After lining up in the wrong line for 20 minutes, waiting in the correct line for 10 and then checking in for another 5, I've moved into my place. It's a neat little four bedroom ground floor apartment with a nice, wide, north bearing living room window overlooking the place where the hares and squirrels like to chill (on a sidenote: squirrels are the coolest thing I've ever seen. I just...I just love them so much.) I live with three other guys who are all 7 foot tall. One is the only cowboy on campus, the other is a biological sciences student studying Drama...the other's name is Michael. If the others weren't so tall, he'd have a distinguishing feature. They all seem like good people, especially since the first thing we did was plot how to go on a successful rabbit hunt with our bare hands.
In good news, the cowboy is working a ranch this week and will be bringing home about 11 kilos of meat for the weekend...so I'm all set for scurvy...and scurvy is wicked, cos pirates got scurvy. Yaaarrr.
Other than that, not much has really been happening. Still really struggling with the time change...I keep getting real tired when it's 4am Sydney time and wake up in the night continuously. It was also discovered last night that my bed creaks violently. All goodwill I had towards it is now ruined. Speaking of beds...I had to purchase a blanket and pillow yesterday. I didn't realise these things cost so much. I bought the most horrible cheapest things I could find and it still set me back $90...$90 for the noisiest, sweatiest, most annoying blanket I've ever owned. I just don't think that's fair when I could have easily hired a rifle, killed and skinned a bear and slept in it's skin for half that price.
As for culture shock, Canadians struggle (or are amused by) in understanding the following terms:
- Heaps good, heaps far, heaps shit, heaps bad...
- Esky
- She'll be right
- Stubbie
I get the feeling that list will be increased astronomically in the weeks to come. Pedestrian rules are whack here...if you start to cross the road in the aim of waiting for a car to drive past, they just stop. Pedestrians are GOD. There are crossings and such, but even if you decide to jaywalk, all cars freak out and just halt (or as they say here; yield.) I'm not sure if I like it as yet, but I'm still concerned when I find a crossing where I just have to start walking across the road in the hope of everyone stopping.
One dollar coins are loonies, two dollar coins are twoonies. I feel like a tool when I use this terminology.
The national beer here (Molson's) is fantastic. Not sure how I'd describe it, but relatively hoppy, but not like a real bitter Draught...probably most like Cooper's Pale, but tastes a bit like a German beer...along the lines of DAB. I'm a big fan, as are the house-mates, this pleases me.
The top three news stories on CBC's Calgary News were:
1) Shopping centres busy as students go back to school (cue 10 minutes of cute kids in snow jackets.)
2) Long weekend uncharacteristically cold...lots of campers go home early (cue farmer saying: "Ya, it's been pretty quiet eey?")
3) Political candidates hose off campaign signs as rumours of an early election being called abound (cue lots of unneccesary hose use.)
I like that it's a pretty big Canadian town, yet has the small time news feel. It feels very safe here, real nice environment, beautiful campus, beautiful neighbourhoods. I'm not convinced about the drinking life here yet...a lot of it seems to be stereotypical American 'partying'...the whole 'WOOOO! FUCK YEAH! YEAAHHH! WOOOO!" thing, but that was residence move-in and seemed to be contained to a minority.
Anyhoo, sounds like a house meeting outside...someone left Sushi out overnight. I'll write soon.
Nice things,
Max
