Lauren's Adventures Abroad

A Whole Lot of Random

2011-01-29T08:38:00.002-05:00

I’ve been busy, and I saw pretty much everyone I assume reads this blog over the holidays, so I haven’t updated in a while. My apologies. This post will be full of some of the many random things I find amusing/odd.

One of the things I found out about fairly recently is the pervert sticks. These are long metal poles which have a u-shaped pitchfork like end to them. These are used to catch perverts should they find their way into the school. One of the other ALTs was describing this. He got to play the part of the pervert as the teachers all drilled on it. And yes, this is a real thing. I’m not making it up. Now that I know what they are, I’ve seen pervert sticks in all my schools. I haven’t seen a drill with them but now I really want to.

Another thing I found out about is snowball fights. I went outside during lunch recess to play with my students at elementary. They were having a snowball fight so I joined in, lobbing many a ball at the other side. It wasn’t until five rounds in that I found out that there were actual rules to this. Two kids on each side were designated as ‘kings’ and the other team had to hit both of them to win. When I finally realized that that’s why the fight was periodically stopped and sides were changed, I surprised the kids. They were laughing at me and so I explained that we don’t really do rules in snowball fights in Canada. Since then, I’ve had a couple of free-for-fall snowball fights.

Speaking of winter childhood pursuits, I taught some of my students at elementary how to make snow angels. From what I understood about what they were saying, they’d seen snow angels before but didn’t know how to make them. Also listening to what they knew about angels was pretty funny. “They fly, live in the sky, and fight demons,” was the final collaboration the five little girls were able to come up with.

Oh yeah, I had the Mid-Term Conference last week. It was boring as usual. On the plus side I spent part of the weekend in Gifu afterwards. We had an enkai (work drinking party) that night followed by karaoke. Thanks to the song Low, my legs were sore all the next day while walking around Gifu. Sadly, other than the castle, which is at the top of a mountain and so there was no way I was walking up it when my legs hurt already, there’s not much to see. But there’s a lot of good shopping. I got a ski jacket for about $20.

The reason I bought the ski jacket is because on Monday I’m going with my junior high kids to the local ski hill. And it is a hill. I can see the place from my apartment. But that’s probably a good thing since it’s been like seven years since the last time I went skiing. I have visions of myself running straight into a tree.

And I have more exciting news! Next month Beaky’s coming to visit! I’m super excited. She’s coming to elementary school. I’ve already told them and they’ve ordered her a school lunch. So Beaks, if you’re reading this, there’s no backing out now. Prepare to be mobbed!

So that’s about it for now. Not too much that’s new and exciting. Until next time, bye!

Tokyo, Exam and Winter's Approach

2010-11-30T04:13:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome back to Lauren’s blog. Last time we heard about my Toyama and Nagoya adventures. This week, we’ll be looking into Tokyo, my medical exam and Winter’s fast approach.

So this past weekend, a mess of us ALTs went up to Tokyo to celebrate the birthday of one of our own. We left right after work on Friday and were in Tokyo by ten that night. Not letting the late hour stop us, we went out to this themed restaurant called Arabian Rock.

The first thing you noticed as you climbed the stairs, the restaurant was on the third floor, was the music. It was the music from Aladdin. Then, we opened the door and found out that the staff were dressed up in “Arabian” outfits. And by that I mean they looked like they’d stepped off the set of some weird harem movie.

So we sat down and ordered. The first thing to appear were the golden eggs. These are given to everyone. They’re just hardboiled eggs that have had their shells painted gold so really not that exciting. Actually most of the meal was pretty normal. The food was good and we were all wound because we were in Tokyo.

Then dessert came. Or rather, the birthday boy’s dessert came. They suddenly turned off the lights and then played some crazy song and we’re all wondering what’s going on when a guy dressed like a genie shows up. But not just any genie. Oh no. This is blatantly the genie from Aladdin. He came in with a piece of cake. None of us expected it and were all dying of laughter by the end. We got some awesome pictures out of it. I’d show you but this site has changed and I haven’t figured out how to put pictures up yet.

After that we went back to our hostel. Which was a capsule hotel, something I’ve always wanted to stay in. It wasn’t the normal kind of capsules, I was slightly disappointed, but more like wooden boxes stacked on top of each other. They were surprisingly comfy and the place was cheap so I have no complaints.

The next day we went to Harajuku. My group, we’d split up into several, started off at the shrine. I can’t remember what the name of it was. There we saw tons of kids dressed up in kimonos. There’s a custom in Japan where kids go to shrines on their 3rd, 5th, and 7th birthdays. And so there were tons of these adorable children running around all dressed up.

We also ended up watching a wedding procession at the shrine. We, and the other tourists Japanese and foreign alike, began snapping pictures. It was awesome. While we were at the shrine, I bought a charm. Mine’s for good luck. I might buy some for other people if I manage to make it to a shrine before I come home.

After the shrine, we went out into the main part of Harajuku. The first thing we saw was a guy who said he’d sing your national anthem. Emma was the first to put him to the test and got him to sing the Australian national anthem. Which he did. We were impressed. Deciding to see how good he was, Colin got him to sing the Irish national anthem. Which is in Irish. And he did. After much applauding, we moved on.

Harajuku is a shopping district. It’s also where you can see all the weird fashion trends. Sadly the crowds were too thick for me to get pictures of any of the outfits I saw.

I did have fun shopping though. I bought some Christmas presents and some sweet tights for myself. Yes, I’ve started wearing dresses and skirts a lot here. And tights and leggings. I now have a collection of weird and wonderful tights and leggings.

Eventually we headed back to the hostel to get changed. We all brought fancy outfits and got dressed up. I wore a dress and the new pair of star tights I bought. Then we headed to the New York bar in the Park Hyatt. If you’ve seen the movie Lost in Translation, you know what I’m talking about. The place has an amazing view of Tokyo. It’s also super expensive. Which is why I only bought the one drink. Still, my Bellini was good.

After that, we moved on to dinner at a Shabu Shabu place. Shabu Shabu is where you have a big pot of boiling water and you dump vegetables in it and swish thin strips of meat around until they’re cooked. It’s very tasty. We also did a 90 minute nomihodai (an all you can drink time period). That part might have been a mistake for me.

We went back to the hostel and changed again. This time into clubbing clothes. Then we were off to Womb, one of the most popular clubs in Tokyo. The cover was super expensive (about 40$) but it was an awesome place. While I was there, I had to leave a bit earlier than the others as I had drank more than was good for me, we watched what was basically a circus act. A woman in a leotard wound herself up and around a thing of cloth and would pose. This was done over the stage some 15-20 feet in the air. It was sweet!

So we all made it back and passed out. The next morning we got up and separated into our two cars for the journey back to Takayama. My car stopped first at a 7 floor book store. Yes, I found my own personal heaven here. Or it would be if I could read Japanese. Sadly only the seventh floor had English books and the selection wasn’t super great. But I did buy 2 novels. And some more French textbooks for my class.

After that, we stopped by this international grocery store. Tomoko kept laughing at me as I got excited over the things I hadn’t seen in a long time. I now have a giant jar of pickles and one of olives as well as a 10 pound box of oats among other things. That place was awesome!

When we finished, we packed the car up, we all bought too much, and came home. And that was Tokyo.

Tomorrow, I have my medical exam. All the ALTs have to do it. I started preparing for it yesterday when I had to poo on a stick. Yes, you read that right. I had to get poo on this stick, there are picture instructions on how much should be on there, and then seal it up. I have to do this again tomorrow morning. I also have to pee in a tube. So tomorrow morning I go to the Kuguno branch office and get checked out. My supervisor came over to my school today to help me fill out the forms. Because they are entirely in Japanese.

We had some fun trying to figure out what to write for some parts. Like one of the questions was asking if I’ve ever had an operation around my stomach area. So I had to say yes. Then you have to specify what part of the stomach area. Yeah. The forms were fun.

The last thing I shall regale you with is the approach of winter. It’s started getting cold here. Cold enough that I finally dug out my kerosene heaters. And then realized they had no kerosene in them. Something I’ll be rectifying today.

Because Japan pretty much doesn’t build anything with insulation, there are several things you have to do here that you wouldn’t do at home. As one of the ALTs has already had to do, you have to put some of your toiletries into the fridge. To keep them from freezing. I wish I was making this up.

I should have realized this was coming given there have been mornings where the fridge was slightly warmer than my apartment. Yeah, it gets that cold. One of the things I want to get when I’m home is an outlet timer like for Christmas lights. Then I can set it a half hour before I get up in the morning and plug my heater into it so I don’t have to freeze when I get out of bed in the mornings.

So that’s about all for now. I just realized I’ll be home in like 3 weeks. Which made me realize I haven’t finished Christmas shopping. So I’ll be busy doing that in the next little while. Until next time, bye!

Nagoya and Toyama adventures

2010-11-24T05:12:00.000-05:00

Yeah I know. It’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been busy. But because I’ve been busy, I now have awesome stories to tell you!

First off, last weekend I was bored so I decided to go to Nagoya. I took the train down in the morning, after missing the train I wanted to get on because none of the bloody ATMs open until 9am, and I was there by noon.

After wandering around the train station for a while I managed to acquire an English map of the city. That was all I really needed. My basic plan for the day had been to somehow get myself to Nagoya castle. I bought myself an all day all subways and bus pass and went off.

I ended up walking most of the way. I couldn’t figure out which subway station I wanted. It worked out because I saw lots of cool stuff. Some park that was full of water fountains, city hall, the city archives, and a huge TV tower.
Eventually I did make it to the castle. When I got inside I noticed a crowd of people gathered around a roped off area. The area had a sign saying something was happening at 2pm. As that was ten minutes from when I got there, I decided to hang around and watch.

I’m not sure what you’d call a show like that. 5 people came out dressed in historical outfits. 3 of the people had huge spears. I got really excited. I though they were going to fight. Sadly, they didn’t. Instead they danced. Yep. You read that right. They danced. To some weird pop-y music. At one point I think they were talking about historical stuff. At least I recognized one of the names as being historical so I’m kind of assuming that. The Japanese was way too fast for me to catch it all.

The show didn’t last all that long so then I went wandering around. They had these displays of flowers everywhere. Then I went inside the castle. It’s 6 floors. They had stuff from the original castle as well as reconstructed stuff. At the top there were a bunch of windows so you could see all of Nagoya. It was pretty sweet.
So after my touristyness, I went shopping at the underground mall near the station. Nothing really that exciting to report there so I’ll skip that and move on to what happened on Tuesday.

Tuesday, AKA yesterday, a bunch of us ALTs went to Toyama to go see the new Harry Potter movie. It was a holiday so none of us had work. I was one of the drivers. My baby made it no problem. The theatre we went to was in the middle of this huge mall so we also did a bit of shopping. I ended up running into one of my English teachers there which was kind of weird for both of us.

The main reason we chose this theatre, and why we drove an hour and half, is because this theatre had the movie in English with Japanese subtitles. Not only did that mean we could watch it in English, it also meant the theatre wasn’t full of children because they can’t read all the kanji/ read the subtitles fast enough.
After the movie we went to a second-hand shop followed by Don Quixote which is this weird everything store. It’s where most ALTs get their onesies. I found some hilarious stuff for people as well as a delightfully warm hoodie for myself.

Well that’s pretty much it for now. On Friday a bunch of us are going to Tokyo for the weekend so I should have more to report after that.

Halloween and French

2010-11-04T04:35:00.000-04:00

And here’s another post. Sorry for the lack of updates. I’ve been busy.

As for what I was busy with, I’m about to tell you. All of us Takayama ALTs have been planning and then executing a Halloween English Shower for elementary students. And it was a lot of fun.

We had about 120 kids registered and only a handful didn’t show up. And that’s not counting the unregistered younger siblings and parents who came as well. All the kids came in costume. I have to say there were a lot of witches. I think witch hats must have been one of the easiest things to find. We did have some originals. One kid had a sweet Peter Pan costume, a girl had a full Belle costume, and this one kid had a full pumpkin outfit.

Not to be outdone, us ALTs broke out our onesies. We had 2 Hello Kitties, one dressed as a tiger and the other a rabbit, one reindeer, one Pikachu, one other Pokemon, one actual tiger, one bloody bear, one Rilakkuma, and one Chopper (me).

This was the very first Halloween English Shower. Which is probably why we ended up with so many little snags. Groups got confused, kids ended up lost, no one knew where the next group was supposed to go, etc. It all worked out in the end though.

Early on, I made friends with a little girl who was around 2 or 3. She high-fived me and I pretended to fall over. This was something of a mistake. Because for the rest of the day, she would periodically come and find me to high five me again. She was super adorable so I didn’t mind.

The last part of the event was the trick or treating simulation. One of the ALTs had gone home for her brother’s wedding so she’d bought all sorts of real Halloween candy. Each of us had our own table which we could decorate and the kids went from table to table saying trick or treat. I’d brought some extra candy and gave it out to the unregistered siblings. And yes, red dress got a piece. I made sure of it.

Afterwards, we were all going to head to a Halloween party. I’d driven in, so I had to take my car back to my apartment and then catch the train into Takayama. Except the train kept getting delayed. First a half-hour, then fifty-minutes, then seventy-minutes. After an hour I gave up and went home so sadly I have no drunken Halloween adventures to tell you about.

Now not only did we have the Halloween English Shower, but most of us ALTs also did Halloween lessons. I blatantly stole my ideas from two of the others. For the older kids, any kid from 4th grade up to 9th, we played a trick or treat game. The kids had to say trick or treat to me and then pick a slip of paper out of a hat. If it said treat, they got a Halloween sticker. If it said trick, they had to wear the ridiculous costume that the paper specified. I know I amused my coworkers during Halloween week when I spent the time I had between classes making fake mustaches and beards for the kids to wear.

