Thoughts

So my first semester at Pearson has officially come to an end. Friday was the last day of classes, now we've just got to write exams (of which I happen to have 5!) and then we're done. It's gone so very quickly! But Friday was definitely a great day. I woke up at 7:20 to get to breakfast and then make it to class. But my first class ended up being cancelled, and then my second class was cancelled. Then my third just so happened to be cancelled and what do you know?, chemistry got cancelled as well! So I had a free morning! After lunch however, my class was not cancelled, but we managed to have fun anyways ... I mean how could we not have fun with Shakepseare ?!?! (I'm joking, for those of you who aren't entirely aware of my attitude towards Shakespeare). Sarah was shoremastering that afternoon, so Siyu and I decided to take out a boat and drown, just to make sure Sarah was kept on her toes. Well we did take out a canoe, but decided the water was far too cold to jump into! We paddled about though and generally had a good time.

So much more to say, but I shoudl really go and study for my exam, especially since Anne has scheduled rehearsals all afternoon !!!!! Been a pleasure procrastinating ... short as it's been.

Where to start this time?

So the show went amazingly. Rhubini's White Flowers act made half the audience cry, the other half stood up and started swaying side to side. It was really a unique experience as a performer, to see the audience getting that involved. Above is a photo of all of the act ... it's the only photo I can find on this computer of National Day. The Afghani song didn't go so well ... but I wasn't expecting anything great from that number. Rhubini's Movie was also fabulous. The audience laughed soooo much. I love interactive audiences. It makes the show so much more fun.

Anyways, on Monday Outdoor Fitness went to an indoor rock climbing wall. It was a lot of fun, though I was so disappointed to realize that my dancers legs have left me. I wasn't able to push myself up the wall anymore. So sad. Tuesday was an interesting day as well. It happened to be day 5 on our academic rotation, which means that after lunch we don't have a class, instead we have International Affairs. Sometimes a guest speaker comes in, other times students do a presentation. This time, in the flavour of Middle East and Indian subcontinent National Day, there was a presentation by students on the Israeli Palestine conflict. Also, there was a photojournalist who was meant to come in and share the time with them. Unfortunately, he got stuck behind a car accident on the way into Victoria and didn't make it on time. It was no big deal though, the students managed to fill all the time. I was meant to be interviewing this guy for the radio at 3:00 though. Jon Elmer his name was, anyways, he was meant to be doing a presentation in the evening as well, so he was still coming out to the college. So I waited around, got the station set-up, waited some more. Jon didn't show. Sean, my housefellow who was supposed to be looking after the 'guest' eventually had to go collect Jasmine from daycare, so he left me in the Admin building with the instructions that if Jon showed I was to take him to the guest house, then the caf, and then do the interview. So he did finally make it, but then the guest house was locked and one thing led to another. We did eventually get the interview done though. It was phenomenal. In everything he does, he has a goal and is very clear and aware of what that goal is. It was really interesting. Later that night I went to his presentation, he went over a bunch of the same stuff, but there was new stuff there as well. Rather than explain everything, I'll just post the link when the show is up. It'll be tonnes easier ... 'cause its all about being lazy and minimizing effort!

Anyways, Tuesday led to Wednesday. But this was no ordinary Wednesday, rahter, it was Jack Matthews day. Jack was our college founder and really an eclectic fellow from what we learnt. Anyways, everyone in the community (students, teachers, etc.) were meant to complete a personal challenge. We had two hours to do so. Chit and I were going to learn how to play guitar, but there are only so many guitars on campus and a lot of people were already using them. Sarah's personal challenge was to swim from the maintenance dock to the floating building, but she needed a safety boat, so I volunteered to paddle a canoe. When I arrived on the docks at 8:00 in the morning there was a whole crew of people who were swimming across the bay without wetsuits. Crazy people is all I can say. Anyways, they hadn't arranged a safety boat so I volunteered to paddle them across before Sarah went in. As we were preparing on the dock, teh shoremaster for the mornign (Mark) came and asked me what 'qualified' me for the paddling job. The conversation went as follows:

Mark: so ... you're going to make sure they make it across?

Claire: uh ... I guess so.

Mark: D'you know your water safety signals?

Claire: no

Mark: D'you have your water boat operators license?

Claire: no

Mark: Are you in a waterfronr activity?

Claire: no

Mark: D'you know how to pull someone into the boat if they need to get out of the water?

Claire: definitely not

Mark: D'you know first aid?

Claire: no

Mark: So you didn't do the first aid course?

Claire: oh that, yeah I did that

Despite my obvious underqualification he still let me do the job, I suppose there was no one else! As I was climbing into the canoe, he asks, "have you canoed before?" Well that just made me laugh. I gleefully told him that I hadn't, that learning was my personal challenge! In fact, Clare and I (yes, they let Cla(i)re squared commandeer a boat!) did have to emergency rescue one of the swimmers who felt his chest was constricting. Thankfully, he made it to the other side of the bay and scrambled up on some rocks so we managed to get him in the boat without capsizing.

