MOVING OUT/HAPPY 20TH BIRTHDAY TO ME

Well people, I have finally said goodbye to room 120-2 for good.

It was a sad occasion. I decided to stay till the last day to spend some extra time with my best friend on campus and to get the most I could out of my meal card. After shouting meals for a couple of friends and starbucks for my aunt and cousin, I still have about $12, but I'll go back sometime next semester and have lunch there. If I can't, well. $12 doesn't devastate me.

It was the right decsion for sure. I ended up having an exam on the 20th instead of the 19th, because of my basic inability to read forms. Turns out the disability service centre doesn't do seven pm exams, so they changed mine to 3.30, and the one before that to 11 instead of 12. I did not read the tiny bit at the very bottom of the form where this was written in very small font, and instead went with the times on the online exam schedule (which makes sense). But yeah, I turned up at 11.50 and got told the exam had started at 11. The exchange went a bit like this:

Check-in woman: Your exam started at eleven.
Me: No.
Check-in woman: ....
Me: No, you're wrong. It's definitely - it's definitely 12.
Check-in woman: Okay, let me just go check this.
Me: (quieter) You're wrong!

I go sit down, pull out my laptop and check my exam schedule. It does say 12, not that this changes very much. I show it to her and she's like well you can start it now and that's fine, but you have your next exam at 3.30. And I'm like 'NO! It's at seven!' So she told me I could take it at seven with the class if I wanted, but I would have no extra time, or I could take it with extra time but with only like 20 minutes between the exams (and I needed that time to cram). So I opted to take it with the class. Then they moved me to another room and had me stand around for a few minutes while they waited for someone to finish so I had somewhere to sit. I went to the bathroom and screamed into my palm for a bit. And then I did the exam and, let's be honest, probably aced it.

Long story short I went to the disability advisor to check there would be an exam for me if I went to take it with the class, and after very kindly and subtly telling me I was an idiot for not reading the form she called my professor and they decided between them I could take the exam the following day (tuesday instead of monday). I was very lucky. Especially since I REALLY needed that time to study.

I did my exam the following day, then came home, hung out for a while, met up with aforementioned friend Kaare, then thought I was going out to dinner with my friend but that fell through so I came home, did some packing, and then Kaare and I went down to Wreck Beach to star-gaze for a while.

I'm kind of gutted I didn't get any photos of this. My camera wasn't working in that little light. So I just lay back and concentrated on taking a million mental snapshots. It's one of my most beautiful memories from my whole time here, honestly, and the perfect thing to do with my last night.

Later I went back to Kaare's room for a while, played a board game called Devil Bunny Needs a Ham (that's a good time) and went home to finish my packing. I had a brief visit from another friend at 2 am, and then I stayed up for another three hours trying to condense 13 weeks worth of stuff I have accrued into one suitcase, two backpacks and a temporary storage box. There was a lot of overflow. And Melanie will be returning to her room to find a pile of books almost as tall as she is.

I got a bit choked up while packing, but not nearly as badly as I thought I would. It helped to know that I would be seeing my two best friends (in the country) two days later, and three more of my closest friends the day after that, and then it would be Christmas :)

So my aunt and uncle picked me up the following morning, and after saying goodbye to Kaare and a few other people at 12 I was off. Having gotten about four hours sleep maximum on tuesday night, I was pretty tired yesterday, and all I did when I got home was sort out my enrolment for next year. It took over two hours to do, and my schedule for next year is possibly the worst I've ever had. I have NO days off either semester, and in the first semester I have to get to school at nine for ONE class and then I have nothing for the rest of the day. Don't think there are any early starts in the second semester, but I do have a five hour break on mondays. What the fuck are you supposed to do with five hour breaks? I'm 2/3rds of the way through my degree and I still don't know. I just know you're not supposed to go see movies every week. Which is what's probably going to happen.

Anyway, after having my worst fear realised with the exam thing and then going through the emotional upheaval of moving away from my home of four-ish months, I lay down at 10.30 and slept for some ten hours.

I woke up twenty years old! Surprise!

Today is my birthday in New Zealand, so I'm technically 20, but it doesn't really feel like my birthday. I think I'm going to break into one of the presents my parents sent. I saw the massive package when I got here and was immediately doubtful of my ability to wait until sunday to unwrap them all. On opening the package, I saw that the tissue paper on one of the presents marked 'Claire' had ripped slightly, and there was something pink sticking out. I was like 'WHAT THE FUCK IS IT, I HAVE TO KNOW' and now I have a necklace. So... yeah. I'm probably going to open another one after I finish writing this.

So since I didn't get to do my shopping on the 20th (as I had to do my dumb exam) I have to do it today. I'm going out in a couple of hours to hit up the mall, and then tonight Kaare and Laura and I are going to see The Muppet Movie. Hopefully. It's a bit tricky to find a location that's good for all of us, but I'm optimistic.

Then tomorrow I will be busing for some three and a half hours to the winter wonderland that is Whistler, and hanging out with my other good friends Eihild (her name changes every time I try to spell it. It's pronounced Ailey) from Scotland and Rob from New Zealand and Patrick from Australia. We're a multi-cultural, attractive, charismatic bunch of people.

