Brock week 1

On Saturday afternoon, Doug, Pete, and Dylan came and picked me up from uni and we went to subway for dinner, before driving to Amanda’s farm. There we relaxed for a while, played ‘things in a box’, ate cookies and icecream, lit fireworks and just had a good old yarn with each other. Then since a few of the crew were feeling adventurous, we went to the wainfleet much music video dance party. It was put on by the volunteer firefighters. It was a good laugh and an interesting experience being in the little town arena dancing to kesha with all the drunken oldies. The highlight of my night was driving the manual car home from the arena! It was really trippy reaching to change gears with my right hand rather than my left.

When we got back at 130, the others still weren’t tired so we played hide and go seek in the dark, scary barn which was a bit of fun. Then I was exhausted so hit the hay around 3am. We slept in until about 10am and had a delicious breakfast of lovely pastries.

After bumming around for a while, we drove back to Brock and I showed the crew around my room (a pretty quick tour I must say!). I said my goodbyes and they left me to join my floor at the res summer games comp. We competed against other residency floors in different games such as water balloon toss, bball shootout, and Sudoku. Our team did pretty well and won more events than we lost which was good.

Went to dinner in the marketplace which was packed because on weekends it is the only place open for food so everyone was there. That night I hung out with friends on my floor chatting and watching summer heights high which is always great!

Monday morning I had to wake up bright and early for my first ever Canadian lecture. 8 am – 11am what a marathon! Walking into the lecture theatre I knew noone so decided to put myself out there and find someone. So I asked a guy if I could sit next to him….no these seats are taken….oh ok…. Ask a girl the same question….same answer (she was lying…maybe I looked a bit seedy haha). So I admitted defeat and sat by myself. The lecture was pretty easy to be honest which I certainly am not complaining about. My next class was after lunch and I enjoyed this one thoroughly, a much smaller and more interesting class and thankfully only went for 2 hours.

After class, Tyler and I caught two buses into town to find the legendary value village op shop store. I found myself a few good bargains and we had a good time. When I got back I walked over to the back field to check out the rugby team training. They had a massive squad! The coach, once knowing that I was Australian, instantly wanted me in his lineup without ever even seeing me play. He was keen to have me, I would have been keen but they have to train every day during the week and play their games every Saturday. So I had to turn the coach down. I told him I might come along to some training sessions just for fun/fitness and help out with technical stuff.

On Tuesday, after a long sleep in, I had a visit from Pete, Dylan, and Doug. We hung out at university and met up with a few other camp people. Shared some good laughs. Pete and Dylan annoyed my neighbor by doing their vocal warm ups at the top of their lungs. After lunch they left and I went to my class which was also pretty easy (maybe because the lecture went for half the time it was supposed to). After class, I went out with Doug, Dylan and Pete again to a fire at Doug’s friend Ben’s house. We made wax bombs which produced huge mushroom cloud fireballs. It was the first time I had witnessed them and I must say I was very impressed!

After Ben’s bonfire, we had a Jacuzzi at Doug’s place (Another cross off my bucket list) before crashing at Doug’s. I was woken up in the morning by the sound of my phone ringing with mum on the other line saying that her and dad were on their way to Brock! Woohoo!

So Doug dropped me home soon after breakfast, and I prepared for the arrival of my parents around lunchtime! It was so good to see them after such a long time – the longest I’ve ever been away from them! So I showed them around my campus and we had lunch in the café. After that we drove in the jeep that they hired for their 3 weeks here to the wondrous Niagara falls. It was great to share all the stories that I had built up over the 3 months here.

We walked along the edge of the cliff near Niagara falls took many a photo, and then went on the world famous Maid of the Mist up the river and right to the foot of the falls, getting a little bit wet from the spray. Luckily we had our dorky blue plastic ponchos along with everyone else on the boat.

After Niagara falls, we went back to pick up some stuff we forgot at Brock, did some shopping at the Pen Centre for groceries, and then drove into Missassauga where we stayed at the Holiday Inn (Thanks Jason) after dinner at Kelsey’s (great steak).

The next day we caught the bus into Toronto where we wandered around the underground shopping centre, which stretched over 20 kilometres. They have some great food outlets here, especially vegetarian. We caught the subway to the ROM – Royal Ontario Museum. This was a really interesting museum with fantastic Eskimo, Indian, animal and DINOSAUR exhibits!

From there we went to the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario), where we met up with Jon from camp. It was great to catch up with him since being at camp. There were plenty of strange pieces of art as well. After wandering the city we stopped in a foodcourt for some fantastic vegetarian food and I showed dad some of my photos while mum went shopping.

Caught the train back to the hotel and then relaxed, watched some Big Bang Theory and showed parents some photos before crashing.

On Friday, we woke up early and began driving to Kingston which was a beautiful little town with an incredible university – Queens – filled with old stone Edwardian buildings. It was a very big campus as well. We went on a tram tour around the city seeing different sights namely the Kingston Penitentiary (most notorious prison in Canada) and the Military school. We visited Wolfe Island which was covered in giant windmills just like Holland – now I don’t need to visit Holland.

The drive from Kingston to Ottawa was very scenic, cruising through the thousand island region (home of thousand island dressing), with maple trees and winding roads. That night in the beautiful town of Ottawa, I dropped over to Jennah’s flat in town where I had a great time catching up with Zach and Jennah. Then we went bowling with a bunch of their friends, including Zach’s brother and Matt Barlow who were both at muskoka woods. Bowling was good, I played terribly, representing Australia badly. But I tried poutine! It’s very popular in the French part of Canada. Basically it is chips with gravy and cheese chunks. Very tasty!

After that around midnight we went to a local Lebanese shawarma restaurant where I had to try these ‘world famous’ shawarmas (kebabs). It was actually really nice! My Aussiness got me out of a fight as well! I was lagging behind the group in our walk to the kebab shop and a ‘street gangster’ hard looking guy comes up to me real angry looking like he wanted a fight and said “Where you from!” So I said to him in my most friendly Australian accent “I’m from Australia mate!” haha…he was so taken aback by my response that he was just like ‘oh ok, cool, what are you doing here in Ottawa?’…so I made a new street friend haha.

The next morning we travelled around town in Ottawa, checking out the parliament buildings and rivers which were very picturesque. We stopped at a really nice breakfast restaurant for brunch…full of fresh fruit smoothies/juices and other healthy stuff which is a good change.

That afternoon we drove to Montreal where we met up with Genevieve (camp friend) in the old historic part of town. It was good catching up with her, she was our French tour guide through town which was helpful. There was something going on that day we were there because there was thousands of people crowding the docks where there were a few old boats, and we saw about 20 weddings all in this area. Not sure why there was so many this particular day.

After a starbucks stop we left Genevieve and drove to Quebec city. For dinner we went to a French restaurant – naturally. And I was determined to get into the French culture, soo I ordered some snails for my entrée. Tasty!...not really but they weren’t too bad….a lot like mushrooms. Dad got to relearn and practice his French skills which was quite entertaining to me and mum.