After that, Sarah went in with her wetsuit and swam a longer way. It was unfortunate, seh forgot to bring a weight belf and so, due to the wetsuit, was unable to get her butt in the water, this made for some challenging swimming. Anyways, the morning was bizarre and crazy. A bunch of people went out in sailboats. When they got back, I was still on the docks taking pictures for the Link, our online newspaper. Theresa was wearing a sailing wetsuit and wanted to jump in the bay. She asked Anouk, who blantantly refused. Somehow I got roped into it. I honestly don't know how, but I sure had no time to think. Theresa grabbed my hand, ran and suddenly I was in the bay. Which reminds me, my clothes are still drying in the laundry room ...

It was bizarre though, usually when one jumps in the bay its a miracle and people are highly impressed. When one jumps in the bay on Jack Matthews day the common reply was, 'you jumped and did what?'. Anyways, the day was much longer but I should really go. Later.

And for the visuals ...

Alright, my chem lab is long overdue so I will just leave you with these few pictures. Today was a post owrthy day though, so definitely expect soem news tomorrow or the next day. Anyways, here we go:

Vivien and I demonstrating the basic move in the Indian Stick dance.

The obligatory room picture, Ashley is once again sporting a hand made dress fabricated from fabric scraps found on the art room floor ...

Here's the three of us ... all making an attempt at "cultural dress".

Cla(i)re squared.

The results of the head scarf workshop. Can you find me?

Me and Colin, the blind date my roomies found for me.

This is from our "pranking excursion". These random garbs were meant to disguise our identities .... ?

Rhubini demonstrating her joy at finding peppernuts in the care package from the church.

ta.

Alright ... here we go ...

So this past week has bee pretty crazy. There have been daily rehearsals for the Middle East and Indian Subcontinent National Day show, which is tonight. I'm only dancing in one act this time, but I'm singing in two others. Uh ... I have no idea where to start, so I may as well start with today. Today is Middle East and Indian Subcontinent Day so theres a lot of awesome stuff going on. As we speak, I'm wearin g a Muslim veil/head covering thinger as part of a workshop. Basically they taught us how to put on the head scarfs and now we're supposed to spend at least an hour wearing them so that we get an idea of how it feels to be a minority/Muslim girl. It's pretty cool, but this being Pearson, people aren't all that surprised that random people are walking arounf wearing head scarfs ... some people look really strikingly good in theirs, as for me, my dreads add a number of lumps and bumps to my skull and slightly ruin the effect! It's tradition on National Days that the members of that region of the world wake up their housemates. Unfortunately, my student job is to light the fire in the cafeteria (that's right, they trust that I won't burn down the cafeteria with my pyro-ness !) and it just so happened to fall this morning. So I woke up at 7, headed to the caf. Lit the fire and ran back to bed and fell asleep. Wow ... backwards isn't really working. So let me rewind a bit....

Yesterday after classes the sun showed its face (finally!). It being a Friday and sunny, I didn't want to waste the day. So Tadhg and I headed out to the soccer field (a ten minute walk) and climbed trees. It was sooo cool, the trees here are really quite excellent for climbing. In total we only climbed two trees, but we got a good 20 feet from the ground in both cases. And then we just sat in the tree and chatted for an hour. It was cool. But really quite cold. We realized that we hadbetter climb down before our hads got completely numb and we were no longer able to climb down at all! When we got back to Calgary house, Rhubini and Aparna were cooking indian food in Sean and Laura (our housefellows) kitchen. So I dropped in for taste testing/moral support. It was fun, we listened to music, danced, cooked, talked. The food was for a house breakfast tomorrow in honour of National Day. That night, I had a bass lesson and then there was the final dress rehearsal for the show. Unfortunately, my lesson ran late so I missed one of the acts I was supposed to be in, but no big deal. Afterwards a bunch of us got together in the LLT (little lecture theatre) to watch the Matrix, which I had never seen before. It was interesting, but not as phenomenal as everyone claims it to be. Then, seeing as which it was two and I had to get up at 7 the next morning, I went to bed.

That takes me to waking up, lighting the fire, and going back to bed. About an hour after I had returned to bed the Calgary House Middle east/indian representatives came in with hot mugs of fresh coffee. I took it, and then rolled over and fell back asleep. Rhubini came in awhile later to wake us all up again, but we convinced here to climb into bed as well ... Finally, Yarin came in and briskly told me (and I quote) : In the middle east we have two ways to wake you up. The first is to bring you coffee, the second is to shoot you. Well let me tell you, that got me out of bed. In the day room were last night's cooking efforts, really quite fabulous if you ask me. Since then, I've been hanging out in the workshops that are randomly scattered all over campus.

Anyways, thats the recent stuff, but what about the past two weeks I have been out of contact? It's been a lot of work really, school, rehearsals, etc. On Monday I had Outdoor Fitness, the activity in which somethine ineveitably goes wrong every week. This week we were supposed to run around a lagoon. The scenery was beautiful, the ari was fresh, the trail was questionably sign posted. The cool thing about this activity is that we go at our own pace and just meet up at the end. Unfortunaely, in this instance, the sporatic sign postage meant that I didn't meet up with everyone at the end. In fact. I never even reached the end. Instead, I followed the path to some dead end road, which I ran down until I found another path leading into teh bush, believing this to simply be a continuation of the trail, I followed it. I ended up on teh edge of the lagoon, which was what we were supposed to be circlign around nayways, unfortunatly, there was no longer any trail. In the end, I backtracked. Thank goodness I ran into Astrid, completing the circuit for her third time. She showed me where I had goen wrong. So, in the end everything turned otu alright, as is the case every week. Next week we're going rock climbing, I can only imagine what the results might be ...

