Red Velvet for Valentines Day

Happy Valentines Day! Here's a cupcake for you:

This particular cupcake is from Starbucks. I wouldn't reccommend them if you're going simply for the sake of getting a cupcake, because their specialty is in their drinks and not their baked goods. If you happen to be in Calgary around the Kensington area, go to Crave Cupcakes and get one there... the cupcakes are to die for. As far as I know, Crave Cupcakes is in Calgary only, but they are building a store in Edmonton, which is pretty exciting. However, I have seen a different store here also called Crave Cupcakes, but they're unrelated. By accident, I discovered the place in Uptown Park. I went inside to check it out... the stores look completely different and the cupcake designs are quite opposite. I tested out a cupcake, and they're pretty good, but not quite as magical as the Calgary Crave!

Red velvet cake, as I have come to believe is more of a southern thing. I've tried researching the history, but as it is with baked goods, everyone wants to lay a claim to the original recipe. There's lots of debate over the origins of red velvet cake, but whichever history you choose to believe, it's pretty darn delicious!

Red velvet, for those who don't know, is a very moist cake most commonly served with cream cheese icing or buttercream. It doesn't always necessarily have a specific flavor, although it can be chocolate, vanilla or cinnamon flavored. All in all, a sweet and delicious treat, but probably not very healthy.

Happy Valentines Day Y'All. (:

Hope your day is as sweet as a cupcake!

--Lauren

Flooded With Letters

To all of you who keep up with my blog regularly, I'm so sorry for the lack of posts these past few days. I was very busy with a conference for the Houston Area Model United Nations, and yesterday I was sick with a fever.

Only in the USA can you get absolutely spammed by letters from colleges:

I took the PSAT last fall, and I got a pretty decent score on it. By decent score, I mean I had a very high percentile ranking... I checked the box that said, "Yes, please release my address to colleges so they can contact me." Little did I know, I was about to get five million emails, and tons of letters.

All in all, this makes my trip to the mailbox much less exciting. Yes, it is interesting to see which colleges and universities would gladly accept me, but I know what university I want to go to, and I almost don't want to be bothered by all the superfluous letters and emails from random schools.

So far, I have received twelve letters, but it is only the beginning of February. I haven't even heard of most of the schools. Tulane University, Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, Agnes Scott College, Drexel University... I'm sure they're all nice places to go, and I'm sure that lots of people love it at those schools, but I have my heart set on the University of Calgary.
(where else?!)

--Lauren

[Four and a half months left!]

Clear Skies

One of the most fascinating things, in my opinion is what lies outside our atmosphere.

When it's not raining, it's generally clear and sunny here. That's one thing I like about the weather here: it's either/or when it comes to clouds. Tonight, I went to get the mail, and decided to take some pictures. At first I just saw the moon, and then I saw the other beautiful things in the sky tonight. The stars are out tonight! A lot of the time, you can't see the stars at all, probably due to the light pollution from the big city of Houston.

I've never been successful with taking photos of the stars before, simply because the camera I had before did not have very many settings at all. As well, I wasn't patient enough. But tonight, it's only 8 PM, and I have lots of time left until I go to bed. I actually put my camera on top of the mailbox to get the pictures of the stars. However, I made some noise, and a dog started barking at me, so I left. I won't lie. The pictures of the stars are not very good, and they aren't very high quality, but I'm pretty proud of them.

Outer space has actually fascinated me for a really long time. I had a dream, about a year ago, to be an astronaut, but with a little research that dream died pretty quickly. [Potential astronauts train for years and years and may never even have the opportunity to go into space. Also, it's not the safest profession, and with me being Canadian, NASA seems like an unprobable route. All in all very impossible.] Then, I thought why not be an astrophysicist? Well, I highly doubt I'll end up doing that, but I'm still deciding what to do with my future.

In the less distant future, I only have 25 school days until spring break, 75 until summer break and about 150 days until I visit Calgary.