In my junior high third year English conversation class, the game went over a little too well. One of the boys had just gotten the feather and fan mask set, something that always happened to the boys more than the girls through no plan of mine, and the whole class was laughing. One of the boys laughed so hard he fell out of his chair and hit his head. Which of course made everyone laugh even harder. He was fine though he admitted it did hurt when everyone had calmed down.

The other game I played with the younger kids was Halloween Basket. Which is just Fruits Basket with Halloween words substituted for fruit words. Kids bring their chairs and put them in a circle. I randomly distributed cards with pictures of the Halloween creatures I’d taught them. Then I’d call out one. All those kids have to change seats. One kid is always left out and then it’s their turn to call out a creature. And the kids love the game. Of course there’s always a couple of kids who fake falls and stuff so they can be in the middle but all in all, it’s a good game.

So right after Halloween, I had my special, shoot-me-in-the-face, watched lesson. This is where a whole mess of English teachers from Takayama came to watch me teach English in elementary school. Well me and the homeroom teacher. It went pretty well. I got the teachers involved in the game instead of just having them watch and loom over kids with their clipboards. I got some positive feedback on the game so at least I know I’m doing something halfway decent.

So the night after my watched lesson I got a phone call from my supervisor. I thought he was calling to talk to me about my lesson. Nope. He asks me if I speak French. I say I do, more or less, and he tells me they have a French language class at the Takayama cultural centre on Thursday nights. And that their French teacher just moved. If they couldn’t find a replacement, they’d have to cancel the course.

And that’s how I ended up having a meeting with the lady who runs that the next day at school. Since it’s only beginner French, and I don’t want them to have to cancel it, I’m the new French teacher. This is either going to be really great or it’s going to end horribly. We’ll have to see. I start next week.

So that’s about all for now. There are plans for trips to Toyama and Tokyo in the next month so stay tuned for details of those adventures. Until later, bye!

Festivals, Sake, and Thanksgiving

2010-10-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

Hello, hello! Yes it’s been a while since my last post. In my defense, I’ve been busy. The teachers at my schools actually get me to help them do stuff like marking so I’m rarely bored at work anymore.

But work is boring so let me tell you what I’ve been up to the last couple of weekends. The second weekend in October was the Takayama festival so a large group of us ALTs, several of who came in from cities throughout our prefecture, and three parents of ALTs went off to see the festival. Sadly, the floats weren’t running because it was pouring rain. But the matsuri portion, the little food and game tents, was still running so we checked that out. I got one of my favourite festival foods, crepes. They are super delicious.

So after wandering around for a bit we went to the Mexican restaurant where we’d reserved the back room. And yes, I know how odd going to a Mexican restaurant in Japan sounds. There we ordered plenty of delicious food and drinks. The drinks were, as always, our downfall. Carl had brought his breathalyzer with him and so we started a scorecard on who blew what throughout the night. Emma’s dad Phil ended up winning, much to the amusement of all.

Now due in part to the alcohol, and in part to the fact that we are never able to be quiet, one of the ALTs had taken it on herself to introduce herself to the rest of the restaurant because of how loud we were. Just so we didn’t get kicked out. Later on, two of the Japanese people she’d introduced herself to came and joined us. Keiko and Takuji especially like the breathalyzer and got right into use playing Bang Bang Clap. That’s right, we kidnapped and corrupted two unsuspecting Japanese people. Keiko even got into the sombrero wearing with me. We found said sombreros in the corner and being the mature people we are, had to wear them.

I ended the night earlier than the others, making sure Emma’s parents got back all right, and it was a good thing I did. I was drunk enough that I couldn’t tell the difference between a sen (1000) yen and a go sen (5000) yen. That would have been a recipe for disaster.

That was Saturday. On the Monday, a bunch of us locals headed down to Gero for Canadian Thanksgiving at Danielle’s. Nothing we had was really traditional Thanksgiving food. Danielle tried by cooking some Japanese pumpkin and baking the seeds. The rest ranged from curry chicken to marmite sandwiches to butter shrimp to mushroom salad. It was a lot of fun even if it did leave all of us exhausted for Tuesday morning and work.

Now this past weekend we went to Shirakawa which is a world heritage site. Though the reason we had less to do with the history and more to do with the fact there was a sake festival going on. We decided on Friday night to go and Saturday morning we met up.

I did run into a little snag. Apparently, there are no trains that go from my village into Takayama from 10am to 3pm on Saturdays. We were meeting at 12:30pm. This left me with a little bit of a dilemma. I bit the bullet and made the 10am train. I spent the next two hours shopping. I spent more than I probably should have but I ended up with all sorts of awesome stuff. Including my very own kimono. I can’t wait for an excuse to wear it!

I also picked up some baby clothes since I’m going to be a Belarusian aunt come November. Dziana’s having a little girl! I’m super excited!

Anyway back to the story of Saturday. We all met up in the Sega World parking lot and got into the two cars we were taking. Shirakawa is about forty minutes away from Takayama and most of that way is tunnels through mountains so there wasn’t all that much to see on the drive there.

The village itself is really cool. Most of the houses still have thatched roofs and people still live there. There were a lot of people there, mostly Japanese tourists with the odd group of foreigners thrown in for variety. After a bit of wandering and getting lost, we found the sake festival at the shrine we’d driven past on the way in. Hey, no one said we were good at finding things.

There were some food stands set up so I bought some grilled stick meat. Sadly they had no crepes as both me and Emma wanted some. We bought our little red sake cups, 400 yen, and got our first round of sake. This was the first time I had ever had sake. And it was lumpy. No, I am not making that up. There were actual chunks still in it. It was not tasty at all.

Then we sat down and waited for the real sake pouring to begin. What happens is everyone sits on these long tatami mats as people from the shrine come up and down with kettles and pour the sake into your cups. It’s an all you can drink deal after you buy the cup or it is until they run out of sake. Three cups was my limit. The others assured me this wasn’t good sake and I should try some of that before deciding I don’t like the stuff. One of the others said that this sake was what they’d been brewing in the back room and so it really wasn’t a good example of sake.

Now because this is a festival that is pretty much giving sake away for free, pretty much three quarters of the people there were old Japanese men. We ended up meeting two. One was a guy I imaginatively named Glasses due to his glasses. He came up to us before the sake pouring began, already drunk, and began talking to us. Then he insisted on pouring beer into all of our cups. After talking for about fifteen minutes to us he wandered off. But not for long.

Once the sake began flowing we saw Glasses again sitting across from us. And with him was his friend Sweater Vest. At one point Glasses was squeezing my toes. Eventually we understood that he was concerned because I was wearing flipflops and the tatami mats were laid over gravel. After assuring him repeatedly that I was fine, he let the subject drop.

Then it was Sweater Vest’s turn. For some unknown reason, he decided that me and Jason, one of the other ALTs, needed to get married. He spent a good ten to twenty minutes going on about it. It was actually pretty funny.

Eventually the sake ran dry and we slowly wandered back to the cars but not before buying more alcohol and snacks at the combini (convenience store). Though we had a couple of mishaps, Danielle left her sweater on a bench and Jason dropped his camera down a hill, we eventually made it back to Takayama. Since the night was young, we decided to take Purikura. These are little photo booths where you get your picture taken and when they’re printed, they’re stickers. We are forever cramming as many people as we can into those booths.

After the Purikura, we walked, though not straight, to the bowling alley. Sadly I had to leave early as the last train to Miya leaves at 9:30pm on Saturdays. I would normally have stayed longer and either taken a taxi or crashed at someone’s house but I had already drank way more than was good for me and the plan was to continue drinking after bowling.

So I got on the train. A nice girl showed me how to get off after I tried to exit the wrong doors, and I staggered back to my apartment and enjoyed my glorious bed.

And that’s about all that’s new and exciting in my life. Next month we’re planning trips to Toyama and Tokyo. At the end of this month is the Halloween event and this weekend we’re planning on heading to Gero again so I should have lots to report in my next post. Well, bye for now!

School Lunches and Library Reading

2010-10-04T04:09:00.002-04:00

Here we are, another post. I’m writing this now as I only taught two of the six periods today. Which is actually a nice change from teaching five of the six and being given a job to do during my free period. Mind you those two days went by super fast so it wasn’t all bad.

Do to popular demand, and by that I mean mom suggested it, here’s some info about school lunches. To start with, everyone eats these lunches. And I mean everyone. From elementary school until the end of junior high you have to eat them. And if you’re a teacher at an elementary or junior high school you have to eat them too. No opting out.

Now what we eat changes every day. Most days there’s rice and some kind of soup. Most of the soup is fine but one day I had some kind of dark soup with seaweed in it. Now I’ve eaten seaweed before. It’s not bad. But when it’s been boiled into an almost goo that you can’t really chew but you can’t swallow straight off, I can’t do it. I tried about three times but after the third time my gag reflex got triggered I gave up. Which meant I have to sneak what was rest back into the empty pot so that I didn’t get in trouble.

Because that’s another element of school lunches. You’re supposed to eat all of it. I had finished one day at Miya JHS when the teacher held up a plate and asked who’d left bits of salad all over the plate. It was me. She laughed and I got by again because I’m a foreigner but if it’d been a student they’d have gotten in trouble.

So I’m sure you’re now wondering if you have to eat everything how do you deal with food you honestly can’t eat. I’ve had this happen when they served shishamo. Shishamo, for those of you lucky enough to have never come across it, is a pregnant fish, compelte with bones and eyes, wrapped in some kind of batter and fried. I can’t eat it. Not after the first time when I thought it was a shrimp and bit the head right off. Never again!

Anyway, when you want to get rid of something you don’t like, all you have to do is find the kid in the room who likes it and give it to them. The other ALTs told me to do this. Then I saw one of the teachers, who also doesn’t like shishamo, foisting there’s off on the kids so I didn’t feel so bad. It’s win-win. I don’t have to eat anything I don’t like and the kids get more of what they do like.

Outside of school, this past Saturday I joined Krys and Tom at the Takayama public library for the monthly English reading hour there. Parents bring their kids to listen to English storybooks. This time was Halloween themed. The kids range in age from baby, the shiniest headed baby we’d ever seen, to one of Tom’s first graders. Most of these kids are only there because their parents want them exposed to English/have them improve their English.

Mind you, most of them seem to have a lot of fun. Especially when we get Head Shoulders Knees and Toes going. One kid just sat and watched and at the end began clapping. There was this one little girl who just bounced the entire time. Her and her older sister must have said goodbye to use twenty times. They kept waving and shouting goodbye then coming back and doing it again. They were really cute!

The other great thing about the library is that they’ll order in pretty much any English book an ALT requests. That’s because they’re trying to improve their English section but they don’t know what people like. So I don’t have to buy books. Not that that’s going to stop me. I still prefer owning books to borrowing them.

So that’s pretty much it. Nothing too exciting’s been happening. This weekend’s one of the huge Takayama festivals so I’ll be going to that with the other ALTs. Anyway, bye for now!

Birthdays, Fall and Christmas

2010-09-26T07:07:00.000-04:00

Here you go mother, another blog post.

So for those of you who don’t know, AKA the two of you who aren’t related to me who read this, I’m officially coming home for Christmas. I bought my ticket and everything. My Visa’s still smoking a little from having that much put on it, but I’m still really excited. I’ll be home from the 23rd until the 5th of January. Parties and fun will abound.

And now back to Japan. It’s finally Fall. And a Fall I recognize. It went from over thirty degrees to ten in a matter of days. Honestly. I had to get one of the many extra blankets out of the cupboard so I don’t freeze at night. I am glad that I no longer feel like I’m going to die all the time which is what kept happening when it was that bloody hot. I feel a bit more at home now though I do fervently wish that my apartment was insulated. Or had heating beyond my two little kerosene heaters. And I’m not turning those suckers on until I absolutely have to. They scare me a little. I am planning on trying out my kotatsu tonight, provided it stays cool today and it’s not just a morning cold thing. So my next blog may feature my love of my kotatsu. We shall see.

As many of you know, I just had my birthday so I’m no longer the youngest ALT here. Well I still am but Emma’s 22 as well so it’s not as obvious anymore. Since Josh’s, another ALT, birthday is the 22nd, we combined mine and his birthday parties into one massive good time. And because everyone has just finished or are about to finish their Sports Festivals (Undokai) we decided to make it Night Sports Festival themed.

Night Sports Festivals occur at the enkais the teachers have after a school’s Sports Festivals. They involve a lot of ridiculous events that get progressively more hilarious as the teachers drink more. I only had one instance of a Night Sports Festival and it involved a hula hoop. And a lot of drunken catcalling from both teams. My team blatantly won. 3 times. But the other team kept saying it was just practice and didn’t count until they finally won one. Jerks.

So in this tradition, we, the ALTs, had the Poondokai. With events such as Dragon Boating, four team members use straws to drink alcohol out of a long container with the fastest team winning, and Pull the Cushions Out From Under the Person Jumping From the Seiza Position. That one involved a tiebreaker.

Danielle, one of my fellow Canucks, also taught the other non-Canadians how to shotgun a beer. I hadn’t realized until then that it was a Canadian thing.

It was a lot of fun. I couldn’t drink anything as I had to drive back to Miya, stupid trains stop running to Miya at like 9pm, but it was still fun to get involved with. We rented out the big room at the Karaoke place in Takayama so of course, at the end of the night we were all singing karaoke. It got hilarious.

All of us got super into both the Disney and the Spice Girls songs.

I apologize for not blogging earlier. I just discovered the joys of Japanese Amazon. It’s pretty much the same as Canadian or American Amazon but with one wonderful difference. You can pay for your orders at the Convenience Store. In cash. This makes me unbelievably happy. As does the fact that they sell English books on their site. I only bought 3 so far and one of them is sort of work related. The other two are the sequels to the book I bought 2 days before leaving. I spent all of yesterday reading the first one and I’ll spend the next two days, when not at work, finishing the other one. Don’t judge me.

