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!!

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