I spend one night in Whistler, and then I'll be on my way back here for Christmas eve. Busy week! But all of it really good. Even the last exam (on literature to the 18th century!) went pretty well. I only have one final grade back so far, for American Lit - a B+. I'm very happy with this - I knew that I had screwed up by loosing lots of little points on things like pop quizzes and participation, so I had to really work to get it up from that, and I managed it. I emailed my professor and he says I got an A- on my last essay (how it was STILL not an A after I spent three days on it I don't understand, but whatever) and an A on the exam. Good work, self.

SORRY I HAVEN'T UPDATED IN A WHILE GUYS.

I have been waiting until I had some free time and was also in a fairly good mood, since I feel like my last couple of entries were particularly whiny. Sorry about that guys. I still love Canada. Promise.

The last three weeks have also been incredibly hectic. First I had the last week of classes, which included three 1500 word essays and frantically trying to catch up on my reading so that I wouldn't have to still be finishing it when I was supposed to be studying for my exams. That didn't work out so well. But I managed to finish the essays to an acceptable standard and get them in on time, so I was pretty proud of myself.

The weekend after that was more or less a non-event. I slept a lot. I went out with some friends. I finished one of the aforementioned books. There is still quite some reading to be done.

But I have now finished my two hardest exams, and I'm in such a great mood! My first exam was American Literature, last friday - it was tough, but I thought I did okay. My professor is a genius and a huge troll. Either that or he just genuinely doesn't realise that most of us don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of all nine texts on our course after our first readings. So his exam was pretty intense, and involved three hours of more or less straight writing, but I finished it and did not die. Today I had Canadian History at 8.30 in the morning after five days of studying with my friend. I honestly had almost given up on that one last night when I was still reading through my flashcards and blanking on things. The course was like a blur. But unlike Mr American Lit this professor was very, very gentle with us and basically all the essay questions were things like 'describe things about the economy in the 19th century'. So given the circumstances the essay was necessarily going to involve some level of bluffing, but I actually knew most of what I was writing about, and that exam could have been a lot, lot worse.

After the exam I was sort of exhausted, having gotten up at 6.45, so I sat in the library and read for a while. Then one of my best friends came to meet me, and we talked for a while, and then another of my best friends happened upon us and the two of them got to meet for the first time, which was excellent, and then a while later I went to hang out with another of my very good friends and talk about the exam and get some delicious Mexican food. Later we stopped by the Salvation Army and I found some excellent shoes and then I came home to find out I got an A- on one of the shocking essays I handed in last week, which I'd been really worried about, and this is fantastic news because it means I've already passed Canadian History and I don't have to worry about it any more :) Now I just have to finish Northanger Abbey and madly revise all my English notes for my two exams on Monday, and then I'll finally be done for the year.

I had to say goodbye to someone for the first time a couple of days ago, and it was tough. This person was not a BEST friend, but a good friend, and since he's going back to Japan now and we have no real plans to be in the same place in the foreseeable future, it was a somewhat permanent kind of goodbye. My first of that kind. It made me very sad and it made it hard to study that night. This really worries me because I just know when Melanie leaves in a couple of days I'm going to be really gutted, even though I'll only have a couple of days here without her, and then before long I'll be saying goodbye to everyone and it will just break my heart. But what can you do? This is why there is skype I suppose.

In the meantime I am doing my best to stay cheerful and enjoy my last few days here, even with the on-going hot water issues (on the bright side I just got issued a cheque for $220 in compensation - couldn't have come at a better time, that's my christmas budget pretty much) and the fact that honestly, I'm a bit sick of this room now. I try to do all my studying in communal spaces and libraries, because being alone in my room just makes me depressed and unproductive. I end up on facebook a lot.

Almost done with the semester, and before long I will being seeing all of you again!

The Hostility Phase

Bad news guys. The honeymoon is officially over.

I was looking at the culture shock graph that they showed us during orientation the other night, and I realised that actually the first stage of adjustment lasts a lot longer than I thought. I was under the impression that the period of constant happiness and ecstacy only lasts six weeks or so for most people, and then the homesickness sets in. That seemed to be happening to most of my friends. But actually, in a six month period, the first two and a bit are supposed to be spent in this stage, and then the 'hostility' stage begins, then there's the bit where you come gradually out of hostility and start finding everything funny again and then you go back to being really happy about everything.

So according to that I've got another two weeks or so of feeling a bit rubbishy. I know what you're thinking, and yes, obviously I'm still enjoying myself most of the time and the campus is great and the people are amazing and blah blah blah. To be honest, it's less the country than the immediate groups of people I find myself associating with. As much as I like them on the whole, I've been in some situations lately where I've felt myself really wanting a friend I can have a deep and personal conversation with, and the people I can comfortably do that with (without first consuming copious amounts of alcohol) seem few and far between. Now that I'm in the fourth month of knowing most of these people, and hanging out with them on a regular basis, it's gotten to the stage where I want to take the friendships to the Next Level. Where heartfelt confessions are made. But this takes work.

