British Student .ca

Yesterday my friend from back home, Beckie, asked me online if I had got the birthday letter she sent. I had memories of getting a letter from her at some point, but I couldn’t see where I put it and I’m sure I hadn’t got anything from her since my birthday and the winter break.

Today I checked my post to find a letter from the UK scribbled with multiple corrections. On the back of the envelope was a big stamp “MAIL WAS DELAYED BECAUSE OF WRONG OR MISSING…” and every box has been ticked. Beckie might be a bit embarrassed at me posting this, but I just found it so funny the amount they stamped and wrote on the envelope, I had to share photos.

There isn’t anything terribly wrong with the address. They get annoyed about the mailbox number, but if they had told me what it would be before I got here then I could have made sure everyone had it up to date. It was a close call with whoever processed the mail, they gave it a “Return to sender” stamp which later got scribbled out.

Thanks Beckie for the letter, also thanks for the Christmas cards Susan and Graham, my Nottingham relatives, and my parents. If anyone wants to send me some post, here is the correct address they want you to use:

Gregory Marler
Box 854
2525 West Mall
Vancouver, BC
V6T 1W9

Think of the poor students, in a new place without their mummys, missing home and not getting any nice treats. It’s a big thing to get post at university, especially packages. Some people have had several care packages (containing a letter, maybe photos, and sweets/candy), where others get nothing. Me and my parents had agreed that it was to expensive to send a package overseas, and I’m a big grown up 3rd year really. However I already told you how my mum didn’t understand how much home cooking is missed and she blogged a virtual care package to make me miss it even more.

Well it’s been suggested here that those who don’t get care packages should send their mean parents a package. Being a poor student I don’t have money to splash away doing that, but then up popped a twitter message from a mapping friend, Dan Karran containing a coupon code. It was for a free box from Graze.com who send healthy fruit and nut lunch packages using the UK postal service, Royal Mail. Although recently the UK (mainly London?) has had postal stikes, so Graze cleverly adapted and I think my mother got an extra helping of nuts and maybe dried fruit to replace the fresh stuff. This was good as the package arrived a day late because Royal Mail are clearing up the backlog since the strikes, usual service in my opinion.

Thanks for the coupon Dan. Sorry Graze for only using my account for your freebie, I’ll have to leave it to my mum to decide if it was nice. To the students who are lucky/spoilt enough to get care packages, what do they actually contain?

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend to you! Just to confuse you Canadian thanksgiving is a different date to America, it’s the 2nd Monday in October which is a public holiday. Thanksgiving is totally foreign to me so I had little idea what would take place. The 3 day weekend prompted most people to go home or to relatives, making my residence very quiet. Those that were left managed to make just as much noise on Friday/Saturday and drink lots to keep the can collection growing.

On Sunday morning I went to church. It was announced that someone couldn’t make it at the last moment so I don’t know if that spurred a change of plan or if the service was different due to thanksgiving. It started with worship and the lead pastor on guitar. Then we had communion together which is a weekly occurance in the Canadian churches I’ve been to (it’s not so frequent in the UK) by dipping the bread in the wine (rather than taking a sip of wine after eating the bread). Usually next would be a sermon but instead a few large rolls of paper had been pinned to the walls with the writing “I’m thankful to God for…“. We could write or draw our responses (the children had made some interesting drawings throughout the service). There was some more worship and then the service finished.

On Sunday evening my building, Haida House, had a semi-formal dinner in the ground floor study lounge. I dug out the one collared shirt I brought here and went down. It was an enjoyable time, actually sitting down and talking to the people I live with. A resonable turn out of roughly 25 (including some from our neighbours Salish House) from the 180 or so who should be living there. After the dinner everybody was to tired to have much of a party, well after a rest the party started up just after midnight.

Side-tracking as I do, along one of the main campus roads sits a large white cain (6ft tall) painted with a red E on all three sides, to quote wikipedia “exists not because it was installed in accordance with UBC’s planning and building process, but because the engineering students simply put it there.“. It is commonly the target of repainting by other faculty’s students to have their letter and colour. On Thanksgiving Sunday night the Haida pranksters were out and painted it fully in our colour of the night, then super glued on coloured featers and a beak to turn the cairn into a turkey.

I made full use of the Monday off and slept in to 1:30pm. In the evening (5pm because they eat so early here) I walked over to Acadia Park, the family houses on the other side of campus. A couple even newer to Point Grey Communtiy Church had invited me to dinner with them and their extended family. In so long I haven’t been in a family house where you can take a second helping without swiping your dinner card, and kids run around fighting and tickling each other.

It’s been a busy weekend and I’m sure to have missed out some blog-worthy stories, but now I need another sleep until my 12:30pm class Tuesday class.