My Summer 2011

THE END.

2011-08-16T22:25:00.001-07:00

Well. The WISEST Summer Research Program has now come to an end. Kind of relieved, kind of sad. I'm going to miss a lot of people......Grace..Victoria..Jenna..Tanis...soo so many more.

Celebration of Research was not bad. Same as teacher appreciation.............nobody....i...know....showed.....up. whoooo. they did at the very end when it was OVER. what a pointless 3 hour trip to Edmonton. BUT WHATEVER. am i right? its the thought that counts? i dunno.

ANYWAYS. I don't believe I will be blogging too much anymore, unless something really exciting happens. I also don't know if there truly is anyone out there in this world actually reading my blog. Who knows I guess.

For the rest of summer I plan on going to the gym A LOT, gettin' my tan on....and catching up with my dear Sundre friends. =]

peace and love. <3

Day 42.

2011-08-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

I feel as though I gained a day somewhere. I thought this should only be day 41.....hm. I dunno.

Teacher Appreciation. Not at all what I expected it to be. Neither was presenting to our research group.
So I had this huge speal all planned out. What I was going to say, when and how I would say it, the answers to specific questions...EVERYTHING. I had all the little details planned out in my head. But noooo. Everyone has to be different. I explained my entire poster to like 2 people. wtf. Others were just like "so what did you do this summer?" or "oh. this looks cool. bye" and the questions were either really easy to answer, or I just stood there like UHHHHHHHHHHH. idk. because they were stupid hard.
All the posters were set up in the CCIS on these big boards. The teachers were then allowed to walk around and ask questions and look at your posters and such. It was quite boring, especially seems how MY TEACHERS DIDN'T COME. grrrrrrrrrrrr. I was fairly disappointed. =( oh well I guess.

CELEBRATION OF RESEARCH TOMORROW. omfg. good stuff.
HOME TOMORROW. omfg. great stuff.
<3

Day 40-41

2011-08-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

OMG BLOGGING IS HARD TO REMEMBER TO DO.

This weekend I went and visited my grandma in Fort Assiniboine!! It wasn't quite as far of a drive as I thought it was. Only took me an hour and a half or so. I bought her some pretty yellow lilly's which she was so pleased with! We went for supper at the cafe, then visited her best friend, Pauline. We stayed up till about 10:00 watching football...then right after we went to bed a wicked storm hit!
Grandma Esther was really happy that I came to visit her, and I'm glad I could make her that happy. I don't see her very often, and usually when I do it's because my mom has to go help her do something, so I think it made her even more happy that I decided to come on my own and spend the night with her. =)

I SAT IN A LAMBORGHINI. omfg. As I stood there drooling over it, the owner (Brett??) was like, "it's pretty nice eh?" Are you kidding me, it's gorgeous! "wanna sit in it? it's mine." WTFWTFWTFWTF YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. omfg. <3 too bad he wasn't good looking ahaha

TEACHER APPRECIATION TOMORROWWWWWWWW. I hope my teachers come. Also, I hope presenting to our research group isn't too bad tomorrow. And Maria better damn well like the way I want to present my poster...or I'mma snap shit. Yea buddy.

CABS ARE HERE. haha jk. I've been catching up on my Jersey Shore. boo ya.

Day 37-39

2011-08-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

SORRY. I haven't been keeping up to date with my blogging this past week. Not like I've been really busy or anything, I've just been lazy and never felt like blogging haha.

Wednesday: Grace came over after work. We read magazines. the end. just kidding, we also watched rap battle parody's on youtube. Now, the end.

Thursday: I honestly do not remem--- never mind. Thursday Victoria, Janice and I donated blood! 1st timers..whoo.

Friday: We got off work at 4:00, then I went to West Ed with a friend and went shopping!!! whhoooooooooo. I bought a really pretty dress that I am going to wear on Tuesday to the celebration of research. It's gorgeous! Now all I need is a pair of heels to rock with the dress. ;)

ah, blogging gets boring. Try it for 39 days and see how much effort you put into each post by the end of it. hahaha

Day 36!

2011-08-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

I GOT MY CAR FIXED TODAY. the exhaust part at least. I dropped it off right when they opened and picked it up right when they closed!

So first, we must talk about work. My poster is pretty much finished.. Maria and I went over the entire thing today and she pretty much told me exactly what to write for everything. I realize though, that I do not take constructive criticism very well... I had my poster DONE the way I liked it, then she comes in and is like "um, well, you see... I don't think that picture should go there..and that shouldn't say that and this shouldn't be that and blah blah blah." Don't get me wrong, I do see exactly where she is coming from, and I was definitely nice about taking her criticism, but in my head I was like UGH I AM SO STRESSED NOW BECAUSE YOU DON'T LIKE IT BECAUSE IT'S NOT THE EXACT SAME AS YOU WOULD'VE DONE. But in the end it was all good, because it sounds a lot better now. I feel as if she doesn't think I've fully grasped the concept though...but who's to blame me! She's only been here for 2 weeks out of the entire 6 weeks, Jonathan apparently doesn't know what he's talking about because half the stuff he told me wasn't right, and there's a language barrier! Ugh. I like her though, she is really nice. I'm just venting because I'm stressed, I think. =)

So. My car. It needed the pipe between the manifold and the catback converter. Supposed to cost around $430, but when I walk in there today after a very stressful trip on the bus, he's like actually it's going to be $600. I WAS LIKE WTF NOOOOOO. So stressed already because 1. the bus I was supposed to take, that left at 5:30, departed without me because I was still talking to Maria about my poster. 2. I realized I had no change, so I had to RUN to sub and get money from the debit machine, then deal with a SUPER slow cashier at Java Jive to sell me a friggen lemon-rasberry loaf so I could make some change (not the right change either, I skipped out on $0.15 of the bus fair, but shhhh) 3. The next bus I was supposed to take also left without me, as I came RUNNING up beside it. =( 4. the bus I finally got on made a stupidly long stop about 5 streets away from Fountain Tire.
But in the end I got there on time, and that ~$600 got bumped down to $509 because the nice guy working there gave me a 25% discount. =)

LESS THAN A WEEK!