Anyway that’s it for now. Bye!

September Drinking and Teaching Fun

2010-09-15T06:29:00.000-04:00

So here I am at Kuguno Elementary with nothing to do. Lucky you because that means I’m writing a blog post. Not too much has been going on. I’ve now been to all my school’s Sports Festivals. I had 3 in one day. It was a little nuts.

The September birthdays have already started. We had two last weekend. Next weekend we have none though it is a long weekend, and the following week we have three. That is going to be a week of permanent inebriation I’m sure.

I did just find out, and I mean in the last ten minutes, that on November 1st all the English teachers in Takayama are coming to Kuguno Elementary School. To watch me teach a lesson. I might cry. Especially after the three failed attempts to teach the second graders the game I wanted to play this morning. We had to switch to Fruits Basket. And even then the kids couldn’t remember what colour they were until I taped colour cards to their shirts. I hope they’re going to watch me teach the grade 5’s or 6’s. All of my lessons so far, knock on wood, with them have gone smoothly. I live in fear of it being the grade 1’s or 2’s. As one ALT put it at Orientation, those grades are pretty much retarded.

I have been adopted by several of the grade 1’s. They seem intent on leading me around the school and playground. Which is a nice change from the normal lunch recess activity of “Chase Lauren up and down the halls and then attack her”. That one I don’t mind so much. It’s the packs of little girls that corner you and then either grope you, yes that has happened to me, or keep doing something you tell them not to, trying to lift up my shirt in my case.

Now that’s not to say the kids are bad or anything. Far from it. I love them. They’re adorable most of the time. I just occasionally want to murder them. I think that’s just kids in general though. And they seem to like me. If they way they lie in wait for me or try and coax me out of the staff room is any indication. The staff room is the only place they won’t follow me so it’s where I hide when I’m tired. If I manage to escape that is.

Oh I had my first fail of a class. It was my English conversation class and in hindsight I should have realized it was a bad idea. See I decided, because it’s an elective class and I have a blank slate for it, to let the students pick what they want to learn. So that’s what we did the first class. The problem was it was probably boring for them, a whole lot of English as I tried to explain what everything was, and I talk too fast when I get excited.

But now that that’s done, I know what I’m doing with them until November. Which is nice. And I don’t care that my Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog unit only got 1 vote. We’re doing it anyways because I want to do it. And I think they’ll like it.

So that’s about all that’s been going on with me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear small children attempting English outside.

First Week of September

2010-09-06T05:14:00.000-04:00

Okay so because mother is nagging me, I love you mom, here’s another post. If this one doesn’t make sense it’s due to the fact that I’m severely hung-over after my three day drink-a-thon. But I’m getting to that.

So Friday started in the most reassuring of manners. I spent a half-hour driving around Kuguno looking for my Junior High. Finally, after the second time I stumbled across it, I went up to my Elementary school and asked for directions. My principal, who’s sort of adopted me as I’m almost the same age as his daughter, drove in front and showed me where the school was. The sad part is I’d made it there by myself the week before.

So I was late for the first time. My English teacher, Omizou-sensei, found my story of getting lost hilarious and so I’m guessing no one found me being a few minutes late to be a huge deal. I introduced myself to some more classes. Questions I’m asked a lot include, What did you have for breakfast?, Do you like natto?, How old are you?, and of course Do you have a boyfriend?

Anyway I ended up leaving work early on Friday because I had to go to the Board of Education to meet the Superintendent. Luckily, one of my boxes of winter clothes was there so I was able to pick it up at the same time. I am a little concerned that it was only one box given that I sent two and I sent them at the same time, but there’s nothing much I can do but wait and see at this point.

Quick side note: We’ve had an increase of bear sighting in the Takayama area. One fisherman was attacked, he’s fine, but now everyone’s on hyper alert for them. Sometimes the teachers actually go check the paths/streets that the kids use to get home, if they’re near the forest, for bears. I just love the image of teachers doing a bear check before letting the kids go. And for those of you who are worried, there’s not been a single bear sighting in my village.

And back to Friday. After going to the Board of Education, I went home, got changed and then met up with Kuguno Elementary’s principal downstairs. We live in the same building though I live on the third floor and he lives on the first. Together we took a taxi to my first enkai.

An enkai is a work drinking party. They often are all-you-can-eat and all-you-can-drink so they are deadly. This one I only had 2 beers and I was very much inebriated. I found out I speak better Japanese drunk than I do sober. This particular enkai involved drunken language lessons from me. I taught all my teachers “the only Spanish you need to know.” Dos cervesas por favor. Or two beers please. I translated it for them and they loved it.

So I got home around 11pm went to bed, and then had to go to Kuguno Junior High on Saturday morning for the Sports Festival. It was actually a lot of fun. For me at least. I just sat there, took pictures, and tried to get the kid with the broken leg beside me to talk.

Some of the events were intense. They had some of the usual, relay races, tug-of-wars, and three-legged races but some of the other events…Like the most violent one was probably the rope-grabbing race. They leave a bunch of short lengths of rope in the middle of the field and the girls on each team line up on opposite sides. When the pistol goes, they run grab the ropes and drop them on their side. Doesn’t sound so bad does it? But once you’ve dropped one you can go back and help your friends. Which means you can have like twenty girls all trying to get the same piece of rope and they’re hardcore fighting each other for it. It’s a lot of fun to watch.

Another of the more interesting ones was the back running race. They have one kid on each team, the lightest, and they have him climb onto their backs, they’re have bent over, and he runs across the field this way and back again. It looks like it’s fun to be the kid doing the running.

One of the other ones I liked was the team jump rope. They get like ten to twenty kids in a line and they all have to jump this huge rope. The aim is to have the highest number of consecutive jumps. The winning number was thirty-four. I have no idea how they do this.

Halfway through the day the kids do their cheers. This isn’t like “Go lions go” or anything like this. First off, the kids have painted their own mascots, big boards with something on it in their team’s colours. White team had a white tiger and the Red team had a picture of Napoleon on a horse for some reason. I still have no idea why. The cheering itself involves chanting, synchronized movements, and in the case of both teams, coloured flip boards. They flipped these over and back to reveal the different colours and created patterns with them. It was frigging cool.
The Red team added in a number involving fans. They spelled the word WIN in English which was sweet. The White team however, took it to another level. Not only did they have their flip boards but half-way through they switch the colours from green and white to green and yellow somehow. Then, in the second half, they opened and closed their black uniform coats to reveal their white t-shirts and formed patterns with them. While chanting. And in the end they made a massive (A V in Japan often stands for Victory) out of both their shirts and their bodies. It was super awesome. I was thoroughly impressed.

So after a day of sun and sweat, I went home to get clean, change and I was right back out for another enkai. This time, I met up with my Science teacher from Kuguno Junior High, he too lives in Miya, and we took the train into Takayama. We ended up at Kanki, which is a favourite restaurant with us ALTs as they do a very good Caesar salad.

There was no Caesar salad in evidence at the enkai. There were however, not one, but two fish heads. One raw, one cooked. The teachers had a lot of fun trying to make me eat the cooked one’s eye. No one else ate it so I assume they were just messing with me. This was like an extension of lunch time where I made the mistake of sitting in the gym where the students and their families were and not in the staff room. Several people seemed to decide my sandwich was not a good enough lunch and began the game of ‘Feed the Foreigner’. I tried to refuse but they wouldn’t let me. And then I couldn’t not eat it. I thought I was going to die. So much food!
So Saturday’s enkai also involved me drunkenly teaching languages to people. This time it was mostly English with a tiny bit of German and Danish thrown in. One of my teachers kept thinking I was Dutch for some reason. I had to explain, using my little chart that I’d drawn in my notebook, to explain what background I come from. They all found this fascinating. Which kind of makes sense since all of them are Japanese and all they’re ancestors are Japanese so the idea of having a mixed background is a novelty.

Again, I managed to keep my drinking within acceptable drunken levels and got home at around 10pm. I went to bed, got up early, made cheesecake dip and then took the train into Takayama and walked to the Valor where I was meeting the other ALTs. We did a bit of last minute grocery shopping and then piled into 4 cars to head to the river in Kamioka.

It was Aiko’s, a Japanese friend of us ALTs, birthday. So we went to the river, crossed it, and set up a barbecue. We spent the day there, swimming, jumping off the cliffs, and sliding down the mini-waterfalls. Well that is until we discovered that there were leeches around the waterfalls. Then we stayed off those rocks. Though they were only tiny little leeches no bigger than tiny bits of thread. They came right off.

We ended the day with several bouts of river sumo wrestling or Mizumo as we called it (Mizu being water and Mizumo being a combination of the words Mizu and Sumo). Aiko was the girl’s champion and Carl was the boy’s. Finally, with the sun going down, the river is between two mountains so it gets cold quickly, we made our way home, tired but content.

So that’s what I was up to this weekend. Stay tuned because there are like 5 ALT birthdays this month so we’re going to spend most of this month in a drunken haze. Until the next time I’m bored at work, Bye!

Ceremonies, Festivals, and I'm a Real Teacher

2010-09-02T04:58:00.000-04:00

I have to admit, I wondered about the wisdom of bringing it along, especially when I was overweight with my luggage. But I have to say, the Canadian umbrella hat was a good idea. Yes I have worn it. I wore it during all my opening ceremonies. It made the kids laugh.

Now initially I wasn’t going to wear it. I was going to wear the red and white maple lead top hat. But as we were walking to the gym, I was wearing the top hat at the time, the other teachers said the umbrella hat was better. So I wore that instead.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I was quite the impressive figure.

The Opening Ceremonies themselves are pretty boring. The principal gives a speech. Then the new teachers are introduced. Then the kids sing the school song. They’re really good at it! After that the students give speeches.

It wouldn’t have been so bad but as a teacher you’re required to stand and I hate standing. Mostly because I’m lazy. Oh well. It was neat to see all my students for the first time. The elementary school was the best. A bunch of kids noticed my hat first and then pointed it out to their friends and eventually I had half the students staring at me.

And during my introduction to the elementary kids I made the mistake of asking how old they thought I was. I forgot little kids believe anyone who doesn’t look like a student must therefore be their parents’ age. The guesses ranged from 27-45. They, like everyone else who finds out how old I am, went “Eeeeeh! Young!” Every time someone says this I feel that they’re refraining from patting me on the head.

Lately the students have been preparing for their Sports Festivals. My first day at Miya Elementary and I found out there were no classes. So instead, I spent the day watching the kids practice. The grade ones and twos do this adorable little cheer/dance with pompoms. I nearly had a cuteness overload watching them do it. Especially since some of them take this super seriously. The grade threes and fours do my favourite cheer. It’s like have gymnastics. They do various stackings of children on top of other children, kids kneeling in pyramids and lifting each other right off the ground. They do this in a specific order and I have no idea how they remember it all. I couldn’t. The last group is the grade fives and sixes. They have a whole dance routine, which has some gymnastics of its own, to do to a song. I’m sure there are militaries who can’t pull of drills like these kids can.

Speaking of elementary schools, I had my first day of elementary teaching at Kuguno. The kids there were super enthusiastic. They, like the junior high kids, love the hot potato game I make them play. And the fact they have to wear one of three ridiculous hats when they ask me a question/introduce themselves (which depends on what grade they’re in).

Another crowd pleaser is my altered version of Stella Ella Ola. The kids got super into it. It only takes about 5 minutes for even the youngest kids to get how to play it and it’s easily prepared as all it requires is them to sit in a circle.

And this Tuesday I get a day off because of Kuguno JHS’s Sports Festival. I’m using that day to finally send money home. The bloody bank closes at 4pm and that’s when I get off work. It has been unbelievably frustrating.

On a happier note, for those of you who’re related to me AKA everyone who reads this, from everything everyone’s said so far on the matter I’ll likely be home for Christmas. They normally only say no when you’re missing a lot of Elementary school because you’re the only real English teacher there but only one of the days I want to take off is an Elementary day. And it’s Kuguno Elementary. The principal there loves me. I still have to talk to all of my principals and teachers and to my supervisor but given that Christmas time is review time for exams, there’s not much for me to do anyway and I should be allowed to come back. Fingers crossed.

So that’s about all for now. I’ll write another post next time I have time to kill at work. Bye!

Garbage, Gas, and the Other 100 Things I’ve Had to Learn While Being Here

2010-08-24T04:45:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the lack of updates. Settling in here has taken more time than I thought. That and I always seem to be doing something.

As I write this I’m sitting in the staff room of Miya Junior High School while the rest of the teachers are in a meeting. The meeting is held entirely in Japanese so the Vice Principal told me to just stay here. You might think that I should be doing some kind of work rather than writing a blog entry. And I agree with you.

However, I have nothing to do. No work. No responsibility. I got my first pay check and I honestly got paid for sitting around, reading novels off my computer, and making the odd lesson plan.

No I don’t spend all day reading but it keeps me occupied. I can only make so many lesson plans in a day. Add in the fact that I still haven’t been in a classroom, exploring the school doesn’t count, and you can see why I’m hesitant to make too many lesson plans. For all I know I’m going to have to scrap the lot of them. Or they’re going to blow up in my face.

Thankfully school starts at the end of the week so I’ll finally have something to do. So now that you know what my work life is like, I’ll start describing my home life.

First off, I love my apartment! Honestly it’s perfect. Well almost perfect. It having air conditioning would have made it perfect. As it is I have a fan. As is one single electric fan. The weather has been in the high thirties, almost forties for a large portion of my time here so far. And that’s the temperature when you don’t count the humidity. And it is humid! I have never sweat so much in my life. Luckily, I have a bathtub in my apartment. Cold baths are awesome!

