Last Day in Canada :(

So today is my last day in Ottawa, and I am sad to be leaving. After getting to know Kristen's family, it feels like it has been too fast of a trip. Kristen is now going to be living back home permanently and will not be returning to Edinburgh. So we are now in our long-distance phase of our relationship. It will be very difficult but we will get through it. These last few weeks have been absolutely amazing and I have been taken to so many places. The trip to Niagara was by far one of the best and getting to know Kristen's Uncle Ennio and Grandma was nice. Kristen and I went to Pellar Wine Estates and took a wine tour. We got to taste grapes fresh off of the vine. We tried grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. We were also taken down to the wine cellar to taste different wines. I loved the Cabernet Franc Ice Wine. I wanted to buy a bottle of it but a 375ml bottle cost $90! Very expensive for such a small amount. We took many pictures and they are all uploaded to the photo section. I have uploaded about 400 photos for everyone to look at as well. We went to Niagara Falls and took a ride on the Maid of the Mist. We got so wet and it was so windy in the falls. The water was moving ridiculously fast! Was such a fun time and Kristen's Uncle Ennio is hilarious! My grandpa would get along with him so well.

Kristen's father and I went fishing a few days ago and spent a few hours on the water in his boat. I kept on catching small perch and stupid sunfish! Lou caught almost a dozen bass and kept 3 large ones. We had to bring the boat in early because the engine kept on cutting out. We went home and took the plug off the back of the boat and loads of water came rushing out! We opened the engine door and there must have been a leaky hose because there was so much water in the engine compartment. We had the bass for breakfast the next morning along with eggs, bacon and some other stuff. It was delicious! Kristen and I have been hanging out and making a scrapbook of all our memories. We've got a long way to go before finishing the scrapbook but it looks good so far! Kristen and I made stir-fry for the family yesterday and it turned out very good. Today we are just going to take MacKenzie to the dog park and do a little bit of shopping. I have a 1.15pm bus tomorrow to Montreal and then my flight to Paris, then Paris to Edinburgh. I will be so sad to leave but also excited to start the new school semester. I will be heading back for the Christmas break and Kristen will be coming back as well. I can't wait until Christmas break! Will be such a great time! So many places to show Kristen and so many people for her to get to know.

Well, better get going here. Remember to check the photos that I posted, there are LOTS of them! Hope everyone is doing well and will talk soon!

Canadian Fishing

So today, I experienced my first taste of Canadian fishing. Kristen's dad and I packed up fishing gear and headed down towards the dam to do some fishing. First we stopped by this boat launch and casted into the water for about a half hour. I managed to catch a sunfish and that was about the extent of what Lou and I caught. We then drove to the dam and walked down to the water. Lou caught a couple of small mouth bass and I caught nothing. After that, we basically kept the fish fed. I would cast my line in the water and within seconds, all of the little fish would nibble my worm off! I started using the artificial worm instead because I was getting so sick of losing my worms. We finally decided to go home after the storm clouds started to roll in. We got back to the house and charged the boat and are planning on going after dinner out into the water. Hopefully we will have better luck tonight. Large mouth bass perhaps? Pike? Perch? Anything?! Clouds are still over the house, so may not be able to go out on the water tonight. Only 11 days left here, boo hoo! I am having a lot of fun here and love getting to know Kristen's parents. Hopefully these last 11 days don't go by too fast. I get back to Edinburgh on the 15th and have a week off until classes start up again. Hope everyone is doing well and will talk to you all soon!

Hot and humid day in Ottawa and finally, EXAM RESULTS!!!

