r e f i n i n g - t h e - s i l v e r

relocated slightly. we'll see how this one goes. if well, it might even get as good as amos' page
http://refining-silver.blogspot.com

Love is a friendship --- that has caught fire.

It is a quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad. It settles for less than perfection, and makes allowances for human weakness.

Love is content with the present.
It hopes for the future.
Itt doesn't brood over the past.

It's the day-in and day-out chronicle of irritations, problems, compromises, small disappointments, big victories, and common goals.

If you have love in your life - it can make up for a great many things you lack.

If you don't have it - no matter what else there is ---

It is not enough

Pictures from Urbana 06!On the bus Dec. 26th...so excited to embark on this 24 hour bus ride
19 hours later...saw the sunrise...
by then we were so sick of being on a bus
major girl bonding time at our hotel room at the Hilton before convention started. we did the whole hair straightening, eyebrow-plucking, modelling sour patch kids thing.
aww we're all so happy! abby looks like a boy. heeeheeee notice that anna now has control of the big cylindrical pillow thing.
joelle happily modelling our travel staple: foamy hand sanitizer! kills 99.9% of germs in one shot!
COR livening up the stage at one of our evening sessions
many of the wonderful prayer times we had in and around the dome and convention center with people from all over the world.
a veritable sea of people...
like Will said, feeding 22 250 people was a logistical nightmare. they'd do 5000 at a time, shuffling people in and out of the "dining hall".
we did enjoy a couple good meals at Hooters!
see more pictures on my yahoo album, anna der's facebook, abby's whatever whenever she posts them up if she ever does...in total us girls took more than 1000 photos. yay urbana!

so i got up at 8 am this morning. went surfing on ange's smugmug site and discovered that tim's posted summer camp pictures. great pictures, made me remember what a good time summer camp was.
then my brother called from toronto and i have a good hour-long chat with him, mostly about his finding a wife and getting married and having an odd-number of kids, preferably 5.
made myself some diluted orange juice cause i never really drink juice straight from the box if i can add water to it. a mouthful went down the wrong way, choked on my orange juice. when i could breathe again i started laughing at the hilarity of it all.
all in all i've had a pretty adventurous morning.
then i went back to studying.

soo...i'm still studying. haven't stopped studying since...last september. man i miss having a carefree no worries fun in the sun summer. the kind i had last summer (except for being stuck in geriatrics in the morning and surgery/obstetrics on some afternoons, yuck). i miss having fun. i feel the impending black hairyness of burnout coming on. i'm gonna party so hard once MCAT is over.
you know.
after i finish studying.
between the time when i finish studying and when i have to start studying again.
those 16 days of...
not studying.
yay.

so under kat's gentle prodding i have decided to post.
so let's see. what's been new?
it's been an absolutely insane semester: a two-month semester with five classes, three papers, eight exams, two take-home finals...and a clinical placement starting next week.
i'm at the montreal general hospital seeing psychiatric patients. or "mental health" as they call it. i don't know what to expect. i get a magnetic nametag though. if i get a magnetic nametag nothing too bad can come out of that. i hope i won't go crazy.
MCAT season is just around the corner. Which means I'll be spending the entire spring and summer studying for this. the test i need to do perfect in to get into med school. as ivan put it: the most important test of my life. maybe not as melodramatic as that but this is huge. i'll have to restudy everything done in cegep: bio I+II, physical chem I+II, organic chem, mechanics, optics and e&m. one word: dread.
although seeing as the weather's getting warmer it might not be so bad. i'll miss out all the brilliant sunshine going on outside. it's almost summer. mmmm....summer. time for hot chili and cold drinks, for skipping through garden hoses and reminiscing about cuba and lounging around in short-shorts...and studying.
crap.
it just won' t go away.

on a side note: i'm usually not this inarticulate and apathetic, it's just that i've had exams from 8:30-5:00 today and something very unfortunate happened at about 4:15 in the middle of my last exam...which i will not get into in a blog. you'll have to ask me if you want to know. sometimes i do want to save the world. really. but today, i just want to sleep.

final word: thank you anita for keeping me sane these past six months of occupational therapy school. without you i'd be stuck with...people i will not mention because it's just not nice. it's great to have a friend.
verse of the day:
make that verse of the past three weeks:
Phillipians 4:13
"I can do all things through Him who gives me strength."

Christmas is almost here! Feel the Christmas cheer!
I've already packed my holidays with dates with friends and parties and shopping. Wonderful.