The Interview

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

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

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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