Oh, the theatre production. It was fabulous! I had honestly never seen theatre to such an extreme before in my life. The show was called Girls on Top and was a compilation of scenes from various plays in which girls dominated. It was emotional and definitely a job well done. Now the first year music concert has to match up, thank goodness we have till the end of the year to prepare! As for my classes, they are going well. In music we're doing a lot of analysis. It's definitely time consuming and I often get frustrated with it, but I'm learning so much from the work. I get to start work on my composition soon, should be an intersting new endeavour for myself. On Wednesday is Jack Mathew's day. Jack Mathews was the guy who founded Pearson college. He chose the location, and was our first director for many years. So on Wednesday to honour him every student is going to complete a personal challenge. They range from math homework, to swimming, to writing poetry, to getting to know one's roommates better. Chit and I are going to learn how to play the guitar. It was either that or climb trees, but I got that in yesterday. So yeah, we're either just going to collaborate our knowledge of music and instruments and figure it out ourselves (with the help of a chord chart) or we may get Marina to help us out. Either way, it's bound to be fun.

As for tonight's dinner, it is tradition that one takes a date to National Day dinners. My roommates and I decided to do a blind date thing for each other. We're all going to sit at a table together. It should be fun. I'm interested to see who my roomies found for me. Ireceived a random note signed "your national day date" this week. It was basically a drawing of a moose ... supposedly thats supposed to make it highly obvious as to who my date is. I still can't figure it out!

So today I can offically wash my hair as its been a month since tme impletmentation of my dreads. However, I only got around to ordering the special shampoo on Thursday, so my hair is going to have to wait a few more days. The bizarre thing is thats its not greasy at all! Anyways, I should get soem homework done before my next workshop. By the way, my first radio show is up on the internet now : http://pcradio.ca my show is entitled Talking to Lofties. There was a super cool interview in the middle of the show that Michelle and ?I put a voice effect on. Unfortunately when we uploaded the show to the web that track got muted somehow. So there's a huge silence in the middle of the show. We're hoping to get it fixed sometime this week, as well as record a new show. On Tuesday, we have an international affairs session adn this week theres a guest speaker coming in. John Helmer I think his name is. He's a photojournalist who has spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Anyways, I may get to have a one on one interview with him for the radio. I'm super excited and definitely hoping it works out.

I've been getting up to a lot of pranking lately. Sarah has been receiving gifts in her room from her "secret buddies" who are in actual fact not so secret. So we played a return prank, we took the tree from the student common room adn placed it in Cagan's room. It's really quite a heavy tree and they couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. On Wednesday afternoon we removed it and replaced it with a log, a few ferns and an apple. A few weeks ago I also helped Siyu play a prank. She had a secret buddie for her advisee gruop. So we snuck into his room one night and stole all his shoes. Now let me tell you, he had a lot of shoes for a guy!! Anyways, we smuggled them our of the house in a garbage bag. We decided to hang them on the tree outside East house. So we were climbing the tree and hanging these shoes but people kept walking by adn recognizing us, despite the dark. So Sarah ran into her room and grabbed us three random hats and scarfs. So adorned with there unique items we continued our quest. I have a great photo of us ... I'll post it sometime. Anyways, now I haven't got an homework done adn its just about time for the workshop on Israeli military service. Bye!

I have Ugly Feet

So .. it's been a crazy week or so here! On top of the "post project week work loard", I've had dinner dish duty which takes from 5:00 till 8:00 pm. It's fun ... but has resulted in my bedtime being pushed back till two in the morning most nights.

Rehearsals have started for Middle East and Indian Sub Continent Day. I'm dancing in Rhubini's mock bollywood mini-musical, performing a traditional Afghani dance and participating in teh Indian Stick dance. I fell bad for my dance partner, the other Clare, I have whacked her fingers so many times they must be black and blue! So our last student has arrived on campus now. There is only oen student who didn't make it and that was due to VISA problems, she'll be offered the scholarship again next year though so hopefully the issues will be sorted out by then and she can make it.

Whats been going on around here? A lot of work on my part. It's all more or less interesting though so I have no complaints. The first year theatre performance is on Saturday night, so the theatre students are havign ridiculous rehearsal schedules ... think a,ong the lines of 7:00 - 12:30 every night. It's intense, but I'm super excited to see the show. Rhubini is a theatre student and so has been participating in this ridiculous rehearsal schedule ... but today she got put on official voice rest. That's right ... she's losing her voice!

(to be continued, I forgot abotu my recording session!!!)

The Progression of Craziness (in no apparent order)

A photo journal of our week of craziness ... I can't figure out how to get them in chronological order/I'm waaaay too lazy. So here we go ... the Progression of Craziness


Here we observe Sarah putting to practice the skills she learnt in TOK class ... performing an icepick labotomy on the sun that was found on her blanket.

Above and below please observe the signage outside the shop where severe dreading and colouring took place on Tuesday past .