Day 35

2011-08-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

Today I finished the statistics of Maria's data, and tomorrow I get to do the statistics for my data! Yay! Ugh. 4 work days left!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I went on a tour of a physical education lab in neuroscience. It was really cool, actually! We got to hook wires up to our muscles (by sticking these white things with metal snap on button like things on them to whatever muscle we wanted) then we could watch on the computer a graph of what our muscles were doing as we contracted them and we could even listen to them! Dr. Collins also had this detector thing that they held over his head and when they pushed a button on this machine it would send electrodes through his body and make different muscles contract depending on where the detector was over his head.

A bunch of us WISEST girls are having supper on Friday night as a sort-of celebration thing, so I think I am going to go to that instead of going home. I could always go home on Saturday, but instead I think I'm going to go visit my grandma Esther because it doesn't sound as if she's doing too well. It'll take me about 2.5 hours to get to Fort Assiniboine. =)

Then 2 more days and I can go home! I might wait until Wednesday to go home though...maybe. =P

Janice, Victoria and I are donating blood on Thursday! I'm super excited for that! =)

Day 33 and 34

2011-08-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I took my car to get looked at on Whyte Ave. They needed it for an hour, so I left and walked around Whyte Ave for a while. I managed to find the Farmers Market at Old Strathcona where I bought some extremely cute jewelry. =)
My car is going to cost me $500 to fix, and I am not impressed at all about that. =[ It's getting fixed on Tuesday. ugh.
I also went to the Southgate Mall, where I bought a pair of jeans, some pretty flip-flops and the most BEAUTIFUL pair of boots I've ever seen. <3 I love them so much! Ah, and I tried on a pair of True Religion jeans that were to diieee for! I wanted them so bad, but they were $425. That is way too much money for a pair of jeans. One day though...

Today Janice and I went to the Edmonton Valley Zoo. I was not impressed; they are lucky it was cheap. They had one elephant (because Lucy, their other elephant, died around May because of how terribly they took care of her. I signed a petition last year to save her, but obviously it did no good), a tiger, a snow lepard and that's about it for cool animals. All their animals looked really sad too, and I can see why: all the cages were badly kept, and of course because they're in a zoo and people are dicks (not necessarily zoo employees, but people that go to the zoo.)

9 DAYS. I have to finish my research poster soon too, but it is quite difficult. =(

Day 32

2011-08-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

Work was the same. Maria showed us her research poster, which was cool. I now know where to put the names, my logos and what to call it. aahaha. She's also going to be sending me some pictures to put on it, which I am super stoked for.
Lunch n learn......writing student reports....blah blah blah. boring.

We went shopping on Whyte Ave today....we being Bailey, Victoria, Esir, Fatima, Radhika, Janice and myself. I wanted to buy Ray Bans but they didn't have a pair that I really really wanted to spend $180 on. So all we bought was candy. hahah.

Victoria, Janice and I went for sushi after..mmmm. I don't really like california rolls, but I like takyoki? it's a wheat roll with octopus! Yum!

day 31

2011-08-04T18:24:00.000-07:00

i'm going to quit saying how soon I think I'm going to be done, because each day there's always something new to do! It better be done soon though because I need to have my poster done by Wednesday! ahhhhhhh!

I'm going to buy a pair of Ray Bans tomorrow on Whyte Ave! Oh baby!

8 days and I will be home again for the weekend. 13 days and I will be home for good! xD

Day 30

2011-08-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

I had to redo all the coding I did last week because Maria is finally back and she wanted it done a different way. Yay. Good thing it only took me till lunch, now I am going through days that she found in 2007/2008. I should be done that tomorrow though, then I believe I get to start helping Victoria do her project.

Next week Grace, Victoria, myself and whoever else wants to come are going SHOPPING! Yaaaaayyy. So exciting. I'm going to buy a dress and heels for the celebration of research day! Ah, I'm so stoked. I'm also going to buy gold tunnels sometime in the near future. double flared too. eeekk.

I calculated that by the time I turn 18 I will have either an 05 blue mazda 3 sedan, or a 04 mitsubishi lancer with a body kit. oh baby. ;)

day 29

2011-08-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

back to work.

Today Maria came back. Now, this should've been exciting to tell her about the things I found, except for the fact that Jonathan had me doing it incorrectly so now I get to do it all over again! Yay. Well not all of it, but a bit of it. It'll probably take me till Thursday.

We went on a tour today of the Swine and Dairy Research Facility. STINKY. It was interesting though, actually. The pig part was sweet. We watched these two little piglets fight each other hahaha. It was cute, but they were fierce! Did you know pigs can be cannibals? Once they taste blood apparently they don't stop =/ and new mother pigs will sometimes eat their piglets because they are scared of these little rugrats running around. Crazy! There was a pig there that was up to my belly button! That's like 3.5 feet tall!
The dairy part wasn't quite as interesting, although we did see a calf being born and got to wear neat plastic boots. =P Not gonna lie, I think it was less interesting because our tour guide couldn't speak English very well so I had a hard time understanding him. It was cute though because Esir has never seen pigs or cows or anything and she was so excited! haha

I'm tired, so I AM going to go to sleep early tonight. My sunburn is almost gone! boo ya! 14 days =)

Day 26-28

2011-08-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

Ah, what a great weekend =) Spent both Saturday and Sunday at Dickson at the cliffs with Summer. Cole and Tyler were there Saturday with us, then on Sunday Cole, Tyler, Winston, Spencer and Codyjoe were there too. Both nights we also all chilled at Winston's. On Saturday when we were leaving Dickson my exhaust decided it was finally rusted enough that it was gonna become unattached to the flange(?) and make my car rediculously loud! I hate it so much! Hopefully I will be getting it fixed this week, even though Jordan estimates it will cost me probably $200. Ughhhhhh.

Monday Summer, Ashley, Shannon, Selenia, Dani, Nathalie, Nathalie's friend, Shaun, Scott, Nathan, Jordan, Dallas, Taylor, Steve, Corey and myself all floated from airport road to town. It's a good 3 hour tube ride. So much fun though for the most part. Had some near death experiences (cough, Ashley) and quite a few tubes popping which resulted in a lot of unplanned doubling. It was a good time though.

I am crraaaaazzzzzyy sun burnt though. Probably because I didn't put any sunscreen on all weekend and it was sunny and at least +22 all weekend. Oh well, Solarcaine will turn it into a beautiful tan! i hope. =)

11 more days of work! 15 more days of living in Edmonton! ahhhhhh. it's gone by so fast!