And lately I'm feeling very lazy. I seriously sat at my computer feeling hungry for an hour tonight before I could be bothered to go and buy a slice of pizza and some apples from the dining hall. I just sat here listening to my stomach rumble and thinking 'But it's so far away and no one's answering my teeeeeeeeeeexts'. It was pathetic. Other symptoms of the hostility phase, as far as I can figure out, include a renewed appreciation for sleep and general irritation. For example, why is it that the little convenience store by the dining hall doesn't sell any good cereals. I'll tell you why. It's because they want me spending two dollars every morning on a bowl of it in the dining hall. WELL GUESS WHAT, TOTEM PARK. I CAN EAT ANYTHING IF IT'S COVERED IN ENOUGH CHOCOLATE MILK. Actually, that probably only applies to cereal. But yeah, now that I've paid for it, my box of 'Original Alpen Weetabix' is not going to waste.

I'm also sick of barely lukewarm showers. The administration actually sent us an email about this earlier in the week (after a weekend of only cold water, during which I was thankfully absent), basically saying that the system operates in such a way that when the hot water doesn't run, there's a brief supply of lukewarm water, and then cold water. Thanks for that bro. They say it's difficult to determine why the system is turning itself off. On the bright side though, they're almost done replacing the light above the noticeboard which no one reads (since according to the workman the old one 'wasn't bright enough'). Good to know the really important stuff is still getting done.

On the bright side, this is a long weekend, and I have some social activities planned which hopefully will involve me making significant steps in turning a couple more of my friends into best friends, and maybe meeting some more people too. I could use some new guy friends. I only have a couple who I see with any regularity outside of classes.

I'm also buying a new laptop this weekend, since this one is currently making more noise than the construction used to and freezing approximately every seven seconds. I'm thinking about a mac, though I'm not sold on the idea. Pros: it's supposed to be a really good machine and you never hear anyone complaining about their mac acting up. Cons: they're elitist and expensive.

So yeah. Leave your computer recommendations in the comments.

HALLOWEEN

T-Ugh. Let me just start this off by saying all the photos I've just seen on facebook of what you guys got up to this weekend have made me even more homesick! I miss you all so much :( I really wish I could just like .... be home. For two days. Without having to fly thirteen hours or pack or anything.

As it is I made the spontaneous decision to bus back to my aunt and uncle in North Van for two nights. I got sick of campus life this week. It's still beautiful and I still love it and everything, but certain things just start to wear on you after a while. Like having to leave twenty minutes earlier when you want to print something off before class, and then having even that not be enough because some bitch in front of you is printing her thesis or something and the printer has to take a ten second breather between each page. And all the drinking. I haven't been feeling so well physically, and while I get back into the s wing of things it's better for me not to be drinking, and it's easier for me to do that when I'm not on campus. So that's this weekend for you. Here are some photos of what I got up to on Halloween.

Pumpkin carving.

It's a kiwi. It's a really good kiwi.

It's still in my room. I'm really impressed with how well it came out. I don't have a photo of it lit up for some reason though, sorry about that.

So that was Sunday. Monday I went to Fright Nights with Melanie and my good friend Kaare. Here's a photo of him getting a tarrot card reading, which apparently made the pseudo-psychic really mad. Well what am I going to do? Not take a photo? I don't think so.

Here's a ride. I don't know any of these people.

So that was halloween. So far this weekend I've returned my library books and gotten my hair cut. It's like shoulder-length now. It's pretty weird. It always works out shorter than you think it's going to. But it tends to grow back so I think we're okay. I also bought two of the prettiest dresses I've ever owned last night. Damn, Vancouver, you so cheap.

I'll probably update again soon - I'm going to try to get back to the Biodiversity museum this week, which I have so far been halfway through. I'm also going to take some photos of the campus with all its pretty leaves and stuff. I know I keep saying that. I WILL I SWEAR.

LEAVE ME COMMENTS! All of you!

GOING TO UPDATE THIS NOW WHILE I HAVE A SPARE MOMENT.

Hi guys!

I'm tired and overwhelmed :( And my hair is getting out of control. On the bright side, I'm going to Granville Island tomorrow and it's going to be totally wonderful amazing. I'll try to put up some photos tomorrow night.

In the meantime, a brief update on what has been going on, and some photos.

Two weeks ago was Thanksgiving. My building put on a turkey dinner, which was nice, but I forgot to take photos of it. Sorry. We had turkey (for the first time. Tastes like weird chicken), stuffing, some sort of cranberry stuff and vegetables. To be honest, it was quite average. I wasn't that impressed. But the company was good. I met a couple of new people from my building and talked to them for a while and it was nice. Unfortunately, I was also pretty sick - I caught a cold, and didn't manage to kill it within the crucial two day period (if you let it go 48 hours it has you). So I was drinking bucketloads of herbal tea in an attempt to fight that off. I was also struggling under a massive load of reading, which is still the case.
So that was Sunday night. We got monday off, and I left in the morning to bus back to North Van and see my family. That was a riot. Even on thanksgiving, the 99 bus is still ridiculously full, and I was fucked if I was giving up my seat while I had a massive backpack and I was trying to drink tea out of a thermos, so I crammed myself into one of the back corners where I knew I'd never have to give up my seat and ended up sitting next to this guy whose backpack was making weird noises the whole way. Then I got off the bus and onto the train and a deranged old woman called me a bitch when she got up to leave and I went to take her seat. Apparently she was saving it for the random Asian couple who were also standing and were totally mortified by the situation :P I was embarrassed, but only for a second. Because the fact is while we're all young and able-bodied, those seats are fair-game as far as I'm concerned. And they got off at the next stop anyway.

