where the foothills meet the prairies: Staying in? Not a chance!

Okay, so yes, I have a lot of work to do, but like a true trooper I have been doing my work and finding time to do fun stuff too! Who would have thought that you could do both?! As it's been such a busy week you're going to get a day by day account of my life, I'm sure you'll enjoy it highly!

Sunday - Woke up early on Sunday morning to go and take photos in the snow with Hannah, Fay and Julia. It was absolutely stunning, even if rather cold! But well worth the effort of waking up early! Then Jess drove me to church which was also great. Did some work before curling up with Steph and Claire to watch Miracle on 34th Street, beautiful day!

Monday - Now we all remember that on the plane over here me and Steph sat next to a lovely person called Kate? Well the 8 hour flight with us obviously didn't scare her too much and so we've been out lots since getting here (think they've all been mentioned in previous blogs!) The exciting thing is that even though Kate is a vegetarian, she works for Alberta Beef. For those people who don't know, Alberta is like the beef province, and Calgary is like the beef capital of Canada. And I love beef. So when Kate invited me and Steph to go along to a free buffet dinner of course we said yes (after some brief questions as to whether she really wanted her work colleagues to meet us!) We got dressed up business-casual and got a cab to the Sheraton Cavalier hotel. Once there and with a glass of free wine in our hands we met a lot of Kate's colleagues who were all lovely, and also met quite a few cowboys (very exciting!) The food was absolutely amazing, the beef was cooked in the style of four different countries - there was a carvery for Canada, fajitas for Mexico, some amazing thing for Korea and then beef pie for England. Although the fact the gravy was separate to the pie made it a little less British, like all the rest of the food it was amazing! Already feeling rather stuffed after all of that food there was then the joy of an ice cream sundae station for dessert! AMAZING! All in all it was a lovely night and I still felt full the next day which is always good!

Tuesday - Me and Claire went to see Silver Linings Playbook on Tuesday, honestly I recommend you all go and see it, I would happily see it again and again. Firstly Bradley Cooper is just amazing, and even though he is in a binbag for the majority of the film he still looks fantastic, and then Jennifer Lawrence is just perfect in this role. I could not recommend this highly enough. Then as it was Fay's last night here this semester we all went over to hers and made Christmas decorations (with varying levels of success it has t be admitted!) but now all our rooms look at least semi-festive which is lovely!

Wednesday - This week seemed to be the week for putting in extra effort to my appearance as to celebrate Fliss' 21st birthday we headed to River Cafe, a posh restaurant on Prince Edward Island (a small island in the Bow River which runs through Calgary). While the walk there from the C-train was absolutely freezing there were lots of gorgeous Christmas lights outside which made up for it. The food was amazing; after the slight disaster when five of us had ordered duck and they only had two ducks left, we all managed to get some delicious food. I had a steak and it even came with yorkshire puddings! How homely! For dessert I shared an apple upside down cake with Tilda which filled me up nicely. After deciding it was too cold to get the C-train home we piled into a taxi instead, much warmer!

Thursday - As this was Fliss' actual birthday, after bible study I went home and got ready to head out to the Den. We got to skip the queue which was good (even though for once the queue wasn't too long) . As we danced the night away (getting very amused with Tilda's ghetto moves and open mouthed faces) we kept checking the time until at midnight we could finally say happy birthday to Lucy! I headed home not long after that, knowing I had a lot of work to do and unfortunately after I left it seemed a thief went on a bit of a spree and 11 people got their phones and/or wallets stolen. Even Anna's cheapy flip phone went to the thief, much to the security's amusement. Losses aside everyone had a great night though!

Friday - So now for big Luce's birthday celebrations! While original plans had been to have a few drinks on 17th a few sore heads put paid to that idea so we headed up the Calgary Tower. The views were amazing and watching Steph and Lucy freak out over the height was equally beautiful. After multiple photos including a 'family' photo we headed down to the outdoor ice rink we'd noticed. None of us had skates but it was beautifully lit up and felt kind of film like. Gorgeous! Then we got the c-train home before curling up and watching Love Actually.

Saturday - Did you honestly think that I would have burnt out after 5 days of doing things? No, not me! On Saturday Lucy, Fliss, Tilda, Julia and me went to watch the Calgary Hitmen vs the Edmonton Oil Kings. Now firstly can I just state that while Edmonton is technically the capital of Alberta, everyone knows that Calgary should be as it's a much better city. So yes, there is quite a bit of rivalry. We were all given a box of macaroni and cheese to shake for 'Shake up the Stadium' and then to donate afterwards for the Food Bank Drive which is really nice (kudos to the Co-op for providing 10,000 boxes!) I have a wee bit of a crush on Spencer Humphries (one of the Hitmen) so of course was cheering him on loudly! Unfortunately by the end of the first period we were 2-0 down. The second period stayed the same. Things were looking pretty dire, especially when with 10 minutes to go the Oil Kings scored another goal! People were leaving the stadium, never a good sign! With 4 minutes to go, we scored...then pretty much 30 seconds later we scored again! For a brief glorious minute I actually thought we could do it! Unfortunately the Oil Kings then scored once more, but it certainly was an intense end to the game and I was very much on the edge of my seat!

Sunday - Not much to report today, been doing a lot of revision! However we did all exchange our Secret Santa gifts! A $5 we discovered was a lot harder to shop for than we thought it would be but I got some gorgeous Urban Outfitters socks from Lucy, wrapped in a magazine page which had Ryan Gosling on - beautiful! Then been revising most of the rest of today, but taking a break to write this blog post, aren't you guys happy I did? So that's that, my hectic but amazing week!