held Julia's hand when the chair came swinging around the turn and swept me off the ground. Once I was on I learned to hold my board so my ankle didn't get twisted. Then Julia dropped the bomb on me and told me the getting on was the easy part it was the getting off that was the hardest!! I got so nervous as the top approached that I started to panic that the chair would hit me and then the following passengers would run me over. Julia assured me that the operators were watching and would stop the lift if we got in trouble...the girl was not watching. As we went to get off we braced each other and attempted the dismount. We biffed hard and were laughing so hard that we couldn't get out of the way. Luckily there were two empty chairs following us that we managed to get out of the way before they came. At that time it was 1:40!! Since it took us so long to go down once we were worried we wouldn't make a second...but we said screw it and went for it. I decided to try my best not to fall as much as I could. I only fell 3 times and we made it in 15 minutes!! I was so proud of myself! The board I borrowed was from a friend of Julia's and so the bindings were not adjusted to me so I still am not sure what I prefer. I had the shoving test done on me and I was told I was goofy. That's right foot forward? I have no idea but the board kept wanting me to go left forward and so I kept switching depending on which way I wanted to go...so this may not have been the best way to learn but I have to say: I didn't want to learn any way else and with no other person. Today I can't move anything without feeling pain. My ass hurts form falling on it too much and my legs felt like I had been doing wall-sits for two hours. I have no idea why everything else is sore...probably from tensing the whole time. So that was most of my experience...I left out that I got heckled, called a loser and lost all of my dignity. But there is no other way to learn and Julia didn't care either so I was happy.

Deja Vu

Here is my attempt to vent and understand why I always do this.

History has a way of repeating itself in life, or so I have now learned first hand just recently. Things have a way of coming back to you again to test if you remember how to deal with a certain situation. Maybe this is an attempt to give you a second chance to redeem mistakes you’ve made; maybe it’s to give you another chance to react in the appropriate manner. Regardless the reasons, history seems to be stuck on replay with some situations. In my relationship-past I have been burnt and it didn’t feel good. I assumed that you get burnt and then you look back to see the signs that you missed and you learn from that. You passed the test and now you are a better person because of it. Then why does it seem, no matter how much you read the signs and prepare for the worst, when you get burned again it seems to hurt even more?

Betrayal seems to be a very common issue in peoples lives. You can be deceived in so many ways by so many people. Deception happens very regularly for many people, but it is the ones that are closest to you that really seem to do it best. My reaction of my most unwelcome news was not the greatest but seemed all too familiar. When you are told a lie, what do you do? Is it possible to forgive and forget? Forgiving and forgetting are two very different things, yet the cute saying seems to fit so nicely that the goal seems to be having a need to be met.

My entry here is more of an angry complaint of why we are told these expressions and sayings about life and if we follow them closely we should be stay out of harms way. Don’t put the cart before the horse; Separate the sheep from the goats; Kicking the dead horse. No matter how many times you hear these sayings, you never will learn. You go into situations blind no matter how wide open your eyes are. Love is deceiving, and painful. You get kicked when your down but you always come back for more. Why do we put up with it? Why do we submit and sign up for torture like this? Because when you finally hit the sweet moments, all the bad ones melt away.