From the train I have to get on the seabus, which always has some interesting characters. I spotted a man who looked like Christopher Walken with a woman who looked a bit like Tom Augustine's mother, for those of you who know her. Then I got off the seabus and onto the regular road bus, which unfortunately stopped halfway up the street (WHY, LANDBUS?) so I got my uncle to pick me up and take me the rest of the way. So yeah. Lots of time in transit. I was pretty exhausted. I went to bed at ten that night and slept through till about nine the next morning. I've really fucked up my sleep schedule lately. I just can't seem to get through everything I need to do. My goal for next week is to be in bed every night by 12.

So after half a day of hanging out with my cousins, eating cheesecake and pasta (better than the actual turkey dinner) and hugging their cat, I was back on the bus home. A guy fell asleep on my shoulder.

That was Thanksgiving. The following weekend, last weekend, I went to Victoria Island, which was brilliant. My aunt and uncle took me and since it was

basically a free trip for them we took Melanie with us, and we got to spend the whole time hanging out and catching up on sleep (we both nodded off for a bit on the ferry) and shopping and sightseeing. I would definitely go back there if I get time, because I feel like there was a lot still to see. Here's some of the stuff we got up to.

Melanie by some little houses on the water

Miniature world!

I loved that shit.

Stumbled upon an Occupy Wallstreet-esque rally

This is a musical instrument that you play by running up and down the stairs. We didn't get to try, unfortunately, but on the seocnd day we heard someone else doing it. It was awesome. Sounds like an organ. I can't image what it would be like inside.

Museum! Here we have the 'People Used to Wear That?' section, where I like to think jeggings will someday be laid to rest.

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Anyone else feel really weird about seeing artifacts from their childhood in the museum? Some of this stuff must still be popular right? I mean I can't be the only one who still has a pokemon display in my bedroom. It's awesome btw.

On our way back to the ferry we stopped off at the Butterfly Gardens, which were really lovely. Here are some badass butterflies and stuff.

On the way back my uncle pointed out some of the other islands. They exist in varying states of civilisation and urbanisation. I plan on visiting some more of them after semester.

Long blog post is long. That's not even all I had to tell you guys. A couple days ago I visited the Biodiversity Museum on campus, and that involved a giant whale skeleton. More on that later.

PEACE

I HAD THE TAZO 'AWAKEN' TEA FROM STARBUCKS AND NOW I FEEL FUCKING INCREDIBLE

Srsly I don't know what was in that tea. Like antidepressants or adrenaline or something. But for the hour after my last class I felt like doing cartwheels. I was so hyper I could barely hold a conversation with my roommate because I kept talking too fast. I've calmed down a bit since and now I just feel really happy, which is a nice change from feeling like I'm being stretched way too thin, as I have for the rest of the week.

It's been hard. I got a bit behind on my reading and I haven't really been able to catch up. Fortunately my History professor is very very cool and laidback and gave us a five day extension on our assignment, so I don't have to worry about that so much, but I still had a quiz to study for and I've been doing that and my other reading all week and I've basically been in exile almost. I've only really seen other people in classes or at meals or in the house lounge while studying, which sounds like a lot, but compared to my usual social life here it's really not.

My sleeping habits have also taken a hit. I've gotten into a kind of routine of staying up too late and then getting up too late, and it's started to mess with my head a bit. Last night I couldn't get to sleep till after two, because some bitch in the room above me was like bouncing a ball against my ceiling or something and I couldn't sleep because of the noise, and then I woke up at four am in a total panic thinking all my classes were over and I'd slept through my quiz and having a near heart attack until I realised it was four in the morning, not the afternoon, and went back to sleep. Then a few hours later my alarm (which I've now begun setting to 'obnoxiously and intollerably loud') awoke me again, and again I woke with little memory of what day it was or where I was or what I was meant to be doing. I got through the morning, got through my quiz, but I felt a bit worn out and my voice was all croaky so I thought I'd better hit this cold or whatever it is before it could take hold (after 48 hours it has you). So I went to Starbucks and got a Tazo tea.

Amazing! When I first tasted it it burned my mouth and then it seemed to have a pretty bitter after-taste, so I thought maybe I wouldn't bother with it again, but halfway through my next class my nasal passage cleared and I started to feel really really good. On my way home I literally couldn't stop smiling and I kept sort of skipping. It was the weirdest sensation. I'm getting another one tonight. I'm going to have to buy a kettle too  I guess, since  my cold killing routine requires some seven cups of tea a day.