Stylists and their products ...

The last photo of hair. Observe the sly looking smiles ... we know whats coming.

The honourable delegates of Qatar prior to openign ceremonies of the UVic Model United Nations Conference.

Here are the bunnies that are so abundant on the UVic campus. This is prior to the bunny biting Rhubini and earning her a spot in the conference newspaper .... That's right, the headline read "Delegate bitten by UVic Bunny ..." Pearson College was so proud.

This is Calgary room number six abotu an hour or two ago. We were dressed up for teh Calgary House Halloween Party. Note a bank robber, a desperate housewife, a fisher man of sorts and a pirate.

Sarah and Claire celebrating the first night in Victoria with a tub of icecream ... if only they knew the tradition this started! This is also a pre-dreads piccy.

Sarah and Rhubini on the second night of ice cream ... by this point we had prograssed to a two litre tub, four spoons adn less than an hour!


Both above and below, you can observe two uneducated cooks setting off on their attempt at Kraft Breakfast. One cannot qualifiy it as Kraft Dinner if it is served before 11 in the morning ... as this one was.

Here is hair colorist Claire attempting to remove any trace of bonde whatsoever from Rhubini's hair. Much to our delight ... it worked!

Being overly bored and hyper in a busstop leads to photos such as this ... jumping off a bench in the busstop after realizing we had ridden the bus in teh wrong direction for a good 20 minutes.
Got Milk?

The other side of the bed durign the second icecream eating. Observe Clare and Claire. First night with dreads ...

First night of project week, Go Go Grannies Project. Me and Siyu I"m dressed for the African dance ... shes already in costume for the Chinese Fan dance.
Rhubini and I's lunch on a bus. Consisted of mango juise, bananas and three dry tangerines. Way to eat on a budget!

Me at a busstop.

It seems I've forgotten a bunch of pictures ... but this outlines the madness in Vancouver. Hopefully pictures of teh madness in Victoria two times over will soon appear ....

The Continuation ...

So when we left off our two brave voyagers were setting off into the depths of Vancouver city intent on their mission : find a hair salon that would provide both dreading and dying services for a relatively low cost.

That's right. We decided that the Pearson hippie bug had infected us. So we spent the morning hunting down salons and finally set an appointment at DejaVu, a Carribean hair shop downtown. Then in the afternoon we headed to Quest Food Rescue to clock some vlounteer hours. It was a really cool place Quest was. Basically, they resuce food pallets that big stores have deemed not worth the effort/damaged/near expiry. The corporations would usually send that food to a landfill, but instead Quest offers to go pick it up and take it off their hands. They then sell the food at a highly reduced price (less than 1/3 the original) to families that couldn't otherwise afford to buy their own groceries. It's really a cool program. However, a lot of the food they still can't use. So they dispose of it in an eco firendly way. They compost eveythign they can, recycle what they can and then dispose of the rest. So that first afternoon I spent about on hour price ticketing things. It was cool ... I got to wear an apron adn use the little sticker gun. I got really fast and since I was doing it with other Pearson students we just had a really good time. Then I got to compost most marshmallows than I have ever seen before in my life! A whole pallet of boxes, thirty boxes per pallet, thirty bags of mini-multicoloured marshmallows per box. It was hardcore. We opened all the boxes (recycling), opened the bags (garbage) and threw the marshmellows in the compost. Two dumpsters adn abotu four grabage cans full of marshmellows. It was phenomenal. I'll get the picture on as soon as I can!

That night was Ben's birthday, so both hostel groups (our hostels were across the street from each other) went to a house that was being rented by a few other Pearson first years to celebrate and generally hang out. You can't keep Pearsonites away from each other long! It was a good night. The fact that the whole thing was organized by firts years and there were only a few second years there was really neat.

The next day, Sarah left the hostel bright and early to put in her final shift at Quest, Rhubini and I slept in adn then headed to our hair appointment. We were there from 11:30 till 5:30, but we left as new people. I have adopted the name Wolfgang Madusa Puck (don't ask) to fit the new look. Rhubini is hereon known as either Simba or the Happy Hippo (it was meant to be hippie ... but a slip of the tongue rendered it hippo). That day went really quickly, as most of it was spent in the hair salon. Sarah and Clare kept checking in on us throughout the afternoon adn a few other Pearson students randomly heard we were there and dropped by to examine the progress. After we were done, the four of us (Sarah, Rhubini, Clare, Claire) headed to the hostel. Clare wasn't sure she could find her way back to the house she was meant to be stayign at, so she just spent the night at the hostel with us. We bought two litres of ice cream, stole some spoons from McDonalds and had a jolly good time!

The nest day (Wednesday) Sarah left for Toronto. Rhubini, Clare and I went to the food bank to put in two shifts ... (to be continued ... to add to the suspense let me leave you with this thought ... Claire Pritchard and a 5 tonne truck ... yes, its as bad as you imagine).

Comments ....

Comments are cool ... hint hint !

