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.