Anyway, it's the weekend now, and I'm really glad. I'm going to a movie tonight with my new surrogate best friend, and then I'm probably going out with my roommate and maybe a few of the other people from our floor, and then it's a long weekend for Thanksgiving which I WILL NOT WASTE. Saturday is for homework and reading and that pesky history assignment, saturday night I'm going out to dinner with a few friends, Sunday I may be going to the Aquarium with a few exchange people I haven't met yet, and Monday I'm going back home to my aunt and uncle to load up on three day's worth of food and hopefully my hair cut. I'm also planning on blogging a bit this weekend. I want to show you guys my decorated room and some of the prettiest parts of the campus, and the aquarium if I end up going.

Alright I'm out. PEACE

QUICK UPDATE

Most of you will know this by now, but for anyone who doesn't, let me lay some news on y'all. I got those scholarships I applied for! I guess Auckland Abroad must really like giving money away because I didn't think my application was incredibly strong to be honest. I got $500 from one and $1700 from the other, and I'm very very happy about it :)

Before this I wasn't exactly worried about running out of money, but I was watching it move out of my account at a surprising rate and realising that I might not get to do some of the more expensive stuff I'd planned on, like my very vaguely imagined Trip to New York. Now that I have a bit more up my sleeve, I'm going to do everything! And I'm also eating more. I think I was losing weight before, my jeans were hanging off me. Eating a lot of burgers and shit now.

Once again I have so much to write about. Also my room is more or less done now, so I'd like to post some photos of that too. I'll do this all later tonight if I can manage it. Here's the thing: I've kind of fallen behind somewhat on my reading. And by 'somewhat' I mean that I really need to read 4/5ths of King Lear by this evening. And then some other stuff too. It's not looking good! It's just that I keep putting things off because when I get home I keep sitting and waiting for something awesome to eventuate instead of getting started on this stuff. I have gotten closer to some people now, and I'm actually getting invited to things instead of always coming up with the plans myself, which makes me very happy. More on that later. I also spent several days last week staying up way, way later than I should've because that's when everyone was on facebook. This resulted in a couple of days of sleep-deprivation while my attempts at catching up on those missed hours were derailed by confused night-time phone calls from friends asking if I knew where other friends were, a roommate wanting to use my microwave a bit before midnight, various drunken adventurers traipsing down the hall or past my window outside, and a fire alarm. Loudest fucking fire alarm of my life. I left my door unlocked and left the building in my Eeyore pajamas, incapable of stringing together a sentence for a couple of minutes. My residence advisor just got 'Kit, why so loud.'

After a certain amount of sleep missed, shit gets weird. I start getting emotional for no reason and having to tell myself 'Claire, it's a dead bird. Pull yourself together for fuck's sake' and having strange ideas pop into my head, like when I thought I was going to take all my notes and write out the first half of my novel in a couple of hours in the house lounge. I'm sure that would've been real fun times but I decided to sleep instead. After last night's surprise fire alarm I slept in luxuriously late today, so I really have to get going to the library and finish these books. I just have one important thing to say before I do.

Many of the people I've met here have been first years. They're looking at four whole years of what I'm experiencing right now, and I'm jealous beyond measure. At certain points (no doubt the lack of sleep has something to do with this) I have looked at my new friends and thought 'how am I going to deal with not seeing you in three months?' and because of this I've been playing around for a time with staying longer. A full year exchange just isn't an option, financially and otherwise, but I can stay a while longer after the end of semester to do the travel I've wanted to and catch up with my friends for a little bit longer after exams. I was already sort of planning on this before I found out about the scholarship, and now, circumstances prevailing, it's a definite. It only costs me $50 to get a different flight back, as long as it's one that costs the same as my original. This will give me the time I need to gradually adjust to the idea of returning home to regular life, instead of forcing me to finish my exams, move out of residence, have my birthday and Christmas and my sister's birthday and fly home all in the space of a week, which I know now will be way too much to handle. I'm not exactly sure how much longer I'll be staying - I'm looking at about a month, but we'll see.

MORE LATER! Have a good day everyone.

Have you ever harboured hatred for someone based mainly on their face?

I'm getting that with a couple of people lately. I'm moving from the stage of 'hi where are you from can you write your name down so I can look you up on facebook' to actually organising to do stuff with some people, and realising that others maybe aren't going to be my new best friends after all.

Don't get me wrong. Almost everyone I've met in Totem and in Gala has been really nice. They've been maybe three or four people who I've had conversations with and thought 'yup, I'll probably never talk to you again', but it's not because they're not nice. We just didn't have a great time of it or anything. But I've finished my first real week of classes now, and this is the point at which I wanted to have friends to sit next to and borrow notes from and stuff. I lucked out with my history class, a girl I already know and get on quite well with is in it with me, and I've met a really lovely girl in my World Lit class too. The other two I haven't been so lucky with.

So I keep looking round in the lectures, sourcing out potential friends, and while doing that I've noticed a couple of people who I definitely don't want to have to ask for notes. In world lit the other day I was sitting and talking with my new friend about how far into the book we were, and I noticed the girl on the other side of me listening, so I thought I'd try to include her. I asked her if she'd finished the book yet and she was like '...Yes...' like she couldn't believe anyone hadn't, and she turned around and didn't even look at us anymore. And then all through the lecture when ever someone made a point she'd be like 'I'm not sure I agree with that' and go off into her own thing. So yeah, she can have fun reading African novels on her own.

