It doesn't take long for a new place to ...

Trip Start Jul 23, 2002

Trip End Jul 23, 2003

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Flag of Canada Guelph, Canada
Wednesday, October 30, 2002

It doesn't take long for a new place to become familiar and start feeling like home again. It doesn't seem to matter where you are, as long as you have somewhere to come back to for a reasonably continuous time it soon becomes home. Whether it be a tent, a shared suite in student accommodation or a proper house, it all serves the same purpose - a place to call your own which can be your haven from the continuous changes happening everywhere in your life, especially when travelling. It hit me the other day while talking to some of the other exchange students at the University that things are becoming routine and not so unusual. We know our way around here, the people we see everyday and are even getting used to the traffic and different shops etc.

So what's been happening? The study bit goes without saying. Lectures everyday with lots of exams and assignments to do

Canada Goose

. This semester alone I've ended up with 16 exams, so I'll definitely be glad to see the end of all of them. Not quite used to the midterm idea, with exams after only four weeks of lectures, but then neither are the people I live with as everyone has been hiding away in their rooms busily studying for their exams. So it's been a little quieter in the suite for the last week or so, but most midterms are over now (although I've got another 3 to sit), so people can relax a little.

The third and fourth floors of our hall both have the same RA (residence assistant) and she raised the idea of painting the canon with Dundas 3 and 4. (And that statement probably needs a bit of explanation - on each floor there are 4 suites with 8 to 12 people in each, and there's a higher year student, the RA, who looks after the people, answering questions, organising events, giving out information and whatever else happens to be going on. I'm living on the fourth floor of Dundas Hall, and the canon, called Old Jerimiah, is the only place on campus where 'graffiti' is 'allowed'. So most nights, someone gets up at an early hour of the morning to paint the canon with whatever they want to be seen by everyone. The canon is in the central area of campus and has been cemented and bolted down to stop it being moved around campus in the middle of the night. And by the end of the year it is covered with numerous layers of paint.) So we got up one morning to go paint the canon, but found we had arrived to late as another group was already there and had scouts out keeping watch for people coming to paint over their handy work

Canon by daylight

.

So the plans got put off for another week, at which time Dundas 3 and 4 ended up on the canon, along with a lot of Kraft Dinner, which made for some very happy birds and squirrels. Kraft Dinner is one of those things which a lot of Canadian kids seem to have grown up on - basically macaroni and cheese in a box - and which they were shocked to hear that I'd never eaten, so by the end of my first week I had tried KD. The other Australian tried introducing the Canadians to Vegemite, but that wasn't overly appreciated by most of the people in the suite - the Aussies have been banished to the balcony if we want to eat it!

We also had a bunch of really weirdly dressed people wandering around campus one day - and it wasn't even Halloween then. It was a money raiser in which the RA's and course cluster leaders were given money to wear whatever the people in their floors wanted them to. So imagine people with the oddest variety of clothes (and non clothing items being worn as clothes) walking around campus and you have what the campus looked like.

It's also been Thanksgiving weekend here which is the only long weekend/holidays this semester (no two weeks off in the middle like at home)

CN Tower

. I was going to go to Montreal with some others, but the accommodation planned fell through and basically everything else that was reasonably priced was booked up so that didn't happen. Instead I headed into Toronto and wandered around there. Did some window shopping and general looking around. The weekend before I'd gone home with a friend from the suite and we'd gone into Toronto for a while, so having my first real glimpse of Toronto (the trip from the plane to the bus station doesn't really count!)

Not going away all Thanksgiving weekend meant that I got to have the suite to myself for a night. The first time that everyone has been out at the same time for more than a few hours. It's certainly a lot quieter with 9 less people running around and was a nice change. I went to a friends place for Thanksgiving and had a proper roast dinner - so nice to have a home cooked meal again - Yum, yum!

I've been put in contact with a bird group here in Guelph and went out with them yesterday to a park in Hamilton and saw some more of the birds they have here. It's a lot better going birding with people who know what they are looking at, especially when you don't recognise most of the birds in the area. They've got a few more trips which I'm looking at going on over the next few weeks.

The thing that gives it away that I'm no longer at home is the weather here. It's not even winter and the forecasts are along the lines of 'temperatures rising to a high of 4C'. Not quite looking forward to the weather with highs in the minus somethings! And I don't want to know that it's getting warmer and heading into summer at home

East Residence

! There's been talk of snow arriving before the end of the week, and already some paths have been closed off for the winter. The trees are all turning their colours and you look outside to patterns of greens, brilliant reds and all shades of yellow and orange. Walking in the arboretum is very pretty with all the different colours, and you can see big changes from one week to the next.

Anyway, that's a bit of what's been going on here. I'm having fun and enjoying my time here. The fact that Christmas decorations are appearing in the shops is indicating that the year is passing by fast.
Seeya
Wendy