Two Meat Markets in One Day!

Today is Saturday, the 27th of February. I just realized last night that there are only 2 days left until March is upon us. I am not sure how I went for so long not really realizing just how close to the end we are, nor am I aware of how I forgot that we are in the shortest month of the year. It was a bit of a shock to learn this because it means that there are only 5 weeks left of classes, which means that finals start right after that. Yikes. Sure the semester is kicking my ass right and left, but it coming to an end means that I have to write big scary exams which prove just how much year 3, semester 2 truly dismantled me. I actually just checked to see if the exam schedule was posted, which it is. I write my last exam on the 13th of April. Wow. I really didn't think that we would be done that soon. Holy crap, that's in exactly 6 weeks! (Reality has officially sunk in)

Today is the day that we had to present the display that we made for our Community Nutrtion class at the weekly farmer's market that they have here in Charlottetown. For this assignment, we had to get into groups and design something for the commmunity which involves teaching about nutrition or basically anything about nutrition. Our group got the opportunity to work with The PEI Healthy Eating Alliantce create a giant display regarding Nutrtion Month 2010, which we were to bring to the farmer's market and inform the public about our vast knowledge. This year's theme for Nutrition Month was "Celebrate Food...from Field To Table", which basically means that people should buy local food and support local growers (no, not those kind of growers my BC friends). Creating this display was a complete nightmare because it took a while to get a meeting set up with the people from HEA, so we were kind of left hanging, waiting to see what they wanted from us. When we did finally get the chance to sit down with them, we only had a few days (oh did I say days? I meant 36 hours) to complete it before we all went our separate ways for the UPEI reading break. But, we hauled ass and got it done to the best of our abilities. It certainly helped that one group member was overly-eager and on a mission to complete the thing, while the other is creative and crafty, which is always a huge asset when making something like this.



Since Kaylynne is in New York for the week, it was up to me and Sam to get our butts out of bed and haul everything down there this morning. We were not really looking forward to it at first, but once we were set up and started talking to the locals with their booths, and to the customers of the market, we began to warm up to the experience (and the amazing hot apple cider helped at lot too). What I really enjoyed was watching the interaction of all of the people and to begin to learn the dynamics of what goes down at the market every Saturday morning. It was this whole little community that most people never get the chance to partake in, and it was enjoyable to be a member of it, if only for a few hours. Oh, and one booth makes these amazing gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that I recommend everyone to try!

After consuming monumental amounts of calories at the market, I decided to go to the gym. Between assignments, mid-terms, traveling and jet-lag, my P90X routine for a bit mixed up and I found myself just doing random workouts the past week instead of following the guided routine, so I've decided to get back into the actual program again on Wednesday (which is usually my Day 1 for the program). I was also really curious to do my old workout and see if I would notice any changes in the amount of weight I can lift now compared to before the whole P90X obsession. There was definite change, for sure, but not a lot. Some exercises I could do an extra 5-10 pounds, which is pretty good I suppose. I decided to hit the treadmill for a bit and found that to be not as easy as it used to be. Yikes. I might have to try to get some running back into my days again. The one thing that I really noticed about being at the gym was the overwhelming reminder of how much I really don't like gyms. There was a time in my life where I would NEVER go to a gym because I just really did not enjoy the experience at all. But then I just decided to suck it up and give it a fair try...then I got used to going regularly and just blocking out my surroundings and do what I went there to accomplish. It's just such a meat market there most days. I always went in the mornings before which was great because it was all the older people who are there to socialize and get their time in at the gym before the rest of the world crawls out of bed. Those are my kind of people! But now I've gotten spoiled being able to workout at home and avoid it all. Perhaps I'm just becoming a hermit who doesn't like to be social. These things happen as we get older sometimes :) I must say though, it was awesome to be able to watch two different Olympic sports on two different TVs at the same time at the gym. Curling and slolam side-by-side. Good times, good times.