Since I’ve been here, I’ve come to appreciate how awesome Jen, my predecessor, is. She left me instructions on how to do pretty much everything. Which is good. Because I’d have never figured out the garbage otherwise.

Yes, garbage is in no way the same as it is in Canada. Oh no. You have to sort it. And this isn’t just recycling sorting. The categories are Burnable, Non-Burnable, Plastic, PET (AKA plastic drink bottles), Metal, Glass, Paper, and Milk Cartons. Each day a different thing is picked up. So you have this massive complicated calendar of pick-ups you have to remember.

Sorting this stuff is stressful enough. What makes it worse is that if you don’t sort it right they bring it back. That’s right. Like a child, if you screw it up they bring it back and make you fix it. Now being more or less told by the garbage people you’re an idiot is bad enough, but what’s the worst is that sometimes, especially if you have old, retired neighbours, they will go through your garbage to see if you’ve sorted it right. Oh my yes. Random old people will can be judging you based on your garbage sorting skills. And they can, and often will, bring your garbage back to you if you haven’t done it properly. Now I’m lucky as this hasn’t happened to me. Yet.

Another unexpected difference I found was when I went and got gas for my car for the first time. With Japanese gas pumps you have to pay before you pump. No matter how you intend to pay. And you have to choose between a set number of litres going into your car, a set amount of money, or pumping the car until it’s full. Thankfully, one of the super nice gas attendants walked me through the process. That and the pump has an English button.

One thing that I’ve finally gotten at least slightly comfortable with is driving. Given that the first time I got in the car, I was driving it off the lot, I nearly got hit by a truck, I didn’t have the most confidence for a while (I looked the wrong way when trying to get into the left hand lane. I was at least trying to get into the lane on the correct side of the road). I know I’ve gotten more comfortable because I’ve started yelling at other drivers again. From my car of course. With the windows rolled up. In English. So I have no worries about getting into trouble. Unless of course the cops pull me over.

Yeah that’s another thing that was stressed to us over and over again in our orientations. Do Not Break the Law! Not just because we’re supposed to be representing our countries and all that jazz but because you will get caught. There is very little crime in Japan and because of that, the police are really really bored. Seriously. They sometimes pull foreigners over so that they have something to do. God help you if you don’t have your Gaijin card. The Gaijin card, which is what we ALTs call the Alien Registration card, has your address and place of employment on it and is pretty much your life here. I still haven’t gotten mine in the mail yet. None of us new JETs have. I lie in fear of getting pulled over.

Mind you, Japan being so safe and all has its advantages. People will totally leave their cars running while they go into the combini (convenience store). And no one takes them! When I left my wallet at the 100 yen store, basically the Japanese equivalence to a dollar store in Canada, it was turned almost immediately in to the cashiers. When I finally came back for it, yes I am an idiot, all my money was there and the cashiers were very nice about it. Though I’m pretty sure they were laughing at the stupid foreigner.

Here’s another fun thing that frustrates us JETs to no end. The ATMs here have hours. Yes, after a certain time they are closed. My banks ATM in Miya closes at like 3pm on Saturdays and 6pm on weekdays. The ones in Takayama stay open until 9pm. Now this might suck more if things actually stayed open late but everything shuts down about 6pm every night in Takayama. Miya tends to close a bit earlier than that. The only things that stay open later are bars, karaoke places, combinis, and arcades. Oh and the bowling alley too.

Well that’s about all for now. I’ll do another post once I’ve actually started teaching. Bye!

In Japan!

2010-08-13T04:51:00.000-04:00

So here it is, my first post from Japan. I arrived at Narita Airport in the middle of the afternoon. Walking into the place felt like walking into a sauna, the humidity and heat were intense. Then, we JETs were subjected to the never ending line. Seriously. It took us nearly two hours to get through Immigration. Not Customs, Immigration.

From there we picked up our baggage and went through customs which as actually relatively painless. Then, the helpful people in the JET t-shirts pointed us in the right direction which is good, because I’d never have found my way otherwise. I specialize in getting lost.

Eventually we were sent out to the buses that would take us to our hotel in Tokyo. Stepping outside in Japan for the first time I was struck by something. The wave of intense heat and humidity that is the bane of Japanese summers. Seriously, I though the airport was bad but this was like walking into a broiling hot, soaking wet towel. Thank god the bus had air conditioning.

The ride to the hotel didn’t take too long but I think that was mostly due to the fact every so often one of us would look at the other and say “Guess what? We’re in Japan!” This would then set the rest of us off. It was fun seeing all the different variations of the “I’m in Japan! Woohoo!” dance.

Our first night in Tokyo was ours to do what we liked with it. I wandered around and got lost for about a half hour (I wasn’t kidding about my superhuman ability to get lost). However, I did manage to feed myself along the way.

The next two days were filled with orientations and workshops. For the most part, these were unbelievably boring. People were actually sleeping through them. After the first few that were useless, I bailed. I mean come on, who’s going to sit through boring lectures about how you need to be polite and not hurl sharp objects at children’s head when you’re in Tokyo?

The answer is most people. Only a few of us slipped off to go exploring. Now when I say skipped I don’t mean I didn’t go to anything. I just didn’t go to the optional workshops where you had to choose them from a list, mainly due to the fact that none of them interested me.

So I went off into the city one afternoon so that I could find an Internet Café so that I could contact my family. I’m still not sure where I wandered off to. I know I ended up in both an above and under ground mall and I found a station somewhere along the way but I really don’t know where I was in Tokyo. It took me an hour to get back to the hotel. I’m not sure how I got back because I definitely came from a different direction, but I suppose it’s not really important.

When I got back to the hotel I found out we could get internet in our rooms. No, of course this didn’t make me feel like an idiot.

Two days later and I was on the train to Gifu, the capital of Gifu prefecture. It was fun watching Japan whiz by. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures as I have a tendency to do.

Once we arrived in Gifu it was another two days of orientation, this time they were a lot more fun, and then I was off to my new home in Ichinomiya, a village just outside of Takayama city,

I’ll describe my first few days in my new home in my next post. Until then, bye!

A little more on Takayama

2010-06-03T18:58:00.000-04:00

So not too much to write about. I did just get my information package from Takayama. I really lucked out in my placement. My apartment is paid for by the schools o I only have to pay utilities. The rest was just the do and dont's sort of stuff along with some minor specifics like holidays and sick leave.
I sent an e-mail to my supervisor as the letter in my package said to. I was rather formal in the e-mail, after the 15 minutes it took me to write the 3-4 sentence long e-mail, as I was unsure of what kind of person my supervisor was and really I'd rather err on the side of caution and be overly polite. I needn't have worried. My supervisor, a man by the name of Hidekazu Itou, sounds like an awesome guy. Not only did his reply include little smiley eyes like ^^ this more than once, but he told me to call him Tom. Because all the other ALTs call him that though he doesn't know why. I laughed.
Anyway that's all for now. More to come once I get talking to my predecessor.

Placement!

2010-05-13T22:37:00.000-04:00

I just found out my placement! I'm going to Takayama city in Gifu prefecture. It looks awesome! I'll be in the middle of mountains and I'm only a few hours away from Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Osaka.
Takayama is known for its festivals and for its preserved buildings. The city's about 95,000 people and I'll be there just in time for a bunch of their festivals. I'm super excited! And because I've been hired by the city, I'll be teaching either Junior High or Elementary students. People start getting details around May 27th so I should know precisely what grades I'm teaching around then.
And so I'll leave you now as I continue my obsessive research into my new city which will likely continue for weeks. So until I get further details, bye!

Waiting Again

2010-05-03T00:42:00.000-04:00

Honestly, the JET program is a lesson in patience. One I am sadly failing. I know that I likely won't find out my placement until the end of the month and possibly not until June but I can't help hoping. I really want to know where I'm going. And what grades I'm teaching. There's only so much planning of things I can do before I get concrete information.
For example, choosing what DVDs to bring. I intend to bring a few that I could possibly show classes. But the difference between movies elementary school children would like and ones that high school students would enjoy is not small by any means. Also the lessons I've already begun planning and the prizes/stickers/things about Canada I get are all going to be tailored depending on the ages of my students. Of course some of them I'll be picking up regardless, like the map of Canada place-mat I found at Walmart, but some will depend solely on my students.
I apologize for yet another post of me complaining about waiting to hear back from JET. JET has pretty much taken over my life at the moment. I'm just ridiculously excited. Every so often I remember I'm going to Japan, not that I forget but that it becomes real for me again, and then I grin and/or giggle for a minute before going back to normal. Well my next post should be my placement. Unless I don't hear until June in which case you may end up with another rant about waiting which I will do my best to refrain from. So I guess I'll say goodbye for now.

Forms and Placement

2010-04-16T14:50:00.000-04:00

So I just sent off my JET reply package indicating that yes, I do want to go. It took all my willpower to keep from adding stars and exclamation marks all around the yes. Now I just have to wait until May to find out my placement.
What went into the reply package? Well first was the reply form. Which just involved me ticking off yes I want to go, no I'm not married nor do I have children, and I want to leave from Montreal. Then I had to put on 2 passport sized photos. The JET program requires your photo plastered on nearly everything you send to them. On the plus side at least they'll know you on sight.
The second thing I had to put in was a photocopy of my passport. Luckily I already had it scanned into my computer so I didn't have to move my giant pile of papers off my printer so I could use the scanner.
The last thing in the package, and the one that took the most work to deal with, was my medical form. Even then it only took me 2 days to fill out. First I made an appointment with Health Services on campus. So in I went and the doctor started compiling my entire history right there. This was not necessary for the form, I checked, but I'm guessing because it was my first visit that she decided she wanted it for her records. She started off with do I have any conditions, have I had any surgeries, and then have I had any other injuries. I answered that last question chronologically. She was shaking her head by the end of it.
Next she poked and prodded me to make sure I had no pain anywhere then she took my blood pressure. Then I had to pee in a cup. Oh the fun of peeing in cups. The test was fine, everything was great, until she came to the section of the form that said I had to get a lung X-ray. She pulled out a sheet, drew me a map, and told me to head into Sherbrooke.
So I did. Of course I waited until the next day because I had other things to do. I got on the bus, got off at the wrong stop, backtracked, walked up a giant hill of death, and then found the Radiology Clinic. I was in and out of there in under 40 minutes. 10-20 of those minutes was me and the receptionist trying to figure out if I had to pay or not. I did. After that, I waited about 10 minutes in the waiting area and then got called in. The X-rays themselves took about 3 minutes. After that I came home. My form was finished later that day, yesterday, and today I got my passport pictures done and sent it off!
I was really worried it would take a really long time. The JET office has to receive the form by April 30th so I was panicking a little. But it all worked out in the end.
My next post, which should be sometime in May, will be about where I've been placed. I have my fingers crossed for somewhere in Hokkaido. Until then, bye!

Result!

2010-04-09T23:16:00.001-04:00

I'm going to Japan!!!!! Eheeheeheehee!!! I can't stop grinning. Just got the e-mail. They only e-mail short list candidates. I was on the forums and I created a topic about the Montreal JET results and someone posted how they'd gotten an e-mail at 6:30pm. So I thought I didn't get in because I hadn't gotten an e-mail but then I checked my spam folder and there it was!
I'm giggling like crazy as I write this. So excited. I can't keep still. Ehee! I'm off to start collecting more websites about what to bring and sample lessons. Wheee!!!!

Stupid Winnipeg

2010-04-08T01:07:00.000-04:00

So as April 12th approaches, I've become even more obsessive about haunting the JET forums. And yesterday I cam across several posts about people who interviewed in Winnipeg have already heard back. Via e-mail.
I am more than a little jealous. Not only do I not find out until next week but I have to wait for a physical letter. One that will first have to go through my mother then to me. But this is all because I am impatient and am sick of waiting to find out if I got in or not. It affects all my plans for the summer and the future.
So yeah, I'm on pins and needles.

The Waiting Game

2010-03-23T18:49:00.002-04:00

So I'm writing this mostly because I'm bored. I have about 3 more weeks to wait for news from JET so I'm doing my best to distract myself. So that I don't succumb to insanity. As it is I've been pretty much freaking out since the interview. And replaying said interview in my head. Mostly the last part. Where I made the elephant noise. Even now I have no explanation as to why I thought the elephant noise would be a good addition to my mock lesson. I think I just panicked. Oh well, too late now.
So nothing much to talk about. I'm just waiting. Very impatiently and with mounting anxiety, but still waiting. My next update should be about whether or not I've been accepted. Until then, bye!

The Interview

2010-02-17T19:47:00.002-05:00

So I just got back from my interview in Montreal. It was...not what I expected. I went in expecting a war crimes tribunal (something some JETs have described their interviews as) and found the people to be super nice.
I kind of lucked out and before my interview the seats in the reception area were full so I had to sit outside. Out of earshot and eye line of the receptionists who I knew for a fact were spying on us. Later I actually watched them hand interviewers sheets they'd been writing on. So I got some time to chat with the people going at the same time as me without worry of being overheard.
Eventually we moved inside and continued our conversation but now it involved asking the receptionists (both ex-JETs) questions about their experiences. On that part I felt I did fairly well. I was leading the conversation for most of the time and asked questions about being a JET that I think (read: I hope) were intelligent and showed I'd been researching the position.
I watched as one by one the other interviewers were called in. Today was the last day of interviews in Montreal and as luck would have it I was the last one called. A half-hour after the time I was supposed to be interviewed. They apologized for the lateness and I told them I didn't mind.
So I'm then led into a tiny closet of a room which only has enough room for the interviewers 3 chairs a table between me and them and my chair. I shook hands and introduced myself. I was going to bow but there was no room and I would have fallen and smashed my face into the table. I'm that kind of klutz.
I was facing two Japanese people, both with fairly strong accents, and one woman I presumed was an ex-JET. They took turns asking me questions. I would write what I was asked but they had a sign saying you're not supposed to release information about the interview so I can't tell you. I will describe my mock lesson though if only to explain why I made the elephant noise during my interview.
I was asked to do a mock lesson for Junior High students as if I'd been left alone with the students. I was told I had carte blanche and that I needed to do a lesson on animals. They then told me that one of the interviewers was going to be a shy person who didn't like English and the other was going to be a disruptive student. Yay me. I started with a few rounds of Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes to explain body parts. I then proceeded to do my best to explain describe an elephant. I chose elephant because it was the first animal I could remember the Japanese word for. Don't ask why elephant was what I remembered. So I started by explaining it has a long nose. Then I drew an elephant on my imaginary chalkboard. I continued saying elephants are big using a mix of Japanese and English. I then ended with the elephant noise. At which point my interviewers all started laughing and told me I could stop. Then they told me my interview was over.
It only took 15-20 minutes. Which is short. I have yet to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing. At least my elephant noise made an impression. I have a feeling I didn't make that great of an impression during the rest of it. Oh well. It's done now. I won't hear from them until the week of April 12th. Either way, they let you know, So fingers crossed, it'll be good news in April. Until then, bye!

