November is OVER!!

Or at least mine is. And that means I can go back to leading the absurd life I love. Though I must admit, this past week I've been taking more time for the absurd and less time for the studies ... which has resulted in some very late (or non-existent) nights. But let's forget all that. Because my wonderful, wonky, wacked out life is back (how's that for alliteration?). 

So tomorrow is the last national day. European. It's good. I'm actually participating in this one (I just couldn't handle another show where I just watched!!!) despite the craziness of the past few weeks. I'm doing a modern ballet with Anouk and a few others. It's neat. Also, Irish dance and Greek dance. It's sorta interesting, there's a lot of folk dance (by North American definition) in this show. You know, not so many arm movements, lots of feet and lines and circles. It's sort of interesting. I hadn't realized that we didn't have that in the other shows. It actually makes for a bit of a boring show. But not entirely. 'Cause there is some really wonderful stuff in the show as well. Lots of spoken acts about political stuff or history of whatever. It's nice. A lot more informative than your standard show that is just packed full of dances. There's also a fair amount of songs and such. Woohoo! Anyways. 

So my bass has arrived. The BIG one. Yup. It's beautiful. Absolutely magnificent. The art students are crazy about it. Haha. I love it. And my bass teacher is really good. It's really motivating me this year to have good teachers and an exciting challenge in the form of a monstrous instrument to play with. I feel like a real music student again. I love it. I will send a picture someday. I have no idea how on earth I'll go back to just playing my boring electric after this. And not having access to such a beautiful instrument. 

So anyways, this another really short post. I just wanted to celebrate being done with November. Yay! You see, I just finished my chemistry exam. And that is really the last element of November for me. After that it's just normal work load. I'm actually going to town this weekend. First time since the second week of October. 

Life this week ...

Can't even remember when I last posted. Then again, can't seem to remember when anyone else last posted either ... hint hint!

So life has been interesting of late. Lots of strees (emphasis on the LOTS). But also lots of really great stuff. It seems as though the month of madness known as Novembermay be slowing down. And not a day too late might I add.

Some more than interesting stuff has been going on around here and since the deadline for the chemistry lab was just extended from tomorrow morning bright and early to Sunday morning, I figured I would take the opportunity to catch y'all up on the happenings around here. Starting with tonight and then tomorrow and carrying on in a backwards fashion until I get bored. Or my fingers start to hurt. Or I realize that I should really do my french reading before class tomorrow ... oh ... yes. I will need to remind myself of that one.

So tonight I was in the cafeteria eating supper and each Thursday night it is my student job (along with Petros) to empty the compost. This involves taking three monstrously heay bins to the back of the cafeteria, loading them into a trolley type thing (with wheels), dragging it downt o maintenance and emptying it in the compost bins. It's not hard work, but it is cold and wet. And smelly. And as we learnt tonight more life-threating than previously supposed. So we dragged the cart all the way down to the compost bins and they were extra full because yesterday's compost people forgot to empty it. I got there thirty seconds before Petros, just in time to see a monstrous (have I used that word twice already?) raccoon slinking around the compost. But it ran undre the bridge and I assumed there would be no problem. So Petros got there and went to lift the lid of the bins. He lifted it and then dropped it with a shout. "There's a squirrel in there!"
Me: Are you sure its a squirrel and not a raccoon?
Petros: Umm ... no
Me: Because raccoons are sort of dangerous. And I saw one sneaking around here jsut before you arrived.
Petros: Well ... it was one of those things that hangs around the garbage cans by the computer lab and looks at me at night but never does anything.
Me: uh ... yeah ... that's a raccoon ... and they bite.
It took us sometime to decide what to do. Finally Petros got a long stick and we started trying to lever the lid open to see if the thing had escaped. So he finally opens it and I peer inside (from a considerable distance might I add). And lo and behold there are eight eyes looking at me! Needless to say, I scream and Petros drops the lid. I explain that the things still hadn't escpaped. But that they were babies. So we spent about seven minutes playing with the lid and the stick and trying to prop the lid open for proper raccoon removal. Unfortunately we dropped the lid on one of the raccoon's heads after he got too curious. So now we had angry baby raccoons, and a mother near enough. Thankfully, the first year art class walked by on their way to the parking lot for a field trip. So we hailed them and a few of the mroe courageous ones went and opened it up and chased the poor raccoons out. All in all, it was a very harrowing experience in regards to usual compost duty!

