Attention: Lightening has struck the plane...

"....And we can't find a piece of the plane. So we have to cancel the flight. Our apologies."-US Airways

WHAT?!? My connection flight from Toronto back to PHL was canceled the first time around and I had quite an interesting time in Toronto for the night. With lightening striking planes and confusing international gate directions, my overnight stay in Ontario was from a movie. I mean, I was that girl running from gate to gate, running in circles, getting yelled at for forgetting to remove my water bottle, and hearing things like "you know, it's because of your country that we have to be so strict about water bottles and security." Ahhhhhhhh.

But I am home at last!! And I should be home for awhile. I think.


Here are some great pictures from the Lake Louise hike I did over the weekend while in Calgary:

The Sun Sets at Midnight

11:42PM in Calgary (Canada) to be exact, basically midnight. I'm already jet-lagged from my flight from CA to Alabama and now my body's even more confused because I'm in the Northern Mid-west territory of Alberta, Canada. Let me see, I believe the time difference is 2 hours from the east coast and 1 hour from the west coast.


I'm here enjoying a visit to my Auntie. She's on vacation herself from her busy job and it's a girl's week of girlie things. Yesterday, I went on a walking tour of Calgary (a bit of a bore to be honest) and then we shopped at Calgary's only mall. A lot of people from this area are from the oil business (my aunt included) and everyone seems to be an expat (my aunt included as well).

Like I said before about Canada, the air is clean and fresh. I can already feel a difference in my skin. Everyone is in great shape and they enjoy the outdoors. The most popular shops around here are EMS, The North Face, Lulu Lemon, and any other place involving out door activities or yoga. Everything seems very simple, very nature, and very clean compared to the states. I feel like I should jog/bike while I'm here just so I can take advantage of the slew of trails available. With the sun setting at 11:42PM, many people are out and about running/biking/kayaking (I mean, "oot and aboot") late at night. Kinda bizarre...

I'm currently catching up on rest at the house with the dog, Atticus. His farts are really deadly (sorry, that was the first thing that came to my mind when I brought his name up).




After this, we're gonna be heading to the Lake Louise/Banff area for some nature-ish activities for the weekend.

Camp Noah 2

I flew into Alabama last week and just completed Camp Noah part deux. It started on Sunday and lasted until Friday night. I'm so happy that the kids from last year signed up again (and they brought friends!). Things went smoothly and it was a pleasure working with everyone. This was my second time doing mission work as a volunteer counselor for Camp Noah. I volunteered through my church last year and had a blast. We had almost the same team working this year with a few new hands on top of that. Unlike last year, we weren't assigned individual age groups but individual tasks/activities. So I was able to work with all the kids this year, not just one age group. Here are some pictures from this year's camp. I'll post other information after the picture post...There's so much to say!


Timmy, Me, Ana


Activities


The PINK team!


Luu loves watermelons


I wish I was small enough to play this game


Skits


Arts and Crafts


Thoaie is adorable. She's grown so much!


Lyona looks so studious


Aivi and her crew

Most of the students were fantastic. No one really stood out as difficult to deal with or a cry baby. Although there was this one girl, Ana, who had quite the appetite. She's standing on the right in the first picture. Homegirl eats a lot! I didn't call on her this one time and she started crying. I didn't know how to make her stop. I tried everything...offering to call on her during the next lesson, offering to let her play outside longer...EVERYTHING. Ultimately, what made her stop crying was when I offered her another brownie. The next day I caught her taking extra chocolate granola bars and I asked her how many she had eaten. She hesitated a bit and answered me in her southern accent, "this is my sixth bar Miss Lanny."I was shocked!!! I immediately told her to grab some carrot sticks...

Other than bad eating habits, Ana and the rest of the children seemed to have enjoyed the camp. We were fortunate that it didn't rain 24/7 down there. OOH, and we also got to eat our fair share of shrimp and crawfish. Yum. Every time I eat shrimp down there, I am somehow reminded of Forest Gump's friend, Buba.

The unfortunate part about Alabama was the mosquitoes. They are worse than Vietnam. Towards the end of the camp, I decided to wear pants because I didn't want parents thinking that I had some strange skin disease on my legs. Lord, have mercy.

If you want to read more about Camp Noah, I wrote a post on it last summer in Aug. Check it out!

In between states

Back in California for family reasons and i've been here since my trip to Chicago. Dennis tells me that I should just apply for residency and go to school here for $5,000. He's right, I should. Maybe I should even consider getting a CA driver's license?

I just booked a flight to Alabama to volunteer as a camp counselor again for "Camp Noah." Flight leaves after Independence day. I'll try to keep ya'll posted from down south!