Hi there and hello faithful readers. I apologise for not blogging earlier, I didn’t know it would disturb so many of you. Anyway, things have been up, down, a little to the left, backwards, down then up again since we last spoke. First there were dramas with where we’re living. The person we were subletting off and the company that owns the place we’re living in had a fight and decided to terminate their lease (and subsequently our lease..) which a) left us out on the street at the end of February with two months left in the semester and b) the prospect of applying for the ONLY available lease on this place - 12 months! So we were in a bad way. We had an emergency meeting with our top Canadian advisors - Jamie and Tom. Several contingency plans were organised. The next day, however, salvation! Deus ex machina! Someone with some compassion intervened from on high. The details are apparently secret because they’re not entirely in line with company policy, but it’s sufficient to say that we’re good until the end of April and we didn’t have to get ourselves into something we didn’t want to get into. Huzzah!

If this wasn’t enough, by Friday things were really looking up at our slightly late Australia Day Party! Click the link for photos taken by one of our brand new friends Kenny! We took photos on Casey and Trudy’s camera too, but I’m too lazy to get them at the moment. Anyway, there was Anzac cookies which everyone was impressed by and some solid drinking and only one complaint about the noise and some pizza and some good times! The day after was lots of sleeping, Donnie Darko in the afternoon and a real genuine North American ‘diner’ for dinner - called the Prince Albert (a bit different to our own local P.A.)! This was followed by a funky little pub down the road called Alex P’s (a little closer to our P.A.) where I had some strawberry beer. Hmmn. Trudy was a bit ill, and we were all a bit knackered, so we went home for more sleep. Then on Sunday a cold I had been keeping at bay finally reared its ugly head, so I slept more and more and more (hence the title of this entry) and today it’s getting better. So I’m well!

Some quick shoutouts..

Liz - Get back to your study and stop waiting around on my website for new blog entries. Try and check back only once or twice a day.
Adam - Happy Birthday Pats! 22.. so old, and yet so.. old. Email me your Brisvegas landline number and I’ll give you a ring with my cheap calling card.
Sly - We need to organise a time when you’ll be at home so I can ring. I’ll email you now actually..
Bodie - I calculate you should be sitting on death couch in approximately 50 hours, so prepare your toque (beanie) and mittens! You better be packed. No wasting time on the internet, get some sleep!
Mum & Dad - thankyou for your supportive emails and phone calls. Only now when I’m on the other side of the planet do I realise how lucky I am to have protective parents.

So things have been good. Uni is going swimmingly. Had a class the other day that was scheduled to finish at 5.30 (started at 2.30) and went ’til 8 - Dante’s Purgatorio. It’s so fascinating, I just couldn’t pull myself away from the class. By 8 there were only four of us left, but it was just so interesting. So yeah, loving Uni. Here are some photos of the campus…

You have to click these ones and the bigger one will come up. Should save on the load time for this page.

In other news we’ve been doing some solid drinking and going out, true UniBum style. Jamie has been hosting us at his place, and he’s taking us on a ski trip at the end of February up to this place called the blue mountain.. Which might sound familiar to some people.. His parents have a time share place up there so it’ll be hell cheap which is handy. We’re definitely looking forward to that.

And more photos! Some of me on the path to Uni, and a few pictures of what it looks like from the balcony when it’s snowing. Which sadly isn’t every day, but the snow will come soon we are told.

frozen puddles - squirrells chasing each other in the trees - fire alarms - checking to see if i have my wallent and passport - ice sculptures on the balcony - egg in the glass (i thought) i just washed - cheap smirnoff - taking ten minutes to prepare to walk outside - mojo is a dog - fat salad - paying for internet that doesn’t work when the free internet we had before worked sometimes - purgatory? - why is this bus taking so long - add the taxes - laptop geeks - when will the snow come? - i wish it would stop snowing - $40 rocking chair, i will never forget the way you would sway me - Z equals.. - trudy hearts hegal -iPod in the rain when you can’t feel your face - imaginary knocks at the door - always only just missing the phone - horrible kelsey’s - load, page.. load - green paper - pausing to remember and putting that memory in your fingertips for later - sitting here in my coat, looking stupid - virtual insanity over the rainbow - appletini - asian chicken salad - exposed flesh in canadian winter.

As promised, images from afar…

Brady & Trudy at the Taipei airport.

