Road trip round-up!

Our road trip came to an end early Friday morning as we pulled into our driveway at a little past 5 in the morn. I typed this up the day after I know, when I post it, it'll have that date, but I'm saying now that it wasn't posted for a while because a) I wanted to edit my pictures first before uploading them, but then my computer mouse broke and doing things with a trackpad is tres annoying; b) there were a few other pictures I wanted to take, for example, of my souvenirs, but laziness dropped by for a visit and hasn't left yet; and c) I don't know, I kinda wanted to keep this as a draft until I felt like it was... post-worthy. It's stupidly and poorly written because I didn't want to go into detail in the entire trip because it was LONG; and in a couple of years when I look back at all my posts before deleting this blog (like I did to my old one), I'll be thinking to myself "yo, why wuz i so stoopid" (which is also what I thought to myself as I scrolled through my old blog before taking it off the webs for good).

But anyhow. Take it or leave it.

Here's the tl;dr in advance: I GO ON TRIP. TRIP FUN. SAW THINGS. CANADA GOOD.

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EPIPHANIES - things I discovered, learned, or realized:

1. Sitting for a long time actually really hurts your ass. I hadn't believed this before because I thought sitting for three hours was a long time and that didn't hurt. Nope, try six.
2. Mosquitoes and black flies love me. Eleven bites all over.
3. I should really re-learn French because French dudes are handsome (among other reasons).
4. Asians are rare out in the Maritimes and so we often caught people staring at us like we were aliens.
5. Crabs have strong grip. This being said, the hermit crabs we played with attempted to pinch, but they couldn't, so it was cute to watch them scuttle around in our palms.
6. Humpback whales are teases. We went on a whale watch and saw two, and everyone on the ship was waiting for one of them to flip its tail up as it dove to get a "tail" picture... and it never did.
   

   

   They came pretty close to the boat. It was magical.

   
   

   

   Tail!

7.  How lobster is supposed to taste: NOT like the stuff we get here.
   

   

   *Emma Stone eye roll* YUM.

8. Maritime traffic is awesome because there is none. This being said, it felt awfully lonely and kinda scary driving down empty highways at night... Felt like I was in a horror movie.
9. My neck is extremely ticklish and so sleeping with my hair down doesn't work well when I'm in a car because it keeps tickling it.
10. I knew this already, but seeing the Maritimes really confirmed it more: CANADA IS AMAZING!

NUMBERS - or estimates, to highlight the extra random events of our trip:

1. Rocks collected: maybe up to 8 pounds. Our family has a thing for collecting rocks - it stems from my dad. He likes to collect them for our fish tank. We went all-out during a stop at a shore along the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick.
   

   

   This was one of the rocks I collected. My sister calls it the "Poo rock"...

2. Times my hair got caught in a hair dryer: 2. Times it was pleasant: 0.
3. Pictures taken: over 3500. The Canon itself took 3457 pictures, but then we also had a second camera that my brother and sister used sometimes, my dad's phone's camera, and my mom's iPad - actually, she probably took more than five hundred snaps herself so I'd be willing to say we took almost up to 4000 pictures in total!
4. Moose seen: 3! All during our hike along the Skyline Trail. The first one was about 10 feet away from us as he was chowing down on plants; the second and third ones were a greater distance away and were both napping at the time we spotted them.
   

   

   Sister took this shot. It's pretty zoomed in, so in reality we were about 10 feet away from it. We named him Jiles, after the butler on the show "Whodunnit".

5. Hours playing Pokemon: 16. Both of my sisters have portable Nintendo devices and were playing their own Pokemon games for the trip. Midway through the trip, I caved and downloaded a version to my laptop to play during car rides.
6. Distance hiked: 7 km (Skyline Trail).
   

   

   Started from the bottom, now we here.

7. Souvenirs purchased for myself: 3. A funny postcard from the Hopewell Rocks, a poster from Cows, and a mug from NEAQ.
   

   

   Best ice cream, and best merch.

   

   If you ever wondered how they got the names of each individual rock...

   
   

   
   

   
   

8. Number of bug bites: 11. Four on my left leg, one on my left wrist, two on my face, two on my right leg, one on my right arm, and one on my right pinky toe.
9. Approximate distance traveled (not including local driving): 5020 km as calculated by Google Maps.
10. Approximate time on the road (not including local driving): 50 hours as calculated by Google Maps.

All in all, it was good fun. But my family won't be ready for another trip for a while... I, on the other hand, am excited about where I could go next!

Musicmusicmusic Monday!

QUICK! BEFORE MONDAY ENDS!

1. Wake Me Up - Avicii ft. Aloe Blacc

2. What I Wouldn't Do - Serena Ryder

3. Clarity - Zedd ft. Foxes

You rock, don't ever change,
Y

Eh?

If you're out of the loop, today was Canada day.

Can I just take a moment to explain how proud I am to be Canadian? Just kidding. It is utterly inexplicable how proud I am to be a Canuck! Hooray for free health care! Hooray for maple syrup! Hooray for saying "sorry" and "excuse me" more than five times a day!

We went to Wonderland in the morning. The place was more packed than the last time I had gone (which was on a weekday, while most kids were still in school), but we still got to ride the Behemoth twice in a row because for some reason, the line up there was really short.

We left after a while for lunch at home, and also to tackled a few chores. Then in the evening, two of my siblings and I went out to a park somewhere in the city to watch These Kids Wear Crowns! We missed the three other acts that came before them, which was fine, because I really wanted to see TKWC only.

(Low Q photo courtesy of my cell phone, because I didn't want to risk the bazooka getting damaged. )

I haven't been a hardcore fan of TKWC, but I do quite enjoy their music (did you read that in a British accent? Because that's what it sounded like in my head). To this date, Jumpstart is still the most played song on my phone!

The verdict is, they are AWESOME live. The small talk in between was entertaining. Their harmonies and pitch were in tact, and the energy was very, very high. My other sister had actually told me that they got too excited when they performed at her Orientation Week concert, but, nope, I think they were decently enthusiastic (of course, this might have been because I was too excited? Hah).

At the end of the concert, we got their autographs!~~~

Yes, they all have red eyes because the drummer thought it would be funny to draw everyone with red eyes. He drew one of the guys as a zombie on my sister's poster...

I also took a picture with the bassist Alan. He's my favourite.

I had to edit this because I was ridiculously flustered. HE'S SO HANDSOME. AND HE PUT HIS HAND ON MY BACK. AND I JUST LOOK RIDICULOUSLY UGLY BUT IT'S OKAY. Oh, and you can kinda see my little brother attempting to photobomb us.

During the concert, they were talking about hockey, and asked whether anyone wanted Luongo to be traded to Toronto and after a period of silence (during which I shouted GO LEAFS GO), they were like "Yeah, that was more of a joke for the dads in the audience". At the signing session, after saying hi, he pointed to my shirt to say that he liked it and when I turned around to show him that I was wearing my Luongo (Team Canada) t-shirt, and he (and the rest of them) cheered; and he asked me if I was a Luongo fan. I told him I bought the t-shirt to celebrate the win at the 2010 Olympics and that I wasn't quite a fan of him since he's been slumping. He concurred, but then added "But Luongo's still the best!"

After that, we went home, had dinner, then went back to Wonderland to catch some fireworks, because in my life, it ain't Canada day without fireworks!

Still in the process of learning how to use the new camera. These were probably the best of the night.

Hope you had an awesome Canada d'eh!