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Coming home from Canada has left me with a very strange mix of emotions. One the one hand I’m excited to see all the people and places I missed so much when I was away that made me homesick and on the other I’m homesick for all the people and places I left behind. Coming home also made me realise how much it isn’t the big obvious things that even make you homesick. I missed all the familiar things that make up the city of Edinburgh, the cobbled streets, the familiar shops, my favourite café, the castle and a million other landmarks even if those landmarks like they so often are only landmarks in my mind. I missed ‘landmarks’ like my favourite place to sit in the gardens, the building sight wall with my favourite graffiti, that rut in the pavement I always trip over! It is not really these things that made me realise I was home it was much simpler things, and the strange little dirt path that leads nowhere behind my flat. However the excitement and relief of finally being home really rushed back to me when I ate a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch, which are impossible to find in Canada along with a huge list of other foods like Marmite, polo mints and Tesco brand tortilla chips. This in turn made me realise that there are similar things I will miss about Canada like Silk brand Soy Milk and Mike ’n’ Ike’s jelly beans. Now I’ll miss other things about Canada not only the food like Zaphod’s Bar- the best place for music and Tila Tequila- the worst! I’ll miss having the canal to run along (or ice-skate along depending on the season), I’ll miss that it actually snows in the winter and that there seams to be a protest outside the parliament every single day of the year. Most of all I’ll miss all the people I met and friends I made but I suppose as a trade off I get to see everyone I left behind last September. Coming home is also strange because everything is not quite how it looked a year ago. It’s like someone had taken Edinburgh and shifted it ever so slightly, road-works have moved and buildings have popped up, shops have closed and new ones have opened. All this means that I find myself walking along, suddenly noticing something new and then finding myself a little confused because it’s as if everyone else in Edinburgh just jumped forwards a year and left me behind.

Coming home had also brought with it a bit of a reality check. In allot of ways being on exchange in Canada is like living in a dream or just being on holiday. Your requirements for the year are to pass your courses, you can’t get a job on your VISA so you have no work commitments, and you meet a million new people from all over the world and travel around as much as you possibly can. It is fantastic exciting and exhilarating. Now that I’m home I realise the need for a job is much greater than before, I have a dissertation topic to pick and then write and a degree to finish but in a way its just the next stage of the crazy adventure that is life and it will bring its own exciting challenges and I can’t wait.

In the Middle of it

When you start a big trip like this one it is incredibly difficult to know if all your plans have been enough and if its all going to work out, if you did enough planning, read enough books and saved enough money but at the same time didn’t over plan and spoil the trip. Before I left Ottawa I began to worry that I was cramming far too many stops into this tiny short month and that instead of seeing everything I would see nothing. I can safely say I think we did pretty well.

Travelling buy train is a perfect way to see and understand the vastness and diversity of this country. We started on the damp and cloudy east coast where we smelt the salty tang of the fresh Atlantic air. Then before we knew it we were in French speaking Quebec surrounded buy good food and winding streets. Then onto the big city of super-urban Toronto with its baseball and skyscrapers. Except these places weren’t reached in the blink of and eye and the roar of a jet engine but by the slow craw of a train snaking across the landscape. The feeling of travel that a train gives you and the way you can watch the landscape develop is where the magic of train travel lies for me.

After Toronto came the slow crawl across the never ending flat expanse that is the Prairie Provinces. We passed mile after mile of nothing, nothing that stretched out so far you can see the curve of the earth’s surface on the horizon. This incredible monotony only broken by the odd deserted road winding gently beside the train tracks and the odd blip on the horizon that grain elevators allow. Of course we have stopped in many of the prairie cities and one thing is for sure they are strange places, like islands in this vast sea of emptiness. Each of these had there one special charm, Saskatoon with is beautiful river and slightly insane shop assistants, Edmonton with the worlds largest mall and Calgary with its surprisingly good shopping and tantalising glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Only Winnipeg was a disappointment to me because although the deserted and derelict industrial areas had a certain sad charm to them, it was essentially a dirty, run down and poor city which I ultimately found depressing.