Interview Preparation

2010-02-08T16:37:00.003-05:00

So I have my date and time for my JET interview. February 17th at 2:30pm. I'm pretty much vibrating at this point. I've copied down every question I can find on the internet that someone was asked in their interview and I've been answering them. That's 11 word document pages of questions. I'm a little obsessive. Well my next post will be my interview experience, so until then, bye!

JET

2010-01-16T18:00:00.002-05:00

So I'm resurrecting this blog. Mostly due to the fact that, fingers crossed, I'll be heading to Japan come August. So for those of you who don't know, I've applied to the JET program. The JET program is set up so that you can go be a teaching assistant in English in Japan. There's also a position where you can work while speaking Japanese. I chose to work as the teaching assistant.
I sent my application off in November and on Tuesday of this week, January 12th, I found out I've been selected for an interview. I still haven't been contacted on where or when my interview will be, but I passed the first stage of selection.
Today I went out and bought my first suit for the interview. I look like corporate barbie in the thing but at least I'll look somewhat professional. I've also begun doing practice interview questions that I found on the internet and I've been haunting the JET discussion boards. From what I've been able to gather these interviews range from pleasant to, as one JET interviewee described, a war crimes tribunal. The interviews are apparently meant to be terrifying. They like to see how you handle pressure. Which'll make an interview that I'm already freaking out about, all the more fun. Though at least I'll have a story to tell if I fail.
So yeah that's about it. I'm preparing for the interview for the next little while. I'll post when I find out when my interview will be and where in Montreal it'll be held.
Bye for now

Italy Adventures

2009-08-16T18:51:00.003-04:00

Well hello again. Here I am writing an update on my adventures in Italy. Mostly because my mother has decided to nag me to do it. So here we go.

The first leg of my trip involved me going from Copenhagen to Stockholm on an overnight bus. The day after Midsummer. Fun fact about Sweden. The sun doesn't ever fully set around the Summer Solstice. This hampered my ability to sleep in the bus but on the plus side I got to see more of the Swedish countryside. It made me wish I'd done an exchange to Sweden rather than Denmark.

So I got to Stockholm around 6:30am and spent the morning wandering the city, taking random pictures and buying souvenirs. The moose is to Sweden what the Little Mermaid is to Denmark. Seriously, you name it, you can find it with a moose on it in Sweden. It's their big souvenir thing. I actually had no idea what kind of touristy thing there were in Stockholm so I wandered from one interesting building in the distance to another. I also had no idea that there was so much water in Stockholm. It's a gorgeous city.

Around 1pm I took a bus to the airport and at 5:30pm my flight left for Venice. I was actually quite lucky. When I got off the shuttle bus at the bus station I ended up meeting some girls who were heading to the same hostel as me so the four of us got talking. We also ended up meeting two other girls who were already at the hostel and they showed us the way. Which was good. I'm terrible at finding places and didn't want a repeat of London and me taking a bloody hour to find the hostel. I soon found that I had rented a three person tent-building. It was pretty nice. What I hadn't realized was that I had rented the whole thing out. But given it was still cheaper than any other place, I wasn't complaining.

Venice itself was quite nice but it's one of those cities that once you've seen, you've seen. So while I enjoyed my wanderings, I really have no intention of going back. I did get to see the Piazza San Marco along with the Lion which were the two things I was most interested in seeing. Thank you Shadow of the Lion. That book was the whole reason I wanted to see Venice. So I got see everything I wanted to in Venice. I sadly didn't get a gondola ride. Every time I asked, the gondoliers asked me if I was by myself, to which I replied yes. Three times this happened and three times they sent me to the water taxi. After the third time I just gave up and instead went to a museum. I had a lot of fun. It helped there was a lot of Ancient Roman relics there. I am truly a Classics nerd.

So the last place I visited was Rome. And it was in Rome that I stayed in the sketchiest hostel of all my travels. It was a tent. An actual tent. With gaps between the walls and the ground. And no lock. It was terrible. But given I was only paying about 10$ Canadian a night, I got what I paid for.

So day one of Rome involved me going all over the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. I swear there is not a rock in those two places that I did not photograph. I'm also pretty sure some of the other tourists thought I was insane given my habit of squealing like a little girl every time I saw something that I recognized from my classes. I had a lot of fun. I did however make the mistake of wearing flipflops. My feet were black from the ankle down at the end of the day but I didn't really care too much.

Day two of Rome involved me going to a museum. I spent the whole morning there and took pictures of nearly everything in there because I'd promised my fellow Classics major Merran that I would photograph all the Classics things I came across. The only things I didn't take a picture of were some of the funeral tablets. And that's because they all were fairly similar. Any of the cool ones I did take pictures of. So after the museum I wandered around, saw some fountains, finished up souvenir shopping and accidentally walked to the Vatican. I actually had no intention of going to the Vatican because it was free that day and the line was some 2-3 hours long (which is why I didn't go in), but I did take some pictures outside. I had though about going the next day, which was a Monday, but I found out eveything is apparently closed on Mondays in Rome. Except the Colosseum and Roman Forum. Had I known that I would have done those last. But at that point it was too late. So I actually spent my last day in Rome sleeping, reading and eating some delicious lime sorbet gelato and talking to my fellow travellers. It was a lot of fun.

The next morning I flew back to Stockholm, wandered a bit more there then took a bus back to Copenhagen and a few days later I flew back to Canada. So I'm home again.

Apparently my computer doesn't want me to upload photos if the way it's failed the last three times I've tried is any indication. I'll try again another day and post the pictures separately.

Back from Italy and Home Again Soon

2009-07-01T05:10:00.002-04:00

Right so normally I'd do a blog update on my adventures in Italy but really, I'm home in 3 days. I'll just tell you in person. Stockholm was gorgeous, Venice was fun and Rome was really cool. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures in Rome, I don't think I left a singe stone in any of the ruins I visited unphotographed, and saw a lot of awesome things. Anyway, like I said, I'll tell you all about my adventures in person, with pictures of course. I'll be home in about 4 days. See you all then!

Work, Tivoli and the Exam

2009-06-16T16:48:00.003-04:00

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Alright, it's been a while since my last post. Mostly because I've been busier than ever. Only a month left until I'm home and these last days are just packed with stuff that I'm doing.

So last week I got a temporary job at the Bella Center for the EULAR convention. I was first hired by a place called Argyle Staffing Agency. Then they didn't need all the people they had so they asked me to be the on call person. Then they never set that up with me. Needless to say I was a little upset. However, luck had not deserted me. I'd mentioned the convention job to my friend Katelynn and so she also went onto Craiglist. And she got hired by this company called Wyeth to help out. They ended up needing an extra person so they hired me for 3 of the 4 days of the convention.

What was the job? Engraving things. Pens mostly. The engraving machine is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. We engraved these level, laser point pens, they were apparently for hanging pictures on walls. We ran out of those by the first hour of the second day. So then we started engraving these 5-setting laser pens. Also ran out of those. Not before I engraved one for myself though. Then we started engraving magnets with the little mermaid on them. We had 5000 so we didn't run out. I ended up engraving a bunch for people. We also engraved initials on these USBs we were giving out. I also got one of those. It was pretty cool.

It was around when we started engraving the USBs that we found out how nasty the engraving machine knobs can be. I still have blisters and Rico, the lone guy who was working with us, ended up getting Tendonitis from the machine. We kicked him off the machines and made him work desk the rest of the time.

Oh working desk. There were people from so many different countries and things sometimes got interesting when we tried to explain things to them. The worst was when I tried to speak Spanish to people. I speak very little Spanish. We did eventually get them sorted out. I spoke a bit of French, mostly to the people from France. Interestingly enough most of the Canadians I met were from Quebec. They all liked me because I go to school in Sherbrooke.

The one thing about the convention that sucked was the fact that so many people were grabby. They would just come up and take stuff. Stuff we weren't giving away. Like our example pens. I know a few people walked off with the empty boxes the pens came in. In their cases I found it hilarious. I wish I could have been there to see the look on their face when they realized there was nothing in the box. Also, some people were anal retentive about stupid stuff. Like one woman made me switch her box because there was a miniscule black fleck on the box. I did it but I put the box with the others and someone else got it. And we had people check the spelling of their names and stuff before we engraved it on the second day. I had one woman who I had check the computer and she says, yes that's right. Then when I hand her the pen she tells me that that's not what she wanted. I'm proud of myself for not snapping at her.

The job was a lot of fun though. Some people got stuff engraved for their kids. Especially the magnets. I know a number of little girls who are going to be told they have Ariel magnets. Also Kelly, the woman who was working with us, was super nice. So other than the blisters and my feet killing at the end of the day it was really good. I also made sweet money so I'm really happy. I actually had a couple people think I was a sales representative. I had to tell them no, I'm a student. All I do is engraving.

Oh yeah! There was one other thing that happened while we working. We had to stop letting people write whatever they wanted to be engraved after someone got me to engrave Humiras For Life on a pen. In fairness I knew nothing about Wyeth or Roche and so had no idea that Humiras was the rival product of Enbrel, which is what Wyeth was promoting. Yeah...

Anyway, so yesterday me and Oly went to Tivoli. I lucked out and one of my group members works at Tivoli so she gave me free passes. The place is awesome! It's not all rides. There are a lot of beautiful gardens and nice restaurants in there. They also do concerts every Friday. I had a lot of fun. Some of the rides were weird though. There was this really trippy Hans Christian Anderson Fairytale one that we were pretty sure really shouldn't have been for children. We also went into the fun house. Where we were the oldest people there who were not accompanying children. It is sad how much fun we had in there.

We were there most of the day and Oly has been telling me about this restaurant called Wagamama's forever so we went for lunch/dinner. From 12-5 students get half off. Wagamama's is this weird asian fusion place. I have to say, super delicious! I'm checking to see if there are any in Canada. There were things in mine that I don't even like that were delicious anyway. I would highly recommend that palce to anyone.

Well that's pretty much what I've been up to lately. Thursday I have my exam. Earlier today we went over to Tia's to practice for the exam. We also went through the project again. One of our members just finished an Academic English course. Me, Oly and Tia agree that this course is terrible. It's not even taught by a native English speaker. Anyway there were a lot of errors in it that we noticed and the one group member had a tendency to use words she clearly doesn't fully understand the meaning off. Oh well. It's too late to change now.

Oh and the weather lately? Terrible. Wind and rain. When Denmark decides to be miserable it is freaking miserable. The wind will randomly change directions so you get completely soaked no matter what. I came home from work with my clothes just plastered to me one night. Even with my umbrella. And the pond near school overflowed. There were trees and a trashcan in the middle of it after all the rain. It's finally been sunny the last few days. Hopefull it'll last.

Anyway that's all for now. Next week I spend cleaning and packing then it's Italy! So my next post won't likely be until I get back on the 31st.

As for the pictures, one is of me before work, looking all professional. What you can't see is how badly the blazer fit me. I got it at a thrift store for 10$. I only needed it for 3 days so I didn't care. There's one picture of the overflowing pond and the rest are of Tivoli.

So there you have it. Proof I'm still alive.

School's Out

2009-05-31T17:42:00.004-04:00

So, with the exception of my exam, I'm done school here at RUC. Which makes me happy. I'm glad I never have to do another group project again. Also that I'll never have to look at the Satanic Verses again either. I'm torching my copy after my exam. Anyway for now I'm rejoicing in sweet freedom!

So Friday we had a party here in Korallen. I thought it'd be huge as everyone's finished their projects and would be in the mood to celebrate. It ended up being the smallest Korallen party I've been to. We averaged about 20 people. It was barnyard themed, hence my hair. It was still a lot of fun. Also random at points but fun all in all.

Saturday was the offical beginning of the Carnivale festival in Copenhagen so I went in, hungover and none too happy at being up before noon after the party the night before, to see the parade. It was pretty cool. It's also been a long time since the last parade I saw so I was pretty excited. There were two adorable babies standing next to us. One had a habit of dancing everytime the music got really loud. It was so cute!

Thankfully the sun had finally come back, the last week has been raining, so a couple of days ago I went for a wander. In the woods. Well what passes for woods around here. Where I went was about as big as the woods behind our house. Yeah. That size. It was good though. I climbed a tree. Sort of. More of climbed up a slanting log. Sadly my shoes don't have good grip so I didn't get very high.

Well that's it for now. My group's having a dinner next week. Large amounts of alcohol are going to be involved now that we don't need to worry about the stupid project. Tivoli's been postponed until sometime in mid-June. And I've created a list of places I'm going ot visit in Venice and Rome. I think I'm going to spend an entire day in Rome just visiting museums. I have a huge list of ones I want to see. So yep. That's about all that's new with me. I'll update later when something interesting happens.

