First few weeks in Kingston

Okay, so I kept wanting to do a blog about my first weeks in Kingston but I felt obligated to write about Malta first. Naturally my solution was do do non for quite a while. But today I decided, screw it, I am going to write about what I want and hopefully get back into the swing of the blog since I really do miss it.

Okay I will skim over some of it because of course there is so much. Over the two weeks prior to leaving for Kingston I slowly and casually packed just a little every day. Unfortunately the last day was a bit of a rush, but nothing too bad. On the 401 the 'folks' and I played a good old fashioned game of animal, mineral or vegetable. We stopped in Ajax to visit Kari and her 'folks'. I must say are families are quite sympatico. Our conversations at some point even divided into pairs, fathers talking together, mothers talking together and daughters chatting together. Quite strange. Anywho, we had a ball and hooted and hollered the entire time. We made it to Kingston in fairly good time (sometime in the afternoon). We spent the night in a hotel because we werent moving me in unil the next day.

The next day (September 1st?) We met my landlord Sue at the Kingston Archaeological centre (where she works) and got the keys from her. At the apartment itself Sue gave us a tour and told us about any rules or guidelines of the apartment. She was very nice and quite helpful. I have the room with the double bed and get the sun rise sunlight in my room. I really do love my room and the 'folks' and I started set up right away. It took us a while to get everything up the stairs (we are on the second floor with one neighbour living below). I have a lot of giant art books that I brought since I am an art history major, so getting the boxes of them up to my room was interesting. My dad started right away on setting up my computer (since I have a desk top) and the printer and the wifi. It turns out the wifi doesnt let you skype so later that night we called a company, cogeco, to get me real interweb so I could still chat with the parents online. It also tunred out that my computer didnt really like the wifi anyway and rarely worked properly or at good speed, so good investment.

After trying to set up as many things as I could we headed out to have dinner with an old friend of my moms and his wife and daughter. Quite the interesting night, but we were dead tired by the time we got back to the hotel, of which I stayed at for the night since I was too tiredto have to clear off my bed at the apartment (which was cluttered with my stuff). The next day to that we went back to the apartment and continued unpacking and setting up. I got to meet Melissa my third house mate who is in 4th year education program. We chatted and watched tv and set up my room for the rest of the afternoon. My parents left very late because the wifi ended up not working and they were trying to figure it out for a while. I did get a little sniffly when they first left, but Mel and i ended up having a nice chat and it made me feel better.

So in the middle of the last paragraph I got distracted by laundry, then I decided to make myself a grilled cheese with the bread I made a couple days ago. Naturally it went wrong and one of the slices of bread split and while trying to save it I momentarily touched the pan with one of my fingers. I didnt burn myself badly or anything, but I will warn that it is making typing interesting so if it is kinda weird I apologize, but at least you know now.

Anywho, so it took two and a half days to fully organize my room into the comfy setting it is now. On the Firday (Sept. 4) Mel and I made home made pizzas and watched A Chorus Line. I haven't seen it in a while, but I definately recomend it to any musical lover who has yet to see it. Later that night Mel and I went to take out the garbage and recycling and got to meet our downstairs neighbours. They were really nice and asked what we had been watching since we did have it on kinda loud. The next day Melissa left for home for a few days, meaning I had 3 nights all to myself in the apartment (Kari wasn't there yet). I am not a wimp, but I did have to sleep with the tv in my room on. This is mostly because my closet is seriously creepy at night and I happen to (as silly as it sounds I know) beleive in spirits and ghosts and stuff. I mean some of the stuff you hear cannot be made up andI have been in some seriously creepy buildings. Not that I think I wouldget hurt or anything by a "ghost", but I would rather not wake up in the middle of the night to find a spook sitting at the end of my bed or in the doorway of the closet. Just a small preference of mine.