So this week has been a blast. I have had such a great time getting to know Kristen's family and really feel as if I have known them for the longest time. We had a barbeque a couple of days ago for Kristen's graduation and there was A LOT of food! Yesterday we had a nice dinner and ate some of the left-overs from the party. We went for a walk with MacKenzie (Kristen's golden retriever) along the Rideau Canal. There was this tunnel on the way down to the waterway that had hundreds of spiders hanging from the ceiling, I was a little nervous walking through the tunnel. They were quite big and fat spiders too. Gave you chills walking through the tunnel! We went down to the dam of the canal and one of the doors of the dam was open quite a bit and the raging water was a site to see! Got lots of pictures and will be posting them today. I've got many pictures, so will be posting all of those as soon as I can. Kristen and I then took MacKenzie to the dog park afterwards and had a great time, but didn't stay too long because it was so hot and humid out. This morning, I woke up and Kristen and I had breakfast. Afterwards, we both decided to check our exam results. I was so nervous checking, so I had Kristen look at the grade for me. I ended up with 52 mark on the exam! Wooohooo! I passed the exam! They must have capped the exam off too because it was such a weird number to have ended up with on the written portion. Kristen says that on a re-sit examination, they usually cap off the mark that you are able to achieve. So I'm assuming that my grade was capped off. Anyway, yay that I passed! Kristen went to check her mark and her results weren't up yet but should be in the next half hour or so. Today we are going to Gatineau Park to go for a hike and then we will go canoeing later on in the day. Should be a lot of fun. I've never canoed before, so hopefully I will not tip the canoe over! If I do, I can guarantee that there will be pictures...

Exam over! Now in the land of maple syrup and poutine!

So the exam is now over and has been over for a little over a week now. Two months of studying sure prepared me for the exam and I was much more prepared than the last time. The first attempt at the exam I had barely studied because I was down in England lambing so had no time to prepare for the exam and I decided to just cram for two days and hope I would do well on the exam. This time I had plenty of time to study. Although I wasn't sure about two of the short answer questions, I managed to answer all other questions and there were two questions that were exactly the same as on previous exams that I had studied. So I was glad for that. I hopefully answered the other questions correctly, or at least get partial points for. Still waiting for results to show up on my university account. I will check on Monday to see, but most likely the grades will not be posted for another week or two knowing how fast the university is at posting grades. Kristen finished her last exam and had it on the same day and same time as I had my exam. We had about a week to do things around Edinburgh and to get her moved out of her flat. It took some time, but we managed to clean and get her all moved out. We spent the last couple of days down at my flat and left on the 25th of August for Canada. We flew into Paris, then into Montreal and then took a bus (that was an hour late, ugh!) and arrived at the Ottawa rail station where I met Kristen's parents for the first time (well, in person for the first time since I have already spoken with them on skype numerous times). I am now in Ottawa at Kristen's house and will be here for 3 weeks. The weather has not been too bad, cloudy and it rained yesterday but the temperature is nice. Not as cold as Edinburgh and definitely not as hot as Arizona! Still have to unpack but will do that later today. Will be doing plenty of site seeing while here and relaxing! Will be nice to have a vacation where I don't have to study! Hope everyone is doing well and will update soon! Sorry for the long delay in posting, but was very busy back in Edinburgh. Talk to you all soon!

Back in the UK!

After 18 hours of travel, I finally made it back to Edinburgh yesterday. I left from Phoenix to Atlanta at 7.15am and arrived into Atlanta's airport after 3 hours of air travel. I was surprised that the airport did not smell of the pungent vomit-smell that I had initially smelled the previous time I was in Atlanta. In Atlanta, I spent the next 4 hours (my layover) studying in Gate E14. Yes, I know, sounds fantabulously exciting, doesn't it? I finally left Atlanta and headed to Paris CDG airport. I began my 9 hour flight at about 5.50pm Atlanta's time. I spent 9 hours of watching movies and sleeping. I did not bother studying because I figured I would either fall asleep or get frustrated with the little room I had to put things. I arrived to Paris after the long flight and proceeded through the security check point to which I was frisked by security twice because I beeped going through the metal detectors. I'm assuming it was my button on my jeans because I had nothing else on me. I then was called back through the metal detector to remove my camera from my backpack. I thought you only had to remove laptops? For some reason, the lady made me remove my digital camera and put it on the belt separately. I had to walk through the metal detector again to get back through and of course, I beeped again. The same guy frisked me again. I was thinking, "Really? This guy just checked me not more than a minute ago and he is checking me again?". I had no problems with it, I just laughed inside. Then a lady had to check my backpack after it went through the machine. Wow, after about 15-20 minutes through security, I was finally able to walk over to my gate. There were so many leaks on the airport ceiling! They had buckets everywhere collecting the water. It was pouring outside too! I sat in the airport and waited for my flight. After 2 hours, I was able to check in and head to the plane. At first, I thought that we were going straight to the plane. However, they put us all on a bus and we drove around the airport for 15 minutes before getting to the plane. I think the plane was on the other end of the airport! Crazy! After 1.5 hours on this flight, I was finally in Edinburgh where Kristen met me at the exit! We were extremely excited to see each other! We got onto the bus and headed to the city center where we had lunch at subway and then Kristen left on a train to go to her university and study. We both have our exams tomorrow at the same exact time. Wish us both luck! Well, I should get back to studying here. Hope everyone is doing well and that the weather is nicer than Edinburgh's!