Me in Vancouver, sleep deprived and wandering.

An upside down chapel in the city of subversion?

Some Vancouver city scape.

More wanderings around Vancouver - Casey and Trudy on the phone to her mum.

Our reception at the airport - my friend Tom!

Tom’s hotel in London, Ontario. Our first good night sleep, knowing we had arrived. Very tropical below, and snow roof above!

Snow! On our rental car! And me waving.

Trudy carting her luggage through the snow like a real woman.

Our home for four months. We just kinda threw everything on the floor.

Homesick-ish.

The view from our balcony.

Tom, Iain and Brady infront of the Australian flag. Tom’s friend Iain was so helpful in helping us get set up. He found death couch for us! Me tired still..

Casey getting settled in.. photo wall and James Dean in the background.

People sitting on death couch! We have friends.. Trudy, Casey, Tom, Jamie, Michael and Michelle (in no way replacing THE Michelle (sly) who I pine for daily)

And that’s it so far. I’ll have to smuggle Casey’s camera to Uni soon to take some pictures of the awesome campus. More on that later.

Tomorrow will be my third day of classes at Western and it’s all going well! My timetable is finally coming together after some extensive stuffing around… One of the sociology courses I’m taking is called ‘Life in the Contemporary City’ which will deal mostly with Canadian cities which will be a good chance to get familiar with the country, especially from an academic perspective. I also have a psychology course with this German professor who seems funny, but none of the Canadians in the class find him as funny as I do. Another of my classes is ‘Dante’s Purgatorio’, the second ‘book’ of Dante’s ‘The Divine Comedy’ that I’ve been looking forward to. The course is also convened by the professor that runs the Western Pride Library which will be cool.

The campus itself is very beautiful. Old buildings that clearly have a deep and rich history. The snow makes everything look like it’s come straight out of a movie, but I can imagine that the campus would be equally amazing in summer.

Photos soon, I promise!

The last few days have been so full on, I feel like I’ve been away for ages but it hasn’t even been a week yet! Our appartment now has one piece of furniture (besides matresses) that we call Death Couch. Iain, Tom’s friend who has been helping us get around and find place every day since we got here, saw it on the way to walking over here. It was just down someones driveway and they didn’t want it, so some extremely Canadian hippie man (who I’m sure was trying to sell us pot) that lives upstairs and owns a big moving truck offered to pick it up for us and help us get it in for 20 bucks. So here we are trying to squeeze this giant three or four seater leather couch that is FROZEN SOLID into a tiny elevator. The logistical nightmare of it all. If only my father was here. Only now do I realise and fully appreciate his prowess as a removalist and a boot packer. Anyway, the Death Couch is now sitting in our loungeroom (centre of attention) on plastic sheets defrosting. To hasten the thawing process, we removed all the frozen padding to discover the seedy inside of a well used couch. Casey and Trudy then started telling each other ghost stories and began inventing ‘imagine if..’ stories about the couch and who may or may not have died on it and whose corpse now inhabits its insides. Hence it is now the death couch that occupies our living room stripped of all padding waiting to be dry. Casey and Trudy seem adamant on cutting it up and throwing it over the side of the balcony, but I dream of a day where we can sit on it instead of the floor thus reducing the pain in my back.

In other news, the grocery shops here are horrid. They’re thrice the size of Kmart at Pac Fair, and they have everything in them include BAGS OF MILK and LARGE BUCKETS OF MARGERINE. We had to line up for half an hour + just to SERVE OURSELVES at a self-serve checkout. Which would’ve been more amusing had we all not been ready to kill each other and any Canadians that dared run into our tired legs with trolleys or ‘carts’ as they call them here.

The rocking chair is just a little something I picked up at the local Salvo store which here is called ‘Good Will’. The shop and the people therein were hilarious. We’re waiting on the furniture to be delivered as I type. We got a dining table with four chairs (two white, two blue), two bedside tables (Trudy’s was $2 and is awesome), a desk with a record player built in and of course my fantastic rocking chair. It all came to like $150 or something. We love the Canadian op shop. When we get a stable internet connection and Casey gets his photographic act in to gear, I’ll post some before and after pictures of our appartment.

Finally classes started today. It’s so odd. I have to keep reminding myself I’m in an enitrely different country. The campus is so beautiful and everyone is very helpful, but it is a bit of a rush to get things organised so quickly and in such strange surroundings. More on campus life later.

