Road trip!

So I can finally write a bit about travelling Canada! Before I came here, I was hoping that I would be seeing a lot of the country. It's not that easy though for a number of reasons...
1. Canada is huuuge! Seriously, I'm pretty sure that to get from one end of Nova Scotia to the other would take about as long as it would, or maybe longer, than it would to travel from one end of Scotland to the other. And this is one of the smallest provinces.
2. Travel is expensive. I suppose it might have something to do with my being in Wolfville that there are only two buses per day to Halifax, with a four hour gap in between, at a cost of $30 dollars each way (approx. £18, in my head anyway). Halifax is only an hour away, so it's nothing like home where Megabus will take you all around the UK for much cheaper. Travelling by air is obviously quicker, but tickets for this are also quite pricey, especially if you haven't really planned travel in advance (comme moi).

3. University is intense! So many midterms, quizzes, assignments... Add that to the fact that all of your friends' assignments and tests are not on the same days as yours, and it's difficult to find people who have enough time (as well as money) to travel with you.



Olena filling up the car



November 11th is a national holiday in Canada, called Remembrance Day, and this year it fell on a Thursday. A couple of other exchange students, Olena from Spain and Sarah from Germany, who I met during international week asked if I would like to come with them on a trip over this weekend, and despite the reasons as to why travelling a lot while studying is not easy, we made a plan. Originally four of us had been going on the trip, the third girl a Canadian who would be able to drive a rented car. However she had too much work to do, and so the driving was all left to Sarah, who had never driven an automatic or driven outside of Germany - and she still did an awesome job! (Slightly off topic, but I really don't think I used the word awesome before these Canadians started to rub off on me..)

We had thought about driving to Quebec City, then realised that it would take at least one day of non-stop driving to get there, so the plans changed to visiting Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada's smallest province, and then spending a couple of nights in Halifax, Nova Scotia's capital.

After an early start, a bit of confusion as to how to read a map, and 5 hours of driving we arrived on PEI. It was really pretty and small, and so we stopped in a few of the towns to have a look around. We also took many pictures and acted like total tourists which was awesome (there I go again..). We all had the impression that PEI would take only about 45 minutes to travel around, but actually it was bigger than that. If we had known that it might have been nice to stay overnight in the capital Charlottetown which seemed like a nice little city with it's own university. However as we already had a room booked in a hostel in Halifax, it was back on the road to arrive before 8 and avoid the $5 late night entry charge.



PEI

 After making it just before 8, we saw our hostel which was really cool, with a lovely coffee shop in the front and upstairs the beds, bathrooms and kitchens. Had a wander around downtown Halifax, which took less than 10 minutes to walk to, had some dinner and then went to bed to recover from what had been quite a long day.


$42.50 to cross this bridge and reach PEI



Halifax at night

Halifax harbour

Pier 21

The next morning we awoke early once again and walked downtown to the harbour. The waterfront is all being regenerated, kind of like Dundee is being I suppose, although the work on Halifax is way more ahead. We walked all the way along the waterfront to reach Pier 21, an immigration museum quite similar to Ellis Island in New York although on a smaller scale. Pier 21 was Canada's main immigration port after the Second World War until the 1970s, and it was interesting to learn about immigrant history, which was especially of Europeans, in a country as diverse as Canada. After fun in Pier 21, we walked back to our hostel, stopping by Halifax farmer's market which is massive and so awesome (I sense a theme here?) with so many stalls selling all sorts of delicious foods and other beautiful things. The afternoon took us on a drive outside of Halifax, to Peggy's Cove which is a famous lighthouse and sort of an iconic image of Nova Scotia. We took a drive around the countryside outside of Halifax at the same time.. Canada is soo pretty!  That evening we headed back to Halifax to visit Mic Mac mall, where Olena had to return some things she had bought a few weeks ago. We were wondering why the mall was so busy on a Friday night and then we found out it was no tax day - AWESOME!! When you buy things in Canada, the price on the shelf is different from what you actually pay due to the tax being added on. It's basically like VAT I think, except for some reason it isn't added onto the price you are shown. But whatever, it meant cheaper clothes to buy, so we stayed there for quite a long time and had some good food from the food court. Oh and my favourite purchase from that shopping trip - a build-a-bear-factory Hello Kitty wearing a pink Toronto Maple Leafs (a hockey team) shirt. She is so cute!