And the computer is freezing something awful and I'm afraid to write more in case I lose it. So I will leave you all with this. And the faint hope that I may pos ttwice in one week! Eh?!?

timing is ironic ain't it.

a word before hand: for those of you who are grammar freaks (and I do know of a few who read this) please do not be distraught over the lack of capitalization ... :)

so monday and tuesday is first year first aid training. for second years, its reading week. however, our major english assignment was due on friday evening. so there's really no reading to be done. somewhat ironic. alas, there is still plenty of work to be done. these past few weeks (since getting back from project week) have just been a nightmare. i should have been prepared, everyone knows that november is the worst month at Pearson. but i was not prepared for it to this extent. so not much has been going on at all. at least in my life. nothing but the econs textbook and my math essay. latin american national day is coming up this weekend and for the first time ever i am not involved in anything. no dances, no choreography, not on the show committee, nothing. it's quite strange really. so i've decided that instead of getting depressed and upset about the whole affair, I will spend the saved time writing my EE. that way, when we start the prep for european national day i will have that much less on my plate to get done. 

so life did get exciting these past three days. on friday, all the second year economic students got the day off to go into town and participate in the Fraser institute economic conference. most people were really quite excited about the conference. basically, the fraser institute is an economic think tank which supports (and argues for) public policy rather than government intervention in economies. now, public policy sounds great and all, but as an economic theory it is not very viable and basically it means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. as you may have guessed, pearson students are very much against such theories. so we had our own think tank on Thursday night with tea and textbooks and came up with a bunch of arguments to bring down the "other side" (being the Fraser folks). it was really quite exciting and a learning experience. boring subjects get that much more exciting when you get to use them practically and move beyond theory. so anyways, we hopped on the buses friday morning at 7:30 and headed downtown for the conference. but wait, I must back up. 

so on friday there were two major assignments due, my math essay and the world literature essay. so thursday night after music class (8:00pm) I went to bed. i intended to sleep only until 10:30, but i ended up sleeping till midnight. so anyways, i woke up at midnight and started work on the math essay, many cups of tea and four hours later i decided it was time to go back to bed. i wasn't done, but i planned to sleep for an hour then wake up, do another hour of math, go to prayer at 6:00 (i have no idea why we scheduled morning prayer at the end of the week where the average hours of sleep are the lowest for the entire year!!!) and then have breakfast and go to the conference. unfortunately, i ended up sleeping until francis and erica came to wake me up for prayer at six. kudos to me, i did not fall asleep during prayer. it was really good actually. we played the street invaders cd and just prayed. it was brilliant. then i went to the caf and had breakfast and go ton the buses at 7:30. this is where we return to the other story. 

so yeah, i could say lots about the conference, but i fear it would bore most if not all of you. basically, it was a really well put together conference. and there was good food on top of that! the presentations were short, about 35 mins. then there was an open microphone question and answer period about the presentation, then we would break off into discussion groups in separate rooms (which meant we got to get up and move about to get there) . the groups were small enough that you were comfortable speaking and that everyone got a chance to voice their opinion. and they changed each time. there were three such segments to the day, two before lunch and one after. all-in-all it was a great conference. and lots of economic ideas and discussion. i think samuel (our teacher) was excited to see us so excited about it. 

that evening when i got back to campus i went straight to the math essay. got it done a few hours before the final deadline. then i was meant to write my world lit, but i just couldn't bear it. i knew that the teacher was out for a vacation till monday morning, so i figured there would be no harm getting the essay in on saturday afternoon. turns out the deadline was extended to sunday night anyways. so i handed in the essay and went to find sarah, who was hanging out with sherdina. so after hanging out we decided that we wanted cheesecake. so we agreed to wake up at 8:30 the next morning and walk to metchosin for a nice breakfast and some cheesecake. so we did. it was nice. once we got back to campus i seriously considered working, but decided that i would rather go to bed for awhile. awhile that turned into 5 hours!!! but it was nice. and i really needed it. 

that evening was the first year theatre performance. in which my roomie Jn proved herself to be phenomenal. she stole the show. without a doubt. so so so good. i can't even get over it. absolutely breathtaking. the rest of the show was good too, but she was great. anyways, as soon as the show was over marina, rhubini and I jumped in andrew sewell's car and hitched a ride to town. there we met up with eve and sherdina and DANA! :) dana is our third year (sherdi and eve's roommate from last year) and she was in for the weekend. so we spent the night in a hostel just hanging out and having fun. it was nice to be away from campus, to be with people i love, and to see dana again. all in all it was a wonderful 24-ish hours. in the morning, we decided to go out for a nice breakfast. as we were leaving for the restaurant, i stepped on a piece of glass, now i've done this before with no repercussion, but this time it was different. it cut into my foot and i started bleeding all over the sidewalk and yeah .. it was interesting. rhubini just finished her first aid certification a week ago, so she was all excited to wash it and band-aid it and such. it wasn't really a big deal. but i was sad to see that somehow my feet had pansied up and become vulnerable to glass. it was quite unfortunate. i suppose i'll have to try harder. not sure how i really can, unless i start jogging on gravel! 

anyways, now i'm back on campus ( i wrote this on sunday night ... not sure when it will be posted) and trying desperately to finish my world lit. it has to be in tomorrow morning around 7:30-ish at the latest. shouldn't take me too long, after all its only a first draft. and then i'll still have two days of freedom. the most exciting part of that is that it's only three days of classes! later. 