Back in the US!

So, after a wonderful time in Paris with Kristen and a day in Loch Lomond with Kristen, I am back home. Paris was absolutely amazing. The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, Moulin Rouge, Pantheon, The Opera, Luxembourg Garden, Notre Dame, Arc du Triumphe, Catacombs, etc. We did so much while in Paris, and Paris truly is a romantic place. We had several picnics in the gardens, which consisted of wine, fruit, chocolate, and bread. Was such a relaxing time in Paris. The Eiffel Tower was great and was even more amazing at night when the tower glowed with the thousands of lights that lined it. Aside from the thousands of people that nagged you for money, it was a great experience. The Louvre was amazing and seeing the Mona Lisa and the statue of Venus de Milo. It was so relaxing outside of the Louvre sitting next to the fountains and relaxing. We enjoyed the Louvre so much that we returned two more times after the first visit just to sit by the fountains and relax. However, before reaching the Louvre, we walked through the park for fresh sorbet. I had the best mango sorbet ever! The catacombs were eery and very disturbing. Apparently, in Paris, the cemeteries became full and there was no more room for new burial sites. So, to buffer this, the city exhumed all of the bodies in the cemeteries and moved them below ground in the catacombs. There were literally thousands of bones and skulls all stacked up on top of each other. There are a few photos that I took. The most disgusting part of the whole catacomb visit was that at the end of the 45 min walk, they would check your bags to make sure you didn't steal any bones. How disgusting is that? Why would you want to steal human bones? There were two skulls that the man had already confiscated from other tourists. Down right disgusting is my only comment about that. We went back to the Louvre after the catacombs and relaxed by the beautiful fountains that surround the triangular structure that is the main building.

We walked around a bit more and planned for our last day in Paris for the next day. We figured that we would do some more exploring and see the Pantheon and have a nice meal at a restaurant. We first sat down at this bar and had a beer each and enjoyed the sunshine. Directly across from this bar was a nice little quaint restaurant where we decided to have our nice meal. Since we were in Paris, I felt that I had to try Escargot. I ordered six of them and they came with a garlic-butter sauce, which was very good. However, once is enough for escargot (for me at least). I then had steak with a peppercorn sauce and Kristen had the leg of duck. She had brown onion soup, which we Americans call 'French Onion Soup'. We finished our meal and then decided to finish our romantic day by heading over to the Eiffel Tower and looking at it at night while drinking wine and eating crepes. We had our wine and crepes below the beautifully-lit tower and headed back home around 11pm. We set our alarms for 4am. We woke up at 4am and I happened to look at our receipt and had figured it out that we had an entire day left in Paris. We had it figured all wrong for when we were leaving. Oh well, it was quite exciting that we had an extra day. We ended up going to the Opera (where the original story for the Phantom of the Opera took place) and where several major classical music composers performed (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, etc.). We had delicious baguettes at this little shop that had desserts galore. The baguettes were delicious! It started raining quite hard, so we ate under the cover of a store's little awning and waited until the rain calmed down a bit. We then walked around a bit and went back to the Louvre and relaxed by the fountains one last time. We ended our trip and went back to our hotel and set our alarms for our "real" departure that was the next morning. We have about 1,500 pictures combined from this trip! I will upload some as soon as I can, when I have free time since it takes quite a while to upload photos.

