Royal Canoe + Winter Gloves = An Unreal Dance Party

So yesterday I had a hidden gem of a night. I didn't know that I would be dancin' and rockin' out so much at this concert which was at a small pub here in Winnipeg called Lo Pub. It's literally connected to Winnipeg's only hostel which is named Hi Hostel... get it? At least, I think it's Winnipeg's only hostel, don't quote me on that. Anyways, I went to this concert with Eric Sung (the remaining third of Sung Knows that didn't accompany our crew that went to see Lights) and his friend. Royal Canoe was playing and they have this fun pop rock sound with some electronica style to them. Eric showed them to me a while ago back on the night of my bday bash and I fell in love with their music ever since. The lead singer and bassist are involved with The Waking Eyes as well (excellent band). Before we got to Lo Pub we were trying to get our buddy Malech to join but due to some inconvenience he was not able to leave his household. After much convincing throughout the night and during Royal Canoe's set he finally agreed to come out (because he knew it was the right thing to do) and made it for the last song of the set. I didn't know that the second band was even playing last night until I got there, and I'm very happy that this band did. Their name is Winter Gloves and they hail from Montreal (I love bands from there i.e. Sam Roberts Band, Stars, The Stills, etc.) They did awesome, everyone was lovin' the electronica vibes they were pounding out. I'm surprised how calmly and easily they continued with one of their songs even though there was a small power outage on the stage that shut all the equipment down! They continued the song with the vibraphone and had everybody hum and clap. Very smoothly dealt with. By the end of their set they started giving away free EPs and I managed to quickly snatch the one that flew towards us before Eric did (don't worry, I'm going to lend it to him). What a good concert. I strongly encourage you to check these two bands out!

LIGHTS Vlog!!!

SO, I took a page out of Sung Knows' book and this is what I came up with. Last Thursday, Cam, Jill, Jen, and I hit up downtown and attended the Lights concert at the Garrick (having dinner before hand at Jen's thanks to Jesse and Jen! I figured everybody else mentioned this in their blog, so I don't want to look ungrateful by not adding it)! When we arrived in line, Cam and I went back to get my camera and saw that the back alley door was open to the backstage. We saw fluorescent purple light coming from it so we decided to check it out! We looked inside and knew that we could sneak in a probably catch a glimpse or even meet Lights! We decided not to then went back to the line. We decided to check the back door again but when we rounded the corner a massive Shrek looking body guard was planted in front of it (we turned right back around).
The show began and Lights was awesome despite some technical sound problems at the beginning probably due to Dwight Shrute being the sound guy (you'll see, too bad there's not a close up on him). She blew the crowd away with her soothing keyboard/acoustic guitar abilities and her resounding vocals (not to mention that she is really attractive... especially live). Here's the summary of the night wrapped up with some raw footage. Bear with the cheesy editing!

(above) In the line up one of the Rogers ladies with a creepy French accent took this picture of us. She literally kept talking to us for maybe a little more than 5 mins straight.
(below) A picture I let some teeny bopper take of us with my camera while we were line for the concert.

Florida Follies

We won our region easily a few weeks ago down in Minneapolis. This gave us the opportunity to head down to Florida for NATIONALS! It was an awesome time and if I went into detail this entry would easily be my longest. Anyways, to make a long story much shorter (if I would have said the usual saying it would have been hardcore cliche), we went down ranked as 1st (plus we were the only Canadian team) and came out of the tournament 4th. Not bad, considering we represent a school of ~400 students and lost to Southeastern University which has 3500! Plus we just got run down by them because they used 4 subs a minute, I swear! Soccer is like fast break basketball to those Floridans. We had no chance to get out of our defensive end and build up an attack. In the third place game we hit about 4 posts and missed a penalty kick, then fell a part and lost in the second half! So we should have really gotten 3rd. Whatevs, I don't want to get worked up about our losses, so I'll move on.

It felt like we were down there for ages, especially since we had a couple days to kick back and relax when we arrived. OH, funny story: when we (the last group - Freshmen) arrived in the Orlando airport, some guy on the PA decided to be hilarious for 5 seconds. He came on with a high squeaky voice and then proceeded to say, "Hello, hello... 1,2,3, penis; 1,2,3, penis..." in a quick sneaky voice. That's all that came from the PA and everyone was stunned, but then of course we burst out in laughter. It was unreal.

Since we lost on Saturday in the Semis, we had Sunday to relax and do whatever we felt like. I had the privilege to head out to Universal Studios with my fam (check out my pictures on my facebook, we had some fun with the T-Rex in the Jurassic Park area). All the rides were awesome, there were no line-ups and it was a sunny beautiful day!! That's the best.

Tuesday we came back and I had a serious spillage incident on the plane. It was ridiculous. Here's how it went: I had just poured my recently received orange juice and was holding it trying to pull down the window shutter. It would not budge so I put a little bit of extra force into pushing it... all of a sudden it gave way with a jolt, resulting in me jolting as well. My whole glass of orange juice ended up on my lap, my shirt, and my seat. Who knew one glass could soak one half of your boxers, half your shirt, half your sweats, and your seat! What's worse is that the flight attendant asked me if I needed a blanket to sit on... I thankfully accepted. How embarrassing! Good thing my friend lent me some clothes.

~~~ Vlog time:

Since the Freshmen had a lay over in Minneapolis for ~12 hours a bunch of us decided to hit up the Mall of America. We hopped on the train at the airport and arrived in under 10 mins, it was very convenient. We ate some McDons for breakfast and some Chipotle for lunch! Here's a fact for all you Chipotle lovers: I now appreciate Chipotle after eating it for the second time. Now that's a life lesson; if at first you don't succeed, try, try again (talk about cliche, plus I'm not even entirely sure if it fits my example... meh, sure it does). And here's a little snippet of the day's events, Thom and I had a mini Lego soap box derby; check it:

P.s. Wow, this might actually be my longest entry.
P.S.S. If you get this far in reading this entry, MY LIGHTS CONCERT VLOG AIRS TOMORROW!! Stay tuned...