That weekend I decorated my room, explored campus and Kingston and applied to a few places to work. Not much else happened since everyone i know here seemed to be away or busy, but I did run into a few people which was nice. Melissa came back on the Monday following and Kari moved in on the 8th. She had just as much stuff as me, meaning it was a lot of walking up and down the stairs with heavy boxes again. Luckily a lot of it was food! Which is awsome. Every student loves free food. Her parents took us out for lunch, than dropped us off for our "castle kids" orientation. It was nice to see everyone from the Castle again, but I must say the 2 and a half hour talk we had from various departments seemed to drag on, a lot. We were told some interesting things but not how to do any of it. Anywho, afterward Kari and I went back to the house and made food/hung out and did up her room and such. The next day her mom took us to the LCBO and we got some white wine. I bought this Interesting sounding Ontario wine called Sibling Rivallery, which I found to be quite good. Once Kari said good bye to her parents some time in the afternoon, we made ourselves supper and started into the wine. We ended up having a very fine night, you can especilly tell because we finished off 2 bottles of wine. It was a few weeks ago so I don't exactly remember what we chatted about, but it of course must have been fascinating.

I believe we wandered Kingston and campus and met with some people the rest of the week and into the weekend. On the Friday (Sept. 11) We sat and watched Maury (are YOU the father of my baby!) as well as a baby story (to guess if the baby was going to turn out cute or funny looking) and lastly Say Yes to the Dress. We have become quite obsessed with this show. Its about a fancy store in New York that gives wedding dress fittings and basically the smallest anyone in there spends is $2000, but the average is usually $5000, on one dress. Anywho, the fitters are hilarious and so much fun to watch. After everyshow we would hold our breaths and then scream with joy when another one appeared. This happened every half hour for about 6 hours before we realised it was a marathon on and that the newest episode was yet to come at 9pm. So lets just say we watched between 6 and 8 hours of a show about wedding dresses. Melissa especially found it funny because she left and returned a good three times and every time we were watching the same show.

On the Saturday following (in the early morning) Kari and I decided to go to the Tamming ceremony on campus. This is the final ceremony for first years and the completion of frosh week where all the new students get their tams. Having not been there to do it last year we decided we would join in this time. We met up with three other castle kids and manaed to get in and get a seat. It was one of the most overwhelming experiences I have been through. Mostly because everyone was being lead by the gails (leaders consisting of upper years) in all these different chants and songs, over and over again, all of which we (the castle kids) didn't know. Imagine this great hall filled with over a thousand kids all yelling and chanting together. Pretty crazy stuff. When the actualy celebration began they sang the oil thigh which is the song of queens, it was fun because we could just mumble along to the tune. As well everyone stood up, put their arms around eachother and sawyed as they sang. Oh Queens. The rest of the ceremony wasn't near as interesting as its start mostly because it was geared towards the class of 2013 (we are the class of 2012). The rest of the day we hung out and I met with the cogeco guy to get my interweb installed. Oh I forgot, earlier that week we got our student cards and went to this market on campus showing all these studently things. We ran into a lot of people we know, but I happened t run into Claire and Katy L. from my old dance studio... and at the exact same time! First I saw Claire and we ran and hugged and then I look over and see Katy standing a few feet off in a different direction. We all dropped our mouths open and pointed because who knew we would see each other all at the same time. Katy screamed "my babies!" and gave us a huge group hug and scream squeeling in the way only Katy can. We agreed to do the dance club and then seperated to go our own way.

Thats all for now. I will talk about first week of classes hopefully later today, but if not some time tomorow. Bye bye!

Malta part ONE!

Wow, I can't beleive its been so long since I've blogged. To be honest I kinda missed it. I didnt even do my Malta trip or my return home, or my birthday or my adventures at the cottage and in Waterloo. So much to catch up on. So I think I will start with my Malta trip which occured about two weeks after my Berlin trip. In between I would say I mostly did school work and movie nights. One day we even got to go outside and just lay in the sun. Unfortunately we were chased away by the bugs. Nasty critters they are. Anywho the group on the Malta mission were me (obviously), Kari, Katie, Cameron, Amanda, Heather, Amy and Kurtis.