Paris ici nous venir!

Paris here we come (what title says)! I have finally finished all of my exams and am free to start the summer! Edinburgh has provided a MUCH deserved break from the bad weather, as it has been sun and blue sky for a few days now. Yesterday evening and today all day has been rainy and dark. Yesterday Kristen and I took a trip to North Berwick because it was so nice out. We decided to make it a day at the beach. We picked up blueberries and strawberry wine and sat on the beach for a few hours. Was absolutely beautiful out and I managed to regain some of my AZ tan back! Woohoo! So I won't be too white for when I come back home. We leave for Paris on Thursday at 6am and will then have to take a bus to the city center since Ryanair (cheap airliner) is flying us to a smaller airport away from the city. We will be there for five days and will have PLENTY of pictures between the two of us, so you can expect those to show up in the photo albums. I get back on the 15th and then leave for AZ on the 17th. I will have many flights on the 17th to get back home. First I fly from Edinburgh to Paris, then I fly Paris to Atlanta and finally I will fly Atlanta to Phoenix. Should be a fun travel... Hey, it was the cheapest flight I could find.

I've also been following the oil spill and wow, it has gotten way out of control! I cannot believe the devastation that this spill has been causing to the coastline. I would really like to volunteer and go down to help with the animals being affected by the spill. I saw one picture of a bird and it looked like a mud creature, it was so covered with oil. It was an extremely sad picture to see. Maybe deep sea oil wells are a bad idea? You think? Here's my proposed idea, FIND AN ALTERNATIVE TO OIL! I wish, unfortunately we use oil for so many things that, economically, it would not be wise to eliminate oil. Maybe we shouldn't be drilling deep sea oil wells since we don't have the technology for catastrophes such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico currently going on. I was very disappointed and angered when I heard that BP had put forward 50 million GBP (almost 100 million US dollars) in an ad campaign to improve their image in the eyes of the public. Wow, what good did that do? It only angered the public when they found out. Nice going BP... Good news though, apparently they are finally siphoning 10,000 gallons a day from the spewing hole. That's only half of what is coming out of the broken well. At one point, I heard that an idea for a nuclear warhead to be sent to the oil well was proposed. Apparently the Russians have done this 4/5 times and it has successfully worked. Can you imagine exploding a nuclear warhead? What kind of mad idea is that? Especially so close to the coast... There would be such an environmental impact if that idea was implemented. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has failed HORRIBLY to try and resolve this crisis. When the BP oil rig first exploded and several attempts to seal the oil well went awry, Obama did no more than to publicly criticize BP and did little else. Now, failed attempt after failed attempt, Obama is FINALLY getting on BP and has put forward increased manpower to prevent the oil spill from spreading too fast. In my opinion, the Obama Administration has been far too lax in this crisis and Obama's ability to handle a catastrophic environmental disaster such as this is beyond poor. Maybe this will spark an idea in that little head of Obama's to create a special team to handle disasters such as this. For many of those that feel Bush's response to Katrina was bad, Obama's response to this oil crisis far exceed that of Bush's. The federal government authorizes all offshore drilling and it is the responsibility of the federal government to manage any major catastrophe's involving offshore drilling. This is just one of the many reasons that I hope people realize that Obama is not fit for the job as president and is far more concerned with changing Washington than dealing with the problems at hand. Well, that is the extent of my political ranting. Sorry for the long post, but I am truly upset over this oil spill and it churns my stomach every day that I read that the spill has not been contained. Well, hopefully this crisis will be resolved soon, because there is going to be a LONG duration of cleaning the shorelines and clearing the ocean from this disaster, and BP is going to have to take care of all the expenses. For the manpower being put forth by the Obama Administration, I hope BP is planning on reimbursing the US for our efforts to cleanup their mess.

Anyway, time to call it a day. In the following days, I will be planning the Paris trip (touristy things) and organizing my luggage for when I head back to AZ. Hope everyone had a great weekend and have a grand week! Cheers!