Day 278: Update from the Continent

(Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness)

Apparently I haven't blogged in a few weeks, not since exams. Whoops... So much has happened since then that I could have blogged a dozen times, but I've been so busy living through all this exciting stuff that I haven't had time to blog.

Hopefully I'll get a chance to write more detailed posts about some of the travelling I've been doing recently, but in case I don't, here's a brief look at everything that's happened in the past few weeks. 

1-  I finished exams! My own exams went decently, I had fun soaking my friends after their finals, and when I got my marks back just yesterday I found I passed all my modules with quite a decent average. Perhaps my marks were a tad lower than they would have been in Canada, but I'm still happy, considering how busy I was, and how I had to get used to a new academic system. 

(MUM IS HERE!!!)

2- Mum came! A few days after my last exam, mum flew out from Canada for a visit. She's here for a full four weeks, which means we're just a tad over half way right now. I loved showing her St. Andrews and introducing her to my friends, and she's a great travelling companion.

3- I moved out of St. Andrews. :( While I haven't said goodbye for the last time (I'm back for a bit in June, then for the last weekend in August before finally flying home September 1st) I have moved out of my flat and said goodbye to many of my friends. This, not surprisingly, was really hard, but having mum here definitely made things easier, since she helped me pack up my stuff, and travelling with her has helped take my mind of what I'm leaving behind.

4- I've visited four countries: Scotland (up north, so basically completely different from St. Andrews), England (Durham), the Netherlands (Friesland, Gouda) and now Germany (I'm writing this on the train just over the border from Holland, but we plan to visit Cologne, Manheim, and Heidelberg). It's cool to add a new country to my list (Germany makes 15), and I've really enjoyed seeing new places in countries I've already visited. 

(The house in the Netherlands where my great-grandparents lived)

That's life now. Another week of travelling, then a week in St. Andrews performing in The Mikado (a Gilbert and Sullivan, what else?) and then I'm off to Romania for a month! I have the feeling this summer is really going to fly by, since I'm constantly busy. The month in Romania will probably be the quietest time I get, since August will be spent dashing across the UK. 

As I mentioned in number 3, I do have a flight home now on September 1st. I'm flying Edinburgh to Toronto, which means that I'll leave from St. Andrews, which I think is fitting. Unfortunately, flying straight to Toronto means I won't have any time home in PEI this summer, so I won't get to see my family, friends, or the beautiful Island. On the other hand, I do get to spend the maximum time here in Europe, and I'll still be here when my BFF, Sharon, comes out for her exchange next year. Then, when I finally do leave, orientation for my MA program starts the very next day. It'll be busy, but I won't have time to miss Scotland if I throw myself right in to life back in Canada. 

Two Days Left

Apparently I’m leaving in two days.

Two days.

In 48 hours I’ll be on a plane over the Atlantic ocean, and in 72 hours I should have arrived in the town that’ll be my home for the next year.

That’s not terrifying at all…

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, and scared, and just really didn’t want to go. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to just get to stay here with my family and my friends and the country that I’ve always called home. But then I realize that no one is forcing me to go, that I could just drop out of the exchange and go back to King’s or UPEI or just sit in my room and read…

But I’m not doing that. That’s not an option. Because no matter how terrifying it is to leave my country, it’s still something I’ve dreamed of doing all my life. It’s an adventure, and there is absolutely no way I could ever back out.

So, really, I’m not terrified. Pre-departure jitters, sure, that sometimes end up feeling a bit like real fear. But they’re not, because I know everything will be alright, and I know I’ll have a fantastic time, and, as much as I love everything here, I really won’t miss it all that much when I’m gone.

Last night, to try and get myself in the mood, I looked through the catalogue of Fresher’s Week (orientation week) events for St. Andrew’s and picked out the ones I’m interested in attending. There’s everything from choosing courses to fireworks to drama workshops to pub nights… So much to do, and I have absolutely no idea how I’ll have the energy for it all, but it sure sounds fantastic.

Everything else is pretty much set. I have housing, and flights, and funding, and all the big important things are taken care of. Of course, once I get to St. Andrew’s I have to set up a bank account and get a phone and order my coursebooks and all that kind of thing, but for now there’s nothing more I can do.