I should be working ...

So as the title says, I should be working. But I haven't updated about project week yet and I should. Because it was awesome. So for those of you who don’t know, I was doing invisible theatre for my project week. Invisible Theatre is when you go on the streets and do a pre-planned skit or whatever, but the audience doesn’t know that it is planned. So they think it’s a real situation. The idea is that it forces the public to think about how they act in society and how they treat those around them. So that was my actual project. Marina and I were leading it. However, we were staying at a house that we rented with another two projects. So we worked for part of the day and then when we got back to the house we got to mix and mingle with other Pearsonites so we didn’t get sick of one another. There were only five of us after all. But five stellar people. And we had so much fun. 

SUNDAY: I’m running around campus packing, cleaning and trying to ensure that everyone in my group has cutlery and a sleeping bag. Not an easy task when everyone (including the people I’m looking for) is also running around making sure of something or other. (ps. I only have two hours of sleep because Marina and I were hanging out around campus all night talking and watching dance videos). I finally get to the buses 15 minutes late. But everyone DOES have cutlery and a sleeping bag. So it’s worth it. We get dropped off downtown, say our goodbyes to everyone else. It’s a slightly tearful goodbye as we think it may be the last time we ever see those brave souls who have decided to hike the Juan de Fuca trail. (Don’t worry, we saw them two days ago, they are back and fully alive). Our two groups head out to the house, suitcases in tow. Everyone has given me their money for the house, so my wallet is stuffed with $1680, mostly in $20 bills. We get there, settle in, pay Dawna and then decide we need to go back downtown and get some groceries. So we all head downtown to have a lunch and do some shopping. Bargains galore. Unfortunately, we went a bit overboard on the pasta and have been suffering the repercussions ever since. 

MONDAY: Day one of the project. The other group leaves the house bright and early, our project sleeps in and doesn’t really get started till 11 o’clock. Heck, we’re self managed we can pick and choose whatever hours we want. We decide we want to do a skit about monetary inequality. How? Well ... we decided to go to a restaurant and not be able to pay the bill. Here is our ‘script’. 

venue: White Spot

characters: all of us

idea: people can’t pay the bill

issue: inequality

Pareena and Marina masquerade as international backpackers. Not too far a stretch, they are internationals at least. They go into the restaurant and order their food. Zuzanna goes in a bit later and sits alone quite near them. She plays the sophisticated woman, drinking tea and reading her book (her roles is to intervene if the situation gets out of hand). Claire and Emma come in later and sit near the other two. They are gossipy Canadian teenagers. When the -eena’s bill come, they discover they can’t pay it. They make a fuss, digging through their bags and scrabling to come up with the cash. Claire and Emma start to laugh and point and generally find it really ridiculous that other people have come to eat in a place where they clearly can’t afford to pay the bill. This is where the script ends and reality starts. The waitress asks what’s going on. The -Eena’s explain that they can’t pay. The waitress heads off to find the manager and see what should happen next. A man from the table over goes over to the Eenas and asks whats going on. They explain that they can’t pay. He offers them the cash he has, which is $10. Unfortunately, the girls need about twice that. So he leaves, he doesn’t even leave them the $10. Interesting. So the manager comes over and talks to the girls. Finally, he sends Marina running down the street to a money exchange to change her Brazilian currency into dollars. The exchange doesn’t do conversions with Brazilian money. Oops, so she runs down the street to another one, which is closed at this point. As a last chance, she heads to the harbour (a looong way away) to try the money exchange there. Alas, it is also closed. Meanwhile the rest of us are in the restaurant, dragging on our meals as long as possible to still be there when Marina gets back. The waitress goes over to Pareena to comfort her and tell her everything will be alright. Marina returns about an hour later. She explains that the exchanges were closed, but that she “went back to the hostel” to get her credit card. Guess what? The card doesn’t work. But Marina didn’t know this. It WAS NOT part of the script. so now shes actually panicking. She really can’t pay for her meal. But alas she has another credit card so they finally pay and leave the place. The others of us quickly following suit. 

