Friends =)

I went to church again on Sunday. I was planning on going to the one on campus (to avoid the 40 minute travel time), but as I walked past, I didn't really feel like going in, so I went back to Tenth. I'm glad I did.

The sermon today was about "Covenant Friendship" starting with the example of David (the one who slayed Goliath), and Jonathon - King Saul's son. Turns out that there was a guest speaker today, David Bentall, who runs a company which specialises in helping family businesses go from one generation to the next or something. He also wrote a book called "The Company You Keep" which I was very tempted to buy after the sermon (but I didn't as I am feeling particularly poor).

He talked about having close friends. How he, when he was younger, had gone to a retreat of some sort, and listened to the speaker talk about having friends that would be at his house looking after his kids that night, should he and his wife die that day. He went on to talk about his own close friends, who have helped him through all sorts of situations, from his marriage to his business decisions.

It's these kinds of sermons that make going to church while I'm here especially important to me. It's also one of the reasons why I believe that Christianity has something to offer everyone - even if you choose not to believe in God, the principles, and what you can learn from sermons still holds.

It also turns out that this is the hardest part of coming here. It really makes me appreciate all the friends that I've got back home, and hopefully I'll come out of this experience with a few great friends as well.

[Insert good photo with a bunch of friends here]
(Apparently I didn't manage to get a good one)

So... it's been a while since I've posted, and a lot of stuff has happened. I actually started writing this post on Sunday, but got distracted and busy.

... and now this is my third attempt at trying to finish it.

It's now also been a week since I last posted, so this is going to be a big post....

Didn't really do much on Thursday, but Friday I went for a walk... up a hill... a very big hill. I did "The Grouse Grind," which is a walk up a mountain. I'd heard that it takes about an hour and a half, and thought, fair enough. However, what people had failed to tell me, was that it was like walking up stairs for an hour and a half. It was a real wakeup to how unfit I am, especially given that I hadn't done any exercise since I left home.

It was about at the quarter mark (they have markers on the trail) that we sat down for probably our third break, and considered heading back. Had I been there by myself, I probably would've. But, of course, having someone else there made me want to go on. It was really intense. By the time we got to the top, walking down slopes was really hard. My legs felt like jelly, and were burning a bit. Good thing we walked around at the top, as I probably would've had aching legs for a couple of days if we hadn't.

It was kinda depressing that we were going at the same pace as a mum with three kids, the youngest of whom was 6, the other two were probably 8-12ish.

So Grouse Mountain is meant to be a touristy kinda place - there's meant to be grizzly bears, and a lumberjack show (which is apparently quite good), and it has a specialty shop that sells "Beaver Tails" (pastry with stuff on top basically). Unfortunately, when we got to the top we saw this:



... and everything was closed. So we walked around a bit, had some food, and took the trolley bus thing down. I was actually amazed at how far up we'd gone.

Those support things you can kinda see in the fog - they're the second set, which I estimate were about a quarter of the way up. It was a looong way down.

I got back that afternoon, and went to my lecture (a waste of time - we got through a grand total of 6 slides, 4 of them being a recap of the last lecture), and I came back to my room to sleep for an hour, before going out.

We went bowling. Which was a weird 5-pin. Type. The balls are tiny, the pins are on strings, and the scoring system is kinda makes sense but is funky at the same time (the pins are worth different amounts). It was actually bowling and pool, but meh.


Saturday was the Vanier Olympics. Basically a bunch of games where we compete against other Houses in the residence, and try to win points. The RAs (Residence Advisers - residents who basically run all the stuff and keep things in order) woke us up at 8am - with loud music, whistles and kicking on doors. They had some good games though - "Blind Water Balloon Volleyball" was a particular favourite - involving a volleyball net with sheets over it so you couldn't see the other side, and 4 bedsheets on each side, supported by as many (or little) people as you want. A water balloon gets placed on a sheet, and must be flung over the net to the other side, and caught only using the sheet. You score a point if the water balloon breaks on the opposition side (so it can still hit the ground if you're lucky), unless, of course, it lands out.


They also had dodgeball (which is still an awesome game), ultimate frizbee, and human fooseball - which was again a good one. You play with 20 players plus a goalie - 10 attackers and 10 defenders. Attackers must stay in your attacking half, defenders obviously in your defending half. Within your attacking/defending groups, you form a group of 5, a group of 3 and a group of 2. They have to be holding hands at all times. End result is a lot of people running all over the place, in a funny sort of way.


The other big thing at the Vanier Olympics were the cheers. Every house has to make up a cheer. We did the Haka (woo hoo) and we had another one led by Kanaiya - a Kenyan dude. Basically we stood around him in a circle, and he starts by whispering a phrase, of a few words (maybe 10), and everyone says "Eh-ya" (kinda like in agreement) every couple of words. It builds up and up, with Kanaiya playing it up inside the circle, running around, waving his arms about a bit, before the final time he's screaming at the sky and we're screaming our heads off. It was quite awesome.

Turns out what he was saying was "My Mum said we were gonna win today" - which is an even better touch (although noone else could understand it =P)

Saturday afternoon I went to Metrotown. Which is a big shopping centre. A really big shopping centre. Saw a movie (Superbad - which wasn't that great, but oh well), and had a Japanese Crepe (which, funnily enough, tasted like any other crepe). The one very cool thing about this shopping centre (apart from how big it is), is the fact that the information helper people move around the shopping centre on rollerblades. So you'll see people randomly skating past you and people stopping them for help. That'd be a fun job - although extremely tiring I'd suspect.

Sunday was that church service, since then it's been mostly study. In fact, since then, not a lot has happened. I've finally hit the work again. Assignments due Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and a test on Tuesday. Given that I'm only doing 4 subjects, that's too many things =P

This evening though, I did have a highlight. Google came to talk to us about job opportunities (which, apparently, lots of companies do at this time of the year - I missed EA =()

Although I'm not particularly interested in working for Google (although it would be cool), I went along, because that seemed to be the thing to do. We got free pizza =D But we also got a bunch of Google loot...
There were a lot of people there. And a mad scramble for tshirts at the end, which was kinda funny =P Apparently at Google they've got a 20% "Personal Project" time thing as well, where basically you do your down project one day a week. And you can say "20% day" and you'll be left to your own devices. Which is kinda cool =P

Hopefully I'll be going to Seattle the weekend after next - it being the Canadian Thanksgiving Long weekend (which, for some reason, is different from the American Thanksgiving). Should be fun, although it's lacking a little bit in organisation at the moment.

It also turns out that I'll have been here a month, today. It's gone really quickly (well, most of it), but I'm kinda used to it now. I feel like this is my home. I really love my room, and love the environment around here. I'm enjoying my subjects, not falling asleep (too much) in lectures - even the tedious bits don't seem too bad. I've seen heaps of things, will hopefully see a heap more, and yeah, generally enjoying things at the moment. I'm pretty content, even with all this work I've got to do. =P

I will definitely enjoy coming home to friends and family though. As much as I'm enjoying my time here, I'm looking forward to it every day.