It's been a great weekend, and pretty much as exciting as it gets for me here in Edmonton! Friday I had to go return some shoes at West Edmonton mall. I made the mistake of buying footwear online and it turned out to be an annoying headache trying to coordinate the delivery with UPS. I had stayed home all day Wednesday when they were supposed to be delivered, but the call never came. It turns out the driver had forgotten to read the buzz code I had printed on the label and just left without trying. Then they were supposed to come on Friday, I stayed home all day and left post-its in the lobby advising of my buzz code, etc. and the UPS guy didn't buzz up, but somehow got in and came up to my floor! If he knocked, I didn't hear it, I just found another infuriating little brown and yellow UPS note on my door. I stayed home all day Monday, though and they finally came (and the boots didn't fit).

So after returning my too-small boots, I went through every shoe store in the mall looking for another suitable pair (and, yes, it is called the biggest mall in the world). No luck. My problem was I wanted the comfort of Uggs without the overdone-teenage-trendiness of wearing Uggs (no offense to anyone who wears Uggs, but unique footwear is important to me). I really needed boots, so I ended up going to another mall the next morning for the perfect pair in my size. They look something like this:

Anyway, while at West Ed, I decided to walk up to Michaels. I had looked it up on google maps, and it was less than a centimetre! What a nightmare. Trudging through snow (have they heard of sidewalks?) and trying not to slip and break my back. What should have taken five minutes took about 20. I've been meaning to rant about the ice here in Edmonton. I cannot get over it. Walking to school is deathly, and I slip all the time. The sidewalks are pure ice! They sometimes put down little stones but it doesn't really help. I guess that's why I never see anyone over 50 walking outside- it's too dangerous. The roads too get caked with snow and frosted with ice (do you like the cake and frosting reference?) At the end of the walk to Micheals my shins, calves and entire legs were exhausted like I'd been ice skating for hours. Anyway, do you know where I'm going with this? I have been shocked and appalled by this and kept wondering if Albertans are too poor to afford salt or too lazy to put it down or what. Thankfully my roommate, also a displaced Toronto girl, explained that salt doesn't work here because it's too cold (if you're thinking I'm an idiot for not realizing myself, understand that I am the kind of person to be thankful things work the way they do and not ask too many questions).

Anyway, that's one of the reasons I moved out here... to learn about western Canada. I've also discovered it's too cold for maple trees so the fall colours are mostly just yellow. And they don't have rats in the underground train station. This puzzled me for a while, although, as I said, I don't like to ask too many questions, I'm just happy to be in such a rodent and insect free city (they also only have two kinds of birds, which is kind of freaky. I've only ever seen pigeons and black billed magpies:) Anyway, back to the rats. Do you know the story? Rats only ever made it to the border of Alberta in 1950! And Albertans didn't want rats so they set up a border patrol, still in operation today consisting of eight employees, 600 x 70 kilometres and a whole lot of rat poison. So there are really no rats in Edmonton.

Well, it's bedtime due to an important statistics midterm tomorrow night. Therefore you will just have to wait for the Friday night through Sunday portion of my weekend review.

Knit-a-thon

I did quite a bit of knitting last weekend, which I do when I need to relax (it's so therapeutic). Plus it was cold outside and I really wanted a cozy hat and scarf. Mom asked for pictures, so here they are. Above is the scarf. Neat, eh? I didn't have a lot of yarn left, that's why I did the looser knit. It's knit two together, yarn over; but I'm not really sure if it's supposed to look like that? Maybe my idea of yarn over is different from accepted rules?
Here's the hat and scarf combo. I made the hat with earflaps after the last one I made (green) left me with freezing earlobes. I have Carole to thank for the incredibly warm, yet unflattering "blueberry bubble" coat.
And, to match my black coat, I made a purple combo. I had even less yarn left, so you may notice the scarf was crocheted with giant holes in it. It still works. This pic also shows the variegation of the yarn (the blue too, but it's hard to see)

It's been a while

Well, at the request of Mom and Dad, I am going to get back into blogging. Life has fallen into a routine, I guess, and the mundane details hardly seem worthy of a post. But hey, it's something to read. Be forewarned, there may be an unreasonable amount of food-related posts.

To begin, I've returned to the yummy-ness of wedges with sour cream and sweet chili sauce. I know at least Louise, Carole and Jill can appreciate what I mean! I didn't know if I could replicate one of Australia's greatest snack foods, but McCain's spicy wedges, light sour cream and Thai sweet chili sauce work pretty well. If you've never tried it, I highly recommend you run to the grocery store right now.