Day 25

2011-08-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

Today we had a lunch n' learn about making our research posters. Personally, I thought it was kind of boring and all I could think of was how Grace's supervisor said that the chick who did our presentation did not make very good posters. All that went through my head the entire time was "chick, you're poster sucks. shut up and let me go have my own lunch time." Haha, nah it wasn't quite that bad but it was hard to pay attention.

Apparently we are allowed two 15 minute coffee breaks + one 1 hour lunch break. NO WAY. Victoria and I took a coffee break at about 4:15, and came back to our office at like 4:45 (we decided to kind of take both at once. ;) haha) and right when we were unlocking our office door Jonathan and Kyle were leaving. We started talking about our weekend plans and when I said I was going back to Sundre, which is a 3 hour drive, Jonathan was like "well what are you still doing here?? GO HOME. now." Ha, okay, don't gotta tell me twice =P

From Harmattan to just before the Sundre Golf Course traffic was going about 20 km/hr. Then at the golf course it was stopped, all because of that stupid bridge construction. It was 9:00 at night! wtf. It took me an hour to get from Harmattan to the other side of the bridge.

day 24

2011-07-28T17:26:00.000-07:00

I'm so friggen tired! ugggggghhhhhhh. HOME TOMORROW. <3

Today I began to code. It is fairly simple right now so it's kinda boring. Kyle made the entire code for me pretty much so all I do is hit play, enter satellite number, enter date (yyyymmdd), enter conjunction hour then enter conjunction minute. DONE.
It was quite the hassle to get the program to work on my computer though. One minute Kyle would be helping me then the next he'd leave and Jonathan would come help. Haha, Kyle messaged Jonathan off of my gmail chat and was like "come fix makepng. Now!" obviously without telling him who it was, so Jonathan replied "huh, demanding students eh? no." hahahaha. Later, to an e-mail that Kyle sent ME which said "come get me when you're done and we'll make that png work," Jonathan replied "no. shut up." which was theeennn replied to by Kyle saying "that's a little harsh." But everyone knows its all fun and games LOL.
Also today we had WISEST photography shoots (really lame btw) and right when I was getting my first picture done Victoria starts laughing, then Jonathan walks in and he's like "oh, well this is awkward. blah blah embarrassing stuff blah blah" which made me blush, then everyone started making jokes about how red my face was. =( RUDE. So, I ended up giving Victoria the silent treatment for 2 hours. Hahaha.
It was a very humorous day.

I shall go for a run tonight, then TRY and go to sleep early, because I am exhausted! I also need to clean my room/organize to go home tomorrow! EEK.

Day 23

2011-07-27T17:23:00.000-07:00

I somewhat started coding today! How exciting! A lot of today was just reorganizing data, but near the end Kyle (a grad student in our research group) taught me a little bit of code. Tomorrow the fun really begins! =D
I did however get to go home at 4:30.

Tonight I am going to look at a road bike!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SO EXCITED. If you are at all like Summer and think to yourself "Don't you need a special license for that?" No silly! A pedal bike! The kind people pedal cross country on! =P I want to ride it to Leduc! That's 32km! CRAZY.

2 more sleeps till home time!

Day 22

2011-07-26T17:06:00.000-07:00

I finally accomplished something at work today! Well, sort of. I did work pretty hardcore all day long...my spreadsheets/data was all mangled (don't ask me what I did to it) so I kind of had to redo some things. It didn't take me too long though, which is good. I think I'm going to be an over achiever and do some work tonight so hopefully Jonathan can teach me coding tomorrow! =)

I took the LRT to and from work today cause it was raining. Oddly enough, when I got on the LRT this morning, Victoria was on the same car as me! What a coincidence!

I've decided that 7:00 is my run time. Every day of the week I am going to go run at 7:00pm, regardless of my mood or the weather. At least that's what I'm going to try to do. =) Gotta get in as much training as possible! Also on days that it doesn't rain (so obviously not today) I am going to go for a run, then end up in a park near my house where I will then workout! ab workouts, lunges, burpees, etc, etc. =)

Day 21

2011-07-25T17:04:00.000-07:00

Half way done! whoop!

IT IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HOT OUT TODAY. omg! In about an hour, when it hopefully cools off a bit I'm going to go for a run! Training for a triathlon, ya know? Sundre's triathlon is next weekend (august 7th) so hopefully when I go home this weekend it won't be too late that I can sign up. But the real challenge, is the Banff Triathlon on September 10. I am so incredibly excited for that.

Well today we had a short day at work because at 2:00 we had a tour of either Afexa or Syncrude. I chose to go to Afexa, who are the creators of Cold FX. It was pretty interesting. You would think that the most interesting part would be the tour of the labs, but that was so boring. It was more interesting listening to the women talk about their careers at Afexa. DID YOU KNOW: Afexa in Edmonton has 40 employees, 28 of which are women! And the co-founder/CEO is a woman!? Cool!
I personally found it humorous that two of the most important people at Afexa were a) Jackie Shan, like Jackie Chan?! and b) Peter Pang, like Peter Pan! Hahaha. Cracks me up.

Can't wait to come home this weekend!

Day 20

2011-07-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

It feels like I've accomplished so much today! I went for a run across this crazy ass bridge that Mom and I drove over weeks ago, and ever since it's been my goal to run across it. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. It was sweet, but I felt like such a tourist because I was taking pictures/videos and walking really slow lol. Whatever though. Then on my way back I ran across this other bridge that was just a walking/biking bridge and it was fairly close to the water. Even had a sign that said "caution. Bridge may sway in high winds or large amounts of pedestrian traffic" Thank goodness it wasn't windy or busy today! The other side of this bridge was quite a bit different from the other bridge, because there was no road or buildings or anything, just lush green forest and tons of people biking and running. It was soooooooooooooooo pretty!
When I finally managed my way back to the road, I wandered down to Whyte Ave and actually went in some stores this time. There was a sweet snowboard shop that sold longboards and Ray Bans! And was having a 50-80% sale!! Eek. Too bad I didn't bring any money. =(

Eventually I returned home, about two hours later. I made some rice and watched a bit of TV, then as I realized that it was +30 outside, I decided to go GEOCACHING. For those of you who don't know what it is, it's like a world wide scavenger hunt that anyone can participate in. There are geocaches all over the place that you can go find if you have a GPS. They are hidden, but once you find it you have to sign the logbook then if you want to you can take something out of the box, but you have to put something back in. For example, today I found one that had a really cute pink breast cancer awareness key chain, so I traded my purple "science is fun" pen! Most boxes has a theme too. That box was anything pink, purple or related to cancer because the box was made in memory of someone who had breast cancer.
I found 3 today, and there's still plenty left in my area! Those 3 were all within 400m of my house. =D

I'm exhausted, and a little bit sun burnt now. So even though it is 6:30 now, I think I might go have a shower then fall asleep fairly early tonight.

xoxo

Day 19

2011-07-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

It was a generally boring Saturday... It was sort of sunny when I woke up, but then it took me like 2 hours to get myself out of bed, into the shower and into something I felt like going out in public in.