--Lauren

My House

This is my house:

My house is probably one of my favourite parts about living here. It's absolutely beautiful. When I first walked in, I was totally overwhelmed. The ceilings were so high, the hallways so wide. It seemed to overwhelm all of our old furniture, and it made me feel like I was the height of a five-year-old. I resented the fact that I had no neighbors, because when we moved here, the houses that you see in the picture to the left and right of mine did not exist. I've gotten used to the quiet neighborhood, and I've gotten used to the feeling of being about half the height of the doors.

My street has literally nobody that I know well on it. I don't particularly like this fact, and I wish that I knew more of the people, but having no immediate neighbors makes it hard to get to know everyone. As well, most people near us are all young families, with small kids, and so my parents don't particularly fit in, me being the youngest in my family.

The one thing about my street that I would change is the location... I wish it was closer to more places that I could walk to. The only thing within walking distance is the a mall, but it's about three km away, and it's not always worth it to walk that far. At my old house, I could walk literally anywhere, and if I couldn't walk there, I could take the bus. There isn't a public bus system here, so I'm essentially stuck in one spot until I get a ride from somebody.

However horrible that seems, it's not really, because I can always take scenic walks within my community. There's lots to see with regard to lakes and trees and whatnot, and it's never too crowded.

--Lauren

[An estimated 150 days until I visit Calgary]

My Fireplace

When I first moved here, I thought the fireplace in my house was more than a little unnecessary, but it's really cozy on these "wintry" nights.

These past few weeks have been pretty chilly, and although we have the heat on, it doesn't always feel warm inside the house. Then comes the time to light a fire!

Last year, around Christmas time, we bought some wood from our usual grocery store. After trying to build a fire with it for about an hour, we realized that it wasn't going to burn. This year, we bought wood from a sketchy-looking roadside vendor, and the logs burn ten times better than the grocery store firewood. Lesson learned: just because it's from the grocery store, and not from a sketchy roadside vendor doesn't mean it's higher quality.

--Lauren

Snow in Texas

I didn't ever think this was truly possible, but here it is:



You can see me in the window.




From inside my front door.. see that patch of ice on the sidewalk? I slipped on it.




Just the lightest coat of snow possible.

 This is the amount of snow we got. Compared to Calgary's snow, it's absolutely pathetic. You might even get this amount of snow in the summer if you happen to be unlucky. But here in Texas, I'd say it's very impressive. I told my mom last night, "Wake me up when it starts snowing." And I was woken up at nine AM... I dragged myself out of bed, and went outside. It wasn't particularly cold. If I had measured the snow, it would have added up to maybe less than a millimeter or two. [I don't know what that is in inches.] It was more ice than snow, actually. Underneath the patches of snow, it was actually icy.

After I took these pictures, I went back to bed. There wasn't much to do. I had a very unproductive day. I'm not sure how much snow my area got, but the highways were most likely icy, making driving anywhere virtually impossible and very dangerous. As I predicted yesterday, it was only a reminder of what true winter feels like. If I were to compare today to a day in Calgary, I would say it would be like a day in September. As far as weather and conditions go, it would be no big deal, and there would certainly be school. I don't think the Calgary Board of Education has snow days.

As of now, I wish that it would start warming up. I want to feel like summer is just around the corner.

--Lauren

[Five months left still]

Snow Day Tomorrow

We'll see if it actually does snow tomorrow, but in honor of the potential "snow" (which might just be freezing rain or slush), I decided to post some old pictures of Calgary, and of snow. I apologize for the bad quality; I didn't have a very good camera when I took these!



This was my old street, my old mailbox and the view from it.




My old house, with the driveway all shoveled.




Still on my street.




My old street still. This was the day the movers came and took everything away.




Snowy streets (near my old street).

 I actually don't know if I want it to snow here tomorrow. I know that if it does snow, it will be nothing like the snow I've been missing, and it will probably be an enormous disappointment. As well, it will be completely impossible to do anything tomorrow if the highways and roads are snowy or icy. The snow would only be a sad reminder...

I miss the sound of the snow crunching under my feet, and the cold little touches the snowflakes make as they landed on my face and bare hands. I miss the numbness in my toes and fingers that practically never went away, because I never wore the right boots or I lost my mittens. I miss the look of untouched, freshly fallen snow, and the triumph of making the first footprints in it. I miss the temperature that, no matter how much I bundled up, instantly permeated all the winter clothing and sent chills down my spine. I miss the steam that breathing made all the time. I miss the winter so much.

