Sep 2006

So by week 3 usually things have begun to quieten down, work starts for real and one begins to do research for the first batch of papers. Hah! Not for an exchange student! Instead it's a steady diet of 21sts, concerts and dragon boat racing!

Why not?!?!

So, this week, on top of classes and the like, we hit Plush Nightclub on Monday for Ali's 21st. Seedy club, very quiet, but as per usual we brought the fun. On top of that Will joined us! That is not a regular occurrence so it was quite special!

Tuesday was a domestic night in - much needed rest!

Wednesday it rained hard, which is something Vancouver is infamous for, so not totally surprising. It was just the first time this had really happened here since we arrived, so kinda disappointing! The stereotypes are true I guess.

What's most hilarious is the absolute presumption by everyone Canadian that that's it - the end of summer has arrived! In fact, it was the only day to rain all week! Yay!

Thursday was spent ogling clubs during UBC's version of O-Week (well at least the clubs component of it). So many clubs, so little time. I joined two: FICUBC (Foundation for International Cooperation at UBC) and the SRC (Singapore Raffles' Club). You can tell where my allegiances lie! Thursday night was Natasha's 19th (she's legal!) and also the Snow Patrol concert. Very very good concert - but the venue felt like a high school gym. Boo too that!

Friday was another uber-domestic night in, watching movies with my roomies and some girls from Australia.

Saturday Nick (from the UK) and I went to see Confetti. This is the film with almost all of our favourite British comedians. A bit hit and miss, well more miss than hit, but overall very pleasant. Love the camp wedding directors - brilliant! We paid a visit to the Aussie store to grab Chris a big Aussie flag for his birthday (and a boxing kangaroo pen) and then headed to his and Laurents' birthdays. Awesome fun - highly debaucherous, especially after we went to the Pit for the "Crime and Punishment" night. As British Tristan said "a night is never complete without arseless chaps!"

Sunday came around far too fast - another week gone! Already I've been here a month and I'm LOVING it!! We had our Longboat training today which was great fun. Basically Longboat is the old UBC tradition that has grown into over 3000 people competing this obstacle course in dragon boats. Our team is 3x USyd, 3x UNSW, 2x German, 1x Swiss and 1x Japanese. We all get along really well and it turns out Lauren (UNSW) is in my 370 class! Small world! Next Saturday we compete! Eeek!!!

Bye for now!

This past weekend we've been in Victoria - the capital of British Columbia and the biggest city on Vancouver Island. I can see how it might be confusing given all these similar names, so I'll try and give you a brief rundown.

• British Columbia is Canada's south-western province.

• Vancouver is on the mainland, and is the biggest city in BC.

• Vancouver Island is off the west coast, and is an island.

• Victoria is BC's capital and it's on Vancouver Island.
  

So there you have it, BC in a nutshell.

So.... we left for Victoria as one massive group (24 of us, most of whom were Aussie!). The trip took about 6 hours by 4 buses and 1 ferry. We were staying at Ocean Island Backpackers which was fairly plain but served its purpose very well. The staff attempted to be helpful, although it became clear fairly quickly that they didn't know Victoria that well!!

We had dinner at My Thai - my first real Thai meal pretty much since I left home - and then headed out for ice cream. Unfortunately the place that we wanted to go to - one on the main street with 66 flavours - was closed! As a small (!) consolation, Natasha, Steph and I went to see Freq Nasty (the breaks DJ with a bird's nest haircut) DJ for $20! Awesome awesome breaks, and a really cool little club, but we were buggered by 1am!

Saturday morning we all slowly got up and headed out for a massive (in every sense of the word) breakfast at a cafe somewhere in Vic (its name escapes me). After such a huge omelette we decided to burn it off by cycling to Thetis Lake. This took slightly longer than expected, but the weather was awesome and the trip itself was great fun - really inspired me to do more outdoorsy activities before the weather turns sour come November-December.

We returned to Victoria to watch some street hockey before grabbing ice cream at Marble Slab (Cold Rock, anyone?). We went to John's Place (about 10 doors down from our hostel) for dinner - a great rare steak - before heading out to Legends. Legends is the tackiest, most mainstream, sleazy bar in Victoria and we owned it on Saturday! All 24 of us descended on it and brought the fun. To top it off it was the Kokanee Glacier Girl search, which turned the place into a bit of a sausage fest for a while before the dancing took over! What would Canada be without Sexyback!!

On Sunday I woke up fairly early to have breakfast with one of my 2nd Cousins Susan! I'd only been made privy to having relatives in Canada about a year ago, so to actually be here having brekkie with one was awesome! Flis and I are the youngest relatives but that didn't make the slightest difference as we got along famously! Oh, and breakfast was tops too - nothing beats fruit for a hangover!

The weather was nothing on yesterday (all rain and clouds ) so Claire, Amanda and I wandered all around downtown, along the coast and through the park (incl the world's largest Totem Pole) before we hopped on the bus/ferry/bus combo home.