Peggy's Cove





 

The road trip was so much fun. It felt nice to be outside of Wolfville for a while and just take a few days to see the area, and not do univeristy work. My only regret- that we didn't think about the possibility of hiring a car sooner, since it is pretty cheap and you can go wherever you want. Never mind though, my current plan is to spend a night in Toronto the day before I fly home, and possibly return to Canada next summer and see more than the East coast - I love this country!!

HALLOOOWEEEEEEEEEEEEN!

Although it marked the end of October, and therefore the beginning of my last full month in Canada, Halloween was so much fun! It started early, with pumpkins appearing on the porches and lawns of many houses from the start of October. As the month continued, pumpkins were everywhere and the windows of the shops in Wolfville were full of halloween decorations. 

       Then the Halloween events began. On the Monday before Halloween there was a pumpkin carving competition in Dennis. Pumpkins and tools were provided, and I decorated one as an eye. The winning pumpkin was a face with teeth spelling the word Dennis, which looked really good and of course showing house pride is always a good thing! A girl who has spoken to me before about her obsession with the BBC got a Doctor Who stencil and carved the tardis and David Tennant onto her pumpkin - I think her and I were the only two who understood what her carving was!



eye pumpkin!



         A few nights later a house trip to the nearby corn maze was organised. This was a house council event, so only had to pay $5 to and from the maze which included a taxi both ways and entry to the maze (normal price $8). The corn maze is literally what it sounds like - a maze built in a corn field, where the corn plants are really tall so you can't see over the top of them, and they're pretty thick too so you have to stick to the path. I heard about one in Truro, which is about an hour from Nova Scotia, which is a haunted one and so the staff chase you with chainsaws and scare you in other fun ways.. The one we went to was just for fun, not scares, but I still did get quite freaked out due to the darkness... I'm glad we remembered a torch! When we had all gone round the maze, the owners organised a bonfire for us and marshmallows were toasted!



Corn maze (should be called maize maze, haha!)



         Halloween was celebrated in both of Wolfville's clubs (yes, there are TWO!) on Saturday the 30th. I went as a cow (another word which I say funnily, according to the Canadians), wearing a onesie pyjama suit which I bought from Primark before I left, complete with homemade udder! We had meant to go to a Haunted House, held in the residence called Seminary which is the oldest building on campus and apparently home to a ghost or two, but by the time the group of people I was with were all ready it was after 11, which is when the haunted house closed. Some other friends told me about it though, and said it was extremely scary, so I'm a bit disappointed I missed it. Anyway, we went to the party in the union bar (called The Axe), which was good fun although definitely not as busy as Dundee Union last year - there was actually space to move!

          One final halloween event, which actually happened on Sunday 31st and which I didn't take part in due to a lot of rain and cold, was Trick Or Eat. The concept of food banks seems to be quite big in Canada - just yesterday I was at a coffee house night which was raising money for the local food bank - and this is what Trick Or Eat is also about. Basically, you go round the neighbourhood in groups of your choice, dressed in your halloween costumes, and instead of collecting sweets (although usually you get some of these anyway), you ask for food donations to give to the food bank. It's a really good idea, and if I wasn't such a baby I would have taken part. In general I've noticed that volunteering for charities is a more popular thing to do over here, at least when comparing Dundee and Acadia Universities. There are all sorts of charities which students get involved in - from helping out at the food bank to going swimming with disabled children once a week. Unfortunately I haven't gotten involved with any of these groups, as I didn't want to commit myself to a cause only to leave after first semester is done. It's definitely the sort of thing I'll want to get involved with next year at home, though.

Anyway, that's all the stories I have to tell about my Halloween experience. It's definitely a bigger event over here in Scotland, which I was expecting, and which all added to the excitement!

 Until next time, over and out!

Thanksgiving fun

Woah, it's almost November already.. really? I have no idea what's happened to time, all I know is it's now almost 3 weeks since Thanksgiving, and also all that work I was talking about before, well it hasn't stopped. At all.

       Anyway I said I'd write about my first ever Thanksgiving! Some people who I told that it was going to be my first Thanksgiving found that a little strange, "You don't get Thanksgiving in Scotland? Why?"  What could I say... we have nothing to be thankful for? The truth is I don't really even know what Thanksgiving celebrates, and nobody who I asked seemed to know too much either. I'm not complaining though, it meant a day off of uni and lots of food, beginning on Thursday evening when mealhall closed all of the different food stations which are normally there, and instead everyone ate from the Thanksgiving buffet.

