A Canadian Adventure

Coming home from Canada has left me with a very strange mix of emotions. One the one hand I’m excited to see all the people and places I missed so much when I was away that made me homesick and on the other I’m homesick for all the people and places I left behind. Coming home also made me realise how much it isn’t the big obvious things that even make you homesick. I missed all the familiar things that make up the city of Edinburgh, the cobbled streets, the familiar shops, my favourite café, the castle and a million other landmarks even if those landmarks like they so often are only landmarks in my mind. Continue reading this entry »

18/06/08

When you start a big trip like this one it is incredibly difficult to know if all your plans have been enough and if its all going to work out, if you did enough planning, read enough books and saved enough money but at the same time didn’t over plan and spoil the trip. Before I left Ottawa I began to worry that I was cramming far too many stops into this tiny short month and that instead of seeing everything I would see nothing. I can safely say I think we did pretty well.

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03/05/08

Unfortunately to start my exciting new adventure I had to end my last one and leave the wonderful city of Ottawa that has been my home since September. Stripping my room of all my photos and posters to leave just a bare empty shell and hugging goodbye to all new friends I had made unsure of when I would see them again was hard. So it was with mixed emotions that I got onto a plane and we left Ottawa, flying east to the start point of our epic journey that will take a month to complete. I am (hopefully) going to complete coast to coast crossing of Canada on the Pan Canadian Railway with my equally crazy flatmate, Julia. This journey will take us from the city of Halifax in Nova Scotia over 3000 miles west to the city of Vancouver on the pacific coastline.

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This week I had may last ever experience as a Carleton University student. This final bid experience was supposed to be my final exam on Monday and this was a bitter sweet experience because I was extremely glad to have finished all my exams and to not have to study anymore but I was also really sad that I would never really be back to work at this wonderful university again.

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Compared to the last few weeks this week has been a whole lot busier than I’m used to. I am currently in the middle of three days of exam hell however after tomorrow I will only have one left and I get a few days to chill out and study before I have to sit it. Time to chill out between exams unfortunately hasn’t been a privilege I’ve been afforded this week. I had an exam Tuesday, today and have another tomorrow. So for the past week most of my spare time has been spent cramming for three different subjects and I’m worried that soon my head will explode.

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So spring is has finally reached the fine country of Canada and it’s about time! If I had had a choice it would have been here about a month ago. Anyway the snow although still lying all over every available surface has definitely stopped falling from the sky and started to melt away exposing the brown and muddy grass that was first hidden over four months ago. Continue reading this entry »

This week is the last week of term and apart from the sudden pressure of essays and exam deadlines drawing ever closer it had brought a few ‘lasts’ for me. I had my last ever class at Carleton today which left me with mixed feelings because on the one hand it’s nice to know that the term is over and there is nothing new to learn but on the other hand it’s very sad because I will never have another Carleton class. Continue reading this entry »

As I mentioned in my last blog the huge highlight of the week was the Foo Fighters gig. I have of course been to several other gigs in Ottawa but they have all been smaller indie shows in bars like Zaphod’s or Barrymore’s and this was my first big stadium gig. It was simply amazing! We all pilled into the back of a friend’s truck to drive across town to the stadium and blared their music the whole way singling along as we grew more and more excited.

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You might assume that St. Patrick’s Day would not be as big a deal in Canada that it is back at home but you would be wrong, so very, very wrong. St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated to an insane extent across North America in a way that puts the UK to shame. Many of the baseball and hockey teams where green jerseys in celebration of the day, many cities dye there rivers and canals green while other paint all the buildings on the parade rout instead, people are known to have dinner parties containing only green food and drink and of course like in the UK finding a good bar and drinking green Guinness for most of the day.

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Now I know that I have bolgged about snow to an almost ridicules extent in the past few months but like any good Brit (and any good Canadian for that matter) I can talk endlessly about the weather.

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