Welcome to Project Week

Alright, it's officially time for the first segment in the chronicles of Claire and Rhubini's project week experiences ... and let me tell you, what an experience it has been! Saturday I was awoken fairly early (6:00) due to Ashley and Josseline's departures. They tried to be quiet, but it seems I'm not the heavy slumberer they had written me off to be. Much to our dismay and (silent) amusement, Rhubini had only just returned to the room after having spent the whole night awake and galivanting around the campus. Anyways, I woke up, got out of bad, had breakfast and then the two remaining girls of Clagary room 6 decided we should probably pack ... seeing as which we were meant to be out of our rooms no later than 10:00 am. So we started pulling things out of the closet adn throwing them in a pile on the floor. then promply went back (in my case) to bed. We inevitably slept waaaaaay in. And the had to rush to complete our packing and the mandatory cleaning of our room which was meant to happen before we left for project week. We did our best, and somehow still managed to be a half hour late for rehearsal in the Max Bell Hall that morning. What basically happened, was everyone who was involved in the Go-Go Grannies project (the Stephen Lewis fundraiser) got shipped up to the Max Bell Hall and retained there for an entire day of rehearsals and sleep! It was an overall good day, the prefect balance of hardcore rehearsing and light hearted play. We had soem disucssions, made an african drum circle, discussed our life goals, and compared the different techniques to moving your hips according to your continent ... while this last point may seem mediocre, there is a very distinct technique associated with each region of the world. The most intricate one seemed to be the one from Fiji ...

Anyways, eventaully all our acts were clean, and it was time to head into Victoria (in two 15 seater vans) to do the show. Before the show, Stephen Lewis actaully came into our dressing room and chatted with us and took photos with us and stuff. It was pretty neat. Unfortunately, meeting my Canadian hero was paled slightly in light of another event that took place that night. During our Friday night dress rehearsal for the show, the producer (a memeber of the women's club holdign the event) had been present. At that point in time, four of us students were still missing host families for the night, so she agreed to take us in (Rhubini, Champo, Daniela and me). However, for some reason still unknown to me, on the night of the show something came up and she could no longer take the four of us. So Libby, our drama teacher and the member of fucaulty introducing us at the event, threw into her speech that Pearson college is always looking for host families for our international students.And in fact, tongiht there were four performers who had no where to go, so if the audience was interested they could come see her after the show to give us a house for the night. Rhubini and I almost died sitting in the audience! So anyways, after the show we went to find Libby and see if anyone has volunteered to adopt us for the night. There was a crowd of people around her. So I sidled up to her and in actual fact teh whole thing played out like a cattle auction. Basically we were handed out to whoever pushed their way to the front first. I mentionned to Libby that Rhubini and I would really like to be hosted together as we were infact sharing a suitcase! So we were "given" to this nice woman named Loralee. But as I was standing there I experienced the oddest thing ever (for awhile at least!). A man was standing there and his wife comes rushing in next to him:

wife: how many are left?
husband: theres only one left
wife: that was quick
husband: well two of them just went together ... they were sharing a suitcase or something.

I felt like an object! Rhubini had a similar experience in the hallway waiting with our suitcase.

But it worked out well for us, we went home with Loralee and actaully had a very interesting and "Pearson type" discussion fairly late into the night. In the morning, she made us banana omellet type thinger and drove us to our busstop. From then on we were on our own. We reached the ferry terminal without a problem, caught the ferry, arrived in Vancouver. That's where the real trouble began. We were looking for a bus to get us into the city. So we're standing at the busstop reading the map and trying to figure out how to get where we want to get (though we're not entirely sure where it is that we want to get!). Being Vancouver, it is of course raining quite heavily. For any of you who have ever been to the Vancouver ferry terminal, you will know that it is a ways out of the city and in fact only one bus even services the stop. Well Rhubini and I didn't know that. So the bus, which has been sitting at the stop for quite some time finally pulls away. We look up just in time to read off the sign that has been there all along that there is only one bus that services the stop. And it only comes every hour. Oh imagien oru delight! There are no restaurants at the Vancouver ferry terminal, no comfortabel couches, no magazines, no vending machines for students who don't have cash. There are ATM's ... but no way of getting change from the bills that the ATM will spit out at you . Add to that the rain, which is so much more abundant in Vancouver than Victoria, and you have a glimpse at the depressing situation we were in. So we called Sarah, who had arrived in Vancouver the night prior. She had little to no advice to offer, having had her own share of troubles finding the hostel the day before. An agreement was made that once we arrived at the hostel we would call her again adn the three of us would be reunited atlast!!!

Anyways, we finally caught the right bus adn then connected to the right bus and then were walking down teh right street at teh right time adn happened to run into Sarah,Omar and Kotiba meandering aimlessly down the street. So they showed us to the hostel. The hostel itself was nice, however the neighborhood was not. And hunting for supper proved quite a problem. All that was anywhere near the place was a McDonalds, a Burger King, a great looking ice cream parlor (but we weren't in teh mood for ice cream) and a dingy little Portugese restaurant. Being infinitely close to East Hastings, we didn't want to head in the other direction. So we ate Portugese and then hit up an outrageously priced convience store to buy bread, peanut butter and ice cream for back at the hostel. We ate the entire tub of ice cream in one sitting. No problem.

The next morning, Sarah headed off to work the first shift at the food rescue bank and Rhubini and I headed off on our own not-so-little expedition ...