I spent probably 3 or 4 hours today at the skatepark. Wheuuu. I met Edward for the first real time today. I saw him for the first time at Shake the Lake last year, but today was the first time I actually talked to him....although we barely talked. Some kid (who's name I never did learn) talked to me a lot. He thought I was an art student making a photography portfolio because of my stylish leather jacket and DSLR camera. Hahaha. Then when I told him I was researching space physics at the university he thought I was "deeking" him. Wtf? hahaha. He was friendly though. I spent pretty much the whole time sitting on a curb with Edward's friend Marv. He was.....strange, but friendly too. I also saw my first ice cream truck today! One that played the stupid song, and had the guy dressed in white with the white hat too. Good stuff.

I watched My Sister's Keeper tonight. Such a sad movie, although, I was VERY disappointed that they changed the ending from the book. In the book the girl who isn't sick, is driving back to the hospital with her lawyer when they get into a car accident. Her father is a firefighter, and he's the one that pulls her out of the car. She dies, so they do the kidney operation and her sister with leukemia lives a long life, which is a miracle.
In the movie, the sister with leukemia dies in the hospital, and the family eventually goes back to a normal family, who vacations to Montana every year on the sister's birthday to remember her. Don't get me wrong, it still was a good movie, real tearjerker, but it would have been soooooo much better if they would have made it the way Jodi Picoult wrote it.

Day 18

2011-07-22T17:32:00.000-07:00

Rain, rain go away, come again another day.
It POURED rain today. All day. So when I woke up and realized that I would be drenched by the time I got to work, I made the wise decision of taking the LRT... all by myself! aha, I'm such a big kid now! Work was pretty much the same as yesterday. I did a whole lot of nothing, with some more nothing done towards the end. I read my magazine for probably an hour.
I did however, discover my life plan. I'm going to go to the U of A and get my Bachelor's Degree in Biomedical Engineering, where I will then work at a hospital as a Biomedical Engineer Technologist repairing and maintaining medical equipment. After doing that for a few years, depending on my interest level, I will then attend graduate school (not sure where yet) for Dentistry. After completing that I will work in a dentists office in possibly Cochrane, Canmore, Calgary, Edmonton or maybe somewhere crazy that I haven't really been too! Then 40 years later I will happily retire with millions of dollars to my name. xD

Today we had a Lunch n' Learn called "U of A Q and A" It was actually quite informative. We talked in small groups with someone who is/was studying at the U of A. We talked about student groups, transition from high school to university, laptops/other supplies, studying abroad, scholarships...the whole works! I really want to talk to someone who did Biomedical Engineering, dentistry, medicine etc., to see if I do want to pursue that career. Hmm... guess I'll have to start NETWORKING. Ahh, exciting.

I do not know what I am going to do this weekend. Kendra and Terri were supposed to come up, but now they aren't so I dunno what to do. Hopefully it will get nice out (like it looks like it is starting too) and I might just go hang out at the skatepark =P I would also enjoy going to the Edmonton Indy, but I don't know who would want to go to that with moi. None of the girls really seem like they'd be into that sort of thing. Hm, we'll just have to see I guess.

I'm sleeping in tomorrow though!!!!!!

Day 17!

2011-07-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

5 days till payday! 26 days left of WISEST! 18 days left of work! Crazy how time flies when you're having fun! ;)

Take a guess at what I accomplished today? NOTHING. wheuuuu! I worked fairly steadily before lunch getting the whole 2010 year done with the CARISMA data, but after lunch I literally just sat there and googled stuff. I searched up some different careers, different universities, went on kijiji and looked at cars/bikes.....yup, that's about what I accomplished at work today.

Now, when I got home.....that's a different story! No....no, not really. I ate ichiban, then did the dishes. How exciting right!?
TOMORROW IS FRIDAY. Now that is something exciting! Kendra and Terri should be coming up to visit me, which would be sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!! Capital Ex starts this weekend too. So does the Westerner. Capital Ex had their parade this morning...how inconvenient of them. Don't they know people WORK on Thursday mornings? hmph.

One thing I did learn from all my free time to google stuff today was that I don't know what I want to do! =( Victoria (Victoria Hessdorfer, Queen of Beaumont... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Grace =P) has everything pretty much planned out. I thought I did, but then I realized that a lot of being a Biomedical Engineer is research, and if this program has taught me anything it's that I don't want to do research! I want to be out in the field working! And not on a computer either! One thing I thought of though, is that I could take my 4 years of Biomedical Engineering, then go on to become a Doctor or a Dentist! Maybe one day I'll even go on to becoming a Radiologist, because they make an AVERAGE of $400 000 a year! Some even make $960 000!!! That's a crazy amount of money! Holy cow!! I could live a nice life with that much money, and imagine if I had a husband bringing in like $100 000-200 000 a year? We'd be millionaires!!! OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

Yeah. That's my excitement for today. Dreamin big of becoming a millionaire. <3

day 16

2011-07-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

Happy hump day everyone! If you are someone that has never heard that saying before, get your mind out of the gutters cause I know what you're thinking. It is Wednesday today, which is the middle of the week, or the hump you have to get over for you to really start looking forward to the weekend.

Work. was. boring. As always. I did however, get to start something new. In the morning I finished organizing my data a bit more, then I got to play around with a program where I could look at NOAA satellites and their orbit around earth to see whether or not they were over top of Canada when there were EMIC waves present in the data I found. Didn't really do anything with that except look. Haha.
After lunch (which may have been a little longer than it should've been, but shhhh) I was shown how to find the CARISMA plots I was supposed to be comparing my data with. It didn't take me long to finish the entire year of 2009, but Jonathan said not to go onto 2010 because "it took a plunge for the worse" or something like that. The magnetometers got flooded out. Hahaa.

