winter realy is here!

well im back in canada, arrived in calgary on monday morning and OMG what a shocker -25c jeez, iv never felt cold like it. had to spend the day in calgary until i got my bus to fernie at 10pm, was a long cold day but i managed to get some shopping in, got some new snowboard trousers and some thermals. i got back to fernie at 3am, where rob very kindly met me of the bus and helped with my bags, what a nice bloke

from tropical kansas to this!! it was so cold my nose hairs and eyelashes froze up


17th ave, there were quite a few board shops here


the most exciting news since i got back is that i got to go boarding, woop!! we hiked up the hill for about 50mins then boarded down, it was great to get on the slope

me in the car park, jst about to climb a big hill, i cant believe i got as far as i did since im so unbelievably unfit, esp after spending the last 2 months slobbing out eating and drinking far to much


anna managed to hike for about 10mins b4 collapsing, altho she did do realy well and got up and kept going for about another 20mins. she's finaly got to make some good use of that all in one outfit. we managed to hike to the top of those trees straight ahead, doesnt look very far up but believe me it was a killer


this is the rental building where il be working, i went and spoke to the woman there and she said id be able to do about 30 hours, so thats cool. got a big form to fill in and then i start on monday, yikeeeees


on the way back from the resort we fell of the side of the road, oops, easily done with the anount of snow about, dont worry we were going super slow and no one got hurt


the sky looked amazing from the livingroom window


as i sed its VERY cold here


main st in fernie, very different to how it was when i left


last night we went to see the james bond film, not usualy my cup o tea but i realy enjoyed it, think it also helped that it was half price nite so was only $4, next week im gona go see borat hopefuly

so today i went and set up an appointment for a bank account, gota go back tomoro at quarter after 11 (thats how they say it here) i also went and did a big shop so i now have some food to eat, yipeee. then we went to build an igloo but the snow was to powdery so went sledging instead (its ok debbie i know ul be worring after the amount of sledging accidents we had in france but it was fine, im still in one piece)




me being arty again


our house all snowy


well thats it for now, im going to a ladies night on thu so that should be very funny, aparently they have exotic dancers from calagary, very exotic, all the way from the next province, ahahaha. all the girls are gona get pretty drunk before going, hopefuly il get some good photos

kansas city

so you guys must think its xmas or something, 3 blog entries appear overnight while you are all sleeping soundly as if by magic!

so today we went to kansas city on the greyhound bus which took 50 minutes, the same time if took us to get to the bus depot (by bus depot i mean dodgy truck stop-the only type of magazine available was of a dirty variety and i mean ONLY ones available, no bella's or take a break's here) from our house. but on the way we did come across this cool train which you could climb on and go inside, so we did




so we seen a lot of sculptures, art and general culture today, this park was realy cool, it had the cutest sculptures iv ever seen, also had all these shovels all over the park which had words of wisdom on the handles. while appreciating these pieces of art (pretending to dig with them for pitcures) a woman from fox news came over and asked if we were involved in the project, we thought about saying yes just so we could be on the news but we didnt




this was our favourite cute one, it was called "all of my love"


this one had a wee duffle jacket on, bless


think this one was a bit fed up being stuck up such a high chair


"falling in love"


one skipping. the buildings in the background are the plaza which is a big shopping area, they switched on the xmas lights last night, apparently its quite a big event and all the buildings are totaly covered in lights but we didnt hang around till dark to see them


next stop was the kemper museum or contemporary art and design, just after we posed for this picture we read a notice next to the sculpture saying not to touch it and that there are security cameras on it at all times, ooops


outside the museum, we later encountered a real spider, almost the same size!


we think these were manatees frolicking in the grass. we checked and no sign of signs saying not to touch them, how can you not hug them they were so cute


now you all know me and debbie take art VERY seriously and would never make fun of it, lol




one of the main reasons i wanted to go to kansas city was to see these giant shuttlecocks at the nelson-atkins gallery of art, they are huge and realy cool just lying about the lawns of the gallery








so while i walked all the way down to the bottom of the gardens debbie just hung out at the building steps like the rock star she is, lol


here's the spider i was talking about earlier! yuk!


so after all the culture we decided to go to union station, which has shops and stuff where we bought some postcards and choc fudge :) then we went to crown mall and it happened to be the night they switched there xmas lights on so we got to see that and just hung about.

ice creams are so big in america!! lol


this was outside the mall, where the lights went on, they had these water things where kids were running over them and geting soaked


kids and debbie that is


so what if im the only adult playing on the giant woden toys. oh i miss my tractor


my second reason i wanted to go to kansas city was to go to fritz's, this is a restaurant where you phone your order and it gets delivered by model train, how amazing is that!! it was probably the best dining experience of my life

oh did i mention we got free hats, yipeee!!






phillipa phoning in the order


debbie pretending to phone the order, but realy she was to shy


our order arriving


debbies review of fritz's


outside fritz's there was a whole village made of gingerbread, we know it was real cause we could smell it (it wasnt actual size)


so we got the greyhound back at 7.45pm and arrived at the same lovely truck stop that we left from, meaning we had a long walk home, but it did mean we had to pass the shop that sells cider so we are now having some hardcore cider, thats actualy what its called and it tastes great :) woop

hottest thanksgiving since 1970

well summer seems to be back its been so hot all week. on tuesday i went to meet debbie up in the campus for some lunch, then on our way back home since debbie had finished up for thanksgiving break we decided to stop in the pub at the edge of the campus and sit outside with a pitcher of beer since it was so scorchio, the pubs usualy full of frat boys but they seemed to have all went home for the holidays. was so nice and we ended up getting slightly tipsy

sitting outside the crossing, think we were about the only people there


this is the life


since it was nice when we got home we sat outside and had another beer


debbie trying to coax butch into coming back into the house, he wasnt having any of it and hissed at her, she left him alone after that, lol


the problem with afternoon drinking is that inevitably you crash out on the sofa and fall asleep!!

but after we were rested it was off to the pub. phillipa, me and debbie in replay, it has a cool outside bit with heaters, thats where we were sitting


we finished of the evening with some arm wrestling, frida (sweden) against katarina (sweden)


phillipa (scotland) against debbie (scotland)


on wednesday we went to papa kenos for giant pizza slices




the lawrence xmas decorations


one of the guides we picked up at the visitor centre was for a tour of the cemetries, they sounded good so we went and visited one on thursday morning we went and had a look round one of them, yes morbid i know but i like cemetries, not sure why i just like them

a couple pics from the oak hill cemetry




after the cemetry we got back to the house and had some lunch then had to get to work filming debbies film for her class, im the star of the film dontcha know. it involves me longboarding a lot so it was lotsa fun

debbie behind the camera looking like a pro


the lengths she'l go to to get that shot. waiting for me to roll past on the board, either that or someone dropped her out of the sky again, lol


so since it was thanksgiving day and we had nowhere to go debbies friend mara invited us to her parents house for dinner, so we went to the campus to meet phillipa so we could get picked up. the campus was dead since everyone was off home so we took this opertunity to climb on the jay outside the union




our thanksgiving dinner, it was realy nice and we were very thankful to mara's folks for taking in 3 scottish hungry people and feeding them. we rewarded them with some walkers shortbread from the brits shop, we thought they'd like it better than a tin of haggis