Explore Day 9

Shameless selfie: New dress for the wedding

Day 9. One week, two weekends. Sometimes it feels like I’ve been here forever, other times it seems like I just got here.

The second half of this week has been far better than the first half. While certain things haven’t changed—such as my prof’s opinion of me—other aspects of life here have definitely improved. For instance, a bunch of my tea-making friends and I have decided that we’re gonna start cooking together, and sometimes making big dinners with cuisine from different cultures. Is it sad that I’m most excited that a girl from Nova Scotia is planning on making lobster?

Explore kids by this gorgeous lake before the ropes course

Student life here has been great over the past few days, as I’ve participated in some fun activities and made a bunch of new friends. I’ve been shopping (there’s a great mall right next to Laval), had lunch in Old Quebec, and spent the day at a ropes course in Duchesnay. The ropes course was great fun, even though I stupidly decided to take the ‘extreme’ lap. Apparently my friend and I were the only girls who did the extreme section, and my muscles are definitely paying for it today!

Birthday party bonfire

Off-campus, I’ve been getting more involved with the church community. On Friday night I went to a wedding, Saturday night to a birthday party, and two church services today. It’s been lovely getting to know some of the people in the church. Many of them speak English quite well, but I also enjoy talking to the ones who barely know English, because it forces me to speak French. Also, it’s helpful for me to listen to actual Francophones speaking French, since most of the time on campus I just hear Anglophones like me butchering the language… :)  

Throwing rice at the new couple

I think this next week will be a turning point, since I have my first test on Tuesday, and a bunch of other assignments coming up. If I do well on the test, the academic side of life here could improve drastically. Right now, I kind of dread sitting in class for 3-4 hours every morning. Then again, it is just the morning, and I have the rest of the day to enjoy Quebec City.

Tulips along the walk to church

Also, it could really stand to get warmer. I’m ready to ditch the jeans and sweaters in favour of sundresses. But this is Canada, after all…

Quebec City: Day 6

Quebec City. 6 days down, 30 to go.

I’ll admit, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. My safe arrival was a miracle in itself, since I managed to navigate Montreal and the closure of my Quebec City exit without any problems. It took a little while, but I eventually found my residence, dragged most of my stuff out of my car, and got settled in.

The most important part of Explore is the French Immersion. The ‘animators’ who run the activities, the professors, and the university admins speak only French—at least to us. Classes are conducted exclusively in French, and all important information is also delivered in French. That means that students who know only a little French (like me) have a pretty steep learning curve for the first few days!

Fortunately, adjusting to speaking French was actually easier than I expected. On Day One of the program I was already having basic conversations with my classmates, and by today (class 4) I was able to have a basically normal conversation. My grammar is horrible, of course, and I’m often scrambling for vocabulary, but I can get my point across.

Being able to speak and understand French is pretty exciting, but the difficulty is that my writing and grammar aren’t as advanced as my oral and comprehension skills. This means that I’m at a distinct disadvantage in my grammar class, especially since the professor thinks that my oral/comprehension skills are as poor as my writing. It’s difficult to succeed in a class where the professor thinks you’re stupid, especially since every time she calls on me for an answer I manage to mess up somehow. At this point, I’m just hoping that the first test (next week already!) goes well, so that I can prove that I actually belong in this level.

The other low point in my week has been adjusting to residence. I’ve never lived in residence before, and I must admit that I’m not really a fan. I dislike going down the hall to the bathroom or showers (although my room does have a sink), and the impersonal feel of the endless hallways is anything but homey. The main problem, though, is my inability to cook. There is a huge kitchen in the basement, but I have no cooking implements, and, most importantly, no fridge. This means that I can’t buy meat, milk, yogurt, vegetables, frozen deserts… anything that needs to be kept cold. My meals, then, are limited to cafeteria/restaurant food, or little fresh-made microwave meals from the grocery store. For someone used to following the sales and cooking healthy meals on just $2 a day, going to the cafeteria every day is painful.