Today after work I walked all the way to 100st, thats 14 streets east for all of you who aren't keeping track of what street I live on/work on. The reason I walked alllllll the way over there was to........ GET MY NAILS DONE. eek. Love them! And I got to walk down pretty much all of Whyte Ave which was sweet because there are so many cute little stores around there! I didn't go in any though because on the way there I was on a mission to get there in time, and on the way back I was talking to Grace on the phone. I didn't get home till after 8:00! crazy!

But today has been too exciting, it's bed time now. <3

day 15

2011-07-19T20:31:00.000-07:00

Not much to report about today either. I finished collecting all my data, so I kinda just fooled around and did a whole lot of nothing again until someone finally told me something I could do. Sooooo, I started to organize my data some more! How exciting!?

Ah, I feel very fortunate to be working with Victoria. We have lots of laughs together hahaha. So many insiders and it makes me happy. =)

I had to walk home in the rain today. Not too enjoyable seems how I wore shorts and a flannel shirt, but I guess that would be nobody's fault but my own.

I also went down to Whyte Ave today! Aka, the hot spot in Edmonton! Tons of cute little stores, restaurants and coffee shops. Also, where all the clubs are. Too bad I'm not 18! =(

GOODNIGHT.
ps. 19 more work days. xD

Day 14

2011-07-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

20 work days left! woot woot!

I accomplished a whole lot of nothing today. The website I use to collect my data from wasn't working, so I did about an hours worth of work then did absolutely nothing. I did however, finish my report for the Team Challenge that I volunteered to write. Two thumbs up for that!

We had our Networking Fair, and it was alright I suppose. Just sat in a big circle with about 5 other WISEST girls and a bunch of older women talking about their career paths. I suppose it was informative, but I dunno, kinda seemed like a waste of time. They all kinda did the same thing too, so it wasn't even that helpful for that aspect of it. It did make me think about my career choice, and I don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't want to do research, I can tell you that much. I WANT MONEY. and they said acedemia is not the place to make lots of money, so no to science/math/stuff like that! haha.

We'll see how life goes I guess. rich rich rich is all I wanna be! and generally happy of course, but I believe money can bring happiness haha.

Day 12 and 13!

2011-07-17T19:48:00.000-07:00

As I sit here in my hot hot hot room with the fan blowing on my face, I think of what a fantastic weekend this has been. Minus the cigar burn on my wrist, and my major entire-body-sunburn I got going on right now, but even then, those things are what made this weekend what it was.

Okay, so Saturday. Shannon and I took her dog Coco (spelling?!?) for a walk down by the river. We probably spent a good hour and a half walking, which is great because it was absolutely beautiful outside and I got to spend some quality time catching up with Shannon. =)
Later, we went to the East Wing to have a BBQ. Everyone was there, and it was just like old times. =) Shannon and I even noticed some writing on the wall in the basement that Darcy and I did like 2.5 years ago. "We're getting our summer back" -Shannon Eslinger.
The BBQ was quite the success. Had some hot dogs, chips, and even bacon wrapped steaks! woah! haha. We played some card games, went longboarding/biking, sat on the jungle jim and had a sick sesh of Ninja! (Youtube that game, so much fun!) I definitely won a round, no big deal or anything. The final round was between Gage and I too, just some brotherly-sister competition. =P
We ended up sitting around the campfire just chattin it up till probably 1, 1:30ish. It was definitely a good night.

Now, Sunday. I spent today with the one and only, Miss Tasha. I miss that chicky! We went tubing down the Red-Deer River, which is not the same as it used to be! The spring flooding definitely changed the channels a little bit and washed away a lot of the bank. It was still a fun time though. After tubing we headed up town to get some icecream then walked around town for a while. Haha, at one point Tasha tried to make the top of her icecream thing slide off because she only wanted to eat the cone, so she kinda flicked her wrist to try and make it fall off, but instead the whole cone flew out of the wrapper and onto the ground! haha, poor tashie!

So overall, I would give this weekend a 10/10. =)

Day 11

2011-07-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

It's Friday, Friday, Friday...gotta get down on Friday! xD
Obviously seems how it is Friday work went by eeexxxtreeemmmeellllyyyy slow! Well up until about 3:00 at least. I have to admit I have been slacking a bit these past few days. I am done the first 6 months of 2010 now though!! Hopefully come Monday I'll be able to buckle down and finish it so I can start the next part on Tuesday. =)

Today was our first Lunch n' Learn session. We met in Education 107 where we got to meet and listen to Margret-ann Armour (a verrryyy verry inspirational woman who chose a non-traditional career =P GOOGLE HER) speak about the importance of networking, role models and mentors. I've heard her speak once before and she is just the sweetest lady ever! We ran out of time so we missed all of what WISEST had to tell us, which is really no big D. mhm.

oooo, also today, before I move on to our afternoon events, I was late this morning because I had to drop off some papers on my way to work and it took a lot longer than I thought it would. Sooo as I finally left the building it was 9:28, and I start work at 9:30 so I grab my bag, clutch my phone/iPod and start bookin er! I ran, not jogged, RAN, from the Butterdome, or to put it into perspective for all you non-U of A people, the Butterdome is on 87Ave, and I needed to be on 92 Ave (if the road actually went through campus) so thats like what 5 blocks. That's pretty much running across Sundre! (well not really, but you get the point, it was a long run) I was not prepared to run either, I had my big floppy bag, stuff in both of my hands, and very improper shoes for running! I did make it there in about 3 minutes though, which was pretty decent. haha.

Okay...afternoon events.... we met with Dr. Mann, just him, Victoria and I. He came to our office and got us at around 3:30pm (he was a half hour late, but c'mon now, he's a busy man being a professor on Canada's top 40 under 40 ;) and all that jazz) and we went to Java Jive in SUB for coffee, or tea in my case. =P We sat outside at a picnic table and he explained pretty much everything that Maria and Jonathan had already explained to us, but in a different way. One of the very first things he said to us made a lot of sense to me (I CAN'T REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS RIGHT NOW THOUGH) but after that it was like gibberish proff talk. hahah. It was nice though, to get to sit down and talk to him for a bit before he leaves for like 2 weeks or something ridiculous.
We also got to meet Jonathan's wife.....................................I don't remember what her name was.... CLAIRE. Ah, I was beginning to worry about my memory there for a minute. =P She is going to be helping us next week while everyone is gone to St. Johns. She works in the Space Physics department as well, (how cute!) so she knows pretty much everything we are researching and she seems really nice and extremely interested in what we are doing.