Here's a visual aid: the real thing at the Easter Show in Sydney.

The Danish Elves

In Sweden and Denmark, Carole and I admired so many of the Christmas decorations. Most of all there was a specific style of elf that reoccurred in ornaments and decor, a company called Maileg. I fell in love with a large advent calendar elf, but they cost about $120 CAD (which is hard to justify, even if I would use it every Christmas for decades to come). So imagine how excited I was when I found the same artisan elf that had been imported and was on Christmas clearance ($30) at an American online store! I was so excited I bought one for Carole for Christmas, too. And Carole had the great idea that our new tradition will be to buy 24 little gifts for each other and send them to each other in November to fill each other's advent elf.

I didn't expect the company to mail them with UPS, though, so I was waiting for them to arrive the slow way. Then yesterday I finally checked my voice messages, and UPS had called on Christmas Eve saying they couldn't deliver, but I could go pick it up. I was very worried they would send them back to the States, but they managed to stop them in the warehouse just in time. Tonight my flatmate Lillian was very generous to drive me to the UPS warehouse (I could never get there on the bus!) It turns out that they had tried to deliver it again and somehow delivered it with another package to a neighbor in my building! He even paid the GST. Then two days later he called back irate, but threatened not to return the package (the UPS woman said he was nasty). I guess they convinced him to let them pick it up again, and if that whole fiasco hadn't happened, I probably would have never gotten my elves. Better yet, I didn't have to pay the GST!

So here are my precious elves... yes, they are five feet tall; that's part of the charm. Each little pocket fits the gift for the 24 days before Christmas.

It's really, really cold

I'm back in Edmonton and dealing with minus 30 degree weather (I don't remember it ever being this cold in Toronto, let alone the average daily temperature!) I'm really grateful I have a few days to adjust back to reality before starting classes on Monday. My vacation was perfect, especially the two weeks joining in on Carole's life in Tarsus. I wanted to put up some pictures on here, but don't worry, they are different from the ones I put up on Facebook!
I spent several days observing Carole's classes. It's always entertaining to mess with students' minds (eventually I was labeled "fake Miss Nickle" and Carole was "our Miss Nickle). The school is very nice, the lunch at the cafeteria was always delicious, and Carole even has a Smartboard! The only downside was the students... they have unbelievable behavior issues. I won't go into detail... you probably wouldn't believe it. I even observed a Turkish teacher's English class to make sure it wasn't just Carole's class, but it was much worse!
When I didn't go to class, I relaxed in Carole's gorgeous apartment with her perfect cat, Charlie. On Christmas morning we decided to dress him up as Saint Lucia for a photo op. Too cute.
Christmas morning we had a brunch with her friends then went to the Haman baths in the afternoon. It was such a memorable Christmas; relaxed and joyful. Christmas Eve was more formal with a potluck at the school director's apartment for all the foreign teachers. We got dressed up for fun and the food was amazing. One of the teachers, Birute, even made a boneless turkey (by removing the bones and carefully reshaping by filling it with stuffing before cooking).
As in any expat community, there were some strange personalities, but for the most part, I really really liked Carole's co-teachers. And the Christmas Eve party had such a family fell, and when we tried to have a gift exchange, the resulting confusion over rules and general chaos reminded me of home! It was even more scandalous, though, because one (attention-seeking) teacher kept stealing gifts from the people who were most attached to their gift, even though she didn't actually want the gift!

Tarsus

Because Carole never thinks to put up pictures of Tarsus, here are some of the ones I took. I didn't know what to expect, but I ended up really enjoying Tarsus. The only foreigners are the teachers at the American College, and I was most definitely the only tourist in Tarsus. Here is Saint Paul's well. And it's generally accepted that this is the actual well that he would have used.
Tarsus is definitely the birthplace of St. Paul and the place where Cleopatra met Mark Anthony, but I'm more skeptical about it being the final resting place of Daniel. I checked online and there are at least seven other contenders. We went to look nonetheless, at the excavated tomb under what used to be a mosque. It's very rough around the edges as you can see from the picture- they had to stop because of lack of funding.
And here are some snaps of Tarsus life... just to give you a visual.

Europe

A couple more of my favourite pictures. Copenhagen above.
St. Lucia choir
Christmas table at an museum full of traditional Swedish homes.
Tivoli gardens in Copenhagen
I enjoy this picture. Carole snapped it before I was ready, but I think I just look puzzled by the dazzling artwork!