Travel Plans

2009-05-21T04:01:00.003-04:00

So I've decided, and booked everything already, that I'm going to visit Stockholm, Venice and Rome at the end of June. I'm pretty much bouncing up and down like a five year old right now. Venice and Rome were on my list of top 3 places I wanted to go, so I'm ridiculously excited. I'm pretty sure most of Rome is going to be me visiting historical sites and Museums. Because I am a Classics nerd. It'll be fun though! And I found out flying out of Stockholm is way cheaper than flying out of Billund. One way to Billund by train costs the same as there and back to Stockholm by bus. And I can get more flights, via Ryanair as it's by far the cheapest, flying out of Stockholm. I wished I'd known sooner. Oh well. And I'll get a chance to visit Sweden! Ehee! I'm just so excited right now I can barely sit still. Sadly I still have a month to wait. Ah well, it'll pass quickly.

This and That

2009-05-20T11:09:00.004-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been busy working on my group project. Which coincidentally is slowly driving me towards insanity. I hate the Satanic Verses and am actually contemplating burning the book after this is over. Mere words cannot accurately describe how much I loathe this book. On the plus side we're almost done. It's due on Tuesday and then I don't have to think about it for 2 weeks. On June 18th is my exam and then I am done. Our exam is early cause Tia's rented a house with friends in the South of France. I'm kind of jealous.

As for what else I've been doing...Well the swans that hang out in the pond on campus had babies so I went down one afternoon and fed them. The babies are just the cutest! It was a lot of fun. Right up until one of the adults tried to bite my toes. Apparently I wasn't throwing the bread fast enough. They're as nasty as Canadian Geese. But the babies are adorable. And one of the adults will eat right from your hand. Of course it'll hiss and bite at you while doing so, but still, it's kind of cool.

I've been in Copenhagen a lot recently. All the rest of my group members live there, except Oly but she's up there with her boyfriend half the time so yeah. Today I discovered something. It's pretty much impossible for me to get lost in downtown Copenhagen. It's the second time I've tried to get lost after a group meeting. I figured wandering around the city would be cool. I keep ending right back up at one of the train stations. Today I walked from Kobenhavn H station to Norreport station. It was fun. I also started souvenir shopping. Today I went into 4 different souvenir shops. Surprsingly they don't all have the same stuff. A lot of the stuff is the same but each one had at least a few different things. Also if they can put a mermaid on it, it's sold in a souvenir store. Honestly I have never seen that much mermaid stuff in my life. There's also a lot of viking stuff and trolls. And yes, I mean those little doll things. I don't know if they were invented here or what but every souvenir store has baout 20 different kinds. No lego though. Lego's only in the toy stores. Which all have at least one cool ginat lego thing which is awesome.

Oh yeah! There's this awesome board game store in Copenhagen. I swear it has every board game ever created. I saw one version of Risk called Godstorm. I told my friend Merran from Bishop's, who's on the Classics Society board, and we're thinking of buying it for the Classics society. It sounds way too awesome. When I got excited about it, and was sad when it was way too heavy to feasibly bring back with me, I realized how much of a Classics nerd I really am. It took being a semester away from it to realize I really do love my major.

Here's some random pictures I took of the swans and around Copenhagen. Oly and me are planning on taking a canal tour so I'll eventually have pictures of that. Also I plan on visiting the castle sometime because it's not right not to. Not since the Danes have their own royal family. Anyway that's all for now. The plans for Tivoli have been pushed back to the end of the month when Oly's sister comes to visit her, and I'm planing a trip somewhere for the next couple of weeks so I'll let you know what's happening with all of that once I know myself.

May 1st Festival

2009-05-02T21:34:00.003-04:00

In Denmark, May 1st is Worker's Day. Apparently this means everyone goes to a park and hangs out together. So that's what we did. It was a lot of fun.
So I met up with Oly and Pip then we headed to Christiania. It was my first time there. I'm really going to have to go back. It's a really cool place. Sadly you're not allowed to take pictures inside. Almost all of the building have some kind of cool painting on the sides and there are all sorts of people in there. We met up with Sanne there and then headed back into Copenhagen to go to the park.
You didn't even need directions. You just followed the huge crowds of people. The front entrance to the park had a fair in it. I won a chick there. I named him Fluffermonster. He's sitting up with my Travel Bear and Good Luck Frog. I'm getting quite the stuffed animal collection.
There were all sorts of booths selling beer, popcicles, kebabs, hot dogs, pretty much everything you can imagine. We brought sandwiches and cookies and drinks and stuff with us. I tried this Pear Cider stuff. I am now in love with it. It's way better than beer. It's just a bit sweet. I'm thinking of bringing some back with me.
We ended up sitting at the far end of the area where the stages were. None of us were really interested in the bands or the political speeches. It doesn't help that said speeches were in Danish. There were more people than live in the whole of Brockville I think. Oly, Pip and Sanne were laughing at me for being so impressed. They told me that the Roskilde Festival is going to be way bigger. I cannot even imagine this.
The Festival was fun, despite me getting sunburned. It's only a mild one so I'm not so bothered. And the number of random things we saw...Well it was different for sure. The guy who was wandering around naked, the guy wearing a red dragon costume, the girl who came up to us asking if we spoke English and then, finding that we did, asking us where the Anti-Fascist people were meeting and of course who can forget the people with the Free Hug signs.
It's actually the Free Hug people's fault that we lost Sanne. She ran off to go get a free hug and never came back. We waited 4 hours. We wouldn't have waited so long if she hadn't left her purse and her phone with us. I have no idea where she went but I know she met up with Oly today to get her stuff back.
The whole thing was basically a giant, drunken (the Danes love their booze), picnic. We left at 8pm. The sun was still out but it was getting cold and we were out of actual food. That and Oly was craving the Kebab from near Pip's apartment. So I said goodbye to Oly and Pip after they left me at a bus stop that would take me right to one of the trains stations I know. 12 buses later, only 2 actually stopped since they were all full, I gave up on waiting for a bus and walked. I actually found my way straight to Norreport station. I was thouroughly impressed with myself for this feat. So I got home at 9:30pm. The sun had only just set.
So that was my adventures at the May 1st Festival. In 2 weeks we're planning on going to Tivoli and to Malmo in Sweden so I'll have lots of stuff to write about then! Bye for now

Copenhagen Zoo

2009-04-29T21:34:00.005-04:00

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Me, Jess and Katelynn went to the Copenhagen zoo today. It was beautiful out, sunny and 18. I think I got a bit of a tan. The best part about going to the zoo in April is that a lot of the animals have babies. I honestly thought I was going to have a cuteness overload.
The very first exhibit you see after walking in is the lions. And they had cubs. Both half-grown and little babies. They were all asleep initially but later they woke up and were wandering around. They were so cute I wanted to steal one!
Next we saw the monkeys. Who also had babies. You should have seen them running around! One of the babies got in a fight with one of the older, but still juvenile, monkeys. It lost. We were there when they got fed. For some strange reason they gave the monkeys food in a container. One monkey ripped it right open. Then one of the mother monkeys stole it from him. It was pretty funny to watch.
Then there were the penguins! If we'd really wanted to we could have just reached in and picked up one of the penguins, the enclosure was that low. It wouldn't have even been hard. A lot of the enclosures were like that which was really cool. You could get really close to the animals.
The wolf enclosure reminded me of home. Sadly they didn't have any babies that we could see.
At the bear exhibit there were two little cubs who kept play fighting. It was adorable. The mom just sort of ignored them and did her own thing. The male was kept separate. He didn't seem to like that too much...
They had the sweetest elephant exhibit! It was huge. There was also a baby elephant. And one of the elephants, for some unknown reason, decided to climb up onto this little stool thing. Nearly shoved the baby right over. She was a bit of a jerk.
Possibly one of the cutest things I've ever seen in my life was at the zoo. Baby otters! Otters are adorable by themselves. Baby ottters? I almost had a cuteness overload right there! They were so tiny and made the cutest little squeaking noise. I think I should get a pet otter. We already have a pool, we're set.
We were actually at the zoo in time to watch the sea lions get fed. They did all sorts of tricks. One rolled over, another did a black flip out of the water, and another one balanced a ball on its nose. It was really cool.
We saw an okapi there. Okapis have got to be the wierdest looking animal ever. Weirder even than platypuses. They're like the bastard offspring of a giraffe, zebra and tapir. And tapirs are freaking weird looking themselves!
We were a little saddened that the giraffes weren't out in the field. It was kind of hard to see them. But there was a baby giraffe!
The zebras also had a baby. Also while we were there some of the zoo keepers were herding the zebras around. We were thinking they might be trying to teach them tricks or something. Who knows.
The last thing we really did, because the zoo closed, stupid 5pm closing time, was go to the petting zoo. They had baby goats. One of the babies kept trying to suckle on my fingers. Which was fine until he decided to use his side teeth to try and bite me. That was not cool. We tried to go see the hippos but the zoo closed. It stays open until 9pm starting in June and next month it stays open until 6pm. We're already planning to go again. But after Tivoli. The new ride there opens this Friday so we'll probably go next week or the week after. I'm beyond excited!
Oh. And that one picture of the road? That's a picture taken from my room. Guess what time I took it? If you guessed 4pm, you'd be wrong. It took it at 7pm. 2 weeks ago. And it's still only April. June is going to be...interesting.

Random Stuff

2009-04-23T14:35:00.003-04:00

So here's the latest report from Denmark, the only place I've ever been where you have to check the weather report for wind. All year round. That's no lie. Tuesday it was going to go up to 15 and was sunny, so I put on a tank top. Then I checked the wind. Nearly 30 km/h. I grabbed a sweater. I needed said sweater. Today was also 15 and sunny. However the wind was only 9 km/h. I got too hot. Best part is, there are people wandering around in jackets in this weather. Not too long ago I wore a tank top. Apparently this was noticed. Katelynn had been told of someone walking around campus in a tank top and laughed when she found out it was me. It was 15! There were people in winter jackets! I don't get this. *Sigh* I'm such a Canadian.
Not too much is exciting here really. The sheer amound of sunlight has taken some getting used to. It's almost nine and the sun had yet to set completely. 8pm it's still sunny. I never have any idea what time it is because of this. The best part is that the days are only getting longer.
I've been going to Copenhagen a lot. It helps Oly's there for a good portion of every week so she meets me at the station. This is how I have yet to get lost in Copenhagen. I know the day I go by myself, I'll be lost for at least an hour. I'm actually heading in again tomorrow for a group meeting. It'll be fun. Our supervisor was shocked I hadn't yet gone to the Black Diamond, which is where we're meeting. Apparently it's one of the places you have to go in Denmark if you're a student.
Tuesday was Ben and Jerry's free cone day. I love ice cream. It made me happy. I also got a bunch of shopping done while I was in Copenhagen. Finally got a new charger for my IPod, since the one I bought with me decided to fall to pieces. Literally. And since my speakers just randomly died one day. I'm kind of pissed about that actually. That and I can't find my extra set of headphones. They're neon pink! They shouldn't be so hard to find. Ah well. I'll just have to buy a new pair when I'm in Copenhagen tomorrow. The ones I'm using know are on their last legs. Only one side works unless I get the cord and jack in the exact right position. This saddens me.
I went to the Undersea party which was a lot of fun. I ended up wearing my blanket as a toga. I am awesome pro at tying togas. I said I was an Oceanid or Amphitre depending on when you asked me. Yes. I am a Classics nerd. I was forced to take off my toga eventually as it's fleece and it was way too hot. That's when I said I was a sea anemome AKA I was dressed all in blue. One guy had this awesome King Trident costume. Full robe, crown, arm bands and trident. It was freaking sweet! I was only sad no one came dressed as Aquaman. If I'd had the right clothes I would totally have dressed up as him.
Oh and the reason I took a picture of that can is because every time I see it, Oly has a poster in her room and I see the cans around, I keep thinking it says Kylie. I'm totally bringing her back can.
Well that's all for now. Mostly I wrote this because Mom's been nagging. If I'm not careful she'll find some way to poke me from across the Atlantic. Just kidding Mom, I love you.

