British Student .ca

More photos should be coming but I’m tidying my room and keep losing my computer. I just found a piece of paper which my friend Amy folded into 4 and titled each quarter “Canada Pro’s, Canada cons, Durham pros, Durham cons” (yes you should tease her for use of an apostrophe, she knows better than me). The paper got made and passed around during a lecture (maybe between lectures in the same room) so it very much isn’t just my work. How many of them were true, or how many did I achieve?

Canada Pro’s

• Beach, Trees, Lakes (individual items and someone grouped them as environment) – Yes seen all three, even walked across a frozen lake in Alberta. I guess at that time we didn’t know the local beach was a clothing optional beach.
• Generic university fun – oh yeah, let’s say no more.
• Dream to canoe in Canada – erm, nobody to go with and I can’t find anywhere to rent open top canoes(my favourite) within a day’s reach.
• Sneak into america – no border crossing, but my phone company thought I was there when I went down to a beach in Victoria.
• Might get lucky with Janet Lavery – a Canadian prof back home. Neither happened, thankfully.
• Make new friends who can go stay with in future, fun hols! – I’ve got the friends and I hope they invite me when I have a job and money (year after next?).
• Will be a year ahead of the canadians so can give them answers fo money. – No Khasan, I will not do your 2min first year CompSci quiz.
• snow! – not really, but a lot left lying around in Alberta.

Canada cons

• Money out – oh yes
• No Amy or Jo or Dave or Emily or Martin or James – sorry James I originally thought you were the only one to add your own name. I miss you all loads, I miss the whole class too even Matthieu and his secret pokemon obsession.
• bear might eat greg – hasn’t happened (yet? touch wood.) although I’ve been scared of raccoons and coyotes, sometimes falling asleep in places they frequent.
• Nobody to live with in final Durham year – It’s going to be like first year again (for the third time!).
• No Pim – no TA(lab helper) could come close to the awesomeness of PIM
• Annoying accents – only when they try to imitate mine.
• Everyone may look like Ike from South Park – nah, only Roy
• need to teach my mum skype – wow, she learnt!
• Don’t reunite with friends currently on Erasmus – (year in Europe) I’m hoping they hang on with a Masters year or something.
• Might be sick of uni by time – yes, but let’s move on…
• you return to durham – oh, that was part of the last item.

Only a few Durham pros/cons and they’re pretty much just opposites. Durham pros included Mummy Amy (+ 2nd mummy Jo) (+3rd mummy Em) (+ 4th mummy Tino). It should be noted Tino is a guy.

I wanted to additionally say I can draw far better Canadian maple leafs than the doodle, but I just tested and it’s only a bit better than the one I did about 16 months ago.

I took a lot of photos on the road trip

1. 25th, going to Calgary – 56 photos
2. 26th, in Calgary – 188 photos
3. 27th, to Banff via Lake Louise – 195 photos
4. 28th, my birthday in Banff – 246 photos
5. 29th, to Jasper and the area – 249 photos
6. 30th, driving back to Vancouver – 16 photos

I’m sure you can’t handle them together so I’ll post them in related chunks, and as always I remove photos that are blurry or near-duplicates. This first post is of photos from the first and last day, the travelling from Vancouver to Calgary and then travelling from Jasper to Vancouver. It was a lot of driving for Pierre, so we took lots of breaks and went a bit slower when we were unsure how the road was going to be.

I’ve worked on more changes and bug fixes to how the photos are displayed. Please comment telling me if you still struggle to see all of them, or just comment on what you think of my trip.

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So following my previous road trip update I went to an Irish pub in Banff (mmm how I miss bangers and mash) for my birthday. My two road companions surprised me by getting a slice of birthday cake and a cribbage board as a birthday present (ahh, that’s why they were being annoying by talking in French earlier).

On Tuesday we left Banff really early to go to Jasper. We made lots of stops on the way so the driving was’t too much for Pierre. One stop included some waterfalls that had frozen over. Near Jasper we walked down the middle of a canyon with an ice floor and lots and lots of ice everywhere.

We made it back to Vancouver on Wednesday evening, I slept at Pierre’s before place before he went snowboarding in Whistler and I moved downtown.

No free Wifi in my room, although there was a Fatport network which I should have been able to use with my UBC university login details (but I got an error). So for three nights I didn’t do much because I couldn’t research and plan anything the night before.

I moved back into my room on Sunday to find it looking rather messy (someone inspecting the rooms had knocked loads of stuff about). I waited for everyone on 6th and 5th floor to come back throughout the day, giving them a shouting welcome if I saw them arrive from my window.

Today term started again, full of fog and rain. The lectures are a bit boring to start with so I’ll probably soon be posting lots of photos of my holiday and if you want I could post some comments about the classes.

On Christmas Eve I picked up the car (later named Louise) from the airport with Pierre. At first it was scary sitting in the front right seat (the driver’s side in the UK, and I can’t drive), but we spent the afternoon driving around by going to Wreck Beach and Simon Fraser University (SFU) to see the sunset over Vancouver.

At 6:20am today (Christmas Day) we left the UBC campus and drove towards Alberta. 200km into the trip Felicia realised she forgot her handbag in, with the details of our accommodation for every night and her ID (she booked them all). The roads were safe here and we made it to Days Inn, Calgary, about 8pm (actually 9pm local time).

All the bars and restaurants were closed on Christmas evening, except the cinema which had a Tim Horton’s and Burger King. We had stopped at a nice place about 4pm anyway. Tomorrow we spend the day in Calgary and another night here, hopefully more stuff will be open.

Over the last week people started moving out of Totem Park Residence enough to make it noticably quieter. Last Thursday and Friday nights were lively and some crazy people took an exam the morning after drinking, then briefly came back before leaving for the airport. After the weekend my floor still made a bit of noise but our days consisted of sitting around maybe playing on Khasan’s xbox or cycling around the hallway.

Then it came to Tuesday, the last night, with only me, Henry, Khasan, Alex (who had made a surprise return), Bob, Jin, and perhaps three of the very quiet people. On Wednesday the canteen had less than a third of it’s cereal selection, I went for Cornflake crumbs. The grill was closed and being super-cleaned (so no fry up to end the semster), even the wrap/sandwich station and salad bars were empty. It came to just me and Jin on the floor and at exactly midday we decided to leave rather than wait to be removed.

I’m now across the road at Pierre’s place in Thunderbird Residence. I’m sharing the internet with him and sleeping here for two nights, until early Christmas Day we set off with Felicia on a road trip. First stop is Calgary, then Banff (for my birthday), then Jasper, and back to Vancouver. I met them both in the week before term started as they are also exchange students, and we meet up now and then to do things like eat French snails. It should be a long exciting trip, hopefully I won’t come back as an ice cube. I might try to make quick blog posts at some places, but otherwise assume I’m not going to be online much, the first Christmas that’s happened!