Posts Tagged ‘Canada’

A Canadian in America

// September 11th, 2009 // 18 Comments » // Academic, Work/Volunteer

I’ve been at Cornell for about three weeks now - it’s exhilarating! Okay yes, the honeymoon period is slowly draining out of my system but I still find something new to love in Ithaca every day.

Now as a Canadian I expected very few differences north and and south of the border. But I’ve been noticing a lot of small amusing things!

  • Y’all say “bathroom” instead of “washroom”! I’ve gotten so many weird looks when I say I have to go to the washroom. I mean, you wash your hands in the washroom, but you don’t bath there!!
  • People are highly amused when I say “eh”. I’ve been saying it a lot more now that I’m here just to emphasize my Canadiana
  • Labor! Color! Neighbor! Favor! Note to self: take out u’s
  • Fahrenheit still makes no sense, but I think I’m slowly getting it
  • I still have no idea where Long Island is, even though 50% of my faculty seems to be from there (okay now I do because I just Googled it)
  • People laugh at me for my US geographical-challenged-ness
  • No one knows what IB is

Some classes are fascinating, some are good but not too relevant. I found a job already - as an administrative assistant in a VP office. Joined a bizallion student organizations as well, need to whittle that down. My suite in my dorm is really chill. Life is good.

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O Canada! No Canada

// August 13th, 2008 // 13 Comments » // Academic, World for the Week

While China is counting how many medals they’re getting on the first day of Olympics 2008, Canada is trying to figure out how many days they’ll have to wait before getting their first medal.  I mean, our athletes try really hard and good for them! But it’s slightly amusing that Canada is behind Azerbaijan, Togo, and Kyrgyzstan. Zimbabwe is way ahead of Canada with three medals XD. In a situation such as this, it’s so much more exciting cheering for China (and Michael Phelps)!

So these past few days, I’ve been watching the Olympics on TV and on NBC and CBC online (my family are huge Olympics fans haha), writing scathing reviews pointing out all the bias in my local newspaper against Beijing, sneaking online to check medal standings at work… haha good times!

Sadly summer’s slowly coming to an end and all my friends are gradually scattering to all corners of the world. It’s a strange feeling because with my record of ten different schools in the last twelve years of public education (my family moved around a LOT), I was always the one leaving, heading off to somewhere exciting. Now I’m going to good ol’ University of British Columbia with my parents as roommates (don’t even get me started on those bus trips I’ll have to take every morning, the very ones I swore not to be a part of last year after seeing all the worn out UBC students on the bus). Despite all the great events I can look forward to, I find loneliness setting in =[

Oh well, no time to wallow! Now taking bets on how many days it will take Canada to get a medal, ANY medal! My money’s on Day 10-11. Laaaaaaame.

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