Since my completion of university is quickly approaching (31 more sleeps!) I decided I would spend the next four Friday’s flashing back over my college years!

The last four years have been a whirlwind and, to be honest, I can hardly believe they’re coming to an end. I can remember my first year of college so clearly.

I completed my first year of college at GPRC in Grande Prairie (GP), AB. Grande Prairie is only 205 km (127 miles) away from Fort St. John so I was still nice and close to home and went home quite often on the weekends to visit my family and Eric. In hindsight, I’m really happy my mom convinced me to stay close to home my first couple years of college. I think it made the transition much easier for me. And I really did love my time at GPRC!

My first two years were “general studies” so I did a mix of everything; history, english, political science, drama, biology, logic etc.

That’s GPRC (Grande Prairie Regional College) below. I sure wish I was into running when I lived there because the college had this gorgeous park right beside it and the running path there was so nice!

Side note: Don’t let these pictures fool you, GP had the same COLD, SNOWY climate as FSJ does! These were just taken at a nice time of year

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My first year of college was an interesting transition, it was my first time living away from home, cooking for myself, buying my own things, not having to get permission for nights out etc. Which was all very exciting for me!

I lived in the dorms my first two years of college, which was a wonderful experience. I honestly think everyone should try living in the dorms when they go to college. It really helped round out the college experience for me, you know?

Here’s what my dorms looked like. They were townhouse-style and there were four of us in each one! Two upstairs and two downstairs. This picture is a little blurry but those are what the townhouses looked like!

Here are some pictures from my first year of college. I party-partied during my first two years of college! Oh well, that’s what your first couple years of college are for right?! :

With my roommate, Melissa:

And at a random dorm party! Haha:

These are me and my roomies outside of our dorm, this was at the end of the first year (miss you girls! XO):

This one was taken my very last night in GP before moving back to FSJ for the summer. I met Jen working at the restaurant and we’re still good friends today, in fact, I get to see her tonight and I’m very excited about it!

When people tell me they miss college my first thought right now is “Are you crazy!!!?”But after just reminiscing my first year of college I think I can see why; my first couple years of college really were so much fun. I had a really schedule flexible and lots of extra money from waitressing and I absolutely LOVED my classes and all the things I was learning.

It’s not until the end of my third year of college and my fourth that I kind of started to hate it and couldn’t wait to get done. But, looking back, I definitely had some of the best times of my life at GPRC and I’m so glad I went to school there!

So, tell me about your first year of college; did you stay close to home like me or go far away? Did you love it or hate it? Did you party-party or study-study? And did you gain the dreaded Freshman 15 (like I did!)?

Something I’ve always wanted to do is travel. Last year, I had the opportunity to spend 10 days in Germany with my younger brother. I jumped at the chance. Lately, I’ve been itching to do some more travelling, even though I know that won’t be happening for at least another year or so. So, I figured I’d do some reminiscing about the one and only time I’ve traveled abroad!

We were staying with family friends in Northern Germany in the small town of Ankum. Since we were there for such a short time we didn’t get a chance to visit the southern parts of the country like Munich and Frankfurt, but we did get to spend two days in Berlin.

This is the house that belonged to the friends we were staying with. Bernd, the man who owned this house, used to spend summers with my mom and dad in Canada when he was younger.

We walked and walked around Berlin for hours. My feet were covered in blisters that day because I had no idea how far we were going to end up walking and I just wore flip-flops. We visited museums and saw the Berlin wall, it was fabulous. One of my favourite things about Berlin was the cobblestone city streets and the beautiful architecture. I took so many photo’s of buildings because I thought they were so beautiful.

I fell in love with this building in Berlin, I thought it was SO gorgeous!

One of the things that hit me the most about my trip is the European culture. It’s very different. We walked and biked everywhere, we wore our shoes in the house (although, I hear Americans do that too?), we sat outside when we went to restaurants, everybody smoked, everybody drank beer on the streets, it was very different. My brother, who was 15 at the time, was able to order a beer and drink it on the street, no problem! I hate huge amounts of meat, break and cake. So much cake, yet at the end of 10 days I’d lost two pounds because we did so much walking and biking. I LOVED all the clothing and styles so much, unfortunately, because of the crappy exchange rate I didn’t do too much shopping.

Berlin’s famous Brandenburg Gate.

Another thing I noticed was how close together everything was. I remember the friend we were staying with said he was going to take us to a “small city of 250,000 people.” We were thinking, ummm, that’s NOT a small city! Haha. Mind you, we grew up in a “city” of 18,000 people! Also, they said we were in the “countryside” yet there was still tons of houses! Logan and I grew up in the real countryside, where there was a house every six or seven miles!

Me in front of a castle in Munster, the “small” city of 250,000 people!

