This, my friends, is the view from my room in Gage at 5:00 pm. Yes, those are mountains and ocean and forest. No, it has not been Photoshopped to look sunny. I don’t know how to use Photoshop; it scares me.
Isn’t it gorgeous? The scenery in Vancouver is one of the reasons — my second-last reason, to be precise — for coming to UBC.
As ridiculous as this may at first sound, I made a list of reasons for coming to UBC — in fact, I made many lists. I made lists about the pros and cons of going to the UK or to Canada. I made lists about the pros and cons of going to other universities. I made a list of things I wanted out of my university experience and gave each of them a weighting. I ranked each institution according to how they performed in each factor.
In other words, I was ridiculously logical and then I threw all my lists away and thought about what I wanted. The answer was the same.
Then I had to recite my list to friends, family, teachers — everyone who wanted to know why I was going to UBC — which is why I can still tell you that this view was the second-to-last reason.
The last reason was the weather. It’s not as cold as Ontario.
That list is, by the way, in order of decreasing importance. Of course.
So here I am, and hoping my heart and logic haven’t led me astray.
I’m participating in ASSIST, the academic orientation for international students which began on August 16th (academically speaking; the social activities began on the 14th). Both the academic and the social schedules have been absolutely packed so instead of blogging, socialising on Facebook or writing long-promised emails to friends, I’ve been doing the less interesting, but slightly necessary, tasks of opening my bank account, doing the laundry, buying milk… (I’m staying in Gage right now, which is basically the apartment-style accommodation with six single bedrooms, a shared bathroom, living room and kitchen. This means I either have to cook or eat out. I eat out a lot.)
There’s a trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery in about half an hour. Now I can either shower or find dinner, but not both. This is why I didn’t blog before. I always seem to be doing something “essential”.
I’ll probably find dinner because I can always shower later. Except all the cheap food outlets closed an hour ago. (It’s now 6:00.)
Cereal, here I come.
