Social Butterfly-Networking

Last week I did my first round of classes, though, due to the holiday I didn't have my Monday class until this week. So now I have had all of my classes at least once. Go me!

Also, since I don't have classes on Fridays I started the school year with a 5-day weekend, with which I did no homework. Because I am lame.

Having been out of school since last December it was a bit more difficult to get back into the swing of things than I thought it would be. I finally plunged myself into reading, etc. last Wednesday after class and since then it's felt a lot better, and easier to get started on assignments.

Though, now I definitely understand that it is true, once you stop it's hard to get back into the school mind-set, real life is easier to just float by in.

In that made any sense at all...

Anyway. What have I been up to?

Been out for drinks with people from my program. Both of my roommates had guests over last weekend, which was a lot of fun. Oddly enough they both had friends who were guys coming over, which, although we have guys in our program, was a bit refreshing, because we had been hanging out mostly with each other and then other girls from school.

As the week progressed, though, we all met more and more new people, so it wasn't all girls....

Also, introduced one of my roommates to Apples to Apples, because everyone should know the joy that it is.

Other than classes last week I am drawing somewhat of a mental blank until the weekend. With the way my schedule is set up Wednesday and Thursday is like my main "week" because I have 3 classes between the 2 days. Also, the weeks are already flying, and I haven't even been here a month. (Yet, only 3 days til that's reached)

Thursday some friends and I checked out the Midnight Kitchen on campus. It's a soup kitchen run by volunteers and that happens during the week, every day at 12:30pm (even though it's called Midnight Kitchen...)

It's an vegan meal that is supposed to have all the nutrients you need, and it comes with a dessert. It's also a pay-what-you-can operation, which is perfect for the miserly graduate student me.

The trick is getting there early, it's very popular and the line wraps around the hallways. And around, and around.

Friday afternoon there was a potluck picnic for the SIS (School of Information Studies) crew, which had a good turnout. Met more new people and fended off a pack of squirrels. They're bold little critters around here!

just before he touched my roommate's leg

Friday night found us at the graduate-student pub for some hanging out meeting of even more people...I think after Friday my friend count went up by about 20 +

Sunday my roommates and I organized a trek to the Tam-Tam which is at Parc du Mont-Royal, about a 25 minute walk from us. Or so we thought. Turns out there was a bike race so they had most of Avenue du Parc was blocked off and also part of Avenue du Mont-Royal, and we needed to cross Parc but couldn't where we were. Ended up walking about an extra 30-45 minutes just to get across the street. Ridiculous.

Monday night my roommates and I organized a horror movie-night, inspired by Monday's full moon. We have a pretty small living room, and didn't really take that into account beforehand, but we still managed to squeeze about 15 people into it, plus a ton of food, picnic style on the floor. It was a good turnout though, and a lot of fun.

Other Stuff

Although I finally bought myself a bike pump yesterday I am going to have to hold off on using my bike until this weekend, when I buy a new bike pump. I foolishly bought a small hand pump, thinking it'd be a smart and cheap way to go. Only, it's a lot tougher to use than a regular pump, and I can only get my tires up to 50 PSI and they need to be at 100.

*facepalm*

My apologies for this update being a bit slap-dash and lame. Been a long week and I need more sleep...better updates to follow, I promise!

Hot in the City

School Update

We had orientation on Tuesday and Wednesday, this past week, and then classes started on Thursday.

Orientation went pretty well. The first day was mostly sitting in this one lecture hall from 10am until 3pm, which was surprisingly exhausting, though we barely did anything.

The second day was more active, we had meetings in different buildings and also had a "BBQ", which, while it was free food, only consisted of hotdogs, potato chips and sodapop. Oh, and ketchup chips, which I was told Americans all love. Myself and a girl from California, who tried them, were not impressed. They tasted like the cheap ketchup you get that's too sweet and a bit watery. Or...maybe that's "catsup".

In anycase, the BBQ was then followed by option tours around the campus, which added another hour or so of walking onto the 45-minute (one-way) walk to campus from home. The tour ended at the graduate-student pub, which seemed pretty cool, until I was charged $6.55 for one pint of beer. I thought it was for grad-students, not suburbanites with full-time jobs...

My first class on Thursday was at 8:35am so I was up pretty early. Walked to school with my roommate who is in the class with me. The only thing with my Thursday schedules is that I also have a 5:30 night class. I usually avoid night classes, but this was a required course that wasn't offered at any other time. So rather than go home I hung out with a few classmates who were also in both the morning and the night class. We did a lot of walking, a LOT.

I then walked home at 8:30pm. Why?

Because the subway here costs $3 to go ONE WAY.

Cah-razy. No thank you. I'll take the T's $1.70 any day over that.

Oh, and my schools non-academic support staff went on strike on Thursday, as well.

Other Recent Events

Yesterday began a 5-day off stint for both me and one of my roommates. Since Monday is Labor day we have no classes and we both only have classes on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

I had originally planned to wake up at the crack-o-dawn yesterday and try and talk to the coach for the swim club (they meet in the mornings at 6:30am) but ended up bailing because my legs were so sore from all the walking the last few days.

Ended up venturing out with my roommate in search of winter boots, because, y'know, when moving to Canada this is something I don't find necessary to have before hand...

Our apartment is shouting distance from Avenue du Mont-Royal and we stumbled upon a closed-street festival due to the holiday weekend. It made shopping a little more hectic with all the people but I did succeed in finding winter boots, and for only $99.99 (on sale because they were from last season, oh no, I am so out of style...) now I just have to wait another month or so to use them...

After trekking around for a good two hours or so we came back home and ended up vegging out in the living room watching Community which is pretty freaking amazing. Seriously spent from about 3 or 4pm util 12:30 in the morning just hanging out with the roomies, it was pretty cool.

Also, our landlord and his family left for for the weekend and have been gone since Thursday and won't be back until tomorrow, so it has been nice. No small children running around on my head. We've had the blinds in the kitchen open for the last few days, and at some point we are also going to hang out on our front porch and drink some bee-ahs.