Belarus

2009-04-08T16:45:00.004-04:00

So here's, and I'm sure Mom's saying "finally", my post of my adventures in Belarus.
I got off the plane and got through customs no problem. In fact the only problem that happened at the airport was me not being able to find mom immediately. We came in at different gates and I couldn't find the gate 4 of the arrivals. Luckily Rhona found me. Pat was not so lucky however. He got left behind at the airport.
We got to Chaussy and we had dinner at the orphanage. I was smart. I refused to do any of the many shots of vodka offered to me. There were a lot of toasts and it was fun. Afterwards me and mom went to Kaminka and I got to see Dziana and Veronique again and meet their mother Tanya and their cousin Angelina. Veronique has gotten huge. She's about 2 inches short of my height. I think she might be able to give Kylie a decent fight for the title of Queen Wookie.
The next day I got to see the Chaussy One school where all the boxes were. The mountains of boxes. We started organizing them. Man did my arms hurt the next day. It was kind of fun though. And afterwards the whole gym became like a maze. I kind of wish there's been some kids around to play hide and seek with. It would have been awesome!
That night we went to his cafe place for a bit. They finally got me to do a shot of vodka. Never again. I hate straight alcohol. Unless it's awesomely flavoured. Vodka is not. And I'm sad to say I got buzzed off that one shot. I am the hugest light-weight ever. Oh well. On the plus side, mom now has a picture of me doing my first shot of vodka. A proud moment for any mother to see.
One of coolest things we got to do was go see older Veronique and her 2 month old baby Kiera. Kiera is adorable! Also probably the most active baby I've ever seen. I don't think she stopped moving the entire time we were there. Mom got these adorable little slippers for her too. Ehee! So cute!
That night me, Veronique and Angelina went out for a wander around Kaminka. We had a lot of fun with my camera. They quite enjoyed being able to see the pictures as soon as I'd taken them. We took a lot of really random ones. I also met most of Veronique's friends. And I got to tease her about boys. It was a lot of fun. We also got into her school so Veronique showed me some of her classrooms. She got us in despite it being Sunday, 8pm and their blatantly being a security guard at the door. He didn't really seem to care though. I was impressed nonetheless.
The next morning I got to go on a delivery that was probably the most fun for me. We delivered boxes of toys, supplies and quilts to this daycare centre. There were only 3 students there. They had a lot of fun going through all the toys. The boy was very serious though. He smiled once when I gave him a candy. The 3 of them were adorable though. The older girl helped us sort through the toys. After we that we went into Mogilev and bought the daycare centre a new fridge since none of theirs really worked. I have never seen someone as happy as the woman who ran the daycare centre was. She did point out something that we found rather interesting. She was saying how she couldn't believe how people like us would just walk in somewhere and buy them a new fridge. We all had to wonder if perhaps we're strange for doing this.
That afternoon I got to meet 2 more cousins of Veronique and Dziana, Violetta and Valaria, as well as their Aunt Natasha. They had some of the longest braids I have ever seen. I'm also pretty sure they thought I was a little insane. So me, Veronique, Angelina, Violetta and Valaria went on a walk along with our fearless protector, Mishal. The dog. He followed us the whole time. He even waited outside when we went to their grandparents. We had a snowball fight, and then at their grandfather's, one of the younger two, I never really learned which one was which, played with my camera. She had a lot of fun taking pictures.
I have to say, Tanya is an amazing cook. Everything was delicious. And I think mom was happy because she actually got to witness me consuming vegetables. I was asked about it repeatedly. I am going to buy some more celery tomorrow and take lots of pictures of me eating it. Then send them to mom. That's what you get for bugging me about it Mom.
Now one story I have to tell is that of the banya. I had no idea what to expect. So me, mom and Tanya all strip right down and go into this sauna-like thing. Then I get to watch as Tanya whacks mom with birch leaves dipped in water. Mom seemed to enjoy it, I think because she was able to get warm. Then it was my turn to get whacked. Man those leaves are hot! I couldn't stay up there as long as mom as it was too hot. Afterwards we washed ourselves out of these bucket-bowl things. Tanya apparently believes me and mom are her children as she insisted on washing us herself. That was...unexpected. I'll admit to being a little surprised at first but I went along with it, no problem.
Oh and the one last thing that was...different about my visit. So on the way to the airport, Sasha, my driver, suddenly pulls over. I thought he was going for a smoke break. I was wrong. We got pulled over by a cop. I had no idea what was going on and for a little while got kind of worried. Especially since the whole thing took like half an hour. Everything turned out fine and we were on our way again. And the very first thing I did when I got back here to Korallen? I took a shower. I washed myself head to toe twice. Sadly, I still smelled like farm. But I got to see a baby bull. And his cuteness made up for any smell that lingered.
Anyway that's an account of my adventures in Belarus. I am back in Denmark and enjoying myself. I'll put up another post about what's been going on here in the next couple of days. Until then, bye!

Copenhagen and Packing

2009-03-25T08:00:00.003-04:00

Well I'm better finally. Me being sick is the reason I haven't put a new post up in a while. I haven't done anything so there was nothing to blog about.
So I went to Copenhagen on Friday and met up with my friend Oly there. We went shopping. She showed me 2 stores where we get student discounts, Urban Outfitters and something with the word Top in it. I think it was the Top Shop but I could be wrong. Oh and apparently Tivoli opens next month so we were talking about going soon. Oly was telling me about some of the rides and about the new one. I'm pretty excited. While we were in Copenhagen I was looking for some cool Danish souvenirs and found none. Everything in the stores we went into was super lame so I'm going to pick some up in the airport on Friday.
Speaking of Friday, I head to Belarus then. I'm actually in the midst of doing laundry for that very reason. I'm excited. I just have to pack...and clean up. Seriously need to clean up. Oh well. I've got time. Anyway that's all for now. I'll do a post once I'm back from Belarus so look forward to it.

Sick Again

2009-03-11T09:32:00.003-04:00

So I realized I haven't posted anything in a while and since I'm not moving today due to me being sick again I figured now was a good of a time as any. On the plus side I'm not painfully sick. On the downside dizziness is not conducive to getting anything that required movement done. And my fever isn't helping any.
As to what I've been doing lately, well there's not too much to tell. I haven't been doing anything all that interesting. Went to a lot of parties. Went to class and worked on the group project. Oh! Got my first essay assignment for History and Culture. The thing is only going to end up being like 400 words. Hurray for super easy work! History and Culture is also the class where my prof definitely showed a clip from South Park which made me laugh. It didn't help it was the Metrosexual episode. I had the crab people song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.
It's weird. Since I've been here I find myself doing my dishes and my laundry more often than I ever do at Bishop's. Not really sure why though. Well the dishes might have something to do with the fact that I cook a lot more here than I do at school. It helps that there are no microwaves in the building. They sell microwave food in Denmark. I've seen it in the grocery stores so I don't understand why we don't have microwaves here in the kitchens. I mean we're university students. Microwaves would be awesome.
Anyway I'm going to go take a nap now. I'll try to remember to post more often.

Barcelona

2009-02-28T14:47:00.005-05:00

The story of Barcelona really begins with me trying to get there. Which also happens to be the next segment on my bus disasters. So I go to the bus station in Granada to get a ticket to go to Barcelona and my credit card was declined. This wouldn't have been such a problem if any of my other cards had worked or if I'd had enough cash on me to pay for it. Neither was the case. A bit upset, I then went to the Granada airport to see if I could get a cheap flight. The flights were twice the amount of a bus ticket. More upset now than before, given that my flight back to Denmark was leaving from Barcelona, I returned to the bus station and tried calling the numbers on the back of my card. None of those numbers worked. That is when I had a breakdown and called mom. Mom called the credit card office from home and we got it all sorted out thankfully. So I left Barcelona at 11:30pm. The bus ride ended up being 11 and a half hours. Which was not so much fun. So finally it's morning and the bus stops. The bus driver announces Barcelona Tarragona. I assume Tarragona is a reference to the station we're stopped at. It's not. Tarragona is a whole other town 5 valleys over from Barcelona. I got off. Then, when I finally found out that I wasn't in Barcelona, I had to take a train. Finally I got to Barcelona and after getting lost a couple of times, I found my hostel. Though I did have one funnt thing happen on the bus ride to Barcelona. This woman sitting across from me asked me, in Spanish, at one of our stops if I was travelling with a man. When I said no, I was travelling by myself, she was shocked. Apparently this is not done.
Not knowing any of the tourist attraction in Barcelona, I ended up just wandering the city. I found this one main strip that, had I had any money on me, would have bankrupted me. It was full of cool little stores, street performers and outdoor pet shops. The pet shops sold, among other pets, duckling and chicks as well as full grown chickens and ducks. Also a lot of turtles. I had a ton of fun. One of the street performers, the on dressed in the Greco-Roman style, was awesome. He asked me where I was from and when I said Canada he remarked that it's cold there. I agreed. Then he reached into his little bowl-thing and pulled out a glass-rock thing that had a snowflake engraved into it and gave it to me. It's my Barcelona souvenir.
The weather in Barcelona was beautiful. The day I had to wander it it was +16 and sunny. So naturally I was wearing a tank top. Apparently this is not natural in Spain. I got strange looks all day and there were people wearing winter coats. Heavy winter coats. I was sweating. On the plus side I got a little bit of a tan.
One of the girls who was staying in the room with me was from Chile but she's been living in Paris for the last couple of years so she speaks French. I spent the afternoon with her, where I spoke French because she spoke very little English, and we went up to the old Olympic Stadium and giant castley museum. I got some great pictures from there and we had a lot of fun.
So on my way back to the hostel, I had to get up at 4am so I wanted to get some sleep beforehand, I get off the Metro at my station. As I'm walking I notice 2 familiar figures. Bella and Monique, 2 Australian girls who'd stayed in the same hostel as me in Granada. The last time I'd seen them they'd been on a bus for Valencia. The three of us were shocked and amused at the coincidence of us meeting up in a city the size of Barcelona. I asked them which hostel they're staying in, saying it can't be Graffitti, which is the hostel I was staying in. Yes it was. So I led the way back to our hostel. As we go, they tell me how they had just spent the last 4 hours in a Spanish Police Station. Apparently while they were eating, some guys stole their bags but Bella managed to stop them. Which was a good thing because their passports were in there. So when an undercover cop arrested the guys who'd tried to steal their backpacks, Monique and Bella had been forced to go down to the station to fill out an incidence report. The only problem was that neither of them speaks Spanish.
So the next day I woke up early to head back to Denmark. I had to catch a bus from Barcelona to Girona to catch my flight. What I didn't know, but soon found out, was that the Metro doesn't run that early. So I tried to walk since it was only a few Metro stops from where I was staying. I managed not to get lost but when it was 25 minutes until my bus, the last one that would get me to the airport before my flight was due to leave, was supposed to depart, I flagged down a taxi since I didn't know how far away the bus station was. It was a good thing I did. I'd never have made it on time on foot. So after panicking and thinking I was going to miss the bus and thus miss my flight, I finally got to the airport and was able to get back to Denmark. Other than a mild misadventure with, yes, a bus, I got back to RUC without much difficulty. And I'm glad to be back. Here at least I know how things work.

Granada

2009-02-26T18:40:00.004-05:00

And so here is the story of my adventures in Granada and the first of my bus disasters. I caught my flight out of London and got to Malaga no problem. It was trying to get from Malaga to Granada that the problems started. So I missed the first city bus from the airport to Malaga proper as it came early. The next one came late and so I ended up missing the 9pm bus to Granada. And the next one ended up leaving the bus station at 12:30am. So I ended up stuck in the bus station for a couple hours. During my stay I actually ended up having this huge converstaion with this one guy who spoke English. Well first he spoke Spanish to me. I was reading one of my books, thank god I'm a bibliophile and bought 2 in England or I'd have gone crazy from boredom, and he asked me in Spanish what language my book was in. I actually understood this as the Spanish I learned from my one class in Grade 10 was slowly coming back and so I replied English in Spanish. Apparently when I say English in Spanish I say it was a Malagian accent, or at least that's what the guy said because he assumed I was from Malaga and started spouting off Spanish. I had no idea whta he said and just told him I didn't speak Spanish. Then we started talking about learning French in Canada and being bilingual. It was random but fun.
Anyway so I finally get to Granada at 2:30am. Fun fact about Granada, the city buses don't start running again until 6am. The bus I needed didn't show up until 6:30am. So I spent 4 hours in the Granada bus station. Lucky I had my books. So I finally find my hostel, after getting lost and eventually just taking a taxi cause I was tired and frustrated. I got 3 hours sleep and then went out to go find Shannon.
After wandering the city and being unable to find the number of Shannon's friend, I decided to head to the museum we were supposed to be going to. I got lost. I ended up climbing halfway up and a quarter of the way around this one mountain because I thought that's where I had been given directions. It was not. On the plus side I got some awesome pictures of the surrounding mountains. I only realized my mistake when I found the hippy camps up there. I climbed down and it was then that Shannon phoned me and we were able to meet up, which was good.
So finally together we headed to the Centero de Ciences. A giant science centre. It was really cool. And see, I did something educational so I get bonus points. Me and Shan went around to a bunch of the exhibits. My favourite was the birds of prey. They had so many of them! I also found the Antartica one funny, mostly due to the fact they had this special freezer room to test how you handle cold. So me and Shannon go in and the thing's only -10. I started laughing. I mean -10? Really? For Antartica? So we proved we are Canadian through and through by laughing at their puny attempt at cold.
After that we went for dinner at this cool buffet place and the out for tapas. Tapas is this Spanish thing where you buy a drink and get food with it. Every time you buy a drink you get different food. We went to this really cheap place. Tapas was only 2 euros. And you get like 3 kinds of food. It was really cool. Then we went shopping and eventually Shan went back home and I went back to my hostel. Granada was a lot of fun and so pretty!
Tomorrow Barecelona, so tune in next day, same exchange blog, same exchange girl.