So when we finally boarded the train to the city of Jasper deep in the Rocky Mountains I couldn’t wait for the change of scenery. It is a spectacular sight to see the huge snow covered mountains rise over the horizon until they seam impossibly vast. They also bring a huge sense of relief as you leave the intense flatness and are suddenly bombarded with everything, trees and lakes and elk and eagles and even a couple of black bears! The Rockies are beautiful a snowy wonderland of awe inspiring views, lush forest and crisp fresh air. I love the Rockies because of the beauty and freedom of them but I also can’t wait to board that train again and move on because that’s the draw of the railway, that need to board that train again to watch more of this amazing country slip by the window unstill we can stumble out into our next dazzling location. Next stop Vancouver and the Pacific Ocean!

A new Journey Begins

Unfortunately to start my exciting new adventure I had to end my last one and leave the wonderful city of Ottawa that has been my home since September. Stripping my room of all my photos and posters to leave just a bare empty shell and hugging goodbye to all new friends I had made unsure of when I would see them again was hard. So it was with mixed emotions that I got onto a plane and we left Ottawa, flying east to the start point of our epic journey that will take a month to complete. I am (hopefully) going to complete coast to coast crossing of Canada on the Pan Canadian Railway with my equally crazy flatmate, Julia. This journey will take us from the city of Halifax in Nova Scotia over 3000 miles west to the city of Vancouver on the pacific coastline.

So we flew form Ottawa to this historic starting point, Halifax. The city of Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia and the province of new Scotland really lives up to its name. It feels Scottish not in the medieval castles and kings way but in a far more rough and modern way. The streets are often narrow and winding climbing over hills and crisscrossing in every direction in a way unexpected of North America. The buildings have a grimy industrial early 1990s architecture that reminded me so much of many of the streets in my own home town of Glasgow. This along with the grey overcast skies and the constant threat of rain Halifax felt almost like going home. Now don’t get me wrong Halifax is a great city with some beautiful and interesting sights. The harbour has a twisting boardwalk crammed with hundreds ranging from modern motor boats to grand old sail boats and of course the famous Theodore. Theodore is the tug boat- the actual working and frequently used tug boat- that just so happens to have a giant smiling face painted on it and stars in its own kinds TV show! Halifax also boasts something else that few other Canadian cities can, a (relatively) long and definitely interesting history it has a hilltop fort buried into the side of mound that the town has grown around. This fort of course built to protect the city from the threat of first French and then later American armies. Now of course the fort is best at offering spectacular panoramic views of the city all the way out to the Atlantic Ocean. It has a haunted church where the shadow of an ill fated monk can be seen praying at the window and however many times they replace the glass or clean the window the figure can still be seen.

As I write this I only now feel like the journey is truly beginning. I am sitting on our first train as we zip across three provinces on our way to Quebec City. It feels exciting to be starting this epic and historic journey however for the moment there is nothing to do but wave goodbye to Halifax and watch eighteen hours of Canadian countryside fly by my window.

A Wonderfull Ending

This week I had may last ever experience as a Carleton University student. This final bid experience was supposed to be my final exam on Monday and this was a bitter sweet experience because I was extremely glad to have finished all my exams and to not have to study anymore but I was also really sad that I would never really be back to work at this wonderful university again.

 

However as I said this is what I though my last activity as a Carleton student would be instead I was invited by my lecturer in the exam if I wanted to come on a field trip on Thursday. Of course there is only one answer to the question do you want to have a free trip into the countryside to play with rocks and GPS and that is yes! This unfortunately did mean that on my first day of what was essentially my summer holidays I had to get up at 7am drive two and a half hours to play in the mud. It was brilliant. We arrived to a hillside just outside a tiny town with nothing much but a convenience store, a gas station and a few houses. We drove bumpily along a narrow forestry trail until we couldn’t get any further in the van because beavers had built a dam across the road. I was pretty excited to see the dam whereas everyone else was just annoyed at the inconvenience. To Canadians a beaver dam is irritating but to me it is crazy new and exciting. The dam was surprisingly sturdy looking and holding back allot of water that sat a foot and a half deep on the other side. All around trees were gnawed into pointed stumps where the beavers had chewed through them in ways I thought was purely the invention of cartoonists.

 

We spent a pleasant day mainly surveying the site to help make base maps for the second year field camp and spent our time scrambling through the overgrown forest, climbing hills and wading knee deep into the bogs to get the exact location of all the buildings and mine pits in the areas. It was a beautiful day as summer seems to have arrived and we are having hot clear sunny days. We sat on the crest of one of the hills to eat lunch overlooking the panoramic view of the incredibly vast country side. Bellow us stretching out for what seemed like forever were trees and fields and rivers, scattered with the odd building and criss-crossed by the winding maze of roads.