Chapter Two coming soon to theatres near you!

p.s. all this is photo chronicled as well, but neither of us remembered to bring the connector chords, so they will be added once I get back to the college ... be excited ... be very excited!

The Long Awaited Pictures

Alright, so I've finally gotten around to bringing all the hardware required to upload pictures to the computer lab. The pictures are more or less in random order.

Firstly, we've got the famous bread party. Earlier this year Sean, our housefellow, held a breadmaking workshop for any Clagarians who were interested. the result? A great smeeling house with huge batches of fresh bread ready around 8o'clock. Here is Calgary Room 6 (my room!) with a few additions eating bread off a makeshift table (think bass case) with a few scrounged supplies ... knives stolen from the caf, random people's peanut butter, the house kettle stealthly smuggled into our room , etc.


This is North American National Day dinner ... hence the dress. These are the dancers! Me, Anouk from Belgium and Anna from Wales. Good times. During campus parties we make sure that we randomly bust our our modern dance piece ... just to reassure ourselves that we are indeed bizarre.

Yesterday Rhubini, Sarah and I went outside to take pictures under the tree. It was Rhubini's idea ... she says they don't get trees like this in Singapore. Anyways, our innocent photoshoot turned into a fullscale leaf fight.

This is my corner of room 6. Observe the relative tidiness ... it doesn't usually look like this! Just out of range of the photo is four drawers that are under the corner of the bed that is cut off ... two of those drawers are mine.

ROOM PICTURE!!! Again, its national day. Thsi is Me, Rhubini (Singapore), Ashley sporting her garbage bag and duct tape dress (The Bahamas) and Josseline (Honduras). I realise this isn't a great piccy of Josseline ... but there are far too many of us to have even one good piccy ... demonstrated further in the upcoming picture ...

This is us! Rhubini, Sarah, Claire. The late night dock crew. Yes, its tradition. One a month we head to teh dock, well bundled of course. With steaming hot chocolat and Indian popcorn (its amazing stuff).

Final picture, our room on the night of the "dress like your roomie/paint fight" house meeting. Same order as the other room picture ... same situation as the other picture!

Hope ya'll enjoy these pictures. I now have to run and study up on economics for tomorrow's test!

Okey, I've figured out how to post a few picutres, the ones on my camerae I still have to load to the computer, but for now these ones I've stolen from other people will have to do! The one uptop is Rhubini and I. I'm dressed up as an Indian for Metchosin day. Good times, that was about a month adn a half ago now ... wow time flies!

Well alright, teh rest of the picutres i'm coming across are boring. So I'll try and load mine tomorrow.

National Day and Post National Day!

So North American National Day was absolutely amazing!!! After rehearsing for all hours of the night the entire week prior, Calgary House's proud North American's awoke at 7:15 in the morning (not early on a weekday, but definitely waaaaay early on a weekend!) to cook pancakes for the rest of the house. We then decked ourselves out as cowboys, cranked up teh country music and paraded through teh hosue waking everyone up for pancakes adn a day full of workshops and North American culture. Personally, as soon as the food was done I headed back to bed for another two hours! On Friday night we had had a NorthAmerican style drivei n movie on East house lawn. Basically a whack of students huddlded up on the grass with a tonne of blankets to watch the highly american classic ... GREASE! It was pretty cold, btu we sang along adn cuddled up ... and then a huge vat of hot chocolate arrived, along with cinnamon buns. It was a good time.

But anyways, back to Saturday. So we had workshops running all day long, just general things abotu north america (I've becoem too lazy to capitalize that each time!), such an inuit games, bannock bread baking, and, of course, hockey playing! I had rehearsals all afternoon, so didn't make it to any of the workshops. I also had a tonne of homework adn so I headed out to the dock to seclude myself and get some work don.e It was really nice, the sun was shining and all these friendly boaters kept motoring past on their way to the harbour. And then at 5:00 we had the famous national day dinner. Everyone hardcore dresses up and goes with a date and teh caf actually serves nto half bad food. And there are tonnes of pictures taken. Tonnes. I even brought my camera and went a little picture crazy, so I'll be posting pictures soonish. (assuming I can figure out how).

And then comes the greatest part (in my humble opinion) the national day show!!! All three of my acts went really really wel! As did the rest of teh show. the Quebecois finalyl got the rhythm of their song moreor less right, the cheerleaders didn't drop anyone, no guitar strings broke, all the cotumes stayed intact and no one fell during swing dance. Supposedly teh videos will be posted on youtube, so I'll post the link once they're up. I was in swing dance adn cell block tango, both of which turned out great! After the show we got so many compliments and hugs and all round happiness! And then we had a high school style party afterwards, with really old music like spice girls, I"m a Barbie Girl, and ust crazy stuff like that. Surfin' USA! It was lots of fun.

Then on Sunday I had soooo much work to catch up on, I spent all day at church, on teh phoen or working. Apart from house meeting, which was absolutely hilarious. We did one of those activities where you're blindfolded and you feed your partner ice cream ... I was partnered with Sherdina from ARuba and she ended up getting ice cream all over my face, no thanks to a little help from a no-good Singaporean! Then I headed back to the lab to finish off an essay ... which I never did finish ... I just got too tired. I did it this afternoon and got it in 3 minutes after the deadline, technically I was doen on time, but Rhubini and I couldn't figure otu how to work the stapler in teh mail room ... which delayed us a good ten minutes, thereby making us late for the deadline. Thank goodness our teacher hadn't checked his mailbox yet!

