What do you do when it’s 9:30 on a Thursday night, you’re trying to write tomorrows post but all you want to do is go to bed? You whip out some bullet points of course!

One.

I’ve noticed that I start getting kind of ornery when I haven’t been home for awhile. Check out this pattern back in November. Clearly, I need my home time. Luckily I will be getting just that in five sleeps! Wheee!

Two.

I’m still running. Just not blogging about it. Right now I’m running three times a week. It’s working really well for me, I actually look forward to and love every run, whereas when I’m doing 4-5 runs a week I sometimes start to burn out. Right now I’m just building a base for the marathon so I don’t want to burn out since I’ll be running a lot more come June! I’m still doing about 20-25 miles a week. This weekend I will be attempting my longest run ever. Stay tuned.

Three.

Between now and April 25 I have to move into a new apartment and plan/prepare/pack for a 3-week trip to Europe all while finishing up my last semester of school and working like crazy. Cue, stress. I try not to think about all of this, at least not all at once, or else it makes me want to throw up. Kind of.

Also, I kind of wish I had not given two months notice because now my landlady keeps emailing me about showing the apartment on short notice and freaking out because no one has responded to their ad. Hello, it’s been up for three days and the apartment isn’t even available until April 1. Calm down.

On another note, the apartment that I’m moving into is much, much, MUCH smaller than the one I’m in now. So I have to downsize. A lot.

Four.

I’m so excited for the Olympics. That start TONIGHT. Go, Canada, go!

Five.

I’ve had a mad craving for a really good cupcake lately. I had a red velvet cupcake from Starbucks about a week ago and it was soooo disappointing. I really need to find an amazing cupcake stat.

What are your Friday Five for this week?

Wow, the feedback on yesterday’s post was awesome! I had no idea you guys would find that stuff so interesting. I will definitely be doing more posts about Canada’s geography/history/politics in the future, so watch for those.

Staying on the Canada note, guess what Canada is doing in like two weeks? If you don’t know, you live under a rock.

Well Canada, and more specifically Vancouver, BC, is hosting the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. So, for the past couple of months the Olympic torch has been traveling through all of Canada. Interesting fact; it went up into a corner of Nunavut and it was the furthest north the Olympic torch has ever been. Ever.

Last night the torch came through Kamloops and I went with some friends. It was cold outside but a really fun and exciting experience!

Here are some photos (oh and some of them are really crappy and blurry. Night photography is not my forte.

Me with Quatchi!

Coca-cola Truck, they were giving away free coke. Very cool!

Me with the torch! Yay!!

There were tons of people there!

Here comes the Olympic Torch! We waited for over an hour, in the freezing cold, to secure this great spot.

After we saw the torch go by we got out of there. We were SO COLD. Once I got home I relaxed with my Olympic Coca-cola, some mushroom soup and cheese bread.

Go, Canada, go!

To be honest, I haven’t been overly psyched about the Olympics. But this kind of put some Olympic spirit in me and even though my fingers felt like they were going to freeze off I’m SO glad that I went. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience to see the Olympic Torch go through my town like that and it was a very cool feeling.

Are you excited for the Olympics or pay attention to that kind of thing? Why or why not? What’s your favourite Olympic sport?

I’m most excited about the HOCKEY! Figure skating is also fun to watch.

According to Google Analytics, the majority of my visitors are coming from the United States and Canada, with the United States pulling ahead by about 400 more visitors a month.

Even though Canada and the United States are neighbours and have a very similar “North American” culture, they are also very, very different.

I’m not even going to get started on all the differences but today I’m going to do a little Canadian Geography Lesson. Kelly originally gave me this idea after mentioning a couple times in the comments that she doesn’t know if she totally understands Canadian Geography. So I figured other people might not either. For example, when my Dad was sick, some people were confused as to why he had to go to a hospital so far away from us!

See, the thing with Canada is, there’s a lot of space but not a lot of people. Canada is the second largest land mass in the world, yet our population is only about 30 million.

The United States, on the other hand, is a smaller land mass with a population of about 300 million. That’s a difference of 270 million people. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.

“Big cities” in Canada are not big in the United States. For example, I’ve lived in three places my entire life. Fort St. John – population about 25,000, Grande Prairie – population about 50,000 and Kamloops – population about 85,000.

I remember when me and my brother went to Germany our hosts told us they were going to take us to visit a “small city, a population of about 500,000 people”. We gaped at them, because that’s a BIG CITY to us.

OK, now it’s time for some wonderful google map photos.

Here’s where Fort St. John is. Up in Northern, British Columbia where it’s winter 6-7 months out of the year. And it gets cold. I’m talking -35 to -40 C (-31 to -40 F) is not uncommon weather in the winter months.

Here’s Fort St. John to Kamloops. I drew some mountains in there to illustrate the windy, mountain road that makes up 300 kilometres of the drive. So that’s the distance separating me and Eric right now. From his apartment to my apartment it is exactly 989 kilometres (614.5 miles)

Here’s the distance from Fort St. John to Edmonton, where my Dad was in the hospital. Edmonton, with a population of about 800,000 is the closest “big city” to Fort St. John and it’s still 662 km (412 miles) away. If someone gets really sick in Fort St. John there are two options for hospitals; Edmonton or Vancouver. When my dad had his heart attack he went to Vancouver.

Talk about being inconvenient for families, hey? That’s just one downside of living in a small town.

Here’s Kamloops to Vancouver. I’m sure you’ve all heard LOTS about Vancouver lately as they’re hosting the Olympics in, like a week. Anyways, to me, Vancouver is a HUGE CITY. With all of it’s surrounding communities (all together called the “Lower Mainland”) it has a population of about 2 million.

Now here’s the real kicker. I live in Western Canada – which is considered to be British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba AND the Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut combined. Those FOUR provinces have an approximate population of 10 million people. Here’s a map of Western Canada:

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Which means that 20 million of Canada’s 30 million population live in the East.

So, if all these little maps and stats didn’t sum it up for you, I guess what I’m trying to tell you is I live in an area that’s mostly land, not people and a “small” city to you is probably a HUGE city to me. I truly am a “Small Town Girl”. Canada has a lot of wide open spaces. Where I grew up you can drive for miles and there won’t be any houses anywhere!

This post was kind of fun to write! I hope you guys enjoyed it and maybe even learned something about Canadian geography? Tell me, what’s the population in the city that you live in? And what do you consider a BIG city?

PS: Google Maps is amazing.