Jonathan gave me an overview of what I have to look forward to, and even though it sounds tedious and hard, I am really excited. I finish data collecting, then I data analyze, then I get to start coding! I am pretty much trying to prove someone's hypothesis right or wrong of whether or not the EMIC waves empty the radiation belts. It's really confusing so if you REALLY wanna know all the details, I can tell you separately LOL.

Now, I am at home. But not my home on 78th Ave, my home in SUNDRE! woot woot. Can't wait for a fun filled weekend with my friieenndss that I so dearly missed. =)

Day 10

2011-07-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

HOLY JUMPING JUNIPERS!!! day 10.

32 more days of the 2011 WISEST Summer Research Program! Woot woot. Not that I'm still homesick or miss my friends A LOT or anything like that. pffftt.

Nah, it's been pretty good so far. Today was a little more interesting at work, I suppose. Victoria started coding, while I still have to finish looking for EMIC Waves and IPDP for the 2010 year. Whooo. Coding looks really difficult though, and Jonathan said that mine was going to be harder than Victoria's. EEEKK. Jonathan spent probably a good two hours with us today, at least. Which was kind of nice because they usually just leave us with a billion questions for a really long time. We also got to meet Dr. Mann today, although it wasn't quite as "proper"? as it should of been I think. Jonathan was showing Vicky and I his office and we just happened to run into Dr. Mann in the hallway. We are having a meeting with him tomorrow though, so that should be good.

We have our first Lunch n' Learn session tomorrow, about networking. Woooo. sounds like fun. =P

Today, Vicky and I got distracted A LOT, by random things, such as all the cute boys, who Jonathan told us were doing undergrad research in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. NERDS! how cute. ooooo, i went for a run today too. that was nice. Ran down some pretty paths, up some intense stairs, across a magnificent bridge, and back through a beautiful neighbourhood. ahhh, what a life <3

I decided that once I learn how to code I'm going to memorize it all and be like Mark Zuckerburg (creator of Facebook, duh) and be able to look behind me and talk to someone while "coding, coding, coding, coding" then be like BAM. facebook hacked. hahaha. Yup, it's gonna happen one day, you wait and see. =P

OH MY GOODNESS. I just had like 5 things on my mind that I needed to go back and put on here, but I don't remember what they were now!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! ahhhhhhhhhh. random thought anyways, my building has automatic lights and blinds. COOL. kinda. the lights turn off if you don't move for a while, and the motion detector is on the other side of our little cubicles so we actually have to get out of our desks and walk to the door to make them turn on. I like the dark better though anyways. And the blinds adjust to the amount of sunlight hitting the windows! NEAT. ufhghghghkdfjk. i don't remember what else I had to say!!
I make a quarter of a cent every second. haha and if you made a dollar a second you would be getting paid $3 600 PER HOUR. woah! I want a job like that! I don't even make that much in like 2 months! hahah.
86 400 seconds until I will be back in sundre! hehe, I LOVE CALCULATING. bahah. such a nerd! <3
peace and puppies! hahaha

Day 9

2011-07-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

Pretty much absolutely nothing interesting happened today. There were a lot, and I mean A LOT of cute boys around our building/on our floor today. Eek =D Victoria and I also wandered around the building for about 20 minutes trying to find Maria's office, which we never did find, although we did find a bunch of neat looking labs! I want to work in one of those! =P

Hmm..what else happened today....? I did the dishes and cleaned my room today! Don't ask me why I did the dishes, seems how NONE of them were mine. But the big pile of dirty dishes on the counter right beside where I make my sandwiches everyday was kind of beginning to bother me, so why not be of some help?!

Some of the girls want to go see the street performers on Friday night, but I have yet to decide if I want to go to that or go home......... hmmm.. home is calling, well actually, SCREAMING my name to come visit, so maybe that one will win?! We'll see I guess.

Tomorrow we learn about our next task seems how Jonathan, Maria and Dr. Mann (whom we've yet to meet) leave on Friday for the next week!! I hope it is generally exciting, because data collecting is sooooooooooooooooo boring! =(

peace, my homiess....whaaaaaaaaaaaaattt. =D

Day 8

2011-07-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

Do you think Monday is the worst day of the week? I've lately been considering that, no, Monday is not all that bad; sure it's the beginning of the week and everyone is still hyped on the weekend, and it's the start of a long work week, but it has a positive side too: you get to friends you don't see on the weekend usually (at least I do because everyone I work with has a life in Edmonton seems how this is their hometown =P) and it usually goes by pretty fast because it is the first day of the week. Tuesday on the other hand is a whole different story. Have you seen the commercial for some food thing like Hamburger Helper or something, where it goes through the good things on all the different days of the week and says Monday's suck, but now you have "insert food product name that has slipped my mind" to make Monday's great! Anyways, the fact that this food product now makes Monday's fun was not the point: the point is that during the commercial they say Tuesday's suck too, but somebody had to be first, right?! Well I 100% agree, Tuesday's suck! The week is starting into full swing now, and if you reminisce about last weekend people get annoyed, but if you talk of how excited you are for this weekend people are like "shut up, it's still 4 days away!" Plus, it drags on FOREVER!
This is just how I felt about my day today, so I figured I'd vent a little. LOL. There was not a whole lot good about today, nothing bad either, but it was a mediocre or so-so kind of day. The weather sucks: it's rainy and cloudy; work went by sooo slow; lunch with the WISEST girls was good; we met Jonathan today and he was extremely nice; I started to work on the 2009 year PLUS I get to add more data to my spreadsheet about EMIC Waves and IPDP (Intervals of Pulsation with Diminishing Periods) oh baby!

Ah, and yesterday I volunteered to write about Team Challenge Day to be published in the WISEST Student Journal... don't ask me why I did that! But while I was a tad bit bored at work today I almost finished the whole thing! Woot woot. Victoria and I also spent a fair amount of time looking at physics and math jokes.. haha, LOSERS, I know right, but it's so awesome at the same time. I wrote down one joke that I wanted to tell Kyra in my notebook and when Jonathan and Maria came in to talk to us Jonathan asked if he could write something down in my notebook, so not thinking I said yeah, absolutely just write it down on that page--The page that had the joke on it =O Obviously it was a little hard to miss, so he stopped and read it, but at least it made him literally giggle for about 10 or 15 seconds haha. He also had to of seen my calculations for finding how much money I was making per second. (Why am I becoming SO cool this summer???) Fun stuff. LOL.

