Hi everyone!!!!!
As you can probably tell by the title of the post, I have been a busy little bee this past week and a half.
Last week we celebrated 3 birthdays on our floor! The first was Nicole's and we ended up staying up late the night before blowing up lots of balloons and putting them up on her door. It ended up looking like this:
So when Nicole opened her door that morning, she got the surprise of her life with all of these balloons falling onto her! We also got the whole dining hall to sing happy birthday to her :)
The next day, I was studying in my room, when Rebekah knocked on my door. She asked if I could help her turn the shower on because it wasn't working. Being the helpful person that I am, I went to go help. She told me it was the 2nd shower along. When I opened the door, the shower curtain flew open and Nichole and Yusy were there screaming and I was so scared! Damn them! They ended up scaring pretty much the whole floor!! They made a video of it!
Then we celebrated Naiomi's birthday! See her post about it on her blog (iamnaiomilu.blogspot.com). I made birthday posters for her on my computer and we stuck the posters along with streamers and balloons all outside her door, and down the stairwell of our house, and at the front of the building. We took her to dinner, where the whole dining hall sang happy birthday to her, then brought her back to the house. The streamers and balloons got more dramatic at every stair level! It was awesome :) Then we all got delicious red velvet cake. This is one of the posters I made:
Last Friday it was Kelly's birthday, and we trapped her in her room by putting up heaps of streamers in front of her door :) That night we went to Speed-Friending to get to know all the people in our house ,and our sister house. It was a lot of fun. I met so many people that I can now recognize their faces, but unfortunately I forget most of their names! Also, quite a few people didn't even realise that I had an accent! Some of the girls on my floor think I'm losing my accent on some words. After almost 7 weeks overseas, am I already becoming a Canadian??
That night us girls hung out in the hallway, chatting, dancing, and plucking eyebrows. You know, the usual. I also managed to lock myself out of my room! I had to go to the front desk in the commonsblock and get a spare key that I can only have for 24 hours. I thought it would never happen to me, but it did! At least now I can cross it off the Vanier Bucket List. It's a list of things I have to achieve while living in Place Vanier. There's about 30 listed on here, and so far I've crossed off 7!
Saturday was a massive day! We started off being woken up by our RAs (Residence Advisors) who came down the halls knocking on pots and pans, and playing bagpipes. Of course this only meant one thing, Vanier Olympics!! My house is paired with our sister house to create the team TweedSL. We're the royal army, so we have khaki green house t-shirts! We got into our army gear, put on our war paint, and headed to the house lounge for a pancake breakfast. This is me and most of the girls from my floor :)
We all practiced our cheers then marched and chanted army style while making our entrance onto the field. We yelled, did our salutes, then got to do the soulja boy dance! For those of you who don't know what that is, watch here: http://www.youtube.com/embed/8UFIYGkROII?rel=0
There was 7 teams all up. We saw a couple of the other entrances, and even though we thought ours was the best, we didn't end up winning best entrance. Our first event was tug-o-war. First it was all girls, then all boys, then both boys and girls, and then the RAs. There was so many people on my team that I didn't have to participate, but we ended up losing. Then there was Shaving Cream Wars. Someone in the team had to cover the front of their shirt with shaving cream, then the rest of the team had to throw wet sponges at them to clean it off. The first to get clean, won. TweedSL won this game :)
We then played Waterballoon Volleyball. Team members held sheets and had to catch the waterballoon and then fling it back across. It was hard because we were playing right under a tree, so the waterballoons kept hitting the branches and bursting! We won that game. Next, they had an event with a rope tied up high between two trees, and we had to get the entire team over to the other side. The guys were lifting us girls and people were catching us on the other side. It was like mini crowd-surfing! I was so scared that people would drop me and I would fall on my head, but luckily they caught me. Phew! We did it too slow, so we then had to do it again to better our time (which we did). We then had to do the other 3 events again to verse other teams. We ended up dominating in the tug-o-war this time. Check out this photo of my team!
After these events, all the teams gathered in the field for an impromptu dance party and conga line.
The last event was the water cup game. The whole team had to line up single file and pass a cup full of water either over their head or under through their legs. So it went up and under, up and under. You had to try not to spill the water, and fill up a bucket at the end to a certain line. Our team was so big we had two lines that were longer than the other teams! We filled our bucket first and won! Woo! They announced the awards... *drum roll please*..... and TweedSL won most house spirit, and came 2nd place!!!!! Yay!!
A girl from Vanier made this awesome video of the Vanier Olympics: http://vimeo.com/49999364
That afternoon a few of us went to the football game where UBC Thunderbirds were playing Calgary Dinos. I didn't really care that much for the football because my friend Clara was cheerleading for the first time!! It was so exciting. She was so good! I took so many photos and videos, and embarrassed her! She kept looking at us and laughing.
We also got a photo with the mascot, Thunder
At half-time they did a performance where Clara did flips and stuff. It was so awesome. We left at half-time, and by then the score was 45 - 7. UBC was losing so bad!!! Apparently the final score ended up being 64 - 7. Here's a video of Clara's cheers:
That night was Graffiti Night. It's a dance held outside on the tennis courts, just for the people living in Vanier. When you buy your ticket, you get a plain white t-shirt and a coloured marker. You spend the night dancing, and signing everyone's t-shirts! Mostly everyone at this dance was drunk, which made it kind of hard for people like me to enjoy, because as you guys all know, I don't drink. Because I am the eldest on my floor, I played my part of mother hen that night, and looked after a few of the girls that got too drunk. Anyway, I danced with the girls, and met some new people. So many people signed my shirt. Some I either can't read or have no idea who wrote it. I even ended up with a stranger's phone number written on there!
The next day we woke up to find that soy sauce had been poured on everyone's doors (except mine and Nicole's!) probably by some drunk people from the night before. It smelt disgusting, but apparently it was all through our house, not just our floor. We had our clinic for Day of the Longboat. We were running late for the bus, but along the way we saw a film set on campus!! I so wish we had time to stop and check it out. We only just made our bus, and then travelled to Jericho Sailing Centre. We registered, then watched a video with all the info and safety instructions. From the beach you could see downtown Vancouver and Stanley Park in the distance
We got to practice in one of the longboats with an instructor. It was actually really fun, and we kept yelling "ROW! ROW! ROW!" to stay in time. We're competing this Sunday! Wish us luck!
This week uni work has been pretty intense. For one subject, I had 109 pages to read just for one week! It was 200+ pages for all my subjects for one week. I managed to get through it all in 2 days. Next Monday I have my very first mid-term exam. It's different to Sydney Uni because back home I never have exams, just essays. And this exam is worth a third of my grade! Yikes! Wish me luck for this too, guys!
Lately I've been skyping Mum, Dad and Luke during the morning their time when they're eating breakfast and getting ready for work and school. I love how familiar it is :) It usually makes Mum late for work though!
I've been having so much fun with the girls on my floor. We are getting so close and they are absolutely amazing. Shout out to you girls if you're reading this!! Also, my friend Clara has always wanted to go on exchange and she's considering Australia! How awesome is that! Clara, now you have to come to Australia because I mentioned it in my blog :D
Can you believe I've been away from home for almost 7 weeks now?! It's going by so fast. Next weekend we get to celebrate Thanksgiving!
I miss you all so so so much
Love,
Emily