 

On the way back tired and muddy we stopped for ice cream at a tiny roadside diner off highway 7. The sun was setting over the horizon stretching out before me casting an orange glow over the scenery. As we sat laughing and talking in the cooling evening sun I realised that it was a beautiful and perfect way to end my time at Carleton University.

Busy Busy Busy

Compared to the last few weeks this week has been a whole lot busier than I’m used to. I am currently in the middle of three days of exam hell however after tomorrow I will only have one left and I get a few days to chill out and study before I have to sit it. Time to chill out between exams unfortunately hasn’t been a privilege I’ve been afforded this week. I had an exam Tuesday, today and have another tomorrow. So for the past week most of my spare time has been spent cramming for three different subjects and I’m worried that soon my head will explode.

However I haven’t actually had that much spare time because my parents came to visit Canada and spent the weekend in Ottawa. So my spare time for studying was in mornings and evenings as well as of course on busses to and from. We crammed a whole lot into our weekend. We visited the Canadian Museum of Civilisation and watched “Roving Mars” on the huge curved screen of the IMAX cinema. The sun was shining so we spent most our time out in the sunshine exploring the little shops and cafes in the Glebe and walking the entire length of the Rideau Canal all the way from downtown to Carleton University Campus. Apart from a few still snowed over patches and a huge flooded muddy puddle the walk was beautiful and calm and it was almost had to think of it as the same canal I was ice skating on only a month ago. The rest of our time was spent eating at the best restaurants Ottawa has to offer. One of the brilliant benefits of Canada being such a multicultural place is that you get a huge variety of food and this weekend I ate at a local fish place, a Thai restaurant, an Indian buffet and of course a gourmet burger joint. The Works is the best place for a burger in town and they offer over 60 different varieties and will put just about anything in just about any combination from peanut butter to avocado. The burgers themselves are massive and come with huge side servings of chips. We ordered a stack of onion rings to start and left full to bursting with good greasy food. We finished out last night together in Ottawa in a particularly Canadian way and followed our Canadian delicacy of gourmet burgers with watching the hockey game in a bar that brews its own beer. So we watched the Ottawa Senators get smashed by the Pittsburgh Penguins and I caught the bus home to study some more. It has been a pretty eventful weekend with the parents and I can not quite believe how soon I will be seeing them again as I will be flying home in just a little over six weeks. Even more amazingly I can not believe how much I am cramming into the time in between then and now. But before I get into this travelling business I have to get through a few more pesky exams!

Sping has arrived

So spring is has finally reached the fine country of Canada and it’s about time! If I had had a choice it would have been here about a month ago. Anyway the snow although still lying all over every available surface has definitely stopped falling from the sky and started to melt away exposing the brown and muddy grass that was first hidden over four months ago. Unfortunately the melting snow had also reviled the huge amount of rubbish that has been dropped onto the streets over the winter. So now instead of wading through knee deep snow I now find myself battling my way through discarded sprite bottles and crisp packets. Despite this rather unfortunate downside there are a lot of wonderful things that come with the warming weather. I can walk outside without first having to put on my entire wardrobe and then rushing to find the nearest shelter before my fingers fall off. The air is cool and fresh and the wind a gentle warm breeze. The first brave flowers have started to sprout out of the patched of expose muddy grass opening their petals to the week sun that shines for longer and longer everyday. The Canada geese are returning from their winter migration spots further south and all this gives the world a sudden feeling of life. Our flat has also been filled with renewed excitement as our sole Canadian flatmate has been accepted into a study abroad program in the UK and will be living in London for a semester next year. The prospect of this and our knowledge that she wont be too far from us again soon is creating a lighter atmosphere as we head into our finial few weeks at Carleton. It is nice to know that at the end of term when we say goodbye it will not be forever.

 

With this new fresh feel the city has once again come alive to me. I find myself with renewed excitement for exploring where I live, whether that is the streets of downtown or the footpaths surrounding the canal. It seams that everyone if in the same joyful mindset as the sun shines down bringing life and energy to us all after a cold dark winter. Unfortunately this beautiful and glorious spring has arrived at a fairly inopportune time with everyone’s exams fast approaching. With the end of term barely behind us and the pressure of essays only just over it is now time to worry about final exams. I have three next week and then one more after that and with so much work to do it is hard to justify time out in the beautiful sunshine. However they will soon be over and I will be free to bask in the wonder of the beautiful weather. Although knowing my luck the spring rain showers will have started by them and I will be face with the prospect of grey skies and soggy shoes to celebrate the end of term.

