1000 Miles on 2 Pairs of Shoes...: September 2010

It's been quite a week! I've made friends with these awesome chicks at work, and we all went to Drumheller this weekend. Drumheller is in the middle o the Badlands where they found a lot fo dinosaur fossils, and there is a world class museum all about it. For the bargain entry fee of $10 each (but we had coupons, so it was only $5 each!!) we had a look around, and it was so amazing! They have so many fossils there, it was crazy!

After that we drove around the area. There are these crazy colored stripes all over the rocks in that area, and they have these eroded rock formations called Hoo Doos, which are when there is a capstone which is made of harder rock, and the limestone base underneath begins to erode away. The ones we saw had eroded a lot, compared to a picture from the 1900s that was on display there.

After that, Jacqueline took us to a town called Strathmore. Her parents have an RV that they camp out in on weekends, at this RV park. It was so cool, theres a beautiful lake about 50m from their RV site, and theres a petting zoo for kids. We met her family and their friends, and made S'mores around the campfire! We don't have S'mores in NZ, so you make them like this: get a Graham cracker (more like a cookie than a cracker) and put some chocolate on it, toast a marshmallow and put it on the chocolate, top with another graham cracker. It's so yummy!!!

Til next time!

xoxo Laura

Well, we've been here about 3 weeks and we're finally getting caught up! We finally have a couch and even got a table today! It's been such a crazy trip, and so long since I updated, I might just give the quick run down of Egypt here in photos:

The pics below are of Aswan to Abu Simbel and back.

The pics below are of our ballooning trip over Luxor:

These pics are of our climb up mount sinai We took camels up most of the way and then hiked the rest of the way. This climb was absolutely amazing, one of the best parts of the egypt trip. I just wish I had climbed to the summit, instead of taking the camel.

On the last leg of our journey we were given the chance to go to Petra in Jordan. It was an amazing day! We caught the ferry over to Jordan and then had about 4 hours to look around.

We spent a few days on the beach at the Red Sea and did some snorkeling. We saw a stingray and a whole raft of amazing fish! In Egypt we had some pretty amazing times, the sights were so breathtaking, but I think overall it wasn't a super awesome holiday destination. I wont go into it here though... but I definitely would not advise you to do Egypt alone, and come with 6 barrels of patience.

Anyways,

CANADA!

We got here and got to our apartment, which is pretty mint. We have a gym in the building, which is pretty nice, and our apartment is brand new. We are right in the middle of town. We signed up to a recruitment agency and I got a job the same day. Stace got one a couple of days later. We have slowly started getting furniture, and just got a table today!

We went out to Calgary Zoo, which is one of the largest in North America. Stacy seems to take it all in stride, whereas I'm like "OMG WHAT IS THAT?!?!" pointing at a porcupine (I've never seen one before). I think I scared some small children.

We've pretty much just been amassing house stuff, like cooking utensils, a couch, tv, chairs, food. This weekend we were lucky enough to be able to catch a greyhound bus to Banff before the snows came. We got up super early to get the early bus there, and went up the Gondola. Once we were up there, we went on a hike down the hill, and then back up. Up the top there were so many ground squirrels, chipmunks, and red squirrels. The views were breathtaking, the Rockies were just amazing! The standing rock pile is called an Inukshuk, which is a local word for "Someones been here" or something similar. The native people used to leave them around as boundary markers, and hey presto! We have a ready made tourist souvenir! ( I bought a little one in jade, lol!)