Just thought I'd give you guys a short update... I'm at the Robarts Library right now, which is really close to my house and about 13 floors. Just came back from the Orientation for exchange students. They gave us some general info and then we had to put stickers with our names on it on our shirts and mingle with the people there. Most of the people came from the UK, from Hong Kong, Australia and Holland (there were two Dutch people we got to know too). There was also a small Scandinavian crowd. I actually expected a lot more people to be there, there were probably about 50. We got to exchange some phone numbers and apparently we're gonna go and have a drink later w/the Australian group. We've also been invited to this English bloke's b-day on Sunday, but I'm not so sure how serious his invitation was.
For the rest I had a really lazy day today. Did some shopping at Dollarama (where everything -obviously- costs one buck). They have some fake flowers there which I bought to cheer up my room, and some candles and stuff, but u can also buy plates and everything there for really cheap.
It's really getting cold now. Yesterday someone told me that Thursday, which is today, was gonna be the coldest day of the entire year, but the predictions on the internet strongly contradict that! It's going to be like -16 next week or even colder, so that's going to be horrible! Last year they had the coldest winter in about 100 years, so it should be less cold this year. The wind really makes it feel cold though.
Yesterday I had two lectures: Relationships and Young Offenders. Relationships seemed interesting, and was tought by this guy who claimed to be related to Celine Dion (his last name was Dion as well). But the professor talked SO slowly! He actually said in the beginning of the class that he was trying to pace himself because otherwise he would talk to fast, but that he didn't want to talk too slow either and put us all asleep. Well, he did! What he took 3 hours to say, anyone else could've probably done w/in 1 hour! I hope it'll improve. The other class was more of an introduction, he talked about when the exams are and what the course outline is like. It seemed ?really interesting, but it collides with another course that I would really like to do (but aren't enrolled in yet). I'll see...
Life here is so different to what I'm used to back in Holland! Everything is so close by, it's awesome! The buildings are huge, though not in the street where I live, everything's kinda nice and cosy there. The university buildings are all close together, but there are so many of them that it still takes a while to get from one lecture hall to the other. And there's students all around the place! Mainly Chinese, Japanese and Korean actually, white people seem to actually be a minority! But it's cool that the streets are filled with young people.
Contrary to what Roos and I thought, the meal plan actually has started this week. People told us it'd only start next week. So next week we have to definitely go by and see how good/bad it is. The last couple of days we've mainly been surviving on eating out, although we did cook at home once. Today we had some food at the exchange orientation, and I ate so much during lunch that I was still stuffed anyway.
One of these days I'm planning to put some pictures on my site, so stay tuned! I took some pics of my room, of the famous CN tower and of Team Holland (as Sukrit calls Haroon, Sascha, Roos and me) so I'll try and put them online sometime soon.
Take care! And Ira - call me!
