mega update: hello from langley!

sorry it took so long for me to update my blog, but it's been... well... let's just say there are a lot of things i'm having to adjust to. hehe. and i've also run into a few little problems and interesting encounters here and there... no big deal really, but they do tend to add up. so now it's my first full weekend here and i finally have some time to just relax and lounge around. i did keep track of the past week's events on my laptop, so i'll post excerpts to fill you in on my first week here in langley.

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sunday - june 11

it has been one crazy weekend! i was gonna talk about my crazy monday (crazy pedestrians and sales associates and ttc bus drivers) but i think i'm over that now. sort of.

let me tell you what really sucks about booking a charter flight when you're gonna be away for two months: LUGGAGE ALLOWANCE. grrrrrr!! they allow me a maximum of 20 kgs... each piece of luggage on its own (i.e. empty) weighs about 5 kgs. i started packing around 8pm friday night and i didn't sleep unil 8am the next morning... having to pack and repack and take out things and repack and take out more things and repack... ugh. i slept for about 1.5 hours. i was still a few kgs over, but i had already gotten rid of half of what i was supposed to bring. about 1130 (my flight was 230) i was complaining to my mom that i should've just packed my stuff in duffle bags and she was like, "well why don't you??" so she went to pick up a duffle bag from someone she lent it to and i was frantically unpacking once more. what a difference in weight a duffle bag makes!! anyway, i barely made it to the airport on time, and when i checked in my luggage i was 1kg over but they didn't say anything. good, cuz that woulda cost me $7. anyway, skyservice (the charter i took) had really good coffee, surprisingly. the flight itself was not bad... though not too good either, but it never is when you're sitting in the middle seat with strangers on either side of you. when we passed over the rockies, my jaw just dropped... i can never get over how beautiful the mountains are. i wish i had my digital camera on me to take pictures.

someone from CanIL picked me up and dropped me off right at my residence. the TWU campus was pretty empty. i was shown to my room and it was so spacious!! not in a good way though... the desks are so far away from the outlets. maybe i'll post a picture of how i rearranged my room. what else. i met two of my floormates and had dinner with them that night. they made salmon and rice... mmm... they're both decent cooks. one's from alberta and the other drove up from missouri. then i met another floormate who came all the way from norway and i joined her and a couple of CanIL staff to do some grocery shopping.

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i was supposed to meet N at 9am to go to church... so i was up late trying to set up my suite and rearrange things and get settled in and stuff... oh yah, after making a huge deal about bringing a cable to connect to the internet port, guess what i couldn't find in my bag. the cable!! all that repacking and downsizing, i ended up missing a LOT of things. a pair of sandals. my running shoes. warmer clothes. the weather here is crazy unpredictable, but i'll get to that later.

so i hear this weird noise and realize it was knocking. omg, it's N!! i slept in. my first day and i slept in. i'm sooo in trouble. i got ready in 5 minutes and we left for fort langley on foot. (the bus comes every hour so if we miss it, we miss it. and we missed it.) about 40 minutes later we arrived at the church, fort langley evangelical free church. interesting. the sermon was on the da vinci code and felt more like a history lecture, but i haven't read the book yet so maybe it was beneficial for a lot of the audience? and then N introduced me to another friend Nv and she has an awesome place she's renting close to the church. i've already made up my mind to find my off-campus housing in fort langley. it's the only borderline walkable town close to the school. we were gonna take the bus to willowbrook mall but instead we walked back to campus where N made some tuna melts for lunch and we had a picnic on the lawn with his roommate M and this other girl named grace. (funny story, grace and i were caught up in a conversation for a while and then afterwards, she was like... "umm... uhh... ann? is it? sorry, what's your name again??" it was hilarious! i can't believe she forgot my name!) and then less than an hour later the weather went from hot and sunny to dark and rainy and thundering and hailing and then the power went out. it was scary how quickly the weather changed. oh yah, i learned another lesson other than not to book a charter flight if you're going away for a long period of time (and if you have to, use duffle bags with wheels cuz they weigh a lot less). that is, cordless phones don't work when the power is out. USELESS.

i soooo need to buy some shoes. one day of walking and my old navy flipflops are already beginning to fall apart... i shoulda brought my runners or sports sandals, grrrrrr... but they were too heavy! the soles of my feet feel like sandpaper, and my legs are cramping from the flipflops.

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monday - june 12

so yesterday my roommate S finally arrived and i think we're gonna get along just fine :) she brought a bunch of groceries with her and i already made her promise to call me to the kitchen every time she cooks something. i learned she's an RN from saskatoon, which is really cool... so now i feel quite safe... hehe. my prof across the hall finally moved in as well. N cooked some stir fry chow mein thingy and invited everyone to have dinner at his place, which was nice of him since i was just gonna eat my leftover T&T buns from saturday.

so then we had some tea and went back to our rooms, and i was really hoping i'd be able to wake up on time for monday since i slept in on sunday. before i did, i had borrowed an internet cable from grace to see if i could hook up my laptop. long story short, the other bed in my room was blocking the outlet and i spent a looong time trying to get the cable in but it wouldn't work, so then i gave up and went to sleep. the next morning i found out i was sticking it in the wrong way the whole time. silly me.