        One of my friends from residence, Shannon, invited me to go to stay with her family in New Brunswick for the weekend and of course I said yes. Most people went home for the holiday unless they live too far away. New Brunswick is the province next to Nova Scotia. Looking on a map I thought St Stephen (Canada's chocolate town :)  ) the town where I was headed, looked pretty close. I guess I forgot I'm currently living in the world's second largest country, so it actually took 6 hours to get there. Shannon has an uncle who lives in Nova Scotia and pretty close to Wolfville so he came to pick us up on Friday afternoon. I was so excited, it felt quite like Christmas since it was cold and everyone was leaving for the weekend. On the drive we stopped for food and ate in Wendy's for the first time. A Frosty is a delicious and thick milkshake which I highly recommend. Arrived in St Stephen at around 7 o'clock and met Shannon's parents, plus her three sisters, her brother, some cousins, an aunt and an uncle. She told me before that she was related to most of the town, and she really wasn't lying. There were also some very tiny kittens, which one of the cats in the house had given birth to a few weeks before, and they were they cutest little things! I wanted to steal one of them so badly., but unfortunately pets aren't allowed in residence.                                               

Me and Shannon



Vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner



              On Saturday Shannon and some of her friends from school were meeting up to play a softball game, so I went along to watch. Softball is basically the same as Baseball, and as far I as I can tell that's not too dissimilar to rounders, although I'm sure I'm probably wrong about that. I was extremely cold watching the game, even with my coat on and two blankets plus a Tim Horton's hot chocolate. So instead of going to watch the high school football game with Shannon, I went back with one of her sisters and played with the kittens to get warm! During this time I was asked many many questions about life in Scotland, and of what I knew about Canada. It's pretty fun when people ask stuff like this, and I also enjoy when my accent is laughed at since I've always wanted to actually have a Scottish voice! (apparently the funniest words are those with a double o - book, cook, cool, look.. etc.)  In the evening we had Thanksgiving dinner, which both sets of Shannon's grandparents came over for. The main course is pretty similar to Christmas dinner, and being vegetarian I skipped the turkey, but ate a lot of other food especially PIE! There were so many types of pie for dessert, my favourite being chocolate followed by pumpkin. Yummm! Shannon had a lot of people she wanted to see, which included a trip over the border to America. It's just a drive over a bridge to reach the state of Maine, although with my no student permit and my British passport we weren't sure if I would be able to leave Canada and return. Luckily border patrols on both sides said it was ok, and all I had to do was pay $6 for entry in the states. Then we visited Shannon's friend, and also took a trip to McDonald's and Wal-Mart, where there are different types of junk food which I just had to buy (example, strawberry milkshake oreos).



USA!



         Sunday involved a trip to Shannon’s grandparent’s house to eat seafood chowder and macaroni cheese, plus more pie (it was Thanksgiving after all...) Met a lot more family, who were all so nice and made me feel so welcome as if I was a part of their family. One of Shannon’s friends then took us for a drive around St Stephen and the countryside and I appreciated the autumn colours – the trees are soo pretty! Then on Monday the six hour journey back to Acadia, home sweet home!



Fall is pretty



me near St Stephen



Kitttiieeesss!



So that pretty much sums up my Thanksgiving weekend – food and family! Although I’ve never experienced an American Thanksgiving, I think it’s a bigger deal there. I know that universities get a whole week off of classes and I think maybe the meal is had on the same day by all families, whereas different people who I spoke to all said different things about when they eat and what they do. It was definitely a nice thing to experience... maybe in Scotland we should find something to be thankful for and celebrate it too! Next thing to look forward to, HALLOWEEN!!

Busy busy busy!

I am so glad it’s the weekend, this has been such a busy week with so many tests and assignments due. Although it’s not the most exciting topic I feel it’s kind of important to write a bit about classes, since the whole reason I am here in Canada is to study, although I did kind of forget that after all the excitement of Frosh week and actually I’m pretty sure I slightly forgot how to write after 4 months of summer holidays.

