Last day of classes was today! There is a totally different mood around camp now! Wahoot. I am currently crafting a speech for tomorrow's closing ceremonies. I will be speaking on behalf of my collegues and I am expected to draw tears from the audience. It's hard to not make the speech cheesy and corny though. I think I may want to try and improv it.

For those interested, I've developed two irritating canker sores. I haven't had any in forever and I'm being such a wuss about them. I forgot to knock on wood when I made a comment that the one felt like it was going way, and that's when the second one came. Not knocking gets me every time.

My family does love me. Easter packages have been arriving for students all week and I have been quesitoning if one would arrive for me. None came as of yesterday and I figured I was doomed (since Friday was a Bank Holiday). However, upon returning home from Oxford today I had a special package from my family! Wahoot. I love that mail is delivered on Saturdays here.

I am in pain. We travelled to Wales this weekend for an adventure trip with 1/3 of the students. This trip included climbing the highest mountain in England and Wales on Saturday - called Snowdon. We brought amazing weather with us, along with an abundance of clothing. We ended up trekking with too much clothing in our packs when really we could have done better in shorts and a t-shirt. I had to climb in my trainers as they ran out of hiking boots my size - and since I am staff, you can guess who got that shaft. We did survive though, however most of us came back with massive sunburns - we packed for winter, not summer weather.
Today I was part of the lucky group that got to go gorge walking. (I finally got to check myself out in a wetsuit.) It was awesome fun despite the icy water (which surpringsly was not very relieving on my sunburned neck). At one point we were doing sideways rock climbing along the river, definately my favourite part. Although I am not fan of wall/rock climbing I liked this, probably because less height and very strategic. Time to sleep for the next 24 hours.

A call out to all those who have backpacked and preferably to those who have backpacked Europe. What do you think is a good length of time to cover Spain, the south of France, Italy, and some Greek Islands? We do have a fairly limited buget but are not worried, we'll just be extra cautious with our cash. Annetta and I are beginning to iron out the plan and need all the advice we can get.

ALIVE! Johnny and I survived his two-week visit. I don't think I can relay the whole adventure here but it was definate good times. Paris was much better going with him (and meeting up with Krista there) then when I went for work. Our hotel was super close to everything, including it ended up being a 3-minute walk to the place Krista was staying at...by coincidence.
The humorous highlight I will share is our trip to Pere Lachaise, the famous Parisian cemetery. Many famous people are there, such as Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Chopin. We ended up having a mini Amazing Race against these older Americans to find Jim Morrison. Thankfully, we were indeed smarter than them as we arrived at the grave a good 2 minutes before them. After Jim, we headed to nearby Chopin where Krista received nasty hand gestures from Creepvilla. Some crazy woman was trying to take a picture of a grave for like five mintutes with her cell phone so Krista got tired of waiting and walked in front, and as soon as she did the picture took. Creepvilla was not very impressed. Upon exiting, we ran into the Americans again where Krista very calmly lied to them and exaggerated the number of famous people we saw due to our impressive organization. Maybe you had to be there.

Alive and kicking. Lack of updates due to Johnny arriving on Tuesday and us travelling to Dublin for a few days. We have since returned but spent all our time either in London or sleeping. Today is our first relax day.
Dublin was good times, great weather although slightly chilly. We basically walked all around the core downtown and checked out the sights. We had to do the Guiness tour, which I thought was really cool even though I am not a huge fan of the stuff - but I did enjoy the "complimentary" pint on top of the building overlooking the city. We also made sure to have some pints in authentic Irish pubs. They're really not too different than Irish pubs in Canada excpet for the fact that everyone around us had accents.
On our trips to London we walked all over the city and developed our leg muscles. The first day was crazy weather. It started off with mad flurries on the drive to London but then once there it was mildly sunny and warm. After some walking, it began to rain lightly and get cold, then it began to hail. Shortly thereafter, it cleared again and warmed up. Then finally it got cold and windy and really poured down - all in a time span of 7 hours. Our second day was spent doing typical touristy things; the London Eye, changing of the guards, Harrods, Kennsington palace, Notting Hill, and Portobello Road. Great times.
Upon returning last night we partied it up with karokoe in the pub. It was also the celebration of my pseudo-birhday. All the other SLC's and my two main other collegues have their birthdays over February and March and I of course wanted to be included - so we picked last night as my birthday. I got great great chocolate cake and plenty of drinks. I also got the loan of some of Johnny's clothes. Oh, how it felt to wear something different.