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?