Potluck Lovin'

One of the nice things about being a nutrition student is the faculty potlucks. There are normally one or two a semester, and although they don't elicit a huge crowd, there are usually enough students and staff to fill the dining room and way more food then we can eat. Pot lucks are awesome because you get to try things you would never normally make and you get to make something to share that you might not necessarily make just for yourself. The only problem with potlucks is restraining yourself from eating everything in sight. It's hard to not take a little of everything, and my eyes are always bigger than my belly (well bigger than my belly going IN to the potluck, probably not bigger than my belly coming OUT). It's been proven in research studies that the more food made available to us, the more we eat. So basically, the bigger the movie theater popcorn bucket we buy, the more we eat despite satiety cues. The craziest part is that even with a group who acknowledges this fact and is aware of it, the same phenomenon still occurs. Which is bad news bears because our portion sizes and even the size of the dishes in our kitchens just keep getting bigger.

Speaking of overindulging in food (story of the week it seems!), a handful of the swim team members went out to the new sushi place downtown called Zen last night. It's the city's first sushi place and it seems to be doing well because after waiting 40 minutes for our food, a table still wasn't available and we ended up having to take it back to a fellow swimmer's apartment to eat. Less than ideal but sometimes you just gotta roll with it. Despite the super long wait for food and not being able to get a table, I would definitely go back because it was delish. Partly because it had been so long since I had had sushi (probably not since the summer) and partly because by the time we actually got our food I was starving! If slash when I do go back, I will make sure it is at a less busy time...although who would have thunk a Tuesday night would be so packed? Most of the teams on campus basically only hang out with each other, the swim team is the exception. Very few of us actually hang out outside of the pool, so it's always nice to get together while we're dry and not in swim suits. Surprisingly, Tuesday night was the very first time I had seen one of the swim team members in something other than a swim suit or the UPEI sweat suit.

School has wound down for a bit...at least it has given the illusion of calming down. I'm sure it's really just a big old trick and then BAM a million assignments will pop up again. But for now I am enjoying the down time and am hoping to get some little things finished up way before they are due to get em over with. It's the first time all semester I've had time to think ahead instead of just frantically getting things done the day before they are due. Being ok with this has been really hard for me to learn, I hate doing things last minute and until this semester, haven't had to do that in my University career. It's hard to accept that sometimes, just finishing something has to be good enough.

This time next month I will have just finished writing my last exam and will be dancing around my kitchen in celebration of summer, probably with a drink in my hand and something really lame blasting from my itunes (at the moment my embarrassing play list includes way more Miley than is healthy to be exposed to) . That thought is what's getting me through this last month. If the first two years of University had been like this year, there is no way I'd still be here. I would a) be weaving baskets in kenya, b) teaching english in Asia somewhere or c) be a the leader of the first ever New York City Cupcake Tour.

My summer plans are still all up in the air. I want to go home for a week in April after exams but I have no idea if that'll happen yet, and I don't know for sure where my internship placements are, and I'm not sure if I'll be coming home in July for 3 weeks before coming back to the island for a week of diabetes summer camp or just staying on the island until the end of camp. It's the first time in a very long time that I haven't already had my entire summer planned out in September. Until this year I always knew that summers would be spent on the river or creek, probably coaching and attempting to get speedy fast. It's weird having no clue where I'll be when or what I'll be doing while I'm there. It am going to miss training for sure, specially while working full time for free for two months.