Literature to the Eighteenth Century, I can now safely say, wasn't a very good choice. I'm trying to get into a creative writing course, but in the meantime I'm going to these lectures (usually late) and sitting there and feeling sarcastic about how everyone else nods along with the professor and laughs at all his jokes. I mean come on! Maybe it's because I have him for two back-to-back classes, but the guy's not that funny.

So my notes have started to look like this:  

And there's this one gut in the class whose face I kind of hate. He has this vague, smug kind of grin the whole way through the lecture. All fucking hour. This is kind of what he looks like

Motherfucker, you are not that enthusiastic about The Canterbury Tales. Put your hand down.

I kind of feel like I've already decided who I really want to be friends with, but I don't want to come off as desperate, so I'm trying to hang out with a variety of people for a couple of weeks. Also next week is clubs week, so that should be another good way to meet some people. Cool cool cool.

I had a ROUGH NIGHT but I FEEL BETTER NOW.

This website sucks! I had this whole long thing written out and I went to publish it and it was gone! Anyway here's attempt 2.0.

I don’t think I have emphasised enough how many things are wrong with this dorm room. I really lucked out. Neither the shower nor the window have been fixed as of yet. A plumber actually came by the other day, but it was in the morning after a long night (if you know what I mean) and Melanie (roommate) and I were both pretty out of it. She was sleeping and I was watching How I met Your Mother with my headphones on. So at some point we both heard running water, and then later he left without saying anything to either of us and it’s still not working. I put an ‘urgent’ maintenance request on it two days ago (quotation marks because the way these people overuse the words ‘urgent’ and ‘emergency’ suggest that they have different interpretations of them than I do) and today when I got home there was a maintenance guy in my room, but he said he ‘didn’t have the right parts’, whatever that means. My uncle gave him the ‘you guys better get moving on this’ speech since I don’t have the necessary guts to say stuff like that to people even when they need to hear it.

But I need to back up a bit and tell you guys why my uncle was there and why I didn’t spend the night there like usual. I actually felt pretty down about the room situation yesterday, especially when I noticed that the open pipe right outside my window was gushing suspicious liquid matter onto the ground. There’s nothing like watching people walk past your room, stop, and speculate about whether that’s a puddle of sewerage to put you in a bad mood. So I went and hung out with a few of my new friends for a couple of hours, and then I decided to head out to the Richmond Night Markets where a few other exchange folks were going, thinking I’d just hop on a bus and meet them somewhere along the way.

It was a bad idea! It turned out to be much further away than I had thought, and I realised after a while on the bus that I didn’t actually want to go out at all, I just didn’t want to be in my room anymore. Nonetheless, when I finally got to the bus station, there was nowhere I more wanted to be, so I decided I would get straight back on the bus back to campus. Unfortunately that was the last one that ran that night (why? On a Friday night, Vancouver, seriously?) so I got on a skytrain, thinking I’d get off a couple of stops before the terminal station in a place where I can usually get a bus. Unfortunately it was not the skytrain I’m used to and it had different stops, and I got kind of upset because it was late and I was feeling down already and it made me feel super vulnerable when I thought about walking round downtown looking for a night bus. So when I got off at the waterfront I decided to call my aunt and see if I could crash at their place for the night.

Luckily they were super cool about it, and a couple of buses and a mcflurry later I was back in North Van crashed out on a very comfortable mattress they’d laid out for me. I had a good night’s sleep, a shower, a nice breakfast and a bit of a venting session, during which they promised to send pictures of the various problems to my aunt’s sister who works with the company who actually oversaw the construction process here or something. They also took me to Super Walmart, where I bought a microwave and a mini-fridge at very reasonable prices and banished my bad mood instantly J

After that I’ve just had a quiet day of chilling in my dorm. A bit of ukulele, a bit of cleaning, a bit of eating cereal (I finally have a bowl, people!). I feel loads better. Also Steve doesn’t think it’s sewerage coming out of the pipe. Now that I look again I think it’s probably just water, which is still gross, but you know. Significantly less so.

In other news I hear Auckland’s public transport system crapped out the other night. Who would’ve guessed. Anyone see the opening ceremony? What’d you think?

Orientation/Moving in: Ups and Downs

Guys, I have so much to update about I’m not sure I’m even going to be able to fit it all in the one post. I’ll do my best. Let’s start from where I left off.

So, the second day of orientation was even better than the first. I’ve actually heard quite a few other exchange students complaining about Gala, but I enjoyed it. Admittedly the speeches got a bit repetitive, because there’s only so many times you can explain the health care program and so many ways to say ‘it’s all up to you’ (which incidentally is our building’s motto), but on the whole I thought it was pretty well put together, even though I didn’t end up going to anything on the last day.