Tonight seems very anticlimactic htough. After the crazy preparations for national day and the crazed dash to get homework done last night, tonight seems somewhat dull. I have little to no homeowrk, and no rehearsals. though! I did have an amazing rehearsal today! For the GO-Go-Grannies project this weekend I'm going to be doing a traditional Chinese fan dance. So the first rehearsal was todya. Turns out there are only four people in teh dance, Beini from china, Charlotte from china (or Hong Kong .. can't quite remember) and Siyu from China. and Me! But the dance is amazing. It's so traditional. I"m even learing the traditional dance step that they used in order to look liek tehy're floating when they wear their kimonos. It's pretty neat stuff. And we get these huge flapping fan type things. There's a video on youtube of the PEarson college group who did it last year .... but it was a considerably larger group!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0CvdQSA1Hg

That's sort of the idea, though ours is a lot more slow. Anyways, thats it fro now. I have a hot chocolate date with a few friends in an hour and I should do some studying before then!

Thanksgiving

So ... its been a busy few days here at Pearson. I actually have lots of interesting stories to tell! On Friday afternoon we had a much needed break from teh rain. The sun came out and it got really hot and nice looking and generally pleasant. So I decided to skip matrial arts (it's an informal activity anyways) and go for a run on the Goose (a gorgeous trail thats close-ish to the college). Anyways, I had just gotten changed, put in the contacts, tied the runners, strangled my hair into a ponytail (its not that easy when you have dreds!) adn was about to go when Heather came into my room and asked if I wanted to go and jam for a bit. Well of course I did! So the two of us headed up to the Max Bell Hall to play for awhile. All she had was a TAB for some Argentinian punk song ... and no recording. So she played electric, I played bass and we both sang (the fact that I don't speak Spnaish definitely didn't hold us back at all ... I sang along as though i knew it!). Anyways, I played the tabs for a while and then just started comping. It was so cool! It's not as hard as I'd always imagined. We took turns soloing and yeah ... Anyways, we had played for about 45 minutes when Marina came in. Marina plays wicked guitar, so Heather moved to the trap set and Marina replaced her on guitar. And we had a female jam session. It was so good. We played for two hours. I got two huge blisters on my fingers. But it was great. We randomly made up lyrics to a song and soloed and laughed and made noise. then I dashed to supper, ate in seven minutes flat and ran back up the hill to the Max Bell for my first bass lesson. All in all it was a grand night of music.

On Saturday I headed into town for dance classes, but only went to one rather than the usual two because Rhubini and I had to go shopping for dresses. That's right, Ashley (one of our secondyear roomies) told us we had to go buy ourselves dresses. So beign good first years, we did as told. Value Village style! I ended up trying on this strapless red, white adn orange thing, but then decided not to buy it. So we ran back to the bus stop. Missed the first bus, almost missed the second bus, but finalyl got on and back to campus. This morning, I got up adn went to church. When I got back Rhubini had already left to go stay with a host famiyl for Thanksgiving supper adn a night off campus, but on my bed she had left the dress. I guess she bought it when I wasn't looking! I love my roomies.

The other intersting thing that I've gotten up to this weekend was filming a video. Every first year has a second year buddy, mine is Anne from Germany. Anne is an amazing film director. Anyways, for her IB diploma project shes doing an artistic film about a dancer. So teh school bought a new video camera that arrived on Friday adn seh wanted to test it out under different light settings adn stuff. So she, Rhubini and I went up there last night twice for one and a half hour shifts to film this video. Rhubini did lights and I basically improved. Anne would have specific shots of just feet or certain arm movements and stuff. It was realyl weird to not have to focus on holding my entire body within techinque all at the same time. Just the aspect she was filming. The funniest part came when Anne carried this wheelchair onto the stage. I was then seh sat in it and called Rhubinin down from the sound booth. You know when cameras are on wheels so that they roll nice and smoothly. Well Pearson doesn't have that type of technology. So Anne sat in the wheelchair holding the camera and directing. I danced and Rhubini ran back and forth between the lights and pushing the wheelchair. Thanks goodness Tawab walked by, we snagged him to do the wheelchair pushing so that Rhubini could just stay in the booth. It was really educational. Not to mention hilarious. Anyways, theres so much more I could say, but due to the constant distraction of MSN I've been in here over an hour already. So some other time.

It's long ... and dreary ...

