The start of a dream; the start of a new beginning.

Here I am, back in Vancouver reminiscing on my time back home. It seemed so short, filled with so many amazing memories, seeing old friends, catching up on stories, and celebrating the holidays with family. I’m so utterly content with everything that’s happened. And to think, I got so caught up in it all that the Blog Squad actually disappeared from my memory for a time period! It wasn’t until Ebakes blog like facebook video to her friends made me realize how much I’m failing at doing my part.

So basically, majority of the time spent was with friends. About 30% was family time, regretfully admitted. More or less, I had repeated visits to local resteraunts, starbucks, movies, and splitzville; a newly renovated bowling alley/bar that didn’t card, bahah. Then there were the Christmas parties, and probably the most epic new years party I’ve yet to experience. I found myself wishing I had more time back in the hammer, but truthfully, there was a need for normality as well. In the past 4 months, the constant reading, 3 AM shinanygins, and exploring campus, has all become part of the norm routine. Not to mention all the friends that have been made; UBC is nothing without them. I kinda call Vancouver home now.

So a list of things to do in the near/immediate future;

–          Get settled into rez, unpack appropriately (note to self, don’t forget keys)

–          Go over distance education tutorials for EOSC course

–          Update resume and fill out application for Residential Advisory next year

–          Housing application for first year, keep forgetting!! (anyone else worrying about lottery?)

–          Figure out my New Years resolutions

That’s all I can think of atm. More to come soon! I’m thinking one New Years resolution can be updating the blog more often? That’s a good start :).

Yea, not really. At the moment I’m sitting at home, with a pile of Clementine peels by my side, and having the phone to my ear organizing my few meagre days in Hamilton. Turns out, it takes a bit of organizing to fit everyone in if you’re on a time limit!

But before I get into my antics back here, I’ll go over some of my finals. Essentially, it was the most studying I’ve ever done in…ever. I had my face glued to paper for two weeks straight. The first week of exams, I had nothing. Then the second week, I had 5 exams, in 5 days. One, after another. Little overviews of the course are as follows:

Anthropology 100 – Rough start, quite a bit of writing. But I enjoyed the information I retained by the end of it. Anyone know what a kinship diagram is? Fun times. I have one made up for my parents when I practised for the midterm! But yea, final was the second hardest. I’m guessing mid 70s. I’m happy.

Sociology 100 – Reasons for big changes, basically. It didn’t make too much sense at first, but then when you started applying it to actually examples in today’s world, such as Jay-Z and his chances on immigrating into Canada, makes for a lot of entertainment (he didn’t make it by the way). The paper made me look at media differently. Anyone heard of the “The Medium is the Message”? Not what’s advertised, but HOW. It’s legit. The final was probably my worst. It was the last of the 5, and I couldn’t for the life of me study for it. I was drained. But after building a gingerbread house with the remaining people in my house, drinking hot chocolate, and slacking around for a few hours, I got back to it…at like 11PM. I didn’t get sleep much that night because I’m in the DOTA hallway. My ultimate vice that game is.

ASTU 150 – This course was a rollercoaster. Loved it, hated it, then left liking it again. I guess I never really understood what the point of this course was when I decided to start hating it. It was research strategies involving scholarly articles. I think what I really enjoyed about this course was the theme we researched. It was gender and sexuality. Heteronormativity in different demographics, how was perceive gender, what is acceptable, what isn’t, etc. We even had an article about professor’s and lectures. The phonemes and morphemes they use actually change the way we look at them. Are they approachable, or are they scary enough to avoid eye contact. The final was 3 hours, and I think I did pretty well on it. I think maybe even my best. Big bang bam, first year English requirement out of the way.

Philosophy 100 – Mark wasn’t smart with this course. He dropped biology and took this course because he thought it’d be easier. So much for that. Me and a friend went in it together, both decided to skip majority of the lectures, and only showed up for the discussions. Well when we had 2 days to study a whole course, we feared for our lives. But we crammed like we never have before, with our good friends Monster and 5 Hour Energy, and we killed the exam. It isn’t as complicated as we had thought. Although some of those concepts were confusing. I still don’t like you Hume, seriously.