Oh, and the autoban; don’t even get me started on that. I am prone to car sickness, so when we were whipping down the road at 240 km/hr (approx. 150 mph) I tended to feel quite nauseous. I don’t think I could handle driving that fast all the time, it was pretty scary!

Also, every time we got introduced to other German people we were asked if we were French-Canadian or English-Canadian. I guess that’s probably normal for Canadian travelers since Canada is a bilingual country, but it was weird for us since we are from the far West where there aren’t very many French-Canadians, and neither of us speak French. Logan is really good at languages though, by the end of the 10 days he was forming full sentences in German. Me; not so much.

It was an amazing experience and I can’t wait to go back for longer and experience more of Europe. I also want to take Eric with me next time. I had a great time going with my brother, and we really bonded, but I kept seeing things that I wished Eric could see too!

Now you guy’s get the chance to make me oh so jealous! Tell me about some of the fabulous places that you’ve travelled, I know many of you have done your fair share of world travelling! Have you ever been to Germany or Berlin? What’s your favourite city in the world? (I loved Berlin but I still like Vancouver the best, it’s just such a beautiful city surrounded by the mountains AND the ocean!!)

PS: A little off topic, but I was sorely disappointed in Grey’s last night. Did anybody else notice how Alex had no facial hair in one scene (where he was outside on the park bench and Meradith came to talk to him) and then had facial hair in the very next scene (where he came to Izzies room in his tux)?? Shabby work, Grey’s producers!! I don’t know, the plot line is getting kind of old. Will she die, will she live. Make up your damn minds already. Hopefully next weeks episode is as good as the preview makes it out to be!

Welcome, Caz from Cherry Blossoms and Vodka. Caz’s blog was one of the very first blogs I ever started reading, I love reading about the crazy adventures that she has and she was kind enough to write me this lovely post about her first car!

Hey! I’m Caz from over at Cherry Blossoms and Vodka. I’ve been thinking for a few days about what to write for Amber… Firstly I thought about writing about Beautiful BC and how I am so jealous she’s living in the province I’m homesick for every day. I also thought about writing about exercise or my workouts because that’s a common topic on Amber’s blog. But finally, I realized that Amber’s in the market for a new car, and like a girl of my own heart, is considering some Japanese-made cars…

While I am totally taking a cop-out in that I’m recycling part of an old post of mine, I figured you girls need a little dose of the crazy! Amber is lovely and I’m very jealous of her willpower and determination when it comes to writing and working out, but she’s definitely not the crazy wild-child I was in my 3rd year of university. Here’s the story of my first (and only!) car I’ve ever owned….

” While I don’t currently own a car, at one point I did. His name was Georgio and he was the Italian Stallion (aka an ’89 Fiat Croma). I jointly owned him with 2 other girls during my year in New Zealand and overall he was great. He drove us all over the country at least three times and lasted through snowstorms, ferry rides, torrential downpour etc.

Unfortunately, the Italian Stallion had a few disabilities. First off, he had a huge dent in his side from where one of the girls hit a house (really!) while taking a too-tight turn from a very, very narrow laneway. Secondly, being an older, European car he started with a push-button, instead of turning the key –you still needed the key to be in the ignition though! Now, Georgio was slightly temperamental and so instead of pushing the button, we had to pull all the wires out and use a metal coin (or bobby pin, paper clip, whatever we had at the time) to complete the circuit and start the ignition. Yes, I would be a perfect car thief as I know which two little wires will hotwire a car (and which ones not to touch for fear of blowing yourself up), call me next time you want to play Gone in 60 Seconds! I’ll be Angelina to your Nick Cage… except I hate Nicholas Cage and I am so sick of that movie… I was just trying to find a reason for me to be Angelina… Shut up!

Beyond that, the Italian Stallion occasionally had some spark plug problems (we got great at taking them out and drying them with our hair dryer!); battery problems -he mysteriously died at Mt Cook in a town famous for cars draining their batteries. Seriously, every person had a jump-kit thingee in their cars because they went dead ALL the time… something about the magnetics or something!?!? And perhaps the best of all was his windshield wiper problems…

I was driving up North by myself when, as it oft happens in NZ, I got caught in a downpour. However, the windshield wipers for some reason decided to go on strike and be a little rebellious. Being 16, the Italian Stallion was as much of a rebellions teen as they come. Anyway, these wipers decided to continually FALL OFF the side of the windshield and get caught. So here I am, driving along at 35 kilometers per hour, in the POURING rain, all by myself. I was leaning forward like a granny driver, with my hand out the window so I could push the wipers back onto the windshield every other pass…

Unfortunately, Georgio gave up the ghost sometime after that, and just decided to never turn on again (ok, maybe he would have started again after $800 worth of repairs, but I’d only paid $600 for the car!) so I made a deal with the tow-truck guy in that he could have Georgio if he would waive the $100 towing fee. I still sometimes miss the good ole’ Italian Stallion…”

Amber here: Tell me a story about YOUR very first car?