As a pleasant note to end today’s blog: I have bought a kettle. This may seem like such a little thing, but once you’ve had to go down three flights of stairs to microwave water to make tea, having a kettle in your room is a big deal. I also met a bunch of lovely tea-lovers in the kitchen last night, and we’ve decided to enjoy evening tea parties more often. There’s no better way to end the day. :)

That’s all for now! I’ll try to post a little more often and get into the specifics of what’s going on here, rather than just general summary. But now… over to you! Have any of you done an immersion program, and, if so, what was your experience like?

A Day in the Life of a University Student: Of Midterms and Doctor Who

The title of this post may seem just a little ridiculous. After all, how are midterms and doctor who related? Does the doctor write midterms? Are there midterms based on doctor who? While both of those would be extremely epic, I’m afraid that they also don’t happen. Basically, the only reason why midterms and doctor who are co-existing in this post is that today I wrote midterms, and then I watched doctor who. ‘nouf said.

As for the midterms, I think I did fairly well. My psych one was hard, but I had studied so much that I knew most of the stuff. It’ll be awhile before I get the marks back, but I’m hoping for at least 90%. (NOTE: I ended up with a 95) Then my poetry one was actually a lot easier than I had been expecting. If I don’t get a hundred it’ll be high nineties (I got 104%, there was a bonus question). Afterwards I talked to a bunch of my classmates and they all said that they thought they did pretty well, too. All in all, my midterms went fairly well. Sorry if this seems like I'm bragging, but since my first essay didn't go near as well as I had hoped, it's nice to be getting these high marks in other subjects. I feel like I've redeemed myself.

Now comes the really cool part of the post, where I rant for ten minutes about how good looking David Tennant is…. no. While I probably could rant for a lot longer than ten minutes about David Tennant, what I really want to tell you about is my extremely strange way of watching movies with a friend while she happens to me back on PEI and I’m in Ontario (approximately 18 hours drive, in case you don’t know your Canadian geography.)

What basically happened is that we started using apple’s Facetime on my iPad. She sat in her living room with an iPod, while I pointed my iPad at my laptop screen. Then I played Doctor Who on my laptop. This meant that we could both watch it at the same time (though I doubt that her picture was exactly the best quality) and talk about it while we watched. Seriously, it felt almost as if we were really sitting on the couch together watching a movie.

Maybe this sounds a little stupid to you. It certainly isn’t something you hear of people doing regularly. But personally, I really enjoyed it. I like watching shows and movies on my own, but it’s even more fun when you have someone to discus it with. I’m the kind of person who likes to talk during movies, pointing out random trivia or just exclaiming “Oh my goodness, this is so sad!” (For anyone who knows their Doctor Who, we were watching the end of season two. Sadness extreme.) Because of this, it was a lot of fun to just sit and watch a movie with my friend, even if she was a thousand miles away.

In other related (happy) news, my last exam for this semester is December 15^th, which means that in seven weeks I should be home! Don’t get me wrong, I love it here, but I can’t wait to see my family and my PEI friends again. 

A Day in the Life of a University Student: Famous Author Moment

This is section two in my miniseries, A Day In The Life Of Me. My bad bus luck story was the annoying part of my day. Now comes the extremely awesome part.

As you will know if you read the previous post (if you haven’t yet, go read it—or skim it—and then come back) I ended up getting to campus in plenty of time for my first exam, psych. My friend was already there when I arrived, sitting right by the front. Normally we sit second row, so I was a bit confused by this, but she said that she sat so close because she wanted the prof to know she wasn’t cheating. Paranoid much? (JK, she’s a lovely person. <3)

Next to me on the other side was a girl who looked a bit familiar, but I couldn’t quiet place her. I started talking to her, just a friendly, “Nervous about the test?” kinda thing, and she pointed out that we’re actually in the same English class. From then on, our conversation went something like this.

Me: So, are you an English major?

Her: Yep. I’m looking to go into publishing.

Me: Seriously? Me too!

Her: That’s awesome! See, I really like to write—

Me: You write? Me too! Like, YA?

Her: Yeah!

*We talk for awhile about books and queries and stuff like that*

Me: Have you heard about inkpop.com?

Her: Yep, I have an account.

Me: How long have you been on?

Her: About a year and a half.