Psychology 100 – My favourite course!! And my future major. What I love about this course is how applicable the knowledge you attain in this knowledge is to real life. Why are we less tired in the light? What exactly happens to the ears of a deaf person? Is hypnosis real? Why can’t you trust a sketchy banker? (for those in Coren’s class). Psychology answers ALL these questions! After learning from my mistakes and studying more for the final, I’m fairly confident in it. It’s a fun time guys, no lies.

Onward to second semester! Psych and socio carries over, and I’m also taking up two EOSC courses. Natural disasters and Mesozoic era. I saw of the same questions for this course, and I’m STOKED.

Update you guys with my adventures back home! Remember SADM? Yea. That night is coming. Pictures will be included.

With PRIDE, I announce that the last of the 9 papers due this semester are complete!! I know we’re not in the clear yet with finals ready to strike, but lordie its nice knowing all we have left is studying. Last Saturday Totem also got to blow some steam off at the formal dinner and dance. It’s insane how much better cafeteria food tastes when you’re surrounded by formal attire and decorations. The dance was wet and greasy, comparable to the GLOW dance in September; a fun time no doubt.  

I feel like mentioning also that the past few weeks have been indifferent for me as well. There were highs and lows, but in the end I was left thanking myself for coming out here. I’m not sure exactly what it was. Maybe it was the amazing friends I’ve made here, conquering inner demons (thanks to those friends), the independence, self realization, or feeling like the future actually holds a place for me, I’ve just been really grateful, to the point where I admit to my mother that I couldn’t see myself settling down back home anymore. It’s scary yet invigorating thinking like a grown up. Homesickness was still there, but I feel when I go back home in 3 weeks, when we reunite we’ll cherish our friendships even more since we survived such a split.  

This reminiscing might be from my sleepless euphoric state. I think I’m going to nap now. This whole sleep thing…it kinda rocks when you get a full 8 hours of it.

Before you judge, let me just say that I don’t:

–          Squeal the second I see Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner

–          Plan on getting a Twilight quote via tattoo

–          Start freaking out the second I see a silver Volvo

–          Plan on going to a Twilight convention

–          OR spend hours on end on Twilight discussion forums

 That, is a bit much. I do, whole-heartedly love the series though. I discovered it through my sister way before it became popular. My guess is all the Twihards ruined it for me.

 I will admit, that I have done the following, and there are NOO regrets:

–          Dressed up as Jacob Black for the first movie (there were quite a few haters, everyone was still Team Edward)

–          Own every book in Hardcopy, each of which that have been read 2 – 4 times

–          Spent a bit too much of my time pondering what would happen in Eclipse and Breaking Dawn

–          Temped to travel down south to Forks and Port Angeles

–          Visited the cullen house in west van (and boy do I want it)

 So yesterday my sister and I went to see the movie during the 4:20 viewing over at Scotiabank theatre. We had to deal with a lot of screaming kids and teens, but that was to be expected.

 Verdict? Better then expected. The budget from what I hear was twice that of Twilight, the bland acting from Kristen Stewart seemed to have improved, and the graphics with the wolves was simply amazing. They added a bunch of scenes that weren’t in the books, as usual, but they added to the effect. There’s a good chance I’ll be going again soon with some girls from my sister floor; since too many guys aren’t comfy enough in their own skin to go.

And since I’m rockin the short fohawk now, I’m team Jacob; cause running with 10 ft tall wolves is so much cooler.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58iQSHhZGg[/youtube]

It started with a casual glance at the screen while my friend was watching Heroes. Then he let me borrow the first season. “Ok, I’ll borrow it but It’ll take me a while to finish it…there just isn’t enough time in my day to watch it!” I said. One episode a week turned into two. Two turned into 4. Next thing I know, I’m power-watching the first season of Heroes, going up to 5 episodes a day. Often till like 3 AM, no big deal.

