A slightly overdue blog this week which unfortunately brings very little exciting news. I am very much settled in to my life here and the routine of classes in the week, sleep and rugby at the weekends is all too easy. Counting down the final few 8am lectures has been immensely satisfying (two to go!) but brings with it the lab exams, essay deadlines and finals indicative of the end of term.
So far I haven’t displayed much academic prowess; my Parasitology exam was a bit of a disaster zone during which I failed to recall any information of any use and spent a great deal of time staring at purple blobs down a microscope. I have every finger and toe crossed that I haven’t completely messed up my chances of passing the course but I guess we shall have to wait and see.
My last few weekends have been partially spent on the rugby pitch. The last two games have both been losses but pretty enjoyable ones; a ten minute exception applies where my nose resembled a red water fountain having connected with someone’s arm at high speed. Other than that I am injury free, (touch wood!) which, for those that knew me in Edinburgh especially during my first year (and second to some extent), will know that that’s a success in itself. This weekend we had an away game which took us to suburbia, land of drive-ins. Our rather shoddy Google-direction following skills made the entire trip rather longer that it needed to be but I most definitely wasn’t complaining as it was sunny and I could see mountains with snow on. What more could you possibly want…. Well I suppose being on the snow would be an improvement but I’m easily pleased!
Counting down the last few days of class has also started the countdown to Christmas, the decorations are going up, the songs are playing and I still haven’t got myself an advent calendar! I know I’ve said this before but I’m amazed by how fast time is going by. I left Edinburgh 4 months ago and have been in Vancouver for over 3 months. Next semester is going to be just the same with another trip to add to my list as I’m heading to New York in January for a week to meet up with a friend who’s also on exchange this year.
I seem to remember this time last year I was umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether I should have applied for the international exchange programme and I was questioning what my answer might be were I offered a place. If I’m being completely honest the University of British Columbia wasn’t even on my list and I had no idea it was in Vancouver. I went in to the application process with blinkers on, convinced that Australasia was the place for me. Obviously things worked out differently and now I’m here I can’t imagine what things could have been like….. I guess I’d probably be investing in a surfboard rather than a snowboard and watching Cricket rather than
Ice Hockey. What I’m trying to say is if things don’t work out exactly as they’re planned it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I had an amazing summer this year which would not have happened had I been trotting off to Australia or New Zealand to start their academic year in July. Right now, I’m enjoying living on a continent I’d never considered being in for any length of time and at the end of the day the rest of the world isn’t going anywhere. I’ll just have to conquer one country at a time!
