Settling in

I've officially moved into college.  Concordia University has two campuses, Loyola and SGW. I'm on Loyola campus, a bit further out of downtown but a much prettier place to be. (SGW is literally smack bang in the city, with high rise buildings and busy streets.)

I'm in a large single room, in HB hall. It's a very newly renovated campus, and we're the first students to live here. As a result there's still some construction going on which seems to haunt my life. Bonuses include everything being brand spanking new!

 This was actually my view in San Francisco, pretty cool.

 Starting to decorate my room!

 Pretty spacious wardrobe, but look how little clothes I have! I was only able to bring one suitcase of things (which was barely 1/4 of my stuff.) It makes me wanna buy so many things. There's a four level Forever21 shop downtown.. I found these amazing $20 each blouses! It's so weird seeing all these shops that I used to buy online from, but IN REAL LIFE. Forever21, FreePeople, Topshop, etc.

 I get my own minifridge in my room! (Which isn't even mini.. you could put a ton of stuff in there. So far I have two bottles of wine and some Ikea chocolate. Classic me.)

This is the view from my window, I'm pretty spoiled.


It's been so ridiculously hot here. Averaging 35 degrees each day! How insane is that? So unexpected but amazing. I might even get a tan?

College is a bit strange because you're only able to live here if you're a first year student or an exchange. So 99% of people are 18. (That really annoying 18, where drinking till you puke every night is sooooo cooooool.)
This one guy tried to show me how to work out how much alcohol each wine bottle was. I was like, are you serious little boy lol? Not really, I was polite - but I'm pretty sure it showed on my face how stupid I thought he was because he backed off hahahaa.

Weed is pretty much legal here! I was soo surprised. Every single person in this building casually smokes weed. Even the RA's!! On the introduction with rules and such, the head RA was like "Sure, go smoke weed or whatever we don't really care, just don't do it in your room! it's much better in the fresh air outside anyway. You don't wanna stink up your clothes."

After turning down some like a bajillion times, the girl was like wow you're so straight edge and innocent!

THIS COMING FROM AN 17 YEAR OLD. wtf

anyway..

I've been following this site called CGsociety. They run all sorts of amazing courses online, but not very often. I received an email that the course I've been dying to enter has just become available again. (Run maybe once every couples years, only 35 students allowed.)

http://workshops.cgsociety.org/courseinfo.php?id=309

In a spur of the moment, probably stupid decision, I enrolled. Despite my extremely tight budget, I couldn't let the opportunity pass - it's pretty much perfect for me. It's amazing! The guy running it is doing my dream job. Kind of my idol. But now I'll be a full time student on exchange as well as doing this online course. Hmm.

Totally worth it.

I bought a kettle for my room today (shh it's not actually allowed). The kitchen renovations haven't finished and I've been in physical pain withdrawals from not having tea 20 times a day. That changes today!

I really miss playing pool.



Someone send me vegemite stat!

First experiences of Montreal

I honestly can't believe I've been here less than a week. I've done so much and explored so much of this place. I love how I can be walking right through the city downtown and a block away there will be a park. There's always grass and trees not far away, and it's really lovely.

Everybody speaks french. This is definitely a french town. Signs, posts, menus, EVERYTHING is in french. They'll always start in french, and then I stare at them non comprehendingly, and they happily switch to english. I'm ridiculously impressed! Nearly every single person speaks fluent english. Even kids. So talented. I really wish french was pushed more in primary/high school. Despite being told people are 'snobby' with english, I disagree. The locals I've met seem very obliging to me, and most of them had english as their first language anyway.

I've met two other UNSW students who are here for exchange who just happened to be staying in the same hostel as I. Andrew Robertson and Hannah Amos - both pretty cool kids and are keen for anything.

Everything is pretty much in walking distance, and it's probably doing wonders for my health. There are 'bike stations' every second block, and how it works is you pop some money in the machine and then you can take a bike, as long as you return it to any other station within an hour (or however much time you paid for.)

The bike paths are everywhere, through Parc du Mount Royal and Old Montreal/Old Port have the best ones. I'm planning on buying a cheapy bike myself once I've moved into campus.

The balloon festival was lame to start with, definitely a family and kids event with jumping castles and very tame rides, but the balloons at sunset made the wait worth it. I took nearly 200 photos and only picked a few random ones to put on FB. When I have more time I'll go through them and find the best ones.

Sadly due to date problems I missed Carly Rae, but I'm not too concerned :P

I've a new found obsession with Bagels. There's this little place that is famous for the best bagels in Canada, and I'm addicted. Blueberry and cream cheese ohhhh yeahhhhh.

I have a feeling my GHD didn't survive the journey :( I'm annoyed at the airline. Apparently you have to pay 25 bucks to check luggage in, and my suitcase was 1kg over the limit so they made me pay $125!!! And then they lost it and I was without clean clothes for three days. And I got no compensation! Hisss.

Everyone is so ridiculously friendly at the hostel. I've probably doubled my life amount of friends in the last week. You literally just say hi, and then BAM you're out getting drunk with them. It's the best.

The average hotness of male travelers is also very high! So unexpected. So many attractive people with awesome accents and everyone seems very happy to buy the Aussie girl drinks. It's a pretty great life. The one bad thing is no one seems to drink wine here (wtf?). EVERYBODY will be drinking beer. I tried one, and it was actually much better than any Australian beer I've had, so I've conformed to peer pressure.

There's just so much to say and I've only really brushed the top. It's going to be a great six months.

So I'm sitting in the airport, and guess what the check in lady told me? My connecting flight from San Fran to Chicago actually leaves a day later than flight centre told me it did.

On the bright side, I don't have to worry about hurrying through customs to get to my next flight.

On the sucky side, I have no accommodation booked and will probably be wandering around San Francisco alone like the confused and out of place Australian I am. Perhaps I'll hit up the nearest bar and go hard.

The unexpected adventures of Zorah the Explorer begins.

Last day in Australia

It's the day before I leave and I've yet to pack. Not entirely sure what's wrong with me.. bit of a freak out.

I have a 14 hour flight to San fransico, then I have 2 hrs to get through customs to get my next plane, then I land in Chicago, and have half an hour before my next flight to Montreal departs.

I don't think I'm normally much of a stressed person, but I am definitely on edge now. Freaking hate flying.

On the bright side, Carly Rae Jepson this Friday yewwww.