Emily Conquers the World: My first week at UBC

Hi guys!

I have survived my very first week at UBC!! Sorry I haven't blogged as much as I did when I was travelling, but I don't want to bore you with every single detail of my days haha. So I thought I would wait until I had more exciting things to blog about!

I think I'm finally starting to settle in here. My room is starting to feel homey, and I've made so many friends on my floor. Apparently we're the only floor who is actually bonding and doing stuff together! Lucky I'm on this floor! A lot of us go to dinner together which is great :) I've made friends with Canadians, Americans, and international students from Ghana and Spain, which is pretty awesome. I've also met a lot of exchange students through the orientation days we had; from countries like Australia, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Mexico, the UK, Nepal, Italy. I feel so internationalised (if that's a word)! Here's a photo of some of the girls from my floor at dinner:

We've been keeping so busy with a lot of firstweek events. We had the ice-cream social, then that night a bunch of us (about 15) went to a frat party. I know, you guys would never picture me at a frat party. It's not really my thing but I just had to experience it! It was seriously just like the movies. It was so crowded and people were drinking from those red cups and playing beer pong and dancing and going crazy. A few of us ended up leaving after half an hour, but I'm glad I actually got to see what it was like. There has been two open-air movies that we went to. The first was on the field at our residence and was the movie 'Across the Universe'. Even though we got a free blanket, we were still freezing, and after an hour a couple of us left early. The next night we walked to another residence for the open air movie where they were playing 'American Pie'. I love that movie, and because we knew how cold it would be, we came prepared and stayed for the whole thing!

After one of the exchange orientations (where we missed out on the pep rally!!!) we got to walk through the club fair. UBC has about 4 times the amount of clubs and societies that USYD does back home. It was insane! UBC has a quidditch team! I didn't join though, sorry guys. I joined the mailing list of a few like the food society, and the World Vision society because it seems like they put on cool fundraising events. The other night our floor got together to decorate the floor lounge. It was fun being all crafty together.

It still isn't finished but when it is I'll take some photos. Last night we went to the Welcome Back BBQ which is like an outdoor music festival. We had to wait in line for about half an hour just to get in. In line we met these two guys from Mexico who also happen to be on exchange! They were really nice. Once we got in I was so hungry so we got in line for burgers. We were in line for over an hour!! I eventually got my burger and I scoffed it down in like a minute so we could go dance. A DJ called Morgan Page was playing. Normally I don't like techno music but he was awesome. We weaved our way into the crowd and got pretty close. It was seriously so much fun! Everyone was jumping with their hands up at the same time. It was awesome :)

Afterwards we walked back to our rooms and I saw a family of raccoons!!! I know it's dark but if you look closely you can see them.

I know a few of you want to know about the food in residence. It's been pretty good actually! There is always so much to choose from. There's a salad bar, a selection of fruit, pastries, a sandwich bar, soups, cereals, lots of different drinks, and then the hot food stations. For breakfast there's french toast, crepes, pancakes, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, bacon, and sausages. I'm trying to be good so I've just been having cereal, but there's so many cereals to choose from! For dinner at the hot food stations there's pizza, quesadillas, burgers, fries, calamari, then there's an Asian section, and like a roast section. For dinner the past few nights I've had pork satay with fried rice, pizza, butter chicken, roast beef with vegies and mashed potato, and a pork chop with rice pilaf. The only thing I haven't liked so far is the pork chop, so it's been mostly good.

I guess since I'm on university exchange I should also talk about my classes! I only have class 3 days a week, and on those days I don't start till 11am so it's pretty chill. I'm doing 4 subjects, the same amount as I do at Sydney uni. I have a couple of exchange friends in 2 of my classes, and the other two I don't know anyone yet. The way the classes are taught are pretty different. I don't have any tutorials, just lectures. Only two of my classes require participation, and I think we get into small groups in the lectures and then discuss. At Sydney uni, I only ever had to do essays, but here basically all of my assessments are exams! Some of my classes have two mid term exams and a final.

UBC is gorgeous. The weather has been so great. On the exchange orientation I got to go on a campus tour so I took some photos.