A very large part of me wants to be in Calgary right now, enjoying winter. But I know that if I had never moved, I wouldn't have ever appreciated it as much as I do. I probably wouldn't get cold when it was a couple degrees below freezing either, but I can't help that as of now.

For now, I'm going to wait until it starts to either rain, sleet or snow.

--Lauren

 [Around five months left!]

Rolling Blackouts in Texas

The weather was absolutely horrible today across the state of Texas. It was even worse because of the rolling blackouts and yet I still had to go (and stay at) school.

I had to back up so far to get the entire building in!

This is a view of my school from behind a Bridgeland lake.

This is the entire campus, including the middle and elementary school that are right next to my school.

This is my school. It's really new, actually; it was built in 2008, and this is the first year that they have a senior class. They implemented each grade year by year, starting with freshmen and sophomores. The inside of it is also very pretty. I was originally going to do a post on just my school, but that's far less interesting than what happened today. You can tell I took these pictures yesterday because today was a lot colder, a lot cloudier and a lot less bright.

Today was perhaps the coldest, worst and weirdest day I've had in Texas so far. Yesterday there were some brief power outages, but that was only a precursor to a worse incident: the rolling blackouts implemented all over the state of Texas. (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/50488/) Because of the freakishly cold weather up around Dallas, more energy is being used, and so there was a massive energy shortage... the state of Texas declared it an energy crisis and proceeded to cut off the energy periodically in all of the communities, except for necessary buildings such as hospitals and the like.

I discovered all of this on the bus... I went to the bus, as per usual, and I was not late... but the bus was. I got on the bus and what do you know, the bus driver was so worried. The first thing she said is, "Your neighborhood is the first I've seen that has power!" All over the city, community and state, people were out of power. Apparently, our particular street (because it is so new and so far from established and settled streets) is on a different energy grid. From the radio, we [the other kid at my stop, the bus driver and myself] learn that our school has no power, but classes will continue as usual. Fantastic, right?

When the bus arrived at school, all seemed normal, but 45 minutes later, the power went out. This cycle continued all day. Every forty-five minutes, the power would go out, and stay out for about the length of a class period. Essentially, every other class, we sat in darkness. It was not the most fun day. It was cold, and dark and pointless because no real work was really done in class.

I hope that the power is back on full-time for tomorrow, but the rolling blackouts could last until Friday. On top of that, there could be snow tomorrow night (in Houston, Texas), meaning that school could be cancelled on Friday...

Who would have guessed it would be so cold in Texas?

--Lauren

A Windy Day

Today was (maybe) the coldest day I've had here. It wasn't the actual temperature that made it cold; it was the wind.

This morning was not very fun. It started pouring at around 6 AM, which is when I was getting ready for school. I got to hear the howling wind and the ferocious rain beat against my window. It was honestly a nightmare. Because I was a little late getting out of the house (due to putting on boots and actually doing up my coat), I had to run to the bus, about 250 meters away from my front door. It felt like taking a shower only on my right side, because it was blowing and raining so hard. By the time I got to the bus, I was soaked and freezing (if only I had a car and a licence!). But mine was not the worst story. I heard about people who's power went off in the morning so they couldn't even see to get ready for school.  However, the rain stopped around noon, and so everything, except for the wind, turned back to normal.

While driving home, I looked out the window and there, on the lake (not my lake, the neighboring one, because mine is a tad more sheltered), were white caps. I have never seen the lake so choppy. I got out to take a few pictures, and my hands were numb by the time I had taken about five. I don't know whether it's because of the wind, because of my acclimatization to the hot summer, or maybe a combination of the two, but today was cold.

Right now, I'm really missing the hot summer weather.

--Lauren

Getting the Mail.

I love getting the mail.



When I first moved here, I wrote letters to my friends like no tomorrow.
Yes, I have internet access, and yes, I have facebook, MSN, skype and all the rest, but there is just something about writing letters that just makes me so happy. As I have slowly made friends and gotten a social life (somewhat), letter writing has become so much harder, but I still do write letters.