i woke up an hour early because of the sun, which was already shining at 5 something in the morning... this is a good thing, btw. the CanIL building is about a 5-minute walk from our residence hall. there was phonetics class in the morning, and at 930 we had chapel break, which was really nice... saw the other students (commuters and such). the biggest and most pleasant surprise today was finding someone i knew from toronto!!! there were two worship leaders today, one on guitar and one on piano... i didn't recognize her at first, but when the piano player was introduced as C, the name stirred up something in my memory, and i was like... I KNOW HER!! so afterwards i went up to her and said, I KNOW YOU!! and her first reaction was... "ohh! yah! from UofT??" and i was like, "no... from Perspectives class!" honestly, what are the chances i'd meet her here?!?! anyway, there was an orientation lunch and i was able to catch up with her on top of meeting some other new people. i'm so glad she's here... she's a year ahead of me since she started the MLE program last year, so now i know at least one person to turn to for help or advice.

we had language and society class after lunch. compared to the morning class (articulatory phonetics), this is more discussion-based, which is a fresh change from all the memorization and analytical work that all the other linguistics courses entail. though funny enough, i think i'm enjoying phonetics more... anyway, at lunch i found out that i can get "free water" at the CanIL building, and they have coffee and food for a small fee (i.e. 25 cents for coffee) that we put into an honesty box. eeeexcellent.

after class i went to the bookstore and bought my textbooks... of course i couldn't resist looking at the Bibles. and i dunno if it's just me, but for a university bookstore, the prices seem quite a bit cheaper than tyndale or mitchells back home. and i have a feeling i won't leave TWU without a hoodie or zipup of some sort :P

aaand..... that's about it. their computer lab is really nice... the CanIL building is only a coupla years old so the facilities are really nice in general. i've never seen it used til now but they have those new overhead projectors that use a camera or something so you can project sheets of regular paper. all schools should have those! it drizzled today but i haven't been caught in a downpour yet so i can't complain. for dinner i had another leftover T&T bun. got one more for tmw, and after that, i'm gonna start on the instant noodles :P

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saturday - june 17

it has definitely been an interesting week. let me backtrack to wednesday... wait, tuesday... so there was an orientation on tuesday after lunch that only a few females showed up to... i wonder why no males attended the event. there have already been a couple of jokes made about how TWU females outnumber the males 2 to 1. it ended up being just a couple of icebreaker games and a quick tour around the campus. the trees around here are HUGE! i love it. they have this challenger course set up in between the trees and i'm hoping i'll have a chance to try it out during the regular school year.

i was a very hungry individual by wednesday. for lunch S and i tried the TWU caf...... i was NOT very pleased at all. i ordered a single burger, and it wasn't very busy so i expected it almost right away... but at the same time there was only one person taking orders and making them on the spot, so it took a while... still, people came after me to order and it seemed the guy neglected my burger because it took him 20 minutes before he finally gave me the thing, and when i finally ate my burger, it was overcooked and dry and hard. awful. i vowed i would never eat at the caf unless i absolutely HAD to... i.e. i was even more set on having to cook for myself. after class i ran into C and D in the comp lab cuz sheila and i wanted to go into town on the wknd and i wanted to know how to get to superstore. in the end, C offered to take us to superstore which was really nice of her. we got a little tour around the city of langley (which is different from the township of langley... the township includes TWU and fort langley, for example. i think the two are feuding or something. i dunno.) anyway, we passed by a tim horton's!! now i know there's at least one of those around here. and they have one decent mall. yah, i think all of the stores i'll need they've got here so i can't complain... it's just a matter of getting there, cuz the bus routes won't take me to all those places. finally we arrived at superstore, and i honestly don't remember it being costco-ish from when we used to go in regina. the prices are AMAZING!! i was making such a big deal buying stuff at walmart or shoppers (with my brother's discount) back home... i coulda bought all of that here at the same price or cheaper!! we spent a good coupla hours inside and i went crazy... first of all, i was finally able to buy a pair of runners since i have been obsessed about getting a pair since sunday... and they were only $10 too!! wow. that'll do. and i know i went to save-on on saturday (i cringe when i think about the price difference and how much money i wasted at save-on) but i consider wednesday at superstore to be my first official grocery-shopping-on-my-own-and-for-myself day. i bought over $100 worth of stuff, enough to keep me fed for at least two or even three weeks. i am so grateful to carmen... she totally went out of her way to help us out.

and so that night i made my very own dinner... chicken breast with rice. of course i totally butchered it. even with directions from my mom. but anyway, i was starving so it still tasted great. i didn't have a bowl big enough to hold it all so i put it into a giant tupperware and added some jufran banana sauce and ate most of it.

thursday was our first dictation test. even for detail-oriented me, the vowels are really really hard to distinguish... but it went ok. friday we had a pizza lunch at CanIL, and there were games and a movie afterwards. we watched pirates of the caribbean which i had never seen, and i really liked it. oh yah, D gave me her guitar for the wknd so i can pick my songs and practice for monday. kinda excited... if i had known i'd be helping out with the worship, i woulda brought my own guitar.

this morning i butchered my eggs... i didn't think i could go wrong with eggs, but it turns out i'm wrong. in meteorgarden 2, when jerry was learning how to cook eggs, i thought it was so funny... hah, now i can totally empathize with him!