TUESDAY: We decide to do a piece about teenage pregnancy, but also sort of about judging people based on appearance. It only really involved three of us, and took place on a bus. We ran it several times. I got on the bus dressed as a twenty something (it’s a miracle what fancy clothes and a pair of shoes can do) and sat down quite near the front. A stop later, Zuzanna and Marina got on and sat next to another passenger. They pretended not to know each other. The following stop, Emma (dressed as a pregnant teenager) and Pareena get on. They’re talking and having a good time when I start to ask questions about her pregnancy. How old is she? How far along? Too late to abort? Yes, how unfortunate. Will she keep it? Does she really think she’s responsible enough to have a child? And such. Zuzanna and Marina’s role was that of animators-the people who talk to the public about what is going on and try to engage the public in a discussion or reflection. When we feel we’ve talked enough, we get off the bus in a staggered fashion. We had some interesting reactions. We ran the skit during the after school rush, so we were often on buses stuffed with teenagers. A few girls gave up their seat for Emma once. Mostly, people just judged me for being so harsh towards the ‘poor pregnant teenager’. Interestingly enough, we had no verbal reactions. No one ever took it upon themselves to intervene. 

WEDNESDAY: On Wednesday, we had a fairly relaxed day. Later in the afternoon we went down to the waterfront. Earlier we had gotten a bunch of cardboard boxes which we ripped apart and wrote quotes on. So we sat on the promenade with our poster-ish things and just talked with people. It was nice. We definitely met some interesting people. Our questions were taken mostly from our experiences in the theory of knowledge course, so they were things like “how do you KNOW what you KNOW” and “what is life? where is life? why is life? how is your life?” and “when did you last listen?”. It was good fun. 

THURSDAY: Day off, mostly. We spent the morning preparing our skits for Friday, but in the afternoon we took some time for ourselves. We went and lounged in the sun, watched the sun set, had pancakes and wandered around (not in that order). 

FRIDAY: We went to UVic to do a skit about bottled water. I saw Anne Bateman. Luckily, she didn't see me. The skit was funny. I'm getting tired of typing. Can you tell? 

SATURDAY: This day really deserves a full fledged report. I got to be a homeless person for an hour or so. The skit was me sitting and being a homeless person nearby a bus stop (that was so that people would be stuck there and have to listen and see the scene that went on). So I sat there as a homeless person with no shoes and grungy clothes (not hard, I rarely do laundry) and a college sleeping bag wrapped around me with my little bucket out in front of me for people to drop change in. I have told this story so many times its not even fun anymore. Basically, I made was given a hat, a sandwich, a cigarette, a bottle of water (ironic after the previous day's skit), a place to go to get free shoes, a place to stay for up to three months, $10.02 (more than minimum wage) and most importantly (in my eyes) two people stopped and had conversations with me. It was crazy. Totally changed my view on homelessness. I'm making a radio show about it that should be up fairly soon ... I'll post the link when I'm done with it. 

So that was that. Oh, expect that on Saturday afternoon when we got back to the house we discovered that the toilet was plugged. And in my attempts to fix it, I accidentally flushed it again which meant that poop water went spilling over the toilet bowl and all over the floor and because the house was poorly built it started seeping under the walls and into the carpet on teh adjoining rooms. It was a mess to put it bluntly. And the plunger didn't even work. So Marina and I ended up playing in this crappy water fo ra few hours trying to clean it up. We got quite giddy after awhile. Some say it was the situation, others say it was the vast amounts of Mr. Clean that were wafting through the air. Who knows, all I know is that it was a great experience. Which isn't to say I want to plunge toilets for the rest of my life, no siree bob. But that it ain't all that bad when you come down to it. Just make sure you're doing it with someone amazing and be positive. And try not to remind yourself that in reality you are playing in someone else's poo. It really doesn't help the situation. 

Anyways, I'm back on campus now, have been for a week. Not that it really feels that way because all week I have had my nose in the economics textbook, either for my internal assessment or the exam. But those are done now. This week I have the half interesting half nauseating task of writing my first math essay. Yes Bethany, you heard right. A math essay. Nasty. Yet intriguing at the same time. I also get to write my World Literature essay. Woohoo! My two favourite subjects :) But yeah, thats sort of all the stories I wanted to tell. Now I shall go to bed. We get to "fall back" tonight. So that should be exciting. IT's always a debate right, do you pretend as though you didn't know it was happening and so get an extra hour of work in, or do you take advantage of the strange flip in reality (really, these sorts of things don't just happen. time doesn't just appear!) and sleep in for the extra hour ... since its not taken out of anything. I think perhaps I'll opt for the later. It sounds more exciting. Well ... you know what I mean.