I have also joined a website called Postcrossing. The premise of it is that you send a postcard to a random person in the world, and a different, random person sends you a postcard. It's incredibly exciting to receive postcards from different places all over the world, and it's very easy. It's also free, aside from the cost of your outgoing postcards and postage.

Getting the mail is just an ordinary, mundane task, but because I moved here, I've written so many letters and gotten tons of letters, postcards and happiness in return.

--Lauren

[Approximately five months left]

Texan-Sized Forever XXI

If you're ever in the need to be seriously overwhelmed, visit a two-story Forever XXI store in Texas.

My trip to the Forever XXI at Memorial City Mall gave new meaning to the word "overwhelmed".

All of the Forever XXI stores I've been to have been big, with an unlimited amount of varying styles to choose from, and unending things to look at. Two stories, however, of this hodge-podge of clothing is nothing but overwhelming, crowded and virtually impossible to not get lost in all of the mayhem.

It is officially a "Texan-sized" store in my mind.

You know how they say, "Everything's bigger in Texas"? Well, it's true. Think of anything, and you can find someplace in Texas where that thing is found to be unreasonably large. Portion sizes, highways, houses, and even sometimes people (though that stereotype is exaggerated a bit) are all bigger. However, I hadn't come across a store that was just too big to handle. There are department stores that are just as big as this particular store, but generally there is a wider range of products. This particular Forever XXI is literally all just clothing, shoes and accessories stocked ceiling to floor on hundreds of tables, shelves and racks. I don't think it's even possible to see everything in the store in one visit.

--Lauren

Shogun Japanese Grill & Sushi Bar

In the city of Houston and the surrounding area, there are literally hundreds of places to eat. Shogun is a Japanese restaurant that combines the best of two worlds: food and entertainment.

At Shogun, you can either opt to sit at a private table, just as in most normal restaurants, or you can choose to sit at a hibachi table like we did. The chef does a show for you, and honestly, his hands moved so fast it was hard to follow what was going on. The entertaining show aside, the food is very good. The food is actually teppanyaki cooking, and you can also order sushi, but it isn't cooked by the chef in front of you.

It's a fun restaurant to go to if you're in the mood for something different to do, and to sit with some strangers. Unless you have a party of eight or so, you're very likely to sit right beside random strangers, and get samples of their food. This time around, the chef gave everyone some samples of shrimp that was actually ordered by the people sitting next to us.

It's also fun to go there for a birthday. They bring out a special hat for you to wear, and they sing you Happy Birthday, and launch a little confetti canon at you.

All in all, it's one of my favourite restaurants here so far!

--Lauren

[Five and a half months]

San Antonio by Night

San Antonio is even more gorgeous by night during the holiday season. As promised, here are some pictures:

Every holiday season, over 120,000 Christmas lights are strung up on all of the trees on the Riverwalk.  I have no idea how they manage it... Everywhere you look, the trees are draped in glittering, shining lights. And with the reflection on the water, the sight is truly amazing.

Even though we visited after Christmas, it brought back all the happy holiday joy that Christmas Eve & Day tend to inspire in me. Even though there wasn't any snow (because snow at Christmas is a must, but unfortunately doesn't occur at all in Texas), it still felt like the holidays, plus it was warm enough to wear dresses and light jackets.

Apparently, they have shows around New Years too, with live music, entertainment and fireworks. I hope I get to go to San Antonio next holiday season, and maybe I'll see the show.

--Lauren

[Five and a half months left!]

San Antonio: Drury Plaza Hotel

This is the hotel we stayed at in San Antonio... we saw the sunset from the 23rd floor.

From the 23rd floor of the Drury Plaza Hotel, you can see everything in San Antonio: the buildings, the streets, the Riverwalk, and the sunset.
The Drury Plaza Hotel is right in downtown San Antonio, and was originally a bank building built in the late 20s or early 30s. It was really interesting to learn how banking has evolved. Banks, a hundred years ago or so, were actual buildings, with grandeur and class.  But with the invention of the automatic teller machine, the actual bank has become more obsolete... However, modern architecture can be absolutely breathtaking as well.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be visiting San Antonio soon again.

--Lauren

[Five and a half months]