 Watching television shows and movies is a nice release. It allows you to be whisked away into a world where all you’re concerned about is the characters in the show.

 Just attempt to prioritise. Only watch like an episode or two a day; no matter HOW good it’s getting.

Cheers!

Im sure many of you think that I’m not much of a blogger. I realize its been almost a month since my last blog, but with midterms and assigments  out of the way, I’m attempting to post more often. This is partially AJ’s, Erica’s, and Megan’s bantering too, since they bug me about my lack of updating multiple times a week.

So overall, midterms were intense. I studied hard for them, killed psych and socio, and hit average on anthro and english. The multiple assignments that were completed the past 3 weeks have been marked as well and I’m glad to say all the hard work paid off. I still have a few major ones ahead of me but they can be completed within the next few weeks.

You can imagine how much I was looking forward to the dressing up and eating candy until I exploded. After my last midterm, I made a spontaneous decision to go to metrotown with a friend. It was a nice suprise seeing how easy it was to actually get there! It gave me a chance to finally ride the sky train. So we got there, pranced around the mall, got some weird looks and shopped around. I came out with a nice peacoat, and Antonnia with some face stuff from Sephora. Our way back was quite the adventure as well. Downtown vancouver was swamped with ghoul’s, waldo’s, and spidermen. It suprised me how many people came out dressed up! Deffinetely not a Hamilton thing.

So after getting back to campus, a bunch of friends and I hung around Totem, got rejected at the frats (if you’re a girl, you’re good to go), and then danced around in the pit. It made for a very, even so slightly blurred, fun night.

So aside from Halloween, how is everyone else coping with the crawling amounts of H1N1? It seems as though there is a weaker strain. I was hit with sick a few weeks ago, and just when I think I’m in the clear, my email inbox is overflowing with flue prevention emails. As Erica just mentioned, they even have that nifty new button on the SSC that allows you to go on sick leave. Pretty convenient. If I keep up my vitamin C intake, bundle up, and avoid shaking hands or sharing food with anyone that’s sweating profusely or looks like they’re about to yak, everything should be ok.

 In any case, I’m off to continue with the assignments!

 Rihanna’s new song is fantastic by the way. Link below, enjoy!

Rihanna – Russian Roulette

I’m homesick, nuff said. Everyday, I feel like it’s been getting worse and worse, and if it weren’t for my sister living minutes away from campus, I don’t know where I’d be.

On top of that, I have two assignments due, and midterms right around the corner. I received my first grade in Anthropology, and lets just say it’s what started the current freakout phase.

Is it just me? I’m having a blast at UBC, besides the massive homework load, but I see people around me hanging around doing nothing at all. Makes me wonder. I can’t wait to get past the next two weeks, because then I have that brief time period where I can afford to not do homework or read.

Gahh. I miss highschool.

Sorry about the vent guys, but I have other blogs on the way. One of which includes my epic adventure to the Pacific Centre with my two friends.

And a final note, enjoy time with Family for those of you who are going back to visit, and HAPPY TURKEY DAY!

I just woke, from like a 2 hour nap. I’m not a nap person, but today, I KNEW a nap was needed. I woke up early to take my shower as planned, and was hoping to make it on time to my ASTU 150 class in Buchanon. That deffinetely did not work, because I ended up taking the 8:02 shuttle behind Dene instead. When I arrived late, for the 5^th time in a row, and started falling asleep in my super small class, I knew I couldn’t thrive off of 5 hours of sleep anymore.

So after Psych, I came back to rez, ate lunch, and napped. At one point a janitor dude came in and fixed mine and my roomate’s flickering lamp? I can’t even remember what he asked me.

So in the past week, I’ve accomplished quite a few things:

I joined the Ski and Board club, and I plan on joining the outdoor varsity club and maybe even the Polish club? That’s still being contemplated.

