British Student .ca

My road trip has now finished and I’m staying in a place Downtown for three nights before I can go back to Totem Park. I’m not to far from the public library, where I will be able to get wifi and send this post before 4pm which is midnight in the UK. My midnight will be at 8am UK time.

For the past three years or so my New Year’s celebration has been with a my group of friends in Sunbury. It would probably be at the Haywood’s house this year and most people’s parents would be at another house together. Since we all started going to different universities, a subset of about 6 of us started a traddition called “The Year According To… [insert name]“. In the hours before the countdown we sit together in the house and answer one thing that happened to us for each month of the last year. We take it in turns either to give our full answers or one month at a time, the later helps jog memories and get closer to finished before midnight, I don’t think we’ve ever made it to midnight.

Yes I am going to miss the time with my friends this year. I’m never good at remembering the key events of the year or on what month they took place. There is always an obvious theme with my memory and no guesses as to what big event happened this year and the months leading up to it. Here is the year according to Gregory Marler…

January Busy finishing my application, and deciding about a year abroad. Handed it in just before the 31st.
February Waited to hear about my application, Durham’s International Office delayed the result multiple times/weeks, but just after this month they said I had the place.
March I cycled from Durham, almost to York before getting the train home to London. It took most of the day and I want to retry now I’ll be better prepared, I might do another strentch, maybe York to a station near London.
April
May My plan to map Durham was going really well, with the city mapped out to Neville’s Cross and co-organising a weekend long event inviting people to help map Sunderland.
June Finished second year, at long last. I was quite pleased that my group won the prize for best in the year long Software Engineering project. We would have gone to represent Durham in a the IBM university challenge, but they cancelled it, I would have been in Canada anyway. I cycled across the width of England, including over mountains of the Lake District and Peak District, taking 3 days and leading approximatly 30 other people.
July Worked at a small company for just a few weeks doing small web development tasks that made a difference to their website.
August I was the oldest looking after Emmanuel Church youth camping at New Day in Norfolk for a week. I had great fun and I’ll be sad if I can make it this coming year.
September I flew out to Canada. Had to quickly settle in sorting out things going wrong like banks. Met many more people than I can remember, several I still see.
October Thanksgiving in Canada wasn’t as much as I expected it to be, and Halloween just seemed to be another drinking weekend (although I did “Trick or Eat” collecting for the Vancouver Food Bank).
November I blogged lots, so it seems like a busy month of working getting too much and partying to relieve it. I filled a double bedroom with balloons, ate too much at the winter formal, and saw a Christmas tree appear in the lounge.
December The final exams of my classes this semester, waiting for everyone to finish theirs, and my Alberta/Rockies road trip.

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.

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I had Thursday free and amazingly the rain had run out, so despite it being cold I took my bicycle on the bus to Stanley Park. This was my first trip to Stanley Park so I kept snapping away with my camera. At first I had forgotten it was the middle of a winter weekday but that explains why it was so quiet and peaceful.

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I like sending old fashioned (aka snail) mail, mainly because it increases the chances of getting post yourself. When your away from home it’s good to send postcards, so it shows where you are and can be stuck up somewhere. But I’m fussy about choosing designs, and then I don’t like to send the same design more than twice.

My solution to this problem is a UK-started company called Moo. They do printing in a new way that allows you to order a small amount of a product but every item can use a different photo/design on one side. Most popular are their “Moo Cards” which are smaller than the usual business card but have become a techy and arty fashion icon. I have lots of fun saying “take my business card”, but even more fun saying “which of my business cards would you like?” as I hold out a few in a fan shape.

They have a base in the US, so they can deliver to me here in Vancouver! I thought it was taking forever, but 2 weeks and they’re here, just fitting in my mailbox! I kind of got a bit excited and ordered 60 (using 11 designs with photos I had taken), and I probably don’t have that many friends.