Me: So, um… do you remember Because You Laughed?

Her: Yeah, the short story. Didn’t that make top five?

Me: *points to myself* Yep, it did.

Her: Hey, wait, did you write that?

Me: *nods*

Her: I’m gonna hug you now. J

*We hug*

*I feel like a famous author*

*The prof says it’s time to start the test*

So, that was my pretty exciting first famous author moment. Well, not really, but you get the idea. I think it’s pretty cool that this random person who I just started talking to on a whim had actually read my story. Also, it must have made enough of an impact on them so they still remembered it two years later. I know that Because You Laughed has over 550 comments and there’s obviously a lot of people who’ve read it and haven’t commented, but it’s still weird to actually meet one of those people.

Needless to say, this conversation made me pretty happy and totally made up for any grumpiness that my terrible bus luck could have caused. It was an awesome thing to happen right before the test. The only bad thing is, I have no idea what this girl’s name is. Hopefully I’ll see her in English class tomorrow so I can prove that she’s not just some illusion that my delirious brain made up… 

A Day in the Life of a University Student: Bad Bus Luck

Today was… how shall I put it… interesting. There were some very high points, some very low points and some just plain random points. Some of it has to do with being a writer, a lot with being a university student, some with being a Doctor Who fan, and everything with being me. Since there’s just so much to tell about today, I’ve decided to break this post up into three parts. Here is number one, Bad Bus Luck.

First of all, you should know that I had two midterms today. One was a psych midterm worth 20%, the other was a poetry test worth 15%. I studied like crazy for the psych midterm since I knew it was going to be hard. The poetry one, not so much. Anyways, I had been preparing for today for a long time, had gotten all my work done last night really early so that I was in bed by ten. I woke up feeling all refreshed and ready to write the tests.

Then, before I left, I sat down on my bed to pray and ask God for help on my midterms. However, I spent just a little longer on it than I had intended, so when I opened my eyes it was already 8:29, and my bus usually gets to its stop between 8:29 and 8:31. I kinda freaked out at this, so I dashed downstairs, threw my lunch in my bag, grabbed my coat, shoved my shoes on, exploded out the door and ran down to the path to the street… only to see the bus pulling away from the stop.

This is kind of a catastrophe. It’s now 8:30, and my exam starts at 9:30. It takes me approximately an hour and eight minutes to walk to King’s. If I ran I could probably make it, but there’s no way I want to show up at my exam panting from running for an hour. The other option is to sit around and see if there’s another bus I could catch. There’s two busses that go by my place, the one I usually take and another one that normally comes before it. I could wait around and see if the other bus is late, or I could start running.

At this point, I have a brilliant idea. My bus has to go through a whole subdivision before coming out again at the main road. If I run really fast, maybe I can make it to the intersection before the bus, and so I’ll catch it there. So I cross the street and start running with my laptop bag swinging around my waist and my coat billowing out.

Just then, the second bus pulls up to the stop just behind me. Great. If I had just waited a minute longer I could have gotten on that. But there’s absolutely no use waiting here now, so I just keep running, then slow down to a walk because I’m really out of shape. About five to ten minutes later I arrive at the intersection, only to see the second bus there at the other side. The light’s red, so I can’t cross over. As soon as the light changes, the bus pulls away.

It’s now 8:40. The next bus won’t get here for another half hour. If I wait for that, then I’ll miss my transfer at main campus and end up at King’s about five minutes late for the exam. Unless I start walking, there’s no way I’ll make it in time.

So I start walking. I speed-walk through another subdivision, glancing longingly at all the cars that pass, until I come up to another major road that’s serviced by about four or five different busses. I take a well deserved break, and five minutes later another bus shows up going east. I grab that, ride it for about two stops, then get off, dash across an intersection and take a north going bus up to campus. Once there, I wait for about ten minutes until a shuttle comes, which takes me to King’s. Arrival time, 9:18.

Despite missing my bus and ending up taking three different busses and walking way too far, I got to campus only about twenty minutes later than I usually do. In the end, it didn’t work out that badly. It just doesn't make sense; I nearly missed my exam because I was praying for help on the exam. How ironic is that?