Hee, silly me just went to check the properties on my photos to see when they were taken so I could remember what times we did things and it said we were in the airport at 6am! When I know we arrived in Malta at night. It took me a good few minutes to realise that my camera's time was forwarded to England time so it is what time it was in Canada when we left! Crazy. So add 5 hours and we were in the airport around 11am? That still doesnt feel right but lets just go with it. So we took a taxi to the airport directly from the castle since it ended up costing less anyway. We went to one of the smaller airports of which I cannot remember the name of now. I dont think we had to wait that long. Long enough for me to go crazy with the picture taking. I remember actually that the sign that tells you what gate to go to wasnt announcing ours and it got up to about 10 minutes before the flight was to take off. Needless to say we were kinda worried but obviously it did come up and we even got pretty nice seats. Ryan Air planes are smaller than the ones you take over seas, only three in a row with two rows and one aisle. I think I napped most of the way to Malta. I don't remember how long it took but I do know that we got there when it was dark out.

When we did finally get through customs and checkout we were expecting a taxi from the hotel to be there to bring us to the hotel. Unfortunately he wasnt there. We had to give them a call and it sounded like the man didnt know we needed a taxi, but then the driver turned up anyway and it was all a bit chaotic for a half hour. Now this taxis was I think the biggest adventure (at least for me) of the whole trip. First of all there were no seat belts. second of all I was sitting in the extra seat at the back, I was next to two of my friends but in the aisle (which happend to be on the side instead of in the middle of the van). The chair was metal and moved with every bump turn. I don't know if it was the design of the van or if the chair was loose, but I was sure that I was going to fly forward two rwos ahead and smash into the driver should he stop suddenly and I not have anough grip on the seat. Of course I was a little scared so my defence mechanism kicked in and I started to laugh and giggle hystarically. My friends kept giving me weird looks like "what are you doing, what is the matter?" It didnt help that most of the roads are twisty and very hilly, so lots of bumps and swoops and turns. It also didnt help that the driver seemed to be a little over eager to get back to the hotel if you know what I mean.

We did make it to the hotel safe and sound, but I booted it out of that vehicle. We checked in and a guide had to take us to our room because it was down a few blocks and up another street in a different building. At first we were a little sketched out, until we saw our room! It was amazing. The boys got a different room in a different building that was only for two people. The girls all decided to share a suite since it was cheaper than some hostels. We were up three or four floors so we weren't sure what we would find. We walked into a full kitchen, not huge but big enough to have a round dining table in the middle of it and a full fridge and stove. To the left was the bathroom and a balcony. Go through a little hall and there was one bedroom off the the left with two beds. Straight ahead was the living room with a fouton, a cot and a good sized tv. To the right of that was another bedroom with another balcony. I stole this room with the bed closest to the balcony because the view was absolutely splendid. Up one way was old buildings and such and the other way was the port with boats and beautiful lights and it basically just made me really happy. We stayed pretty calm until the guide left and then we all burst into girly fits of screaming and jumping around. Once the guys came over and found where we were we all went out in search of a store for food and of course booze.

We found a couple small stores. We bought bread, eggs and other provisions to make our own meals and lunches. Kari and I decided on buying captain Morgan spiced rum this trip. Mixed with coke it tastes like vanilla coke! So it took us a while to decide what we all wanted. But we eventually made a decision and meandered back to the hotel. We stopped to get food at this really cheap take out place. I got amazing pizza! We lowered the fouton into a bed and sat on it or on chairs and chatted/watched Maltese TV. They had Gossip Girl in Italian at one point! So exciting! After food we played some drinking games and ... drank and laughed and even did some dancing. Eventually we made it to bed and slept very comfortably.

I will try and do the rest maybe this afternoon or later today. There is only two days to recap so hopefully I can do them in one shot! Then I can start on my adventures here in Kingston.