Field trip

I went to The Yellow Deli for the first time today. It is definitely a one-of-a-kind restaurant. Mr. Nash took our Literary Journalism class there for a field trip. Emily is doing her project on the Twelve Tribes and the local one, Benyamin, owns The Yellow Deli.

We sat in the very front of the restaurant at a round table with half booth seats and half chairs. Warm sunlight poured in through the front window and splashed across lacquer of the handmade wooden table. A woman with long white hair hanging down to her waist in a limp ponytail passed seven menus around our table. The five who had been to the restaurant before told Mr. Nash and me what was good to eat. Once we made our decisions and closed our menus, a young girl (probably in her late teens) wearing a long skirt made from a piece of cloth covered in a nondescript small pattern, wrote down our orders.

We talked about spring break while we waited for our food, and then Mr. Nash decided to look around the restaurant. Four of us, followed his lead. I noticed the hippie theme as I walked up the spiral stairs to the second floor. A huge mural spanning the length of one wall met me at the top. Hippie colours and sayings intertwined with pictures of Jesus and joyful-looking groups of people. A scene at the front of the mural caught my eye. A small group of people were stepping onto a hippie bus. In white paint, stenciled over the front of the bus were the words: "We know the way. We'll lead you home." More homemade tables and chairs crowded the top floor. On plaques hanging between the tables were portions of scriptures with small illustrations. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard," was just one that I noticed. Near the back was a study area with a brown leather couch and matching easy chairs. A trunk sat as a coffee table in the middle. A perfect study haven. A Twelve Tribes magazine sat nonchalantly on the trunk. Several wooden stairs led to a door to an outside patio. Three tribe members sat at a table talking. The old lady who had given us the menus came outside behind us. They struck up a short conversation with Mr. Nash and the other students. I returned inside, went down a set of stairs at the back of the restaurant and walked around more seating areas back to our table where Emily and Rainey sat and the others slowly trickled back to their spots too.

Soon our food came. As we ate, we continued talking, more about spring break, about our classes, about what we were going to do in the summer and after we graduated. We finished our meals, Mr. Nash got the check and paid. We wandered back outside into the afternoon sunshine, piled into Mr. Nash's Honda Pilot and drove back to Collegedale. Rainey and Chris played the girls' Auto Bingo game. "I thought I would have one car ride with no kids arguing," Mr. Nash commented when they started quibbling about the rules. We listened as Emily gave us more information on her project and the research she has been finding. Rainey asked for advice with her project. We discussed, asked questions, gave suggestions. Then we were back at the school. Just that fast our short trip away from the pressures classes and homework and deadlines was over. It was a nice reprieve and an interesting time. Literary Journalism is absolutely the best class ever.

Space Needle fireworks

I actually got up and going earlier today. My mum and I went out to do some errands in the late morning/early afternoon. We started with dropping by ICBC so I could renew my driver's license. It expires on my birthday next month, but I won't be around to renew it then and I kind of want to still be able to drive throughout this coming semester so I'm glad I remembered to take care of it now. Then we stopped at several other places before finally going to the hospital to visit Auntie Beth for a bit. She is not one bit happy to still be stuck in the hospital (yesterday was two weeks), but her breathing is still quite atrocious. My mum keeps explaining to her that the doctors aren't keeping her in the hospital just for the fun of it, but because they want to make sure she's all better before she goes back home. She seems to understand that while we're around, but by the next time we come in she's wanting to come home again. When my grandma came in to see her this morning, Auntie Beth actually asked her who was keeping her in the hospital, my mum or Sandy (the lady that runs the care home where she lives). Anyway we tried to make her more comfortable and happy, but she seemed to be in a blue mood today and still was when we left.

We stopped at Subway on our way back home and there was the strangest man in line behind us. He must have never been to a Subway before in his life. He kept asking the weirdest questions and then when the lady was going to toast his sub he said, "hey, well I want some fixings on there, too!" She looked surprised, but put on the veggies that he wanted. He also told her he wanted "salad" and the lady didn't understand what he meant until my mum translated "lettuce" to her. Eventually all the "fixings" he asked for were put on and she toasted the sub. The "salad" looked hilarious when the sub was done toasting, but that's what he asked for so I guess he couldn't complain.