Now is the calm before the storm. Two last days of PEI before my world changes forever…

That might just be a little overly dramatic. But I am a writer—dramatic is what I do. And right now nothing looms larger in my mind than Monday morning…

Summer Goals: An Update

So. About three weeks ago I wrote a lovely little post about my summer goals, full of optimism and hope for a productive summer. Now, over a quarter of the way into my vacation, it’s time to ‘fess up to what I haven’t accomplished… and maybe celebrate a little about what I have.

The most obvious goal I haven’t met is that I definitely haven’t been blogging twice a week. I’ve got a number of excuses (poor internet connection, over-enthusiastic inner editor, lack of time, etc….) but the fact remains that this is only the fourth blog post in three weeks, so I’m a few behind. I’ve decided to start publishing my backlog of book reviews twice a week, so at least that will be something, and I’ve got another couple ideas for posts on writing. Basically, I can almost guarantee that this blog will see more activity in the coming weeks.

Secondly, I definitely haven’t been writing as much as I wanted. For the first week, my 15-minutes-a-day goal worked wonderfully, but when Saturday hit and I was nowhere near my 5 hours for the week, discouragement hit and I haven’t written since. I definitely need to find a better way to get myself writing, since I have a few projects that I would love to work on. It’s just so difficult to get in the writing groove after coming home from work.

But, enough with the negativity. My PEI goals have been coming along nicely; I’ve already seen three shows and discovered an awesome beach I didn’t know existed. I’ve also visited several old favourite places of mine, like Canoe Cove beach, Brackley beach, and Avonlea village. The weather here has been wonderful recently, and I’ve spent a lot of time swimming and lying on sand pretending to tan.

Finally, my reading projects have been going well. I’ve finished three Shakespeare plays and am halfway through a fourth, (Coriolanus, Richard II,  A Winter’s Tale, and Henry IV) and I’ve read a number of YA novels (Entwined, Ophelia, The Power of Six, Looking for Alaska, Hate List, Never Have I Ever, Two Truths and a Lie, and Insignia). What’s wonderful is that I’ve really enjoyed all the novels I read and have found a few new favourites (which I’ll be blogging about soon).

In short, I’m feeling a little down that my writing goals haven’t really helped me to actually write, but everything else is going to plan. And, most of all, I’m enjoying my summer, and that’s what really counts. 

Summer Goals

One of the wonderful things about being home for the summer is that I can finally actually get some reading and writing done. I read Entwined (by Heather Dixon) the other day, and it was the first YA novel I’d read in nearly a year. I also read Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (because Tom Hiddleston is performing in the title role this fall in London) Maybe it’s silly to read another classic, just like what I’ve been studying at university all year, but it’s still nice to read it for personal pleasure, rather than for a class.

With eleven weeks of summer ahead of me, I’ve decided to set some goals to make the most out of my PEI vacation. I’ll be working full time at the library and hanging out with friends, but that should still leave time for plenty of reading, writing, and enjoying what PEI has to offer.

To make sure I don’t spend the summer on Facebook, I’ve set some SMART goals under the general headings of Reading, Writing, and PEI. You possibly know that SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely, and I find the acronym helpful for setting goals that actually have a chance of getting completed.

Under Reading, my goals are very simple. I’d like to read ten Shakespeare plays (and watch the film versions) and at least fifteen YA novels. I’ll likely read more than this, but with a relatively low goal I know I won’t end up spending the last week of August frantically reading ten novels simply to meet an arbitrary limit.

Beyond excited for this play!

Writing goals were a little more difficult to define. I have two major projects I’m working on (a novel and a play) and while I’d love to finish them both, I doubt I’ll have the time in just two months. Writing is also dangerous to measure by output, especially since I’ve never written a play before and I have no idea what sort of speed I can expect. So, I’ve decided to measure my writing goals by time, spending five hours a week, with at least fifteen minutes a day. I’ll also write book reviews for every novel I read and blog twice a week, which doesn’t count under this time limit.

Finally, since this may be the last summer I spend at home, I’ve decided to take advantage of what PEI has to offer. There’s an amazing theatre community here, so I’ve made up my mind to see at least five shows, whether that be a professional musical like Anne of Green Gables, or a smaller comedy my friends are starring in. I also want to visit two places (beaches, hiking trails, tourist sites) that I’ve never visited before, because even though I’ve lived here for seventeen years there are so many places I’ve never seen.

Those are my goals for the summer. Hopefully they’re all SMART, and I’ll actually end up reaching them. It would be refreshing to look back at the end of the summer and see how much I’ve accomplished.

Now, over to you. What are your summer goals? How do you plan to reach them?

