Thanks Giving Weekend

I'm at work right now (actually that's a lie but when I wrote it in the first place I was :P) and bored a lot so I thought I might as well tell you guys about my last weekend which was Thanks Giving weekend.

On Saturday Seala picked me up at about 2:30pm and we went to the Hastings hosre track. I've never been to a horse track before so I was kind of excited about that. You only have to pay for the parkingbut you get vouchers for food and the with all the leaflet races, horses and statistics listed in exchange so that's ok. The entrance for the actual track is free. Seala explained a lot to me about how the whole thing works cause she likes to go there from time to time. So there is one part where the horses are shown around before a race so you can compare them and see which ones you like and which ones look like winner. And there is this comentator Mike who tells a little about every horse and then picks his fovorites. After that the horses go on the track with their jockeys and walk along for a second time so everyone can get a good look at them. And now comes the fun part: you can bet on the horses of your choice and the minimum amount is only $2 so you can bet just for fun and won't loose a lot of money. So there is this big screen where you can see how much money has been bet so far on ech of the horses on either "win"(that's pretty much selfexplainatory), "place"(means the horse either wins or finishes 2nd) or "show" (means the horse either wins or finishes 2md or 3rd). So we made our $2 bets on almost all the 5 races left and I actually won a little bit so that at the end it was pretty much evan. Seala had really good luck that day she won $11 on one of the bets =) We walked around there from the little place where you can see the horses and to the counters where you pay your wager and collect your won money and watched some of the races (the actual race only lasts for about 2 minutes but everyting around the race takes way longer) from the stand and some right next to the track which is a really great feeling when all the horses gallop past you and you can almost feel the ground shaking =)

After the last race Seala took me to her place which is just a couple of blocks away from me and we had Thanks Giving leftovers from the day before when she had a movie and sleepover night with her brother and niece. I had yum (which is a kind of potato but orange inside and it tastes aweet) and pumpkin pie for the first time ever. Really yummy!!! We hang out together for the evening talking and looking at an awesome book with horse pictures. I had a really good time and I felt great to just hang out with someone at their place and not being alone at home!
On sunday I covered for Michelle at work cause she couldn't do her shift... just a regular Coffee Shop shift pretty boring.
So monday the people at my place had their big Thanks Giving dinner so I decided I try and bake an apple pie. I've never made one before but I found a pretty easy recipe on the internet so I went to the mall to get some apples and butter and all the other stuff I already had. And I figured out what the problem with the oven was last time on my birthday: you have to preheat it so that those glowing grill kinda things don't glow any more so wheterver you put in won't burn on top! That's what I did and the result looked (and what we later discovered also tasted) AWESOME.

THE END lol

xoxo
Anna

PS: I don't bite so go ahead and leave a comment so I have something to read, too :P!!!

Horseshoe Bay and my attempt to get to Lighthouse park...

ookay I figured it would be the best if I write down what I did right afterwards at the same day =) So here we go (btw you can click on the pics to see them full size;) ):
Today was my first of 4 days off cause it's pretty slow at work cause of the time of year. We don't have any big banquets so I'm only working in the coffee shop and considering there are 4 of us working there I enden up haven just 3 days work this week. Good for going out and doing something especially with the weather being really nice the last days (on the other hand not so good money wise). I browsed a little through the really nice city guide I got for my birthday to see if I can find something I can go and I decided to make a trip to Horseshoe Bay where all the BC Ferries departure and to Lighthouse park going for a hike (or well you should propably call it "walk").

Being me I couldn't get out of bed in the morning so I had my yummy cheese omlet, nutella and peanut butter toast (no, not everything together :P) "breakfast" at lunchtime and got ready so I left at about 2 o'clock. I had looked up which bus to take yesterday so that was easy. I'm usually pretty slack when it comes to taking buses along the lines of "if you end up somewhere you didn't want to go there's always a bus back :P". It took forever to get there, though. About over two hours and a nice conversation with a polish lady and a girl from Frankfurt (she totally reminded me of Caro cause she's going to school here, too) on the bus - later I finally arrived at Horseshoe Bay. I still regret that I didn't ask the girl for her name :P But hey who would have thought that I'd start a convo with random strangers on a bus. Even though the ride was so long that itself was worth the rip! The bus is going along Marine Drive which is basically going directly along the shore. Sooooo beautiful! And the houses around there... anyway I strolled a little along at Horseshoe Bay and took some pics.

I thought there might be a trail where I could walk along the shore back to Lighthouse park but there wasn't (or I didn't find it) so I had to take the bus. Unfortunately I took the express one which I didn't know goes on the highway without making any stops (therefore it takes less than helf the time). I really wanted to walk a little on the shore so I just took the other bus back and tried to figure out which stop to get off which wasn't easy because it was an old bus that didn't have a display saying what's the next stop. So I got off to early and kinda wondered around the blocks to find a trail which I evetually did.
The houses down there at the beach reminded me a lot of Santa Monica just with a lot more green around.

It's must be awesome to live there but I guess if you live there you don't value it that much any more... so I walked along the trail trying not to remember Seala's creepy crazy guy in the park story and took some really nice pics and just enjoyed the great view and everything around me. I was a little amused by all the benches there. It's like with bus stops there's one every stone through away.

Oh and they actually have tiny washroom cabines there.
I didn't made it to Lighthouse park cause it was already starting to get dusky and I was pretty much the only one walking around there exept for some people walking there dogs so I think I just walked for about half an hour but I've been really exhausted after I went up the hill to the next bus stop ( I really need to do some sports or something I have hardly any endurance :P). The way back took even longer cause someone tried to jump from the Lionsgate Bridge so it was shot down and combined with rush hour there was a lot of traffic but I got home on time to make some dinner and hit the coach for my Grey's and Private Practice TV night :P

oh and Michelle called me to ask if I can do her Sunday shift so I got one more day of work for this week *yay* Tomorrow's most likely just gonna be laudry, cleaning and hanging out at home day but on Saturday I'm gonna go to a horse race with Seala. Monday is Thanksgiving but I might be working that day...idk yet. Would have loved to be a fly on the wall in a real canadian family for that, though :P




Gotta go "hit the pillow" now.
Love you guys and thank you for reading!
"Bussi" xoxo
Anna

ps: sorry if there are a lot of spelling mistakes and stuff but I'm too lazy to read through it again...