I’m pretty much caught up in my courses. Except Philosophy. I decided to drop anatomy and leave it for next year. It’s too much to handle first year.

I came up with a little organizational chart that keeps track of all my readings and assignments due. It involves tons of post-its, and a little weekday template on the quorkboard.

I attended GLOW the past weekend, which was the definition of residence fun. Never seen anything like it.

Above all, I’m still working out. I can’t remember if I’ve posted this in my previous blogs, but I have this plan. I call it; “Plan – Get sexy by December”. Fairly self explanatory. I don’t want to become all jacked and buff, but I’d love to tone down and just LOOK fit. Normally when I’m hit with this goal, I work out for a week or two, get bored, and then just continue living my life. But in this case, I’m hitting up the birdcoop, and I’m going to start swimming at the pool.

I had a revelation last night about my first month in BC. Aside from the added independence in residence, I can almost feel responsibility and maturity growing off of me. Remember when we were young, our parents would make us go to bed early and we would protest and argue our hearts out? Or when we had the tiniest of sniffles, we would make it into a huge deal hoping to take the day off school? Well, now I’m kind of wishing I had a mom and dad that would still enforce and prevent those kinds of things here. I’m attempting to fix all the bad habits like going to bed at 1AM, or starting my homework late.

WE call the shots now. So we can stay up as late as we want, but then we pay the consequences in the morning. We can pretend to be sick, but then we’re missing out on important lectures or discussions that we’re paying for. We can eat super unhealthy things at the café, but sooner or later, that freshman 15 is going to bite you in the bum.

This is where we grow up! And almost daily phone calls to my parents don’t seem like a hassle at all. If I didn’t know better, this move is going to do a lot more better then I thought it would.

What do you guys think? How are you dealing with independence?

So why then am I freaking out?

Current Moods: frustrated, stressed, but I’m feeling excitement on the horizon.

Why? Homework. I’m having some difficulty understanding how people manage high grades in university. I’ve had a minimal, if any kind of social life at all in the past week.

I switched out of my anatomy class, because I thought it was too much to handle first year, so instead I enrolled myself in a Philosophy course. This gives me another 3 weeks worth of reading content I have to catch up on. Love it!

Aside from the hours of reading in psych, socio, english, philosophy, and anthropology, I have an assignment due tomorrow morning at 8 AM. I only found out about this two days ago, which is totally my fault. Regardless, it’d be nice if TA’s can go over the assignment so everyone understands what they’re supposed to do !

I left to my sister’s house yesterday so I can get some quiet time studying and doing this subject, but I ended up ripping out my hair for 4 hours. I built somewhat of an outline for the assignment, or abstract, as they call it, so now I’m hoping the research part won’t be too difficult. If anything, I can always just stay up until 4 in the morning doing it. I’ve only done that… 4 times now? I guess students weren’t kidding when they said university was hard.

Back to work! Just wanted to provide a quick little update.

You guys can expect an update sometime Sunday or Monday after Totem Color Wars (life or let dye), day of the Longboat, and GLOW. It hear it has quite the reputation, haha.

Oh, and one quick end note, whoever stole 1^st floor Dene’s PingPong Table and wrote 6^th Nootka on it with permanent marker, we are all unimpressed.

Can I just start by saying how sorry I am? It’s been over a week since I’ve updated my blog, and during one of the most exciting times of the year to boot. As you can imagine, the past 9 days have been nothing short of insanity.

Here’s a little rundown on the trouble I’ve been getting myself into.

Moved into Totem. This night may have been a bit crazier then I wanted it to be. The totem partying hype was lived up to, and by that, I mean to say it was a blast; from what I can remember. Moral of that story? Don’t mix drinks. The nausea isn’t worth it in the morning. I spent the day at my sister’s recovering.

Then there was the AMS events week. They were selling these manly blue glittery bracelets for 20 dollars, its supposed to get you into a bunch of the events that were being hosted. I bought this band, I wore it for an entire week. Did I make use of a single event that was planned? Of course not. Take note; cooler stuff happens.