Such an awesome weekend, but so tiring!

For photos, see: My Facebook Photos

As with Sydney University, UBC starts for real in second week. I've settled on my courses (3xPoliSci, 1xHistory) and I'm loving it!

My timetable is as follows:
Monday
6:30-8:30pm: HIST402 - Violence & Trauma in the late 20th Century.

Tuesday
(& Thurs) 11-12:30pm: POLI321A - Chinese Government & Politics
(& Thurs) 3:30-5pm: POLI370A - International Law & Politics of Military Force
7-10pm: POLI365A - Asian International Relations

This timetable leaves me with Wednesday and Friday free, and Monday essentially free, which is fantastic.

I've also got the readings lists for my subjects. HIST402 goes through about 200 pages a week! (eek!), but the others are a much more normal 30-50 pages a week. That I can deal with!

Almost every night this week we went out as a big exchange group:

• Monday: The Gallery - our new second home! (partly because Koerners was completely full)
  
• Tuesday: Exchange Student night at Koerners.
  
• Wednesday: Abi's 21st at an awesome wine bar in Yaletown called Bar None.
  
• Thursday: Salsa classes (finally!) & seeing Snakes On A Plane downtown - best Z-grade film EVER!
  

Still no assignments yet ... thank goodness!

This past week has been insane! It's as if classes have formed a minor inconvenience around our endless sightseeing and the like. So here goes the recap:

On Sunday a group of us headed to Stanley Park to cycle around and take in a bit more of downtown. Everything still seems so far away from campus, and it's taken a while to get my bearings, but slowly I'm sure it will all come together.

Stanley Park is the world's 2nd largest urban park and it's brilliant! Apparently there's an aquarium and all sorts of mini-parks inside, but today we just cycled along the boardwalk around it (it's on the peninsula) and into the water park area. The weather was perfect for it too!

On Sunday night we went to the Pit again with the international students. Looks like we've discovered our 'local'. And it's only 2 mins walk from my place. Yay!

Monday was a public holiday (Labor Day) and so a small group of us (Anna, Ella, Ali, Emily, Hanako, Chelsea and I) went to Granville Island to see the markets and have lunch (at Bridges). The markets were awesome - so much fresh food and so cheap - which is great considering they are fairly close to UBC. Also has some of the best street entertainment and buskers I've seen in a long time. We also continued downtown to Sears where I got a new satchel bag (from Roots - the quintessential Canadian brand).

Monday night I went with a completely different group (Natasha, Bailee, Jacki, Will, Sebastian and I) to Wreck Beach for a party. It was fairly cold (by my beachgoing standards) and more than a little interesting! We arrived after sunset, found a place near one of the big fires, and cracked open the alcohol. All was going well until we were approached by a drunk nudist (it's a clothing-optional beach) and threatened to be fed to the sea lions. He was fairly specific with his methods, so we took the opportunity to run off into a whole bunch of Canadians. Things couldn't have turned out better, as we met a group of first-years - one of whom knew the Cat Empire - awesome, eh?

Tuesday-Friday was mostly spent organising University ('school') life, and I had my first classes for all my subjects. They all look SO interesting, so I'm really happy. I even managed to meet friends in all of them, which makes a huge difference. Will from Sydney is in one of them, and Natasha (from Nottingham) is in another. The only crap subject is Modern Caribbean History, which I have changed to Anthropology of First Nations. That's not going very well either, so we'll see and I may change it again!

On Tues night I went out to dinner with two Singaporeans (Grace & Elizabeth) from my Asian International Relations class for Pho - Vietnamese noodle soup. Best cheap meal in a long time! Great company too!

Wednesday night was the first Pit night, and it was PACKED. Crazy crazy busy so we just gave up and headed to the Gallery with its couches and better music. Nice and chilled with excellent company.

On Friday night we headed to the Richmond Night Markets. We had thought this would be similar to those we'd all experienced in SE Asia, but alas this was not to be. Instead it was all overpriced food and tacky souvenirs. Ah well, you live and learn! It didn't help that it took 90mins to get there!

On Saturday we made the big trek to Metrotown (Canada's 2nd largest shopping mall) for the quintessential North American experience - drinking Starbucks in the mall. This place is massive, but hella fun. They even have a shop named Tristan. It's an upmarket ladies fashion shop!

Saturday night we headed to Hanako's Marine Drive Party. MD is another residence on campus, and it's amazing. Seriously like a hotel, it's light-years ahead of Gage and it's concrete ugliness. The Absinthe was finished, the music was good and the company was excellent. We ended up at Mahoney's - the Irish pub - for more beer and shenanigans.

Sunday was therefore spent recovering and Bailee, Jacki, Gretchen, Natasha and I stayed in to watch Shrek II on DVD, eating chocolate and crisps. Mmmm.... junk food!