On Saturday afternoon, I caught the greyhound bus to Buffalo with Lachie. Even though the driving distance there is only half an hour, it took us about 3-4 hours! This was all because of the waiting for buses, waiting for border security/customs. They were really slow. It was ok, I got to have a nap on the bus. So we arrived at the buffalo bus terminal, caught the first of many taxi’s to our hostel downtown. Walked to the ice hockey arena where we went to watch the Buffalo Sabres play the Washington Capitals. The Sabres were pretty low on the ladder and the Capitals were much higher, but this night they played really well. The game was fantastic! I really loved it! Ice hockey is my new favourite game to watch, other than NRL of course. The game is so intense and the halftime entertainment and atmosphere is just awesome. I was cheering with the home crowd for the Sabres, but Lachie supports the Caps. Sabres won, and I got to slap Lachie for the win! Haha.
After the game, we wandered the streets trying to find our hostel. We met some other girls from Brock (They saw us wearing our brock jumpers) who gave us a ride back and were very friendly. We pretty much went straight to bed that night.
In the morning we woke up before everyone else in our 16 bed room, and caught the bus to the Galleria Mall. Little did we know the mall didn’t open up until about lunchtime. The bus ride there took a while and was very ghetto. I kind of enjoyed soaking up the ghetto culture, driving through the streets.
Since the shops were shut Lachie and I waited around until the cheesecake factory opened up for breakfast. I had a delicious pizza. We realised that we missed the only bus that went to the Bills game, so we had to catch another taxi there. The atmosphere before the game was really cool. They have ‘tailgating parties’ which is where everyone and their dog comes and has bbq’s in the boot of their car in the carpark, play music, throw the footy around and drink beer. It very much reminded me of the atmosphere at Bathurst raceway. I bought a football from one of the stands for 6 dollars and we wandered around and threw the footy ourselves, which was fun.
When the time came to go in the stadium, we were told we couldn’t take any projectiles into the stadium, so I had to hide my footy in the bushes. We had seats in the 4th row on about the 30 yard line which was really close! The game was great to watch, even though it started raining and we didn’t have raincoats. One thing that I didn’t like about the game was all the stoppage time in between plays. At the beginning they had an F1-11 fighter jet do a flyover. It was sick! The Buffalo Bills had their first win of the season defeating the Detroit Lions. It was a close game – nearly a draw.
After the game, we were freezing! Jumped in another taxi back into town. Grabbed our bags, then went to the bus terminal. We met up with Lyndall and her father, who were also at the game but we didn’t see them until the bus station. We caught the bus at 630. Because of the traffic going back across the border, we didn’t get back until about 10pm! I spent the travelling time studying for my test the next day.
The next day was the busiest day of my semester. I had a midterm test at 8am, then at 11 I had my hour long presentation on Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, which I presented with Heather (classmate). It was great to get that finally done.
On Monday night, it was Erika’s (a bcf girl) birthday, so I went along to a celebratory dinner at Boston Pizza. Since there was a lack of rides coming back, I walked back up the hill with Kayla. We had a good chat. Then she and Carly hung out with me in my room till 3am when I skyped my family at the formal. Even though the connection was really bad I got to see a bunch of my friends who I haven’t seen since I left, as well as, of course, my beautiful sister who looked sooo stunning! Didn’t get to sleep till 4am that morning.
There were a couple of days this week that I spent as a hermit in my room doing my last assignment of my degree. Great to get that one done. On Tuesday, the exchange fair was on, and Lachie and I ran the Griffith University booth. We spent time simply chatting to people about how awesome Australia is, and Griffith is, and exchange in general is. That was fun. Im hoping that some of my friends from here make it over to Australia for exchange. That way the tables will have turned and they will be on my turf and I will get to show them all the things to do.
On Wednesday night I went with Lachie, Jess, Kendall, Lisa, and Jayne (all aussies) to Niagara’s Keg for dinner with Lachie’s family. Niagara is like a mini vegas really. The restaurant was really nice, on the 9th story with a fantastic view over the falls. The food was pretty expensive but very tasty. I had some sweet potato fries and bruschetta type flat bread. It was great to have a meal with a nice friendly Aussie family. Lachie’s parents were both very friendly, and his sister and sister’s friend were visiting as well! After dinner, we visited the casino briefly. Two more taxi rides for the night – I’ve never been in a taxi so much!
I spent a few hours on Thursday with Jasmine, playing the guitar while she sang. We even got the key to the fireplace lounge down in the lobby where there was an old piano, and we shared songs on the piano for a while which made me crave my piano back home even more. I think one of the first things I will do when I get back is spend a good hour playing on that beautiful piano again.
On Thursday night I went to Bible study with bcf at Emily’s house. We had a big group that night, it was really nice. After that, since there were a lack of seats in the cars a group of us decided to walk back to university which was nearly an hour walk. I was headed to the Pen Center to watch the premiere of Harry Potter. I ended up leaving the group and running a good 15 minutes to the pen in the freezing weather.
I managed to find the 12 other people on my floor who were lining up since 8pm. Andrew sweet talked some other people into swapping tickets for us, because we had the wrong cinema. It was hilarious as all the boys had organised down the nth degree what was going to happen when we got in the cinema in order for us all to get good seats together. They were talking about blocking and pinch manoeuvres and stuff like that, it was hilarious that they took it so seriously. The movie started at midnight. It was pretty good. I was amazed at how much of the story I had forgotten since reading the book only a year or two back.
The movie finished around 2:30/3am. Since there were over a thousand people that watched the premiere in 6 cinemas, the taxi line up was ridiculous. My previous method of transportation to get to the Pen worked well enough, so I decided to utilise it again. Ethan and I ran back to university, which took about 20 minutes. I got a nosebleed from running in the cold weather. Slept soundly that night.
On Friday I had my C4C group after lunch. We looked at Stephen’s story. The rest of the day was spent finishing off my assignment. In the evening, my good friends Jon and Rachel (From MW) came and picked me up from residence, and we drove all the way to Waterdown – near Hamilton. We went to Burgers’ house and chatted and ate snacks including Jon’s fabulous homemade Christmas treats and poptarts. We watched the Christmas movies – Elf and the Grinch. After that we watched a documentary called babies which Burgers had bought. It was really random! Pretty much just visuals of babies being breastfed and just lying around crying etc. There wasn’t even a commentary. Haha.
Stayed at Rachel’s house that night and the next morning after a sleep in, she drove me back to res, which was very nice of her. At lunch, we had a residence activity, where we had to do a bunch of challenges. One was to protect an egg from cracking when we dropped it off the building – success – we just padded up a witches hat. We serenaded our don, told a joke to one staff, rolled some grapefruits, and did some charades. Our floor was sure to win!
After lunch, Michael, Andrew, Adede and I went to the Brock Badgers hockey game. It was a great game, which Brock won in penalty shootouts. It went to the 7th shooter. Very thrilling. I even fell over after cheering when I went to sit down and my seat had flipped up.
That night, it was Becca’s birthday, so we went to a restaurant called the Office in town. The food was delicious and very reasonably priced. When we got back we hung out in the fireplace lounge, played some cards, yahtzee, guitar and piano singalongs.
A great week! Got my last undergraduate assignment done! Should be pretty cruisy from here on out!
No comments:
Post a Comment