I hope all is well!

G’Day! Well we’re here in Canada now, or Cranada as our toilet likes to say.. and it’s been ‘awesome’..! So much has happened in the past week that there’s no way I can remember it all and type it all in here. So I’ll give you some memorable highlights..

On Tuesday we flew from Brisvegas to Taipei. The flight was pretty cool. We had these nifty little screens infront of us that we could watch any movie from a huge selection whenever we wanted to, listen to a huge range of CDs, play games, trivia quizzes, etc. The food was better than expected and because the flight was empty we ended up spreading out over six seats so Casey and Trudy were able to sleep. I was too awake though, so I just watched movies. Then in Taipei we got picked up by a woman screaming ‘Green Paper’ which is a long story and will henceforth enter into the realm of the personal joke. Anyway, the Taipei airport is nowhere near the city, so we drove through farms and slum areas to get to where we were staying which was this huge ‘Bruce Wayne’ type mansion where a can of coke of the local soft drink ‘C is for creative people that drink C’ costs $25. Which works out to be about $1.25AUD I think. So anyway, that place was fun. It was quite chilly there, but nothing compared to what we had ahead. We also met this Australian dude who was flying to Canada to start a snowboarding instructor career with virtually no snowboarding experience. On the flight from Taipei to Vancouver he made us drink until the stewardesses had to say “No more for you!” and then we were sad. They didn’t understand the, “But we’re Australian” rebuttal.

So anyway the flight to Vancouver was about 10 hours and there was no personal entertainment units, so it was quite hellish. I got no sleep on that flight either, but I was OKish because of a good night sleep in Taipei. So now we’re in Vancouver. Our first dose of semi-cold, or as the Canadians called it ‘mild’ five degree weather. We caught a bus and instantly made like three friends who started talking over each other to give us advice. So we arrive in downtown Vancouver and it’s really funky. Everyone was very trendy and the shopping was great. Alas we couldn’t really buy anything except for postcards. And then we discover the bain of our Canadian existence - taxes. They don’t include them in the price like we do, so you rock up to a buy something that said $1 on the sign and they charge you $1.30.. it’s very annoying. You just have to guess how much it is unless you carry around a calculator all the time. And then we discover tipping.. which is essentially compulsary. But you only have to tip certain people.. and we’re still getting used to the etiquette.

So now it’s about 4 in the afternoon and I’m really crashing. Timezones are all screwed up, it’s cold, Casey is pissing me off and my head is spinning. But we have to make ourselves stay awake to get over the jet lag ASAP so we do. But I’m allowed to sleep in the airport at 8, so I do. Then then our flight to Toronto is at night so I sleep there too. And then we’re at London all of a sudden, where the airport is even smaller than Coolangatta.. and Tom and Iain are there to pick us up! So we get in a rental car and Casey starts driving normally which over here is of course the wrong side of the road. Anyway, last few days have been huge, but we’re nearly moved into the appartment and we’re spending out second night in Tom’s hotel. The people here have been awesome, so friendly and helpful. Everyone wants to hear about what we’re doing and where we come from. Uni starts on Monday and we should be settled in by then. Yay!

We’re really missing home right now. Everytime my mum calls I feel like crying. I’ll hopefully get on to some emails next week, but everything has been so full on we’ve just been so busy. Talk soon, I hope all is well with everyone!

Hey hey!

Thanks to everyone who swung by to celebrate new years and say goodbye to us. Trudy, Casey and I fly for Canada on tuesday. Hopefully this blog will be regularly updated by moi while we’re away. Thanks again to everyone. Michelle, Zoe, Adam, Elise, Tez, ‘trina-mole, Alinta, Daniel, Kya, Taters, Matt, Bodie, (biker)Suz, Lucan, Jen, Toni, LisaD, Dom, Koi, RyRy, Claire, Karissa, Paul, Amy, Em, Stan, Chach-ski, JD, Nicole, Sarah, Richo, Craig, BenStG.. and anyone else I’ve forgotton. I would’ve liked to have seen more people and had a longer goodbye, but you’ve gotta cut yourself off at some point I suppose!

I hope everyone that didn’t make it to mine last night had an awesome new years. Next time I write I’ll probably be in Canada (time and temperature in the little box above). Have fun!