London

2009-02-25T12:47:00.006-05:00

So I'm finally back in Denmark after the bus ordeal from hell. But I'll come to that later as it wasn't until I got to Spain that the ordeal began. Anyway I'm doing a post a city so that it's at least demi-organized. That and it's easier for people to read. No sense in forcing you people to wade through a post the size of short novel.
I got into London at night and went immediately to my hostel. At least I tried to. I got lost. 3 times. I spent over an hour wandering around the neighbourhood that my hostel was in. Fun fact, it may have been called Prince's Square but it was in no way a square. And half-way down several of the streets that made up the so-called square the name would change. Eventually I did find it. Since it was late all I did was buy some food to make for dinner and went to bed. I have pictures of the hostel. It was the middle of the three for niceness. While it was sketchy it wasn't too bad.
So I really only had one full day in London so I decided to actually be a tourist for once and hit up all the attractions. So the first place I went was Buckingham Palace. It was pretty cool. I couldn't go in as there was a an event of some sort going on. All these Man in dress uniforms and women with the big fancy hats kept showing up in cars and there were cops all over the place. So I only took some pictures from outside.
Since it was morning and after Buckingham Palace I was actually hungry I got back on the Tube and got off at a station that I though would be a shopping district so I could grab something to eat. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I end up near Big Ben. So I took some pictures and kept going since I was still hungry. Then I found the Parliament buildings. And then Westminster Abbey. At this point I just gave up on food and wandered around taking pictures of all the attractions. At one point I ended up behind a French school tour group which I found kind of funny.
Finished with that part of London I went off to find London Bridge. And yes I was singing London Bridge is falling down to myself during my search. I found it and the Tower of London. Also food. And since I'm cool, and I love it, I got fish and chips. Because, come on, I'm in England. So after lunch, it was around 12 at this point, I went into the Tower. It was the only tourist place I went in to. And man was it ever cool!
They had a special kids' program on while I was there, all about knights. So there were a bunch of kids running around completeing 'quests' which was adorable. As an added plus there were guards at the Tower so I finally got a proper picture of one.
I saw pretty much everything in the Tower, even the Crown Jewels despite the psychotically huge line. The knight that I took a picture of called my milady when I asked if I could. They also had guides dressed up as Yeomen. I didn't go on a tour though. I prefer looking at things at my own pace. It was near the end that I found the worst place for me. I found the place where you could dress up. So in a style reminiscent of the Viking Ship Museum I dressed up Tudor style. The best part was that my clothes matched the colours of the dress. Clearly I was meant to wear it.
So after I was done being all touristy I decided to wander around. Then I came up with the brilliant idea of finding Charles a Doctor Who toy. 3 hours. I spent 3 hours looking for one. I went to the 5-story toy store and they had no good ones. Well no good ones that would fit in my luggage. The Dalek voice changing helmet looked pretty cool. I even went to Harrod's. No luck. Though I did find a book for myself. I ended up buying 2 books in England and it was a good thing I did. I needed them during all my bus misadventures in Spain. I did eventually find some good Doctor Who toys in the airport on my way to Malaga. But they were way too expensive. I love Charles but I'm not spending 80$ on a toy for him. So I came back Doctor Who-less.
The first picture is a picture of the hostel room I was in. There were 6 of us in it. There was barely enough room to stand. That night I discovered something that's a lot of fun to do and I preceded to do in every hostel afterwards. Tell the other guests, most of whom are European, what winter's like in Canada. They are horrified and have great difficulty imagining that it can be like that. I always find their reactions hilarious. Mind you I was talking to a guy from Australia and he described their summer. Ergh. I couldn't take that kind of heat. So I guess it works both ways. Anyway that's an account of my London adventures. Either later tonight or tomorrow I'll post the section on Granada.
Oh, all the pictures of me in London and Barcelona, with the exception of the Tudor dress-up one, are for mom. Because she got upset after I came back from France the first time with no pictures of me in France. There you go mom. Pictures of me overseas.

Lack of RAs, the Satanic Verses and Travelling

2009-02-09T10:41:00.002-05:00

So I have to say, one of the things I've really noticed since I've been here has been that fact that there are no RAs in our residence. All we have is the one Custodian/Handyman. Other than that we're left to our own devices. It gives a certain sense of lawlessness. I mean we had a party in one of the kitchens and it could be heard throughout the building. There was a good 50 people there at all times and more came and left during the night. That kind of thing couldn't happen at Bishop's. The RAs or Security would break it up. That was another thing. You can totally drink outside which is awesome. I'm so used to Security watching for you drinking and even in town the cops don't care if you're drinking. Which is good. Because booze in the bars is ridiculously expensive. Especially when beer's so cheap in the grocery stores.
Today was the first meeting of my group for out project on the Satanic Verses. The book's snot bad just incredibly dense. It took me 2 and a half hours to read 90 pages. It's kind of interesting but you have to be prepared to wade through the damn thing. Oh well. I suppose it'll just make doing a project on it easier. Our supervisor, who I have yet to meet, apparently said we could compare it to the movie the 12 Monkeys. I have heard of this movie but never seen it. I'm not going to lie, when I heard 12 Monkeys I thought of Iron Monkey which is a kung-fu comedy movie. Which made me laugh.
Well next week I'm going travelling for the first time. I'm supposed to meet up with Shannon in Spain but that may not work out after all. I did find a flight from Billun in Denmark to London for a total of about $20 Canadian and so I figured even if I don't go to Spain I'll still go to London as I've never been. I mean how could I pass up a $20 flight? And if Spain doesn't work out I may also head down to Venice because I found a cheap flight there from London. I might just airport hop my way back to Denmark. We'll see. I'll be missing a class or two but that's no big deal. The work is ridiculously easy. I have 2 or 4 4oo word essay-things for the one class and that's it. That's my entire workload for the class. I'm pretty excited about going away though this does mean I desperately need to do a couple of loads of laundry as well as clean up my room. Oh well. LONDON!

Sickness, USA Night and School Starts

2009-02-04T07:45:00.003-05:00

Alright, first off I need to apologize for not updating for a while. To be honest I forgot about the blog. That and I've been pretty sick the last week. I'm getting better though. Hurray for cough medicine!
So the international club had USA night at this bar/concert hall/cafe called Gimle and since Marie and Katelynn signed up I decided to sign up to help out as well. It was actually a lot of fun. Me and Trang picked out the music and I ended up DJing all night. I would have danced but no one came to relieve me, damn them! But it was still a lot of fun. I got a bunch of requests and I got to pick out the music so it was good music for dancing. After the food, I played Baby Got Back, Hey Ya and Stand Up to get everyone to start dancing and man did it ever work well. We had a good turnout and even though Barrett forgot most of the decorations in her office it was still cool. The fact that the powerpoint slideshow wouldn't work was a bonus in my books though Barrett had a flip out about it. I wouldn't mind DJing another one of those parties!
This Monday school started which was fun. Not. It seems RUC screwed up my admittance nicely. I ended up in Cultural Encounters for the first part of the morning, which I soon realized was not where I was supposed to be. So I went to the international office and they sent me to Building 3 with the names of 2 secretaries. The secretaries, Gette and Dorthea, were both very nice and everntually found out where I was supposed to be. I'm in the Humanities Basic Studies level. I was then asked if I wanted to stay there because it's at the 1st year level. I was like, BONUS easier work. I already made friends with one of the girls in my program. Her name's Isolde but her nickname's Oly. She's really nice. Gave me a list of people I don't want to have in the same group as me for my group project. We're both in the same group. It's going to be a project on a book called the Satanic Verses. I also looked into the project on Brave New World. Actually the teacher said I could do an independent project if I wanted but I decided I'd rather do a group project instead. It'll be more fun this way. So I finally have my school stuff somewhat organized. Hurray for me! Anyway I've got to go to class now. I'll post more later. Including pictures of USA Night and my aborted trip to Copenhagen.

2009-01-24T08:14:00.003-05:00

So here's some pictures from our trip on Friday to the Roskilde Cathedral and Viking Ship Museum.
The Roskilde Cathedral was really cool. It's where a lot of the Danish monarchs were buried so there are some impressive coffins and rooms in there. It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I went a little snap happy and took a huge amount of pictures. I only put a couple of them up here.
The Viking Ship Museum was a lot of fun too. Not the bulk of the tour, though out tour guide was really good, but the end was awesome. There were the costumes you could try on, and you can see in the pictures that I did. I was actually the first one brave enough to do it. We had a lot of fun there and there are some interesting pictures from us all trying the clothes on. Well us girls. None of the guys would do it. Wusses.
After we finished at the Viking Ship Museum, me, Andrew and Elaine decided to go pick some things up. I needed a hair dryer and Elaine and Andrew wanted to get kettles. So begun our adventure. We ended up in this little mall Elaine had seen when coming in from Copenhagen. There was a store there called Fotex which sold pretty much everything so we picked up some groceries along with my hair dryer and their kettles. It was when we were leaving the problems began. Outside was a bus stop and since our train clip cards work ont he buses as well and we didn't want to walk all the way back to the train station we checked the schedule. It said that this bus went to RUC (Our university) so we decided to catch it. This was around 5:30pm. What we didn't know was that this bus was going in the opposite direction and it was the one across the street that would eventually go to RUC. This was also the last bus of the night as we discovered once we got to the end of the line. Luckily we ended up near a train station. I can't remember the name of this station other than it was two parts and they both started with S. To make matters worse this train didn't go directly back to Roskilde. So we caught a train to this place called Koge, where we were able to switch lines and finally got back to Roskilde. From Roskilde we were able to catch a train to Trekroner and walked back to our residence, Korallen. We got in at 8pm. Last night it was annoying but today the whole thing is pretty funny. The three of us got ourselves randomly lost in weird suburbia Denmark. We saw a whole new side of Denmark last night.

Foundation Course, Campus and I'm going to kill my friends

2009-01-21T12:51:00.005-05:00

So we've started the Foundation course and I have to say it's pretty much as boring as it sounded. Not that what they're teaching isn't useful but most of it I can figure out myself. Which is why I don't always go to all the classes. Some, like Academic English, are useless for me. However I make sure to go to every single Danish lesson. The prof, Mads pronounced Mess, is hilarious if rather eccentric. And everything he teaches us is useful. Which reminds me, there's a girl here named Ofelia and I always kind of feel bad for her. I mean her name's Ofelia and she's in Denmark. The jokes are just too obvious. I wonder if she's read Hamlet.
So I went around and took pictures of campus yesterday as it was the first sunny day we've had since I got here. What I don't have a picture of, and I wish I did, was of this bird we saw flying and going nowhere because the wind was so strong. It was just flying in place. We all kind of felt bad for the bird. Also for some reason there's a field with horses in it. One of the horses was friendly and came right up to me. I'm pretty sure he only came up because he thought I had food for him. He at least let me pet him. Oh and the second picture is of my residence, Korallen. The weird amphitheatre thing is in the little courtyard-thingy of Korallen. Still haven't figured out what it is yet.
So yeah, my friends here are awesome but I'm still going to have to kill Katelynn and Craig. Mind you it was partially my fault for leaving myself logged on on Facebook on Katelynn's computer but they really didn't need to change my status to that. But I'm going to get them back. I'll just bide my time and when they least expect it, BAM! Revenge.
Also I was all excited to go on the trip to Fyn, as were the rest of my friends, until two things happened. One, we met the head of the international club. This woman is irritating and clearly mule-headed. And her strong-arm tactics to get people to volunteer not to mention her inability to shut up damn near drove the lot of us to just get up and leave. One guy kept fake yawning in the hopes of her noticing. She didn't. Marie finally had to cut her off at the end with "Thanks" or we'd have been another 15 minutes at least. And we were 20 minutes late getting out as it was. The second reason we've all bailed on the trip is the price. It seems cheap until you realize that the school provides free transport and we cook our own food. So why, oh why, does it cost 500 DKK? Julia, a friend of ours pointed this out. We also took a closer look at the schedule and the places we're going, what university student wants to spend the night in a quiet, picturesque town when we're near one of the biggest cities in Denmark? Also some of the rules were ridiculous. "If you don't do the tasks assigned to you the entire group will be punished". Seriously? What are we, 5? Every last one of us is at least 20 and we're going to be punished as a group if one person doesn't do as they're told? And we're spending money to go on this trip. Yeah. I don't think so. Me and my friends will probably go sometime, but certainly not with the international club.
This last semester at Bishop's I felt I'd started drinking a lot. I mean we went out pretty much every week. That is until I came here. It's every day. I copped out for two of those days, we do have to get up and go to class, but very few people seem to be doing that. Last night we just sat in Katelynn's room and played cards, talked and drank. Tonight we're supposed to be going to some bar and tomorrow's karoke night at a different bar. Oh well. At least we have a lot of fun!

Wandering Roskilde

2009-01-18T15:04:00.005-05:00

So Craig, Sam, Katelynn and I decided to go wander around Roskilde yesterday. We applied for our CPR numbers, got a few things we needed and then just walked around. We went down to the fjord, wandered through a park and ended back up near the cathedral. It was a lot of fun. Katelynn's mentor said he'd show her around Copenhagen so we might go do that sometime. And Friday we're going on tours of the Viking Ship Museum and the Roskilde Cathedral so I'll have pictures of that on Friday/Saturday.
When we were in the park we saw all these birds, the picture above gives you a bit of an idea of what it was like. In the ponds they had actual stairs for the birds to get up and down. There were also lots of Mallard ducks there which made me laugh. I wonder if any are the same ones that visit out backyard every spring.
The weather's not been too bad. Tuesday was the coldest with a -7 windchill. It's supposed to rain for the next couple of days so I'm not looking forward to that so much. And tomorrow we start the Foundation Course. The first week looks pretty good. Second week not so much. I'm going to see how things are and if it's really bad I'll spend the second week travelling before school starts in February.
I have to say living in the international students dorm is pretty cool. You meet people from all over and everyone's really nice. One girl, Sophia, who's from Montreal, actually walked us over to the building where the foundation course is. And this guy named Pierre from France, who works at a bar, got us in free and got us free booze. It was awesome! Though I did find out that you're allowed to smoke in Danish bars if they're small ones. Me, Katelynn and Andrew all have clothes that reek of smoke now. Oh well. It was worth a little smoke.

Luggage, Rooms and Airports

2009-01-16T04:44:00.004-05:00

So I've finally arrived in Denmark. No problems with the flight and my luggage was some of the first off. However some of the others weren't so lucky. Marie-Christine, a fellow Canadian, lost one of her bags and one of the Australian guys lost his one and only bag. Both are understandably upset. Just as bad is what happened to poor Andrew from the UK. They didn't have his room ready for him. He almost had to go stay in the hostel. But we let him in and he slept on one of the couches in the kitchen so he's alright.
So I got to see a variety of airports yesterday and I have to say my favourite was the Copenhagen one. I didn't explore that much of the Amsterdam one, mostly because I went to the wrong terminal initially and had to find the right one, but the Copenhagen one had tons of stores once you got through security. It was like a mall. I'm actually excited for the next time I fly so that I can go look through them.
Oh and that's a picture of me after I got off the plane. Yes, I am the height of fashion.

Test/Pre-departure

2009-01-10T21:16:00.001-05:00

This is really just a test blog. I'm currently in the midst of getting ready to go. Lots of packing. Oh the packing I have to do.