Anyway, for the course credits to match to the modules I would otherwise be taking in Dundee, I had to take 5 3 hour courses for the semester. I’m a psychology student, so it was necessary to take a course in Research & Design Methods, basically about how to write psychology papers, which I did do during first year in Dundee meaning that this class has been pretty easy so far. I also had to take a statistics course, which most psychology majors here take in their first year but which can also be taken in second year. I’m so bad at any kind of maths, but there’s a lot of help available if needed so I’m hoping this class won’t get too difficult. Then I had a choice of other psychology courses to take, there was a choice of four and I was advised to choose cognitive psychology and physiological psychology, since these were the closest to the topics I would have studied had I been in Dundee for this semester. My final choice could be pretty much anything in the faculty of arts, so I originally chose Spanish which I began to learn in my first year. However after I arrived at Acadia I decided to change that as there wasn’t really a class which matched the basic level of Spanish I already have, without going back into the beginner course. Instead I’m taking Canadian sociology which takes place from 7-10 on a Tuesday night. I like this class but if it was on a different night it would be even better, since it means I miss watching Glee! Oh well..

There are a few differences between lectures here at Acadia and at home. Most of the classes are 1 ½ hours long, although they’re usually only 1 hour 15 minutes so travelling time is accounted for (even though the campus is really small so 15 minutes to travel isn’t really necessary). The class sizes are also much smaller, so even for a course which a lot of students are taking we’re split into different groups. For my stats course there are 3 different classes at different times. I quite like the smaller classes, the professors actually try to get to know your name and it is easier to participate in discussions or ask questions. The lectures are given through PowerPoint and so the slides are available on the internet, however I’ve found that there is a bigger reliance on books. The information given in lectures is taken from the books we are expected to buy. These books are necessary as there often aren’t any in the library to borrow and besides that most of the information needed for quizzes and midterms is taken directly from the books. The price of these books did make me feel a little ill - I ended up spending over £300, but everyone is in the same boat and actually the prices I paid were a bit less than a lot of others I spoke to, plus there’s the option of selling them back to the bookstore at the end of the semester. The cost of education here makes me so grateful to be Scottish, where all I have to pay for as a student is rent and food etc. Here there’s the tuition fees (which I get paid by SAAS for this semester since I’m still a student at Dundee), plus medical insurance, dental insurance, a place to stay, as much food as you want from meal hall, contributions to the student union… I suppose that’s why most of my lectures are still pretty full, people take university pretty seriously, and realise how much they’ve paid to be here. Most of the classes consist of quizzes, which are just mini tests of the work covered in certain chapters, midterms, tests of a larger amount of work, assignments and a final exam.   

There are other, more fun reasons as to why this has been a busy week.



Sake with sushi



Last Saturday I took a trip along with about 30 other international first years to Halifax, the biggest city in Nova Scotia. Halifax is about an hours drive away and the bus left at 10 o’clock, dropping us off at Halifax shopping centre at 11. The group of girls I was with, (3 of who are also on exchange for one semester, from France, Germany and Spain) decided that there wasn’t really anywhere in the mall we wanted to shop apart from the dollar store, so once we had been there we took a cab to another shopping area to go to a shop which one of the Canadians recommended – Value Village. I’m so glad she did recommend it; it’s just a giant second hand store where they have some really cool clothes and books for very cheap. Then we took a cab to the area of Halifax called

Spring Garden Road

, which is a busy area with more shops and restaurants and bars. We wandered around some more shops and then went to a Japanese restaurant for some sushi which was delicious, and sake, a very strong wine, before taking the bus back to Wolfville. Because this trip was a shopping trip I didn’t really get to see too much of the city, plus it was a very foggy day, so I’m hoping to go back again soon and see some more of the sights!



Spring Garden Road



I went to see some sporting events too this week, mainly intramurals which are between the different residences on campus. I saw my first ever ice hockey match, which Dennis won (yay!) but I’ve been told that a real hockey match will be much more exciting. Also watched some “soccer” and rugby matches. Although not many really turn up to watch the intramural games, when Acadia is playing another university the stadium is so busy and there is such a good atmosphere which I love!



Intramural hockey



That’s about it for this week, and I should probably stop writing this and do some homework - two more midterms this week plus a few assignments... fun. Never mind, next weekend is Thanksgiving so we get Monday off, plus I’m taking a trip to stay with my friend and her family in New Brunswick. First ever Thanksgiving, that’s definitely going to be the subject for my next blog post. I am so excited!