Among other mini parties, I met TONS of people. You’ve heard your parents tell you: “Don’t worry about making friends ! Everyone is in the same boat, so it’ll be no problem at all”. I can’t deny though, that remembering everyone’s name is extremely difficult. You’re meeting hundreds of students a day, and most of the time, (don’t hate me for this), I forgot the person’s name by the time we finished our conversation. It made me so sad ! Good news is though, a lot of people’s names stuck. And for the most part, I hang around a lot of these people. Both my floor and our sister floor are amazing.

My RA, Dylan Denault, is really good at what he does. He’s so chill and down to earth. Even when we’re caught making too much noise in our rooms, or having a rave party in another at midnight, he doesn’t yell, actually, I don’t even think speaks. He kinda walks in, nods or smiles at the person, and walks off. Our floor and him have this mutual understanding, he has to do his job, and we don’t want to get him in trouble. It’s usually the people that randomly take over our common’s room from vanier that do the most damage. Someone stole our TV’s cable for crying out loud! Ces’t la vie.

OH, and the roommate !! This was a HUGE deal. After all, we’re living together for the next 8 months. His name is Kurtus, and he’s going into engineering. He’s a pretty cool guy. We agree on pretty much everything, and neither of us have done anything to really annoy each other. Unless you count me forgetting my keys at 3 in the morning and having to wake him up so he can open the door for me (still sorry about that budd!). We had roommate boot camp two nights ago, and we dominated together. Me and Kurt got an official paper with a star and cartoon (the works) with the “Most likely to survive eachother” award. I dunno, I was pretty excited. So I’m glad how that part is working out.

CLASSES. I’ve basically attended all my classes once already. I’m not proud that I’m falling behind on the reading, but I plan on doing all that this week. This isn’t high school after all. Classes I’m currently taking are:

PSYC100 – The teacher was intimidating, and seems a bit unapproachable. But his humour is starting to grow on me. Really interesting stuff!

SOCI100 – Tons of reading ! Between chapters in the textbook, to the random articles we have to print out for our discussions. It’s quite a bit. The profs seem really interactive with the students though, so that’s a huge plus.

ANTH100 – Probably my most confusing class. We have quite a bit reading due though, so maybe once I get started on the textbook and the two ethnographies we’re reading, I’ll get a vague idea on what anthropology is about. I’m worried about this class, but I’m going to try and stay optimistic.

ASTU150 – Arts English ! This class seems pretty fun, for an English course that is. Our teacher is very down to earth, and even encourages us to call her by her first name. Our main topic of studying has something to do with gender and sexuality? Needless to say interesting.

BIOL155 – The damn anatomy class. I LOVE anatomy, and I LOVE biology. What I don’t love, is how there is only one time slot. It’s on Tuesday and Thursday’s from 3:30 – 5:00. Meaning, I have a four hour gap after my psych lecture. The gap right now actually ! I guess during this giant space of time I can head to the gym or go back to Dene and get some homework in.

There’s so much more to write, but before I save the rest for tomorrow’s blog (hopefully), I have to mention about my dear friend, and fellow blogger Erica Baker ! This girl is like a little piece of walking home. We’re both from Ontario, so we both know what we’re feeling. We can open up to each other in deep meaningful conversation or we can joke around, like in her latest blog; she’s modeling the blackhead strips I let her try! Fun times. But you guys will be seeing a lot of Mark and Erica Blogs. We have plans in the making, and you know they will be spoken of, with pictures taken of course.

More updates within the next three days, promise ! I’m thinking about making a fun fact Friday, or even fitness Friday? Just a separate blogging day of the week. Let me know what you guys think!

Aaaaaaaand a quick shout out to some people back home ! I miss you guys, phone calls with you all make it so much easier!

K seriously, I’m off to get ready for anatomy, and then our brother sister floor dinner ! We’re going to the mongolie grill or something like that? Needless to say, I’m pumped for some good food and fun times.