Quick Harry Potter review

*spoiler alert* Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows Part 2

1. At first I was a little disappointed by the music. It was very dark and you could barely make out the theme, but it definitely helped to create the mood of the movie.
2. Snape's acting was incredible!
3. I loved the way Molly Weasley delivered her 'Not my daughter Bitch!' line.
4. I had imagined a real baby when I read the book and the part where Harry is in the in-between, not a gross-looking Voldemort fetus. Gross!
5. The actors kind of sucked during the epilogue - I guess they just don't know what it's like to be an adult!

All in all, I was very very happy with the movie. Great fighting scenes and very true to the book! Now I'm just so sad that it's over...

My personal pensieve

Moving back to my parent's temporarily means going through 6 huge boxes in the garage and deciding what is worth keeping. I'm not a hoarder - at least I don't think I am - but I do like to keep things. And really, old notes, drawings, and letters all act like a pensieve because as I read and looked for hours and hours on end, I felt myself being magically transported back to that moment in time and re-living the memory.

I made a few interesting finds that I will share with you today:

I wrote this in 1999 as a part of an 'all about me' project. I have one of those projects for each year of my life, approximately and I find that not much has changed. In general, I still have the same core values I discovered I had when I was about five years old: mainly that all people are equal and have the right to be treated as such. Anyway, I still think arguing about politics is pretty boring, but I now realize it needs to be done. Ironically and funnily enough, the people closest to me who argue about politics are my very own brother and sister and I now have to admit that they are a lot of fun (despite the fact that) / although they like to argue about politics and the government.

Next are samples of my artwork at age 9:

Now this is especially embarrassing when you have siblings as artistically gifted as mine. Notice that in the first picture, the flying birds DON'T HAVE WINGS! I was nine years old, which means I definitely knew what birds looked like when they flew... oh dear. In the second picture, I am most likely drawing dinosaurs for my younger brother and the poor thing can't differentiate a long-neck from a T-Rex because they all look exactly the same! This is still a problem in my life today. Sometimes I'll draw an animal on the board, let's say it's a horse, and a student will raise his hand and say, "Miss, is that a dog?" People say that I'm creative, but it definitely doesn't show in my artistic abilities!

Billy Elliott

Paul and I drove down to Belleville, Ontario this past weekend to visit our great friends. I drove (and I'll admit I complained) for four hours straight (no stops for 'I'm hungry, tired or need to pee' breaks - this is a first for me!). I complained mostly about the music - I swear the shuffle/random button on Paul's iPhone doesn't work and it seems like we ALWAYS listen to the same songs. I finally got him to put my country mix on and belted out tunes until we got to Belleville.

Friday night consisted of catching up and spending time with our friend's wonderful 7-month-old. She is SOOOO cute! She stares, sits, does 'flirty eyes' as I call them, grunts, smiles, coos, and is just awesome! I could stare at and play with her all day. We had a great barbecue dinner and then watched a few episodes of 'Modern Family'.

Saturday we drove out to Toronto to see the musical 'Billy Elliott'. We were so lucky to have almost front row seats. We were like five rows from the stage! The musical was amazing and made me want to learn more about the coal-mine strike. I've decided a good way to judge a movie or show is if it makes you want to learn more about it. Definite win for Billy Elliott. It also made me feel a little bit bad about myself because there were so many amazing children in the show! I mean the kid who played Billy Elliott was phenomenal! He's a triple-threat as my friend says because he can sing, dance and act and he does so better than some adults out there! It was great to see so much natural talent. Afterwards we went out for dinner and walked around in Toronto a little bit.

Sunday we went to Northbeach! It was a beautiful day for it, sunny with a little breeze coming off the lake. The waves were just the right height. It was a perfect day. It was baby's first day at the beach, so that was a great event to be a part of. We had a picnic and swam a bit. The drive back went smoothly. We hit some traffic in Brockville, but that was also about the time my bladder was about to burst so we stopped for a bit and when we got back on the highway the traffic had disappeared!

All-in-all it was a perfect weekend! Thanks to our friends for inviting us! Can't wait to see you again in August! In other news, Paul and I are still watching all of the Harry Potter movies before seeing the last one in Imax 3D (we watched the fifth one last night). Stay tuned for my 'review' of the final movie!

Star Wars --> Harry Potter?

Summer vacation = watching lots of movies. Paul and I first watched the Back to the Future Trilogy, then the Star Wars Trilogy (the original ones, so the 4,5,6 ones... it's so confusing! and I still haven't seen 1,2 and 3). We're now onto Harry Potter 1 through 7 Part 1. And I noticed (or maybe Paul mentioned it) that Star Wars and Harry Potter are oddly similar. Case in point (oh and maybe spoiler alert for those of you who have not read or seen the entirety of these movies):

1. Both take place in imaginary yet realistic worlds.
2. Axis of good and evil is clearly defined.

http://io9.com/5522961/geek-love-his-and-hers-star-wars-t+shirts

3. Awkward love triangle in both, where the second main character (Han Solo / Ron) is convinced the other two are an item, but in reality they have a brother & sister relationship. They (Han & Ron) end up getting the girl in the end.
4. The hero (Harry Potter / Luke Skywalker) has a strange relationship with the villain: hate them but are similar to them in certain respects. Darth Vader is actually Luke's father and ends up having some sort of sympathy because he doesn't kill him. Lord Voldemort and Harry's wands are made of the same core (phoenix feather), Harry can speak parseltongue thanks to Voldemort and both are orphans.