P.S.  This is the link to a video made of frosh week, it's quite cheesy but I can see myself at a couple of places! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3aBzvrWrp8

 

First Blog

So I can’t believe it’s already been three weeks since I arrived in Canada, the time has gone by so fast. It actually makes me a little worried that the first semester will be done soon, then I have to go home! L I’ve never blogged before so not really sure what I should be writing, but I guess it makes sense to start with the first week..

International orientation took place from September 2^nd to the 4^th and allowed all of us international students, whether taking part in an exchange like me, or attending the university to do their whole degree from a country abroad, to meet each other and get to know our way around before the arrival of new and returning Canadian students in a few days. I met lovely people from all over the place – the Bahamas, Bermuda, Trinidad, Nigeria, Barbados, Spain, France, Germany, the US, Indonesia... For some reason they all seemed to think it was pretty cool that I’m from Scotland but I told them the places they’re from are probably a lot cooler! On the first day (September 1^st) me and the others whose flights landed at roughly the same time as mine, were met at Halifax airport and driven the hour or so to Wolfville, the home of Acadia University. On that first day I was exhausted, having been awake for almost 24 hours, travelling through three different time zones, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the fact that I was actually finally here and having dealt with the stress of flying alone for the first time ever (which, actually, turned out not to be that stressful at all – if you’re lost, say “bonjour”, or whatever form of greeting is appropriate for the country you’re in, and then anyone is willing to help you in English). I was too tired even to be particularly worried about my missing suitcase, which had not been put onto my last connecting flight in Montreal because the plane was “too full”. It eventually arrived at about 1 in the morning, although I didn’t actually wake to the knocks on my door when it was brought – luckily there was a guy in the room next to

me who took it and I was able to get it the next morning. Over the next couple of days the international students had the chance to meet some professors, take a tour of the town, the gym, the library and most exciting to me, the nearby Wal-Mart for bed sheets, towels, notebooks and other things like that which had not been a priority when packing my 23kg.

One thing I wasn’t expecting when I arrived in Canada was the heat. Everyone said that it was freakishly warm for this time of year, but 40 degrees and very humid and I felt like I was actually melting. Before leaving the UK anyone I told about my upcoming trip to Canada had spoken about how cold it was going to be, and I did believe that it would probably be snowing within a few weeks of my arrival. I’m told that in Nova Scotia winter doesn’t really begin until November/December and doesn’t get really freezing until January, so bringing more summer clothes would have been a good idea! The heat became much more bearable three days after my arrival as Hurricane Earl hit the province. For this reason, the arrival of new Canadian students was postponed until Sunday. I was so excited to witness my first ever hurricane, but by the time it reached Nova Scotia it had been downgraded to a tropical storm meaning we weren’t confined to our residence. The older students who were already here preparing for frosh week (I’ll mention more about that later..) decided it would be fun to go mud-sliding in the nearby dykes (haha). This area has the highest tides in the world, so twice daily the dykes fill up. It’s quite amazing when in the morning you can just see an area of muddy land, and a few hours later you can see a lot of water. Anyway, on “hurricane” day we went mud sliding and got extremely dirty, stopping on the way home to wash under some taps attached to an office building. 

Mud sliding!



Cheer off



Dennis House

Sunday 5^th September saw the arrival of new Canadian students and the beginning of Frosh Week. This is like freshers except it lasts for only a few days, and is very different in that during the day you are taken around by the NSOLs (New Student Orientation Leaders – students from the same residence as you usually in 2^nd or 3^rd year) to do different things like a matriculation ceremony, the opposite of graduation where you are welcomed into the school and you actually get to wear a gown! All the residences are in competition over this few days so at every opportunity there was a lot of cheering. My res is Dennis (Whose house? D-house! Etc.), which is closest to meal hall, yay! All this cheering came into practice at the cheer-off, where all the frosh were taken to the gym and performed a cheer which we had been taught before hand… and Dennis won!! During frosh week there are also things on at night time, like a stop light (or traffic light) party, frosh formal, Classified (a Nova Scotian rapper) and a toga party. The student union bars are open to everyone during this week but after that it’s back to the regular rules – you must be 19 to drink in Nova Scotia (this age varies between provinces in Canada). Anyway the attitude to drinking is pretty much the same as in the UK, just maybe a little less intense over here.

So that about sums up frosh week – Wednesday 8^th marked the beginning of classes which I was not looking forward to after 4 months of summer. So far they’re going pretty well, but more about that in a later post.

Peace!