Category Archives: Involvement / Leadership

Free dance lessons

Posted on 25 September 2007 | Leave a comment

Because I love to share free stuff with other people, here are some free dance lessons going on this week:

UBC Dance Club is offering free ballroom dance lessons today at 12:00-1:30 pm in the SUB Rm 207-209, and tomorrow at 6:30-8:00 pm in the SUB Ballroom. (I went yesterday and they taught basic steps to the cha-cha and the waltz. Really fun!)

UBC Swing Kids is offering free swing lessons today and Thursday from 5:00-7:00 pm in the SUB Rm 214-216. The first class of all official lessons are also free, apparently.

UBC Dance Horizons are even crazier in the variety of classes they are offering. All classes listed below are in the SUB Party Room. (They had tap yesterday, but yesterday is gone.)

Today there is contemporary ballet (2:00-3:00 pm), contemporary jazz (3:00-4:00 pm), and hip hop (4:00-5:00 pm).

Tomorrow there is beginner jazz (1:30-2:30 pm), advanced jazz (2:30-3:30 pm), and cardio hip hop (4:00-5:00 pm).

Friday offers advanced ballet (12:00-1:30 pm), beginner ballet (2:30-3:30 pm), and another session of hip hop (4:00-5:00 pm).

All that looking at dancing has me hankering after my ballet lessons again.

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Posted in Involvement / Leadership, Recreation

One of those awful summaries I write to make up for not updating more often

Posted on 15 September 2007 | 2 Comments

Somehow or other, time has flown by and I’ve been at UBC for over a month.

I’ve sorted out most of my ‘official stuff’: what I like to call tedious, but necessary, matters such as paying my tuition, opening my bank account, buying necessities, and so forth. I went down to East Van — a rather sketchy place, it feels — last week to get my Social Insurance Number (as a Canadian citizen, I need one to open a savings account and I never had one before). My savings account is now open, I’ve been down to the dollar store to buy random things, and I’ve eaten way too many bananas in the past week.

For the record, I’m really glad that I came for ASSIST. Although I left earlier than most of my friends and shortened my golden summer, it gave me a head start on getting used to UBC and has helped me make a fairly smooth transition so far. I’m way more familiar with the resources and the campus layout than if I had just come for IMAGINE, or even GALA, but most importantly, it was a great way of meeting people, particularly since I didn’t really know (m)any people coming to UBC. (My own set of secondary school friends are mostly split between the UK and Toronto.)

So to any prospective students out there, I do recommend coming early to UBC. I count as a domestic student, but I’ve lived outside of Canada for as long as I can remember, so I felt more like an international student than anything else when I first came.

Returning to the topic of meeting people, I find it somewhat more difficult to make friends with people in my classes. This is mostly because when you’re in a lecture hall or even a smaller class, you don’t really get to chat with the person next to you and have lots of deep conversations. The person next to you may also change each time you go to class. Then, of course, people are rushing to and from their previous or next classes so conversations are limited to a hurried ‘Hello!’ and ‘Goodbye!’ Making friends in classes is, for me, slow going.

Which is why I’m looking forward to Clubs Week next week. I think everyone should go. As I’m only doing four courses this term, I seem to have a lot of free time on my hands. (This is bad for my studying as I procrastinate when there is very little to do. Classes go at a slightly faster pace than the IB, but I don’t yet feel as challenged. Yet.) There are a lot of clubs that I’m interested in and I want to join about three, give or take. Is it sad that I’m mentally categorizing clubs in terms of CAS (Creativity, Action, Service)? It is. Curse you, vestiges of the IB. You’ve changed me irrevocably.

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Posted in Academic, International, Involvement / Leadership, Orientation

Tuum Est

Posted on 6 September 2007 | Leave a comment

We’ve all heard this phrase before, and we’re going to hear it a whole lot more, but I thought it was worth repeating.

The school motto — “It’s Yours” and/or “It’s Up to You” — is generally used in conjunction with describing our university education. UBC has a lot to offer its students to those who take the opportunities, and I totally agree. I’ve only had two days of classes and already I’m despairing about how I’ll ever take all the classes I want (the answer is I won’t, not within my limited time here). I’m also despairing about how to fit in all the activities I want to do around classes and reading without my grades dropping (I’m in denial about this one here, and am convincing myself that I can indeed do ten things — don’t burst my bubble, please).

But we don’t just have the opportunities at the UBC campus to pick and choose from: we have the whole of Vancouver, and heck, perhaps even Canada and the world. I’ll just stick with Vancouver for now, though.

On Tuesdays, the Vancouver Art Gallery is entry-by-donation. There’s a Monet to Dali exhibition going on at the minute on the ground floor, and the weirdest Asian art I have ever seen in my life on the second floor. I went with ASSIST a couple of weeks ago and it was great.

If I’ve got this right, Theatresports has a two-for-the-price-of-one special on Wednesday comedy nights over in Granville Island.

A fortnight ago, there were free ballroom/salsa (I can’t tell) dancing lessons in Robson Square on Friday evening, and then a competitive dancing show. I’ve never seen ballroom dancing in person so it was an amazing experience, and permit me a very girly squeal over those beautiful dresses the ladies were wearing! This free dancing apparently goes on every week in the summer but might have ended now.

On the same night we went to watch the ballroom dancing, we went to Kino Cafe and watched a flamenco show. The nachos there are the best I have ever tasted by the way. I used to hate nachos; now I might be addicted.

And I haven’t even started looking at all the shows, performances, activities, and what-not there are. I stumbled upon all these things through other people or through the ASSIST orientation, so I can’t imagine just how much more there will be when I actually start exploring. I could not go to school, have something to do every single day, and still not get to do everything I want to do.

So now I’m also despairing as to how to fit in exploring Vancouver into my already overflowing schedule.

Tuum est. Not just for our university education, but for everything we do all the time, even or perhaps especially after we graduate.

It totally is.

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Posted in Academic, Involvement / Leadership, Orientation, Recreation