The second day was mainly comprised of free food and more seminars on mundane topics like cultural adjustment. We met in the morning at ten for a quick academic seminar, which introduced some new, cool courses we may not have thought of. I loved the sound of Russian lit, but it turns out it’s only available next semester. I am thinking about enrolling in Creative Writing though. I know I took a creative writing class last semester, but it’s not like it’s going to be the same. I need to email people and stuff though and I haven’t quite sorted it out yet.

After that we all met up to go get our free lunch, which was comprised of burgers, cookies and vitamin water. This was a definite step up from the free lunches I’ve had in the past. Also they were playing Beatles songs in the background, which set a really nice atmosphere for sitting out on the grass and meeting people. While we waited in line for the food there were a couple of people selling $10 ice-skating tickets, which my new Australian friend thought would be fun, so we bought some. Come to think of it, I still need to pay her back for that.

After this we were supposed to go to those meetings I mentioned, but we thought about it decided we were probably doing an alright job with our cultural adjustment and decided to go off and do other things. A couple of people wanted to go grocery shopping, but I had this other thing I needed to do. You see as part of staying in Totem Park residence, a meal plan is mandatory, so a couple of days ago I had chosen the ‘light plan’ which is supposed to be $1800, but when I looked at my bill the available funds seemed to already be significantly depleted and I saw that about $500 had gone into ‘overhead fees’. And I freaked out a bit because there had been no indication till that point that the money I paid wasn’t going straight onto my food card. It’s bad enough that they don’t do refunds. But anyway I talked to my group leader and she told me who I could go to see to sort that out, and I went there and picked up Rob on the way and I explained our situation to the lady and said we wanted to be moved to the minimum plan – this has less fees, but if I decide I need more food I can still put more money on there. She said there was no reason that couldn’t be done, and now it has, so at least that’s something.

Still, though, I’m pretty pissed about this. It’s bullshit. When you buy food you don’t have to pay a separate fee for the associated costs of preparing it and paying people’s salaries and whatnot, so why should that be my responsibility now? But there’s basically nothing I can do – to cancel the meal plan is to cancel my residence, and even though I’m kind of tempted by the looks of some of the others, there are such horrific fines involved in that process that it’s not worth it.

It’s a trap! The university is preying on eager students who trust their website and don’t read the fine print on every damn contract incurred in the very long process of coming on exchange. I felt pretty stupid when this happened, but I talked to Rob and he was under the exact same impression as me, and no one I’ve told about it has been like ‘you didn’t know that?’ Although they don’t seem as concerned as me either. I think it’s fucked. But it looks like I have to live with it. This has just been a reminder to me that even though everyone at the university has been utterly kind and lovely, the institution itself is only interested in my money. I’m just glad I’m not an international student. I talked to a couple of American students yesterday who are looking at $30,000 fees and thinking that’s a pretty good deal. More on them later.

So anyway I went to do that, and then I sort of wandered round for a couple hours, got some food, ran into some people, hopped on a random uni computer to check my email and used the facebook page to warn other students against the more expensive food plans, and met up with my group again to get something to drink. Not long after that I had dinner from Subway with Eri, a Japanese student in my gala group, and we headed off to do the ice-skating.

I’d never been ice-skating before. I figured Eri would be there with me, and Isabella and Helen (other new group friends) had also gotten tickets, so I thought I’d have plenty of people to help me out. Well, I never saw Isabella or Helen and Eri had a different colour ticket to me, which meant she was on the other ice rink. So I ended up going out there with one of Eri’s friends, a guy named Taka, who I’d met literally five minutes ago. Luckily he was very cool and good at both skating and teaching, but I couldn’t get the hang of it. It’s a very unnatural movement! I sort of scuttled my way around the rink a couple of times, clinging desperately to the side and freaking out every time I started to glide, and I fell several times. Backwards, forwards, into the wall, into other people, onto my knees (that was the worst), every which way. It was damn painful, okay! And don’t even get me started on the muscle pains the day afterwards. Now I feel like I’ve sprained both my wrists.

But my most spectacular fall actually wasn’t even on the ice. I was outside the rink in the rest area, with my skates off, thinking about taking some photos, when I tripped over a stupid little step some dumbass designer put in and twisted my ankle and fell so badly that everyone on the bleachers went ‘OHHH’ and someone was like ‘I’m going to get the St John’s people’ until I was like ‘No I’m fine! I’m fine!’ They took a bit of convincing but I really was alright after a minute, thank god. I didn’t want to be moving in with a broken ankle.

So then I had to make the long trek home, which took several hours since the girl who took me back to the bus loop got us utterly lost on the way, much to her despair. It was about 12.30 when I got home, and I pretty much crashed.

MOVING IN

I was supposed to move in between 12 and 4, which is much better than 9 and 12, especially as I still had laundry and packing to do at that point. I spent pretty much the whole morning getting my stuff together, but I still think I left my deodorant behind somewhere. I can’t find it.