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/lord-voldemort/images/17773462/title/harry-potter-voldemort-photo

So, if you'd like to write a smash hit, incorporate these elements and you've got yourself a winner! These seem to be the main points that make an adventure story work. I haven't studied comparative lit or anything, so don't judge me if this is horribly of-course, this is just my own opinion. What do you think? Are there more of these epic stories you can think of?

PS - Every time I go to write Star Wars, I accidentally write Star Wards... weird.

PPS- If you love Star Wars and Harry Potter, you might want to read about Bob here: www.smacksy.com

I could be a princess

Kate and Will's Canadian visit has caused many people to question to role of the monarchy and yaddi-yadda. My personal opinion is that it sucks that they use our tax dollars to have an awesome vacation, but I still think it's cool that they are a prince and princess. I think all over the world, different monarchies have secretly been paying Disney to infect the minds of young girls like me to think that princesses are just the coolest thing ever!

I actually had a student this year come up to me and tell me in a super indignant voice:

Student - "Miss, she says princesses are real!" 

Me - "Well, they are."

Student - "No, Miss, like she says they're not just in movies."

Me - "Actually, Canada has a queen, it's the queen of England."

Student's eyes go wide - the realization sets in - "That means princesses DO EXIST!"

Me - "Yes, yes they do."

So that's kind of my point of view. Yes it's a waste of time, money, whatever, but it's just soooo cool! It's kind of like if dragons or dinosaurs or fairies or elves existed. 

Oh and I've recently come to think that I could be a princess because I've been eating out with friends a lot and I figure that's what rich people do. They eat nice food, they smile and wave, and look good. I could smile and wave. 

See?

The only thing I couldn't do is obey all the rules. Showing my shoulders is probably a no-no, my smile probably isn't white enough, my hair isn't long enough and most importantly, I would HATE to be in the public eye at all times. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a complete klutz. Getting out of the car or sitting nicely are not my forte. Still, I'll keep dreaming!

One year later...

Paul and I enjoyed our first year wedding anniversary together on Tuesday. We opened up a bottle of wine our friends had given us as a wedding gift, and used our fancy decanter for the first time.

The fancy castle feel was a perfect setting!

We then went out for dinner. It was a perfect evening, and the table they sat us at even reminded us of our honeymoon dinner table on the cruise ship! I'm at a loss for words because nothing truly conveys how much we love each other, are at ease around each other, can play around and fight with each other. It truly is magical and I hope the feeling continues for years to come!

Yesterday we invited some friends over for dinner. Since they had made us a home-made Persian dinner not long ago, we decided to treat them to an authentic Mexican meal. Our first stop was Jean-Talon market where we got limes and avocados for exorbitant prices (when comparing to Mexican prices of course). We also stopped at 'El Rey del Taco' to buy:

• one kilo of 'carne al pastor' (pork meat marinated and cooked in a special way that makes it so delicious!)
• tortillas
• totopos (nacho chips)
• obleas (a dulce de leche treat)
• Totis (a snack my students used to eat in Mexico and I love!). 

We couldn't find little green tomatoes at the market since it isn't the season for them here, but we did find them in a can at the supermarket (la Costeña, if you want to buy it). 

My Mexican husband told me more than once that he didn't need any help and I should kindly just leave the kitchen already. He cooked up a feast (well, prepared more than cooked I guess, since the meat was already ready).

Side note: I just spend close to an hour trying to find a software program that would let me insert text to a picture and then import it here. I downloaded GIMP, but that program didn't even open. Something called X11 opened instead and sent me to a blank screen. Awful. So I deleted it. I then downloaded myphotoedit, and that seemed to work well when I first opened it. I tried to add text but I couldn't change the size no matter how hard I tried! So I deleted that too and you are now getting a picture without text inserts telling you which dish is which. You'll just have to try to use your imagination and figure it out. BUT if anyone out there is reading this and can help me, please let me know how! I see lots of cute pictures with drawings or text on them on other blogs!

On this table, you see: Totis, frijoles, guacamole, salsa verde (both homemade and La costeña), Corona, and random chips! These were all starters.

For the main course, we had gringas, which consisted of:

• the Al Pastor meat I mentioned earlier
• cheese 
• tortillas
• pineapple
• cilantro
• onion
• lime
• green or red salsa

Afterwards, we watched the movie 'Seven' which I had never seen before. For those of you who don't know me, I am a scaredy-cat! I went to bed really late because I kept getting the image of that sloth man's face when I was trying to fall asleep! Oh but I really did love the movie! And the food! And the friends! And the love! 

Hope your summer is just as fun, and if you know how to edit pictures easily on a mac, please let me know!

Gardening Part 2

Here are a few pictures of the garden's progress:

The lettuce is doing well, the tomatoes might be ready for August, but the rest looks tiny!