Merry Christmas!

ho ho ho, merry christmas! I love the gifts I got, my car is fixed, and I'm off to the boxing day extravaganza at Steven's aunts & uncles today! Hope everyone's christmas was as joyful and merry as mine! New Years is coming and that will be quite fun. I got a lot of gifts relating to the fact that I'm moving out. I was thinking to myself, 3 1/2 more months, I will be done school completly, going to Mexico, and soon to be moving into my new house! It is so thrilling! Not to mention what kind of a job am I going to get after I finish school? I have no idea! Well, continue to celebrate the holidays with the most important people in your life! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

christmas shopping and broken down buicks

My car broke down on friday. I was driving and I lost heat, power steering, the water cooler, and my battery light went on. So the belt that ran 3 of those things came off, and I am housebound still on tuesday. Well, I shouldn't say housebound because now Steven is required to drive me everywhere. I should probably change that to say that actually Steven is now Jess-bound. My dad is doing his best to fix it, but he destroyed his knee, so it has been a bit of a process. About christmas shopping, I have 4 more gifts to buy. Even though this is ridiculously ambitious, I plan to go out and get 3 all totally done TONIGHT. The problem is that I am going shopping with Steven, so I can't buy him a gift when I'm with him. So anyway, hopefully the next time I write I will be done all my christmas shopping and back to driving my Buick all over the place! Merry Christmas, Jolly Shopping!

DONE-ZO!!!! and now its quincey time!

Well, I'm done and I can hardly believe it. That was really really tough, way tougher than semester's that have passed. But it is all totally over!. ....well, until January 3rd, thats when I go back for my last semester. So today Steve picked me up from the SA and I helped him and Gregg, Snake, Jason, and Devon build a snow fort/quincy! Steve made me go inside of it and I was scared. The tunnel to the way in was very small, but you could actually sit up inside of it! Then I put some rocks around the outside of the mouth of the tunnel, but you can't see that in the pictures. So I guess I'm going out for a celebratory dinner tonight and some relaxation! I cannot wait to begin the greatest holiday season EVER!!!!!

Time is going fast these days...

So I did alright on my exams, glad both of them are out of the way. I now have one more class and 2 more days of field placement to complete and then I'm totally donezo! It will feel weird, but I'm already getting used to some of the freedom.

Yesterday I went and visited the house that marla, steph, lori and I will be living in May or June. It is so nice! Hard wood floors in the living room, dining room, and also in the bedrooms. Also the basement is totally finished except Mike is ripping one room apart because its disgusting and apparently re-drywalling it and all of that stuff. There is 5 rooms in the house and 4 of us girls. So there is some variation in the rooms that we can have. It looks like I will get the smallest room in the house, which will be a big change for me as my bed is the width of the entire room! Its weird but I pretty much have my heart set on it, as the windows are way bigger than some of the other rooms. But it doesn't really matter I won't be living there for very long. Anyone who picked up on that last sentence, don't read anything into that! I already have picked out the paint and decided the colors I want for my room. Its one thing to know your moving out, but a totally different thing to actually see it! Nothing seems to be taking its time these days, and I can't believe I'm already going to be starting my last semester in in a few weeks. This is a picture of me and Steven at Pam's wedding, I think this is definitly the best picture that we have taken together and I had to show it off!

CRUNCH TIME!!!!

I'm writing two final exams tomorrow (monday) Pray for me!

HOUSING CRISIS: EDMONTON

What the heck is with Edmonton and the rising housing prices! It's ridiculous! Last fall I played a game in the Edmonton Journal called "Rome for the Gnome." Gnomes were hidden all over different parks in Edmonton, clues were given in the newspaper and people had to solve the clue, and then go to that park to find the little gnome often hidden under trees. It became a little disturbing when we went to lift up the bottoms of trees to find gnomes and instead would find an entire family sleeping underneath! Mom, Dad, and kids. Unless you were to physically lift up the tree branches, you wouldn't be able to tell that people were sleeping underneath them. Whats really surprising and why you don't see these people during the day is because a lot of homeless people in Edmonton work during the day and sleep in public parks during the night. "Susan McGee, spokeswoman from the Edmonton Joint Planning Committee on Housing, said working people have been living in campgrounds over the summer or sleeping in the city's river valley."(http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2006/10/31/homeless-edmonton.htmledmonton.html) I think that if a person is working full time on minimum wage, they should be able to afford some type of housing or accomodation. It's ridiculous to me that Edmonton is too expensive for people who are working hard to support their families to provide food, clothing, and I don't think that shelter should ever be considered a luxury, especially in Alberta where not having a shelter could mean freezing to death! "Alberta's white-hot economy is creating a new class of homeless — the working poor. The latest survey of homelessness in Edmonton has found that low vacancy rates and lack of affordable housing are hurting those with jobs as well as the unemployed." (http://www.themoneyblogs.com/edmontonrealestate/my.blog/homeless-in-edmonton.html And as for shelters, there isn't enough room. There isn't enough room for people in the richest province in Canada! "168" people in Edmonton each night will not make it into a shelter because either the shelter is too full, (people being turned away) or people will be discharged from a shelter. (http://www.edmonton.ca/CommPeople/HomelessOct02.pdf) People have different solutions to these problems. Some people want to implement a "living wage" for people of an area to earn enough to be able to afford the necessities of life for whatever cost things are priced at in that area. Other people want the government to introduce a type of rent control across Edmonton. There are other solutions such as the prevention of foreign land buyers in the Edmonton area.

It happens to really irks me when I see people who work all day on minimum wage, often long hours, who have families, who don't do drugs or alcohol, are forced to work more than one job, who are responsible, who, because of Edmonton's rising housing prices cannot afford some type of decent accomodation. So, this is just something to think about, especially for anybody who believes that in all conditions being homeless is a choice.

p.s. This is a re-written section of my paper - "The Increase of Poverty in Edmonton", (written with a little more emotion for this blog! lol)

Cat!

When I move out with Steph, Marla, and Lori, we will get a cat. I'm really hoping we can name the cat some name like Margot or Gloria. I'm really a big fan of pets being named people's names that people don't really name their kids anymore. Although I did go to swimming lessons in grade 4 with a Margot and my mom said there are many people named Gloria. It doesn't matter! Soon I will get to be living in the same house as a cat which is very exciting considering only one other person in my family is not allergic to cats! Our cat is going to be the greatest!