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Published: January 29th 2008
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So I suppose the hardest thing about writing a blog after a month of having not is that monumental feeling of not being able to cope updating an entire month's worth of activities, which is more or less what has kept me from writing up until now.
In which case I will start at the very end, Julie Andrews forgot to mention that it was also a very good place to start.
My friend Dave from Sydney has been staying with me for the last week, after sleeping on people's floors for a few weeks throughout the States (he has upgraded to sleeping on a couch). As well as being cook, handy man, cleaner and prime motivator (making me going shopping to buy vital things such as groceries and lights), he has now taken on the job of interior designer and has managed to make my blank walls not so blank. As I write, he is currently sitting on the couch drawing on my lampshade. Because why wouldn't you?
We have had a good weekend, awakening from slumber around noon each day, sitting around until 3, and then managing to put on our million jackets and walk down
to the shops to buy something or other. For Australia Day we went to a little bar on St Laurant (one of the main streets here in Montreal) and met some other Australians, another exchange student from uni who didn't end up making it had told me about it. It was great talking to other Australians, some of whom were residents here, other students, travellers and people who are doing working holidays in Canada.
I unfortunately somehow forgot to do a lot of study this weekend, which is a bit bad - the university I'm at here, McGill, has the most beautiful campus I have ever seen, especially as it is continually blanketed in snow. The unfortunate bit of it, however, is that it is the number one uni in Canada, which means that everybody there is incredibly smart, and more importantly, has brilliant work ethic. For someone who calls showing up to lectures "studying", its a bit hard to keep up... I will have to have a big study day on Wednesday to make up for this weekend. The university is great with extracurricular activities, tonight we went to the French Students Association film festival, where they have
been playing "our favourite french movies" all week.
Suprisingly, I have adjusted to the cold Canadian winter quickly and quite well. Minus five degrees now seems strangely warm, and I am happy walking around in minus ten... After that, I tend to start complaining. I bought a nice new coat in my first week though (thanks mum and dad :D) and it is a lot warmer than the one I had in Germany (which is what I wear for those aforementioned "warm" days)... I need to buy another pair of boots though, as well as some jeans - wearing one pair of shoes, and only owning two pairs of pants, both of which are black, gets to you after a while. Tomorrow is supposed to be kinda around -3 so hopefully I can wear my cons.
On Saturday we went for a walk to Parc du Mont Royal - for those of you who aren't as fluent as I am in french, Parc du Mont Royal is a mountain (okay so its a hill, but the Montrealers get really insulted if you call it that. Oscar Wilde made that mistake back in the 1880s)... Its a really nice
walk uphill through the snow to the summit, where there is an awesome lookout in front of this big old chalet, and you can see all of Montreal. We wandered on a bit further amongst the cross country skiers and babies being pulled on sleds, to find "Beaver Lake" - a massive frozen over lake, complete with sledding, tubing (sledding on a tube), ice-skaters, and just generally people having fun. We hiked around the other side of the mountain to see the big cross, which is lit up at night, and went looking for a lookout that we never found (but we had a good snow fight).
In other news - I went skiing last weekend. Ain't that just precious. I went with two other international students, a girl from France and a boy from Colombia. After finally getting there and organising lift passes and rentals, and being taught how to put my skis on (grade 9 was a long time ago in my defense), I hit the bunny slopes were I stayed for a good hour or so, each time telling the man operating the escalator style lift that it would probably be my last run. After getting
onto the green run, I took a gondola all the way up to the top of the mountain to meet the others for lunch. It was after lunch that the real fun began. I decided I would be able to go down the blue slope all the way from the top, in the company of another McGill girl that was friends with Orlando (the Colombian boy)... Halfway down I realised that I was too far ahead of her, turned to move to the side to wait, and promptly fell off the side of the mountain and down a ravine. I hit through the ice covering the creek which I had brilliantly managed to fall down with my boots, and sat there for about a minute wondering if anyone had seen it and would help me, or if I was stuck there to freeze slowly to my death. Luckily, a crowd of about ten people quickly showed up at the side to help me up, and by the time I reached the top, beanie, skis, poles and all, they wished me luck and skied off. I then stood there for about twenty minutes trying to get my skis back on and
not managing, before giving up, slinging those babies over my shoulder, and resigned myself to walking down the mountain. Luckily a ski instructor came by at that precise moment, realised that my boots were covered in ice from having sat in the water, and chipped it all off for me using his poles. It was kind of a slow descent down the mountain after that, and I didn't find the girl again (she missed the whole thing), but I did manage to get myself back on the chair lift and do it again once or twice, despite contemplating staying in a cafe and waiting for the others in the nice safe warmth of Van Houtte (think Gloria Jeans).
And there you have it, the biggest update I can muster up at the moment (I have been procrastinating and still need to at least skim this reading before going to bed). I promise that I will at least try to be more vigilant, and work on this a bit more 😊
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