Explore: Back Home

The Confederation Bridge (the longest over-water
bridge in the world, which takes you to PEI)

I’m home. Explore has been finished for a week.

It’s kind of weird, being home. In some ways, though, it just feels really normal, and in still other ways it feels weird that it feels so normal.

The strangest bit was Monday morning, when, instead of heading off to class, I went into Charlottetown for lunch with my friend. We went to an adorable little café, and I could ask questions about my food without having to think for a minute about the wording. I could chat with the cashiers. I could listen to the other patrons talking and actually understand what they were saying.

One of my favourite PEI beaches

I had to stop myself saying merci when they handed me my food. That’s been the most difficult; all the little things. The automatic desole when I bump into something, or oui in response to a question. The little phrases: ca fait de sense or quelque chose comme ca. I trained myself to give these responses and it takes a little while to un-learn them.

It’s sad, though, how quickly I’m adjusting. The first few days felt really strange, but after almost a week it’s just normal to be speaking only English. I’m making efforts to keep up my French, like reading the Bible in French, or speaking to my mom and friends, but it’s not the same as several hours of complete immersion. 

Lupins!

I don’t want to lose it. Explore, as fun as it was, was by no means easy, and I don’t want to forget everything I worked so hard to learn. Technically, I only need the credit to satisfy the language requirement for my MA, but practically, knowing a second language will be so useful on my travels. I’m already considering spending next summer in France, taking more courses.

At Explore, they sold coffee mugs with the following quote (in French) on them:

He who does not know a foreign language knows nothing of his own.

-- Goette

What's this? A National Park you guess? Nope...
it's my backyard. :)

At the beginning of Explore, as an arrogant English Major, I disagreed sharply with that quote. How could I have been a reader all my life, a writer for ten years, and a literature student for three, and yet still know nothing of my own language? Over the five weeks, though, I learned how right Goette was. The more I learned about French, the more I delved into English, learning about the structure, the phrases, and the purpose of the language. I probably learned almost as much about English as I did about French.

All that to say, I think I will remain a student of languages. Explore may be finished, but I’ll treat it as a springboard to further studies, not a one-off deal. After all, I’ll need yet another language if I do a PhD. Next stop… Latin?

William and Kate visited PEI!

Right now the royal couple, Prince William and his new wife Katharine, are touring Canada. They stopped in Ottawa a couple days, and Sunday night they arrived on Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province. On Monday morning they visited Charlottetown and were joined by about 30,000 people (including myself.) Since I know the royal wedding was a huge deal, I thought some of you might like to see some pictures from my ‘royal stalking.’

First off, Charlottetown was busy. It’s the capital of the province but only about 30,000 people live there, so the turnout to watch William and Kate ride in the carriage from Province House down to the water was about as big as the population of the city. I went with a friend and we got there about two hours before the event actually started. There were already so many people there that you couldn’t get within five feet of the barriers.

I got lucky and we managed to find a place behind a news platform, which meant that I was looking through that rather than over peoples' heads. Since I’m short, trying to see over people really wasn’t working. As is, I didn’t actually see much, thanks to all the media in the way, but I managed to get some okay pics. 

At around 10:40 the royal couple left Province House and stood outside while the Premier and the Speaker for the house gave a couple short speeches. When they were done, William went up to the podium and talked for about a minute about how happy he was to be here, that sort of thing. Short, but sweet.

After the speeches they did a quick walk-around shaking hands. Kate went around the other side, covered by an umbrella (it was raining a little) so I didn’t get any good pics of her, but William came right around five feet away from me. Unluckily, those five feet were jam packed with people so I didn’t get anywhere near enough to shake his hand, but I got a couple nice closeup shots.

When they were both done, they waited under an umbrella for the carriage to be readied. It was the Governor General’s special carriage, brought all the way from Ottawa. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any good pics of them inside the carriage (thanks to someone shoving their cellphone up in the way just as my camera was taking a pic) but I certainly cheered as loud as everyone else as they drove down the street towards the harbour.

At this point the royals were off to a private function and I went to lunch, not with them, of course. Hence, I have no more pictures for you, but since they were followed by more than 1200 members of the media, you can find plenty of pics online. Here’s a news article that you can check out if you’d like some more information on William and Kate’s Canadian tour. I’ve just got to say that I’m so happy they chose to visit PEI and I was thrilled to be able to see the royal couple, even if it was just for a couple minutes.