Hey guys! So today was yet another crazy day at Pearson. I once again tried to get out of bed intime for breakfast and once again failed miserably. I am determined to make it there tomorrow morning, seeing at which its the last day of the week I shouldn't be worried about losing sleep hours at that point! So my day started off with chemistry (woohoo!), which was a disappointment since all we were doing was reviewing Tuesday's test. Then I ran off to TOK, only to find that class was cancelled. So I spent a nice free block in my room, writing letters and searchinghigh and low for some laundry detergent (which I never did find and so have still not washed my clothes ...). Then the famous cookie break. for those of you who haven't had this fabulous tradition described to you yet, basically at 10:00 every morning everyone (and when I say everyone I mean everyone, teachers, students, housefellows, admin, maintenance, etc.) congregates in the cafeteria to chat and eat cookies for 15 minutes. It is also the thermos refilling time so that we don't freeze to death in our next two classes. After cookie break I had math another free block (this one is scheduled though, so I knew about it) and then math class. Lunch was surprisingly tasty, but then again even the most unskilled cook (myself) couldn't ruin a make your own sandwich buffet! anyways, after lunch was french class, definitely one of my favourites so far. Our teacher is this french woman who seems absolutely terrifying at first, but is really highly ridiculous and enjoys a good laugh. Anyways, I'm realizing how entirely boring this post must be. So on to more interesting things (in theory).

I keep getting struck with how entirely bizarre this community is. I was running today just by myself and came across my chemistry teacher, so we ran together for a bit and then I, full of spritely youthful-ness, left him in the dust! But things like that are entirely commonplace. Anyways I just had an entirely eye-openign conversation (those seem to be in abundance tonight, as this is the second one). But the guy sitting next to me in the computer lab was showing me pictures of his village. And then he came across one and was like "oh yeah, this is from after the war". He's from Lebanon and his village is right next to the Israeli border, last year during the Lebanon-Israel war huge parts of his village got destroyed. Both his neighbor's houses were reduced to rubble. I just can't even imagien what that would be like! It was my first truly Pearson experience. But can you imagine, he said he stayed in his village for eleven days of war and then finally decided to leave! I just can't wrap my mind around it ...

Anyways, I'm finally starting to get a flavour of what schoolwork here is like. A lot of it is self-initiated. The teachers teach you and then you have to teach yourself the next bit in order to complete the exercises. It's really a foreign system, to me, but seems like a lot of fun (so far ... once I'm stressed out and confused beyond belief I may not admire the system to the same extent). We're currently setting up our project weeks. Which is basically a week where we're kicked off campus and told to do a service project. I'm fairly excited. I had a really great project lined up, but teh administration vetoed it due to security reasons. Unfortunate, but I've got another good one lined up. A whole bunch of us are heading to Vancouver where we're going to stay in a hostel for a few nights (like 5) adn work at a food bank. Then, Rhubini and I are going back to Victoria to participate in the Modal UN conference there. Should be a fun week.

Anyways, that my extended update for today!

Post #2

hmm ... so our house meeting on Sunday was definitely an adventure of sorts. First off, my entire room was watchign a movie when someone walked in and told us that we were going to be late for the house meeting. (For those of you who remember teh night we watched Children of Men, it was that movie ... I have now officially seen the end!) So anyways, we basically stood up, stripped and passed our clothes to the right. Granted, it took us sometime to figure out just what was right ...

Anyways, we made it to the house meeting on time and after chowing down on the inevitable fresh snacks (hot bread and meltign chocolate chip cookies) we decided to hand paint a banner to decorate our front hall. you know, the who9le business of placing your handprint on a sheet of paper and then writing our names next to it. Well it seemed like a good idea, but obviously 40 teenagers with paint on their hands can't be trusted not to start a paint fight!!! So the house got a little messy, we got very messy, but it was fun.

Tonight I got a true taste of Pearson. We've been having swing dance classes once or twice a week as an informal activity (we don't get credit for it). So anyways, we wanted to perform it at teh North American National Day Show, but there were waaaay too many couples to fit on stage. So there were auditions adn this story is getting way too long. Anyways, the jist of it is that I made it into the show group and practice was scheduled for tonight at 6:30. But on Tuesday night at 6:30 I also have Christian Fellowship. And at 7:0o tonight there was training on how to use teh sound equipment. And Canada's ambassador to the EU was coming in to give us a presentation. So I had to choose one! In teh end, it worked out well, swing practice was cut short by a half hour so I made it to both that and the sound training session. Anyways, ta for now.

Welcome

Okey, so since I'm writing you all letters and telling the same stories over and over again, I decided this would be a better alternative. So anyways, I may as well start with today. I woke up around 10:00, had a quick caf breakfast and then headed to church. It was really really good. The church I'm going to here really has an evangelistic falir. Not really evangelistic, but more so just sharing what God is abotu adn being a lgith wherever you are. Of the three Sundays I've been there, that has been the main part of the message each time.

I only just arrived back on campus in time for brunch, which was surprisingly tasty today. Then I started on all the homework I didn't do over the weekend! Currently, I'm procrastinating writing a french composition with teh topic "season = changement". Yes, its fairly clear why I'm avoiding writing it, the topic has nowhere to go ... All day I've been running into the girls in my french class and we're all bamboozled as to what we should write. I spent a nice hour in the music room listening to the Nutcracker suite and analyzing it for music class tomorrow. It was time well spent. Estlin (US) came along and brought apples and peanut butter so we basically hung out there and identified dynamics, chords, instruments and such.

In an hour I have the weekly house meeting. Woohoo! The best part about house meetings is that there is always really good food. Baking or fresh fruit (other than apples, bananas or oranges, which is all the caf ever has). Tonight we have to dress up as our roommate. Should make for an interesting display of creativity ... I'm slightly worried! Anyways, thats all for now.