I’ll sell them to you at $1.50 a card or $7 for 5. E-mail postcards at britishstudent.ca or pop by my room if you know where I am. I don’t have stamps, but if your very nice and ask me before I make a trip to the SU post office then I might get some for you at cost. Also, feel free to comment below on your favourite design even if you don’t buy any.

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I’ve made the decission to be a believing christian since 2003. At the end of last year God seemed to give me a fair few messages that I should go to Canada (although I take credit for discovering the opportunity and suggesting the adventure). Those messages were in various forms and included: coming away from prayer with a potential advisor in mind who later turned out to be far more suitable than I ever knew; involved staff I didn’t want to deal with suddenly being away from meetings; church prayer announcments from people that didn’t know me, detailing exactly my current application situation. So it should be important to find a church to go to in Canada where I can be spirtitually supported when I get distracted from the God that helped me get here, have other people (and musicians) to worship with, and be parrt of a community that isn’t just fellow students.

In 2004 finding a church near home was scary on my own, but simple. I ruled out the 6 churches within half a mile of me due to silly reasons, and asked my cool class mate, Matt, where he went. That took me too a church a 10min bus ride away and Matt wasn’t there on my first week. I was about 17 so happy to meet adults, but the youth leader subtly(not very well) made some guys sit with the ne kid. When I moved to Durham for university it was even easier: go to one of the well known churches each week with your new christian corridoor mates or the many christians you meet, after 3-4 weeks you’ll naturally fit into a church (or go for the longest lie in).

Moving to Canada in 2009 is harder. I’ve never understood denominations well, but here it’s changed. Evangelical, “happy clappy”, charasmatic, is very different without reserved British people. Searching Google for “churches in Vancouver” brings up a small random selection of the Greater Vancouver area. On my first Sunday I went to Costal Church in Downton Vancouver. It was lively but large, and an hour away by foot-bus-subway doesn’t place it where I’m living.

Asking other christians where they go was harder. There are many christian student groups here but I’m getting bored of the same old introductions and actual christians are much more diluted in more than double the number of students Durham has. I did some more searching on Google, and combined with promotion of some local churches by UCM (University Christian Ministries) I made a list of churches to visit that were closer to downtown. They’re described in the photos below.

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Yes yes, next post after this one will have photos and be more original, I promise. I just thought you would like the rest of the updates from facebook so your fully up to date on what’s been happening.

• will survive another week without a mobile phone?
• is skyping the stupid bank.
• has sent a postcard to the bank manager.
• s mini mouse has broken, I didnt even get a chance to show SteveC its bright blue light. For some unknown whenever I type an apostrophe or forward slash in the web browser it triggers the search. Im running out of irreplaceable money\beer. Life in amazing Vancouver has now hit a big low, I think its time to resort to emergency plan code named “Tim Horton doughnut” to cheer me up.
  • Tom: Hey – keep your chin up. I know times can get low when you’re abroad – being away from home makes all those little things which normally don’t matter all the harder. But I’m living proof it just takes a few weeks and you’ll start to have an epic time x
  • Gregory: cheers Tom, it’s not really that low and I just went and got some English tea, solves all problems!
• ’s amazing printer fixing skills require me to be fast at running, from guys who want to kiss me with thanks.
• likes Old Dutch Creamy Dill flavoured potato crisps, but has got used to calling such things chips.
  • Steven: as long as you still like tea, your national identity is safe
• knows the party is always on his floor, but it must be hiding from me tonight. Come out, I need a distraction!
  • Bob: i’m coming out!!
  • Gregory: Bob that’s an English term to say your admitting your gay.
  • Taylor: no that works here too
• tastes the chocolate… its edible, but not the same.
• fears asking if they have “Freshers Flu” over here, too much talk about the certaintiy everyone is going to get H1N1!
  • Jo: You’re a brit – you’ve probably already had it!
• is facebooking in a lecture, being an innocent studious fresher has ended again. Well they encoouraged it with their network\power sockets at each chair and wifi point in every lecture hall!