Posts tagged ‘Christmas’
Driving to Calgary
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.
On the move
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!
Santa Clause Parade
I almost forgot to upload the photoos from Sunday 6th December when I went and watched the Santa Claus Parade downtown. I didn’t see any Santa Claus, but I did see some Father Christmas looking Russians.
Twice a guy quickly walked in front of us filming the whole parade with his compact digital camera. His t-shirt told me it was ButchNews of YouTube fame, but he was too fast for me to take a photo. I focused on still images so if you want to hear the music we had, watch Butch’s view of the parade.
I took 171 photos, but managed to cut it down to 66 for you. I’ve just spent two days fixing some of the problems people had viewing photos, please let me know if there are more issues.
Breaking News: Snow!
Last night I went out to a very nice French restaurant and learnt enough French to order Escargot à l’aïl as a starter, Canard confit for the main, and later Crème brulée as desert. That’s a bit daring with the starter, but the garlic sauce was just amazing, and I quite like escargot (snails) that was in it. Canard confit was duck with a sweet sauce and vegetables. French cooking is so amazing I think it could make me love any food, even beetroot which I previously hated. The quebecois waiter wasn’t so amazed at the effort I made to speak French well (for the benefit of the blog I don’t know how to spell ‘please’ in French, but I said it well).
This morning church was hilarious because it was the children’s Christmas Nativity Play, or Christmas Pageant as they call it here. Baby Jesus was played by a girl, the wise men/kings carried a younger king in a box, which broke by the time they made it to the front. I think there were a few angel sheep, and the computer froze for the video map. But we all went with the flow and it was brilliant, a lot of hard work must have gone into that.
After the service I left the building to see snow falling and a thin covering of the pavement. Wahoo! I was so excited and now I have a big burst of energy. I might be visitng Alberta over the Christmas break, so it will be good to climatise to the cold. My weather widget currently says 0°C as it has been for the last few days (without snow), 1°C in Newcastle/Durham, and 4°C in London. But here we have snow, so it’s better.
Winter Plans
On Friday classes finished and the study period for final exams started. Yes, final exams, the end to the classes I’m currently taking. Unlike in England where you have to remember everything while the class continues untill May/June exams, in Canada most classes last just one term(called semester, as the term is September to May). I’ll hopefully get round to writing about the classes I did this semester. My exams are as follows.
- Thursday 10th, 8:30am – Software Enginering (to compare it to last year)
- Monday 14th, 3:30pm – Functional and Logical Programming (Haskell, Prolog, and a dash of Scheme)
- Tuesday 15th, 12pm – Human Computer Interaction
The exam period is untill the 23rd December and then the next set of classes starts on the 4th Janurary. As that’s such a short holiday (due to the Winter Olympic reading break) it originally didn’t seem worth a flight home for a few days of Christmas and someone’s 23rd birthday. Now I know that my exams finish early I’m still going to stick to the plan of enjoying my first Christmas away from home, on my own, and in a different contient.
I dreamt about the Trans-Canada 3-day train ride to Toronto or Montreal but left it too late to organise, so maybe I’ll do that in May before leaving Canada. I’m now excited about making a trip Salt Spring Island, where Roy (on my floor) is from, it’s near Vancouver Island. He tells me doesn’t think there are salt springs, but I say we we go looking for them to be a tourist attraction.
I get kicked out of residence for the winter break (and apparently they’ll find me if I hide). So I’ll probably stay in the Gage Towers residence where I can cook for myself, or the hostel on campus. Maybe I’ll burst the campus bubble and stay in a hostel downtown, there seems to be some nice ones looking around. If I find a friend or two then we could save a bit of money on a private room. I know some friends in Haida have said they’re here over the winter break, but of course I’ve forgotten who. Hopefully they’ll leave a comment and even if we don’t stay in the same place we can meet up and do some stuff together.
An ill Christmas Tree
On Friday night I was strangely able to block out the noises in the building, and I was asleep before 1am, for the first time since September. I got briefly woken up around 1:30am with banging on my door to perform floor photographer duties. I ignored whatever was going on and continued to enjoy my sleep. In the night (with the elevator turnedd off) a Christmas miracle had happened, there was a 10-12 foot tree in our lounge!
Saturday night was Totem Park Winter Formal. Everybody who wasn’t away skiing dressed up smartly. Even the cafeteria was dressed up smartly and draped in white and black sheets for this free meal. Chatting away to the staff has paid off and they gave me large helppings of everything, “You love jello, it’s all you can eat and tomorrow you have to pay for it, so take lots“. Not quite the same feeling as a Durham formal, but good to see a change in eating pattern. After the formal we spent a couple of hours on 5th floor sharing a cheese and veg platter between the two floors.
The evening gave way to the “Totem Gets Classy” dance in the ballroom. I wasn’t planning to go to this, until I had a few beers from my “Winter Mingler” selection of Granville Island Brewing ales. I also found someone with spare tickets. It looked good inside, and the sweat and pushing reminded me of post-formal Klute nights. It finished at midnight, but then me, Steph, and Fridge Boy watched a movie in David’s bed.
I felt fine at church the following morning and the first advent candle was lit, but from the afternoon onwards my stomach couldn’t stop telling me it was unwell. There’s nowhere in residence that has good ventilation or doesn’t smell bad, where I can sit down and rest. I went to dinner with a Roy and David, but the serving area made me feel so hot that I just got orange juice. Something isn’t right if I’m not able to tuck into dinner, but I just sat and chatted with them for a while. I continued to be really hot at this point so I left the guys to get some fresh air, as I got to the end of the table I finally felt like I might puke something up. I ran to the washrooms, or maybe just the bins before the door out. Making it just to the bin area my running gave the effect of projectial vommiting, and I reinacted with another couple of loads.
One of the managers came round the corner “What’s the hold up here?” as I was stood waiting to say sorry once I had stopped throwing up. She didn’t talk to me, just around me, “Why does everyone throw up here” as she stopped everyone from leaving, despite space to walk round. Again ignoring me she said “Can’t you throw up in the washroom or garbage can“. Where does she think I was running to, and maybe it’s her food (which is all I eat) that makes people throw up.
I tried to just sleep it off, but it’s hard with all the noise taking place on the floor. The cafeteria food isn’t good if you’re feeling ill, most annoyingly they hardly seem to have potatoes to go with the roast meat. I went to the late night grill and shop that evening and just before my turn in line they announced last orders for the grill (5 mins early for last orders). Thankfully the staff are much nicer than the managers and I was able to get 2 slices of toast, even though it’s not on the late night grill menu. I already have marmite from Safeways (next to Vanilla extract, in the cooking section) to spread on it. That and sipping almost-flat Ginger Beer (called Ginger Ale here), is the food prescription when sick in my family. Still, it didn’t feel enough like home, it probably needed to be made by an unwilling sibling.
Last night the Christmas (actually a bad looking conifer) tree had to disappear, because it was apparently a fire hazzard. Something about it not being 3ft but taller than the room, and curved at the top to fit in. So I saw that go down in the elevator, and then went to bed. It was no biggy skipping my two classes this morning. A lecture for the class I’ve already done, and optional group lab time (I’ll have to make up the work to my group later). I’m feeling slightly better, I had noodles for dinner and part of the meat I got with it. I don’t want to feel bad, so I’ll try and got my body to fight the rest of the illness off.