I also went grocery shopping today. Bought a TON of stuff....NOT. I bought a loaf of whole-wheat bread (om nom nom, healthy!) and a pack of gum. =D

See you tomorrow err'body!

p.s. Why did the cat slide off the roof? It didn't have enough mew! (Hahahahahahahahaha, I definitley LOL'd at that one when I read it, and it truly isn't that funny, but it's an insider for our Physics 20 class, or at least the cool side of the classroom, aka Max, Kyra, Jenna and I.)

ta ta for now! xD

Day 7

2011-07-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

Well, today was a very good start to the week! I had a terrible time falling asleep last night though. I stayed up till about 10:00 talking to Grace on facebook, then told her I needed to sleep. I tried and tried, but I got restless leg syndrome and it was hot in my room, and just ugh, it was not a good night for sleeping apparently! I finally fell asleep at around 1:00am though, which still left me with a solid 7 hours of sleep, but that went by way to fast!

My whole 2.5 hours of work today went by fairly fast too actually. Maria stopped in at her usual time and we were supposed to meet Dr. Mann and Jonathan, but I had to leave at noon for our tour, and Victoria had to leave at 2:00 for her tour so we never ended up meeting them. Hopefully tomorrow! =D
Whew, speaking of work, I learned some very interesting things about space weather today! QUIZ TIME! What is space weather? Space weather is a consequence of the behavior of the sun, the nature of Earth's magnetic field and our location in the solar system. Numba two?! What are the different kinds of space weather events? Geomagnetic stom, solar radiation storm and radio blackout! whoo! What is solar wind and what does it do? A highly supersonic plasma flow proceeding from the sun that shapes and structures the magnetosphere and it drives key processes such as magnetic reconnection, convection, current systems and particle precipitation!! Ahh, I am just having too much fun nerding out so far! =P

The Dow Chemical Company tour was interesting, I suppose. It's on the North (I think) side of Fort Saskatchewan so we all piled on a schoolbus for the 45 minute drive. It didn't seem like it took very long though, maybe because Grace non-stop talks. LOL. Not saying it's a bad thing though, it's an AMAZING thing, because imagine this, but I am a little bit shy! Woah, I know right!? The company makes chemicals (another mind blown moment, right?) that are used for almost everything from plastic toys to pop bottles. The plant is huugggee, and I guess that part was pretty interesting. They employ over 42 000 people all over the world!

After the tour, Grace and I hopped on the city bus and headed over to WEST EDMONTON MALL. Eeek. I <3 shopping! Grace was so much fun to shop with too; she loved trying stuff on and just being totally outrageous! It was definitely a fun filled night. =) I already feel like I've grown up so much this summer, and I've only been here for a week. The conversations we have are so...mature! And the fact that I am living on my own and doing everything by myself. I'm getting less homesick now too! But I still can't wait to come home this weekend and see all my friends! =D

Tomorrow, I shall go grocery shopping as I seem to have ran out of bread for sandwiches. Isn't that exciting! Whoo!

Sweet dreams kids! <3

Day 5 and 6

2011-07-10T20:50:00.000-07:00

Ah, the weekend! I don't have very much to say about it. It was boring. I slept a lot, and it rained a lot. Hm, how exciting!

Today 82nd Ave was closed, and it took me like a half hour to figure my way around it because I didn't not realize that the sunday all the "82nd Ave (Whyte Ave) closed Sunday 8:30am-10:30pm was this Sunday", so I didn't turn before 82nd Ave and ended up going all the way across the river and getting lost and confused over there until finally I managed my way to somewhere I recognized and made it home. =D

Day 4

2011-07-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, so the next 3 posts are going to be from my memory, seems how I haven't posted anything since Thursday. SORRY! =)

Hmm.. Friday. Well, on Friday I finished my first year of data, and found about 20-30 signs of a resonator in total, but most of those were from Thursday. A lot of the data I worked with on Friday was really simple, so it got boring really fast because I wasn't looking at resonators for about the last four months of 2010. I finished the year at around 2:00pm, so for the next hour (because we got off at 3:00) I worked through some of the modules that Kyle gave us to look over. They are really interesting so far! I am learning a lot more about how to actually explain space weather and the causes/effects of it. =)

After work, Victoria and I headed over to CAB to meet for our Team Challenge. Grace saved us some seats in the back, like a BOSS, as she would say. We began by listening to Jen (one of the WISEST workers) speak about her career path and how there are no "boy" jobs and no "girl" jobs, we can do whatever we set our mind to. Then we got to the fun stuff. We were divided into groups of 3 and were sent downstairs where there were laptops and ROBOTS on the tables. Our goal was to firstly, make friends, but also to design and program our robot to parallel park between 2 army men. At first it was somewhat confusing, but Fatima, Cayley and I quickly got it figured out. It was so much fun and really interesting.

That ended at 4:30, so after we had cleaned everything up Victoria, Irina, myself and some other girls hopped on the LRT (which I find to be extremely fun and exhilirating) and headed home. The LRT made my 20 minute walk in the rain turn into a 3 minute warm, dry train ride. =)

That's all for now kids! =D

Day 3

2011-07-07T19:47:00.001-07:00

Today's work was a little bit more interesting. It was still just me staring at a computer screen for 7 hours, but this time I was actually looking at important stuff. I have gone through the first 8 months of 2010, and I have found about 15 signs of a resonator. I also had a good discussion with my supervisor Maria, about what all the different images meant. I learned that a lot of the images I was seeing looked so weird because of something happening with the magnetometer, not actual space weather! What I am working on is part of the bigger picture of trying to discover the connections between the ionosphere and our atmosphere. Currently, scientists don't quite understand how what happens in the ionosphere affects our atmosphere and our planet.

The program I am working with is called the FFT Dynamic Spectra of Induction Magnetometer Data. Woah, that's a lot to handle! LOL.