The Masquerade Gala

This week is the last week of term and apart from the sudden pressure of essays and exam deadlines drawing ever closer it had brought a few ‘lasts’ for me. I had my last ever class at Carleton today which left me with mixed feelings because on the one hand it’s nice to know that the term is over and there is nothing new to learn but on the other hand it’s very sad because I will never have another Carleton class. One of my friends said that it’s like graduation but with all of the sad and none of the excitement. Although since neither of us have ever graduated I don’t know how he can be so sure. I am acutely aware of trying to not get too bogged down with this thought and that I shouldn’t get too caught up in the thought of it ending that I forget to enjoy these last few weeks. However it is ever present in my mind these days and I guess it’s because everyone is looking towards the end, everybody is celebrating there last class, can’t wait to hand in their last paper and are counting the days until their last exam. Of course this is exactly the mentality I would have and do have when I’m at home but because these are all the last time I will do these things ever the joy in them is tinged in a little bit of sadness. My final last for this week was the final event run by the international centre which was the Masquerade Gala.

The Masquerade Gala was an event and a half and definitely one of the most enjoyable ‘lasts’ of the week. The evening started as most evenings do with the mad rush to get ready. It was a formal event so we were all dressed up in dresses and heals and of course masks. The only trouble with masks is that since I only own glasses and have not contact lenses I had to choose between a mask and being able to see- I chose the mask! The event was being held at a fairly unique venue, the Ottawa War Museum so we arrived in out finery to be greeted by a banquet hall filled with tanks and half destroyed vehicles. After briefly hanging around at the cocktail bar we quickly claimed a table for our large group and before long the buffet was open. Now I completely object to buffets at formal events, not because I feel it’s not classy enough but because it is impossible to get your money’s work while wearing a very neat fitting dress. After we had all eaten out fill or at least our dresses fill the entertainment began. As the event was run by the international society the performers reflected this with singers and dancers from all corners of the globe. There were African dancers jumping to the sounds of the drums, Chinese dancers swaying daintily to soft music and an amazing array of singers who wowed the audience into silence. The evening was rounded off by a DJ and our bizarre banquet hall was transformed into an even stranger nightclub and we danced the rest of the night away.

Highs and Lows

As I mentioned in my last blog the huge highlight of the week was the Foo Fighters gig. I have of course been to several other gigs in Ottawa but they have all been smaller indie shows in bars like Zaphod’s or Barrymore’s and this was my first big stadium gig. It was simply amazing! We all pilled into the back of a friend’s truck to drive across town to the stadium and blared their music the whole way singling along as we grew more and more excited.

 

The gig was at Scotiabank Place and this was an odd choice but a necessary one. Strange because Scotiabank place is the home of Ottawa Senators and a hockey stadium for a start so consist of a huge oval arena with the seats around an ice rink which does not immediate lend itself to a rock concert. However for a Foo Fighters gig it was unavoidable as it is the only venue capable of holding all there screaming fans. The stage was set at one end of the oval creating the only downside that a huge majority of the crowd have to sit a long way from the band. However halfway through the gig the problem was miraculously solved by the genius that is the Foo Fighters when they lowered a second stage into the centre of the standing pit and bringing the band incredibly close to where we were sitting. This was my second time seeing the Foo Fighters live and their show is all ways worth seeing because there live show always consists of interesting rare songs, new adaptations and this time even a triangle solo. After two hours of fantastic entertainment I went to sleep last Wednesday with a smile on my face and music ringing in my ears.

 

Unfortunately this last week has also brought the first of my final exams for this semester and the pressure of studying and work are now pressing down on me. I have two essays as well as two presentations due at the end of next week and then four more final exams in mid-April. All this work mayhem creates a dichotomy as I wish that it will all be over soon but also dread that it will because when this term ends it will mark the end of my time at Carleton and I will certainly miss it. Carleton has given me brilliant opportunities, shown me new courses and subjects, helped me find new friends from all over the world and most importantly given me the chance of a lifetime to live in a whole new country. However the end of term does bring some exciting new adventures since I have a whole month to travel from East to West by train for before I have to leave Canada.

 

So this week has brought highs in the glory of a brilliant gig and lows in the ever looming presence of exams, deadlines and of course the inevitable end of my time in Canada.