(*If you don't care about hockey, skip to the next paragraph. I'm just so excited about what transpired tonight that I have to write it all down.)
When we got home I went to check out what was on TV and saw that the Canucks had just started playing so I sat and ate my sub while watching the game. Things went downhill quickly for them. At one point in the second period they were down 3-0 to the St. Louis Blues, but then they stopped taking bad penalties and started to play like they actually cared about the game and then they scored 4 unanswered goals to win 4-3 in overtime. An hour after that game started, the WJC traditional New Year's Eve game of Team Canada against Team USA started. Right from the opening puck drop I was scared for Canada. The boys looked pretty nervous and kept making bad passes that got intercepted. Team USA also looked faster and seemed to be making smarter decisions with the puck. Canada managed to open the scoring a few minutes into the first period, but the U.S. equalled it back up with a PP goal a couple minutes later. Then in the second period the U.S. got a shorthanded goal (was, I have to admit, was a beauty). I almost gave up on my team right then and there, but they managed to get another one soon after and the score was tied again. Canada was fortunate that the score was still tied after the U.S. had two great chances to widen their lead. One was a penalty shot that was shot wide and another was an open net after a breakaway. Then the U.S. got another shorthanded goal to finish out the period with a 3-2 lead. They got another goal at the start of the third period and after that it was all Canada. Our boys managed to get a goal halfway through the period and then we got a shorthanded goal of our own to tie the game at 4 apiece. With two minutes left in the game, Canada got another goal, but it was called off because of a player in the crease. Regulation time ended with the score still tied up so the game went to overtime. Those five minutes did nothing to solve the game so it went to a shootout. All three of Canada's first shooters got goals and so did USA's first two shooters, but our goaltender stopped the third shooter and we won the game!! The whole building erupted in cheers and Team Canada's bench exploded as players launched themselves onto the goalie. So now the U.S. has to play in the quarterfinals against Finland while the Russians take on Switzerland in the other quarterfinal game. Canada joins Sweden with a bye to the semifinals to take on the winners of those two games. I'll keep you updated.

Right near the end of the game I got a phone call from a GYC attendee, which was awesome. I have to say that I'll be pretty glad to get back to school on Sunday. Break has been nice, especially since we got some snow, but I'm ready to return for my last semester. Now I'm going to go let my mother take pictures of my siblings and me and then maybe we'll play a game while we wait to ring in the New Year. Our family's December 31st tradition is to watch the Seattle Space Needle fireworks, which is amazing. I hope someday I can actually be in Seattle for the celebration and watch the fireworks live. Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

Snowmoboarding

Once again it was a sleeping-in, lazyish morning for me. I read for a bit before finally getting out of bed and getting ready for the day. I went checking my e-mail a little bit after noon and Ty came into my room to tell me that our high school English and French/choir teachers (they're married) had come by to drop off some tithe for my dad and wanted to see us. So I went to talk to them for a bit. It was nice seeing them again and getting all caught up with each other. They were in Alberta for Christmas and said they were quite happy to get back to the milder BC temperatures.

In the afternoon our family and Tyler's friend, Isaac who lives just across the border a couple hours south of us, took our snowmobile and the one my cousin's daughter uses up into the mountains. Then we spent several hours driving up and down the logging roads. For the majority of the time we took turns pulling each other on snowboards/skis which was so much tons of fun! I even tried Bryn's snowboard and it wasn't near as bad as the last time we switched equipment. I just put my snowmobiling boots into her snowboard bindings and it actually worked alright. The only part that was hard for me was steering. I kept edging off toward the left-hand side of the road and once I hit the branches of a tree and broke some off. I fell many times, but by the end I was getting the hang of things a bit better. My second fall of my snowboarding experience I went straight down on my knees so they're a little bruised and sore, but it was too terrible. The snow is pretty thick up there so falling wasn't too painful usually. Ty and Isaac used my dad's snowmobile and Bryn and I used the smaller one. My mum stayed up at the junction between two logging roads were we had parked the truck and trailer and my dad stayed around there for most of the time too, but took a couple rides around on the snowmobiles in between when we went. After both Bryn and I snowboarded behind the snowmobile, we got out my ski boots and skis and tried that. My dad was just moving his snowmobile to get it reset up for Isaac to pull Ty on his snowboard when he drove over the tow rope that Bryn and I had been using. The rope got all caught up and wound around both sides of the snowmobile track and so I ran over to help him. We tried and tried to get the handle back through the track but it was just too long to go around some of the curves. I'm not sure how it got through originally, but finally my dad found a way to undo the handle from the rope and then it was easy to pull back through and untangle the rope from the snowmobile. Then I towed Bryn on the skis and then we switched and she pulled me. That was the most fun part of the whole afternoon. It was just like waterskiing except for colder and not quite so wet. It was so much easier for me to steer on the skis than with the snowboard and I was skiing all over the road just like how waterskiers cross the wake. By the time we turned around to come back it was getting pretty dark so once we got back to the truck we loaded up the snowmobiles, got all our gear into the truck, and headed back into town.

A couple hours later we drove downtown to meet some church friends at The Keg for a supper out. My dad had gift cards for that restaurant from last Christmas and this one from someone at his business so it was nice to be able to share the meal with others. The adults, my parents, one of my dad's salesmen, Arnie, and his wife Lori, sat at one end of the table and the young adults, my siblings and I, Isaac and a guy from Australia that's stay with Arnie and Lori while he works here, Daniel, sat at the other end. We had a great time learning more about each other and, of course, eating. Daniel told us that his dad was a taxidermist and then Ty and I peppered him with questions about taxidermy. I sure learned a lot of stuff I never knew before. Later in our conversation we tried to think of a name for the snowmobiling-snowboarding/skiing that we'd done that afternoon. Ty came up with boardmobiling (which would be skimobiling when skis are used) and Daniel thought up snowmoboarding (or snowmoskiing). I think they're all great, but I think I like how snowmoboarding sounds best.