I had lunch with some of the other girls today, exchanged names and numbers, how exciting! I definitely need to find something to do after work though, because as soon as I get home I eat supper, watch some TV, then do absolutely nothing and that is the time where I start to feel homesick. =(

Tomorrow we have a Team Challenge with the other WISEST girls, so I will be done work at 3 then get to go have some fun! Hopefully the weather keeps up the way it has been and we don't get no tornadoes or hail storms like Sundre did today!

Goodnight everyone!
sweet dreams <3

Day 2

2011-07-06T18:40:00.001-07:00

Today was our first day of actual work, or research, whichever you prefer. Victoria and I are both working on different projects, although we are still side-by-side the entire time. Victoria is researching what causes the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, while I am researching the effect of solar winds and charged particles on our atmosphere.

We've already covered an entire unit of Physics 20, as well as learned a ton more stuff, and it's only been a day and a half! All of my research is on the computers, using data from ground-based and satellite-based magnetometers. For the first few days I have to go through an entire years worth of spectrograms collected from various magnetometers all over Canada. I am looking for signs of harmonics, which could represent an increase in particle activity in our ionosphere. Some of the charged particles from the solar winds penetrate our magnetosphere, where they can become trapped or continue on right into our atmosphere and to our planet. These particles are dangerous not only to technology on Earth, but also to human beings.

Understand all of that? Haha. =) I'm sure it will be interesting, but as of right now I have gone through two months worth of data, and it is kinnddaaaa boring, not gonna lie. =P My supervisor is really excited about it though, so that's good!
Also today, we had lunch in the quad with all of the other WISEST girls. We have an hour for lunch, so after some of us were done eating we went to Starbucks in the Central Academic Building (CAB) then wandered around campus. I met a girl named Irina, who moved to Edmonton with her family a few years ago from Ukraine! She's really nice, and she works in the building right behind mine! Obviously I have met a lot of other people, but it is so overwhelming and hard to remember all of their names!

I miss home, and my friends and family. It's debateable whether or not I am going to come home this weekend. I really want to tuff it out for two weeks at a time, but I am a wee bit home sick. And I have no idea what I am going to do for two whole days without work. So far I have been home everyday at around 5ish, and I usually just chill on my computer, watch TV, or chill outside seems how it has been absolutely GORGEOUS outside! I am getting a tan walking 20 minutes to and from work everyday. =) The mosquitoes are terrible though! I'm so itchy!

That's all for today! Keep checking for updates! <3

Day 1: Orientation

2011-07-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!

Orientation was today, bright and early at 8:30am! There are 58 girls in total and 2 boys, and I'm sure I met almost all of them, but I only remember like 5 names. =P The first girl I met was from, GUESS WHERE? Caroline, of all places. I met some girls from St. Albert, Beumont, Leduc, but I'm pretty sure Janice and I are the furthest away still. Everyone seems really nice, and the coordinators of the program are really friendly as well.

Orientation was pretty much just familiarizing ourselves with the expectations (payroll, responsibilities as a student, etc.). We did do a scavenger hunt in groups of 4, that took us all over campus trying to find different things that we might use over the next 6 weeks. Every Monday and Friday there are Professional Development Seminars (networking opportunities, field trips to off-campus research facilities, and tours of labs on campus), and Lunch n' Learn Sessions.

I also met with one of my supervisors today, Maria Usanova. She is such a nice person! She moved to Edmonton 6 years ago from Moscow, Russia! I work with Maria, Dr. Mann, Dr. Rae, Kyle and one other WISEST researcher, Victoria. I haven't met Dr. Mann or Dr. Rae yet because they are both at a conference in Australia till the 10th. I like Victoria, which is good seems how we work beside each other on computers every week day from 9:30-5:30. =) We didn't start any research today, so now I am just at home relaxing in the HOT HOT weather. Tomorrows post is sure to be a lot more interesting than todays!

But as for now, I am off to do some exploring of the city. =)

New Home!!

2011-07-04T18:02:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Edmonton today at my new "home" at about 2:00pm. It's pretty simple to get to, but the 3.5 hour drive from my house back in Sundre is kind of brutal, especially by myself. I blasted the tunes and probably almost lost my voice from singing to myself so loud. LOL. =P

My roommates are nice, the neighbourhood is quiet and it is SO close to the University! It's only about a 15 minute walk from my doorstep to the ETLC (Engineering Teaching and Learning Complex), which is where I have to meet for orientation tomorrow.

The drive up was long and boring, but when I got to the city my heart started racing and not gonna lie, I did get really nervous. =\ It took me about 45 minutes to get all my stuff into my room and organized. Neither of my roommates were home until about 5:30 so I got to spend the first 3 hours by myself. I had to manage my way to downtown Edmonton to get a parking permit though, and that took a while. I found it pretty easily, and got my permit right away, but then on my way back it was the begining of rush hour and took me like 40 minutes to go 6km! Stupid cities! =)

I watched some TV with my roommates earlier, and got all introduced. So now, I am just relaxing in my room, thinking of actually going to sleep soon even if it is only 7:00. It's been an exhausting day!
Less than 24 hours until orientation!!!!!

3 Days Untill Orientation!

2011-07-02T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hey Everybody!

So I decided to start a blog so that if you really wanted to, you could keep up with what I am doing this summer! I will try to update it everyday, but I apologize in advance if I miss a day here and there. =)

I better begin by telling you about my wonderful opportunity! Thanks to my teachers, such as Mr. Challoner and Mr. Nielsen, along with a group of girls in my grade, we were all able to attend the WISEST (Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science and Technology) conference at the University of Alberta last December. While there, we met with women in non-traditional careers, participated in labs, and listened to guest speakers.
At the conference we learned about the WISEST Summer Research Program, which is what I will be attending this summer. At first I wasn't sure whether or not I actually wanted to spend my whole summer in Edmonton, by myself, but I figured, What the hey? What are the chances I would get accepted? Again, thanks to my teachers, I did end up applying and I am very happy I did.

I got accepted to work with Dr. Mann in the Space Physics Department researching how the weather in space, such as solar flares, affect the things we send into space and how they work on Earth. I will be working mainly on computers, but there will be some "space camps" on the weekends that I have the opportunity to attend. At these camps, we will send mini rockets into space, and track them while they are there.

Orientation is on July 5, 2011, which is less than 3 days away now! I am extremely excited, but a little nervous at the moment. First time on my own...three hours away from all my friends... It'll be quite the experience, that's for sure!

I probably won't make my next post until after orientation, so check back then, and any day after that! =)