St Patrick’s Day

You might assume that St. Patrick’s Day would not be as big a deal in Canada that it is back at home but you would be wrong, so very, very wrong. St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated to an insane extent across North America in a way that puts the UK to shame. Many of the baseball and hockey teams where green jerseys in celebration of the day, many cities dye there rivers and canals green while other paint all the buildings on the parade rout instead, people are known to have dinner parties containing only green food and drink and of course like in the UK finding a good bar and drinking green Guinness for most of the day.

Celebrations were of course extended this year because the Pope moved St. Patrick’s Day from the 17^th to the 15^th in observation of Easter Holly week. Of course for all those who are not Christian this effectively created two St. Patrick’s Days or even better one three day long party.

I celebrated the occasion in Montreal with Canada’s oldest St. Patrick’s Day parade that started in 1824 with my one of my flatmates. People showed up in their thousands and braved the cold and snowy weather to watch the parade pass through down the main-streets of the city. There was an entertaining mix of acts in the parade from marching and pipe bands, to roller-skaters and cheerleaders to firemen and many famous people who I didn’t recognise but was told that they were very important anyway. There were floats celebrating the cities many Irish dance and music societies as well as it many Irish pubs. Local radio and televisions stations also put in an appearance with floats blaring music across the city and handing out green flags, beads and hats to everyone as they passed. The parade was lead by a ten foot tall moving statue of the pope dressed in green holding a shamrock and ended with the Montreal American Football team waving from the open top of a double-decker bus.

After the parade was over we found a somewhere to eat warm food and warms drinks to thaw out after our extended period flag waving on the street. We found a little café that served Poutine and other fries of every variety imaginable. After filling our stomachs and thawing our fingers we headed back out onto the streets to work our way through all the little boutiques that are scattered along St Catherine Street and sell beautiful jewellery and clothes that I wish I could afford. St Catherine Street eventually fades into more affordable and mainstream shops and malls and we whiled away the rest of the afternoon trying to no buy everything we saw in the labyrinth of malls and underground tunnels. Not bad for a daytrip.

The rest of the week was uneventful except for tonight when I am heading out to see the Foofighters in two hours so I will leave to get myself ready for the party!

Snow

Now I know that I have bolgged about snow to an almost ridicules extent in the past few months but like any good Brit (and any good Canadian for that matter) I can talk endlessly about the weather.

 

This weekend saw the arrival of Ottawa’s biggest winter storm of the season with 50cm of snow falling on Saturday night, pushing the totally snowfall for this winter well over the 4m mark. This is means that Ottawa is only 30cm short of having its snowiest winter on record.

 

This ridicules snowfall also means that the snow outside has now reached the height of my window and that I couldn’t get out the building on Sunday as drifts were reaching up to 8m high. Even if I could have got outside it would have been very difficult to get anywhere. Even id I didn’t get swept off my feet or buried in snow and managed to struggle my way to the bus stop there would have been no busses. Most public transport ground to a halt on Sunday as busses could no longer navigate the snow clogged roads. On campus no roads got ploughed until Monday morning so most shops and sports facilities closed as their staff couldn’t get to work. This was the pattern through out the city as snow fell faster than ploughs could move it and even when snow was being moved they have run out of places to push it.

 

Stories have been trickling in all week about crazy disruptions caused by this epic storm. The o-train got suck in a drift and passengers had to hike back to roads. There were hundreds of abandoned cars on unploughed streets were not being moved because the tow-trucks also got stuck and then the ploughs couldn’t clear the street. Ambulances couldn’t reach thousands of destinations and were parking on ploughed streets and snowshoeing to accidents. The police patrols had changed from cars to skidoos to allow them reach most areas of the city. All fights to and from the airport were cancelled and many others just scheduled to pass over eastern Ontario were forced to land. Therefore thousands of people were trapped in the airport and forced to spend Saturday night sleeping in the terminal. This was not the only case of people being trapped as thousands of shop and office workers elected to sleep at work rather than brave the weather home.

 

Despite all this mayhem and getting a little trapped I really do hope that Ottawa gets that final 30cm of snow before the spring thaw. To be in the city during its snowiest winter ever would be an exciting experience but even is this doesn’t happen I still will have experienced the snowiest winter season in 60 years.

 

So anther blog on snow and I hope that I have something new to talk about next week or that we will have broken that record and I’ll have more now to talk about.