Now we're home and I'm planning to spend the rest of my evening reading. That is if Bryn doesn't convince me to watch a movie with her and my parents instead. We'll see. Both sound good. Oh, and not to leave hockey out in today's post, feel free to read my Olympics Hockey Roster post on my other blog if you're just dying to find out who will represent Canada in February's Vancouver Olympics.

Team Canada

For pretty much the first time all break I have nothing of much importance to write about. I was basically lazy all day. My friend Julie flew to NYC last night to visit a friend there and then go to GYC so she's gone. Bryn's friend Rachel and her husband are gone to Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland to visit their extended families. I think Nik left back to Alberta with his family today. Stephen, Chris and Jonathon, as far as I know, are at their house two hours south of us and I'm not sure if they'll be back in town during the rest of this break. My friend Jodi and her family are in Spokane visiting her brother and his wife for the holidays. Just after I got back home for the break I wrote to my friend Jodi, who currently lives in Alberta, that she should swing by my house on her way to or from Spokane where her family was visiting her brother and his wife. She wrote back that that would be rather difficult and add a lot of hours to their trip home, which I knew, of course. So I guess I'll just have to try and convince her to come down to visit us at school. Maybe she'll come for our grad. This is sounding like a pity party so I'm going to switch subjects.

I was on the computer pretty much all day. It was pretty nice. For a few hours in the afternoon I went out and settled on the rocking chair in the TV room and watched some World Junior hockey. Team Canada beat Switzerland 6-0 in their second game of the tournament. On the opening day, Boxing Day (the day after Christmas) they beat Latvia 16-0, so they still don't have any goals against. I suspect that could change soon though. They're playing Slovakia tomorrow and then the United States on New Year's Eve. Particularly the game against U.S. could be challenging for them. But I'm going to stay positive and say they can keep up their winning ways. Some notes about today's game: (1) Team Canada wore green sweaters. It was rather shocking to see them in a colour other than red or white. I read somewhere yesterday that the green jerseys were in honour of the Saskatchewan Roughriders, Saskatchewan's CFL team that lost in the Grey Cup (CFL's equivalent to the SuperBowl). Oh, by the way, the World Junior Championships this year are being held in Regina and Saskatoon, SK. I found the idea of the green jerseys rather odd since this is the first time the Team has ever worn any colour other than red or white that I can remember. I wonder why, when the WJC were held in Vancouver in 2005, Team Canada didn't wear orange and black sweaters in honour of the BC Lions, our provinces football team. It's all very strange and very hard to wrap my brain around. Even by the end of the game I would sometimes still think that Team Switzerland was Team Canada because they were wearing white jerseys with red emblems on the front. Hopefully in tomorrow's game they'll be back to their ordinary jerseys and everything will be back to normal. (2) Brandon McMillan got a hat trick in today's game. A hat trick is when one player scores three goals in a single game. (For more intriguing details, click here and scroll down to the hockey entry.) I was happy to see McMillan get the hat trick because they are always nice to see, but what made me proud was that he's a forward for the Rockets, my hometown WHL team. He's the only Rockets' player in the World Juniors this year so I'm sure that tonight all the junior hockey hearts in town are bursting from pride over his achievement. (3) I was disappointed to see the McMillan wasn't given the Player of the Game award at the end of the game. I think getting a hat trick beats out anything else another player does, even if they had good physical play or did a great job of defending. The only player that might supercede a hat trick scorer could be the goalie if he made numerous amazing stops and saved the team. But today our goalie had a relatively easy day with only 15 shots on goal from the Swiss. So I thought it should have gone to McMillan. Plus he's a Sask. boy. Why not give it to him in front of a hometown crowd? I definitely agree with TSN analyst Bob Mackenzie on that one. (4) The Team Canada coach talked in a press conference that I saw a part of tonight when I was watching the evening news. I was highly impressed with his tie, which was Team Canada red with little tiny Team Canada logos subtly spread out over the entire tie in the same red colour. It was classy, but showed pride for our team and our country.

After watching hockey I watched some Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which is a pretty sad, but also uplifting show. There was a marathon so I watched a few. Didn't I already tell you it was a lazy day? Then tonight we went out to eat at Milestone's with a gift card from one of my dad's cabinet installers. Every year he gives our family a gift card to a restaurant so tonight was the night to use it. I hadn't been to the new Milestone's since it's been moved from in the mall to at the edge of the mall parking lot so it was nice to see how they did things up differently. It seems a lot more classy now. I stuffed myself even though Bryn and I shared our penne dish. Somehow, though there was room for gelatto for dessert. It was scrumptious. Then I came home and decided I really had to finish "Harriet the Spy" so I did just that. I can see some similarities between Harriet and myself (more on that here). Anyway, now I can move on to one of the many books I got for Christmas. We'll see how much I can accomplish in the next few days. Wow, for doing nothing and apparently having nothing much to say, I sure said a lot. Allow me to apologize once again.