We got going at about 2.30 and got here at around 3.15. After getting some misleading directions we eventually found our way to the check-in (this was after an awkward conversation with a girl who thought I was asking about a Totem Park chicken. Damn you New Zealand accent). There was a brief five minute orientation on how to use your key and stuff, and then someone helped me move my stuff and then it was done. I was kind of overwhelmed. I made the bed (no easy task since it was so high up. I’ve since had it moved down) and unpacked a bit, and met my semi-roommate Melanie. We have our own rooms but we share a bathroom. I knew pretty much from as soon as we met that it was going to be just fine. She’s Peruvian and small and bubbly and just nice. She bought a whole lot of cleaning products for the bathroom, which was apparently ‘just awful’ when she got there, so that was a very auspicious beginning to our relationship.

At 6.30 our floor (first, btw) was supposed to go to dinner together, but it ended up just being me, Melanie and the two aforementioned American guys, along with our two residence advisors, Kit and Thilani. We’re a very multicultural bunch in Totem. One of the Americans was from Wisconsin, and his name was Forrest, and the other was from Colorado and his name was David. I won’t go into the specifics of the dinner, because I am aiming to get to bed at some point tonight, but let’s just say one of those guys made an okay first impression, and the other one I didn’t so much take to. You can guess which was which if you want.

After dinner we had a scavenger hunt, the photographs of which you can see on facebook, and then I came back to upload those photographs and kind of just went to bed. I was very tired.

First and slightly later impressions of the room: it’s longer than I expected. Don’t think the space has been used very efficiently, although lowering the bed does seem to have opened it up somewhat. There’s a motherfucker of a crack in my window. There was also no rubbish bin when I got here, though that’s been sorted now, and the shower also doesn’t work. So some room for improvement. I do like the desk chair. It’s halfway between a regular desk chair and a rocking chair. It’s pretty cool. I also like the desk itself. Oh, and they promised a lamp, and there is NO LAMP! There’s an overhead light on the desk, but that doesn’t provide any light for the room, and the energy-efficient light and I are already having disagreements about whether or not its service is ‘necessary’ (if it detects enough light in the room, it won’t turn on).

TODAY:

Today, in short, was a very bad day. Long story short (it’s 3.35 am over here. I really really have to get to bed) I checked my email this morning and found out that Gus, our kitten, had been hit by a car last night and killed.

I was sort of in shock for a while. It just came so totally out of the blue. But when it hit me it hit me hard. Suddenly everything that hadn’t bothered me too much yesterday felt like the end of the world, and then I was crying not just because my cat had died but because I didn’t have any tissues and because there was no bin to put the toilet paper in and my room was already a mess and I didn’t know where to go for breakfast and I couldn’t remember where anything was and aaargh. It was just messy and gross. Also I couldn’t connect to the internet and that pissed me off too. I stayed in my room blubbering and trying to get a hold of myself until about twelve, when I decided that I need to get out of my room and just do SOMETHING so that I didn’t waste the whole day wallowing. I took a baby step and went down the hall to ask one of the residence advisors to show me the way back to the commons block, where you can go to complain about broken windows and absentee rubbish bins and the like, and there I also bought some extra hangers for the clothes still lying round my room (on a sidenote, has anyone else always called these ‘coat-hangers’ regardless of what’s hanging on them?)

After that I felt a bit more confident, so I went out and got lunch (pizza and icecream. I wasn’t going to try and kid myself into healthy meals today) and caught a bus downtown. The yuck part of downtown. Otherwise I was going to have to wait like an hour for the next bus. Anyway I got in there, went to a mall, got my watch fixed, looked at some stuff I could potentially buy for my room and decided I could probably get cushions for less than $12 (before tax) at Walmart or Ikea, and walked down to the massive city library, where I basically got blown off by a guy who informed me that I need about four forms of identification and $36 to get a card there, so I told him to get fucked. No. I didn’t. I did say ‘this seems like a very complicated process to just get a library card.’ He said ‘yes.’ That doesn’t sound obnoxious when I write it, but you have to imagine his tone. He was a bastard.

I was feeling pretty volatile though. I kind of felt irrationally angry at strangers all day. Like I was standing on the bus and glaring at this girl in front of me, thinking ‘You happy there, bitch? You’ve been sitting there for the last twenty minutes. Sure you’re comfortable enough?’ and when this guy told me it was going to be about three times as complicated to get a library card as it was to get a bank account, I’d just had enough. Some other stuff happened, but I don’t really feel like talking about that either. I did get my watch battery replaced, so that’s good. That guy was nice.

When I got back to uni I stopped in at the supermarket-ish thing we have here and got a bulk pack of toilet paper, a bueno bar, a kinder surprise, a family-sized packet of chips and a bag of mints. When the girl at the counter asked how I was I said ‘ah... okay...’ and she looked at my stuff and said ‘Okay? Stressed?’ so I said ‘I found out my cat died last night, so now this is happening.’ She was very sympathetic and sweet and made me feel a bit better. I had a good dinner with my roommate and several of her Peruvian friends (I don’t know where they come from. I swear we were just sitting there and she was like ‘Patricio!’ and suddenly there were like five of them there with us). They helped move my bed down, which was cool of them.

So yeah. That’s been my last few days. I’d say right now I’m in average spirits, because it’s much later than I lately like to be up and not much good stuff has happened recently in comparison to the bad. I not setting my alarm tonight.

Also, does anyone have suggestions for decorating?