New-niversity

I am so pleased with that punny title. Let's all take a moment to appreciate it.

*appreciation*

A thing has happened in my life. I thought it would be a scary thing, but it's not as bad as I imagined. I might even like it!

Frosh Week: Couch Carry (I'm the blonde girl on the right)

My life as a first year mechanical engineering student started four weeks ago and so far it was been going great. I participated in frosh week and got to do weird things, met friends and even made it on the local news! I don't know how it is wherever you are but here, the engineers are crazy and slightly full of themselves. Our frosh leaders painted their entire bodies purple since purple is our unofficial colour throughout many universities and we got to do weird activities such as a picture scavenger hunt with a couch.

This whole experience is exponentially different than high school! For one, I have 5 classes per semester (0 electives though, engineering is that kind of course.), not 4, and they happen sporadically throughout the week with 2 hour and a half lectures plus an optional but super helpful at times discussion and then a three hour lab on top of that for some courses. Making my schedule almost made me cry. Seriously, it was so hard to fit everything in and not have like five hour gaps or super early or late classes. But I managed to have an average of three classes per day, which is a crazy amount, especially compared to literally all my friends who are in some kind of arts program (communications, psych, history, etc.) and complain about their one day with three classes.

Woah, tangent. Anywho, other differences are not having set hours for class. For example, I managed to get most of my classes to start at 11:30am which lets me sleep in to a wonderful time and also get things done in the morning hours. And then there's the thing of my place of education NOT being under 10 minutes away anymore. I used to literally roll out of bed half an hour before class started and get there on time but now I have to check the bus schedules and plan my life around that. The bus takes about half an hour to get to university which isn't actually that bad compared to other people that live at home as well.

Speaking as a shy person, I was immensely pleased with myself for how many friends I made! I think it helped that nobody knew each other; the pre-made cliques were non-existent. Still, I was a little worried since I wasn't living in residence that I wouldn't make any friends but I managed to prove myself wrong. You end up talking to the people around you in your classes, usually just about the teacher and stuff, but then you walk out of class together and realize you have a break together and suddenly you're always sitting together and have each others' numbers and bang: friendship. And before you ask, those phone numbers are pretty much all girl numbers. Just because there's way less girls in engineering doesn't mean that I'm suddenly a hot commodity.

So this concludes my happy post. I'm sure everything isn't going to be this easy going for my full five years but I really don't mind it being this nice right from the beginning.

My Holiday Life

I was supposed to make this post BEFORE all this stuff actually went down, you know, to warn you that I'm am out and about, going places and seeing people, and won't be online. Well that went very well. I'm so good at this.

Anywho, let me tell you about my life for the past couple of weeks!

We'll start with the last day of school.

Mine was less pretty

I gave and received my Secret Koala gifts. What were they, you ask whilst screaming at my through the computer screen in anticipation. Well, I gave my person a giant cupcake (it used a whole cake batter but definitely was in the shape of a cupcake. I was very proud of it.) and some mustache earphones. From my Secret Koala person, I got some nifty homemade bracelets and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians DVD. Can't say that I'm a fan of the movie but I adore the books plus Logan Lerman is in it which more than makes up for everything.
It was a snow day plus the last day before the holidays so all my teachers completely gave up on the idea of trying to stuff some information into our heads. So, in chem, we decorated our door, making a paper chain Christmas tree and modifying the title of the room to Chemis-tree. (I actually enjoyed that pun very much.) For math, all we did was watch Youtube videos. Cat Person, Dog Person was a highlight for me since the cat person was spot on in acting the way my cats do. Data consisted of us playing telephone pictionary which made for some major laughs, especially when our exchange students didn't know what some of the words were and just guessed. I usually have a spare last but I decided to drop in to my basketball coach's class where there was food and a movie. A good decision on my part, I must say.
And finally, on that same day, my school had our annual talent show which was pretty spectacular. The good ones were amazing and the bad ones still got lots of support from the crowd. I love my school.

A couple days later was Christmas. Now, I'm originally from Brazil even though I live in Canada but that means that most of my family is still over there. That means we don't do very big holiday get-togethers. It's usually just my mother, my younger sister and I. And I like it this way. Yes, I'm sad I don't get to wrestle in the snow with all my guy cousins but it does majorly reduce stress seeing as we don't have to prepare anything at all. With Christmas comes Christmas presents! Which I will tell you about in detail at a later time.

Finally, to end my holiday travels, my friend and I bussed over to Kingston to see another friend of ours from the summer camp I worked at all summer. Many ridiculous inside jokes were created and a total of 7 movies were watched in the span of two days plus one night. Don't believe me? Ask me anything about the following movies:
- The Hobbit (YES I shall do a review later on)
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Meh, it was okay)
- Pitch Perfect (Is there a more perfect movie?)
- The Odd Life of Timothy Green (Liked it more than I thought I would)
- Easy A (Oh Emma Stone, how awesome can you get?)
- What to Expect When You're Expecting (Very droll)
- In Time (Didn't like the concept too much)

 

We then all commuted to the very same camp for the staff reunion where our time was divided between eating that amazing food and collecting bruises on the ice rink while playing broomball. The New Year was counted down right on the rink actually! We paused it at 40 seconds to go, counted down, hugged a minimum of 7 people each then got right back to playing.

The night after I came home, I barfed. At least 11 of us that were at that Staff Reunion had the flu when we got home. Such close quarters would do that to a person.

That is the end of my saga! To be honest, it is one of the way more exciting Christmas break's I've had in a while seeing as I am not a social butterfly in the slightest. Thanks if you actually read the whole thing.

Secret Koala

So me and my group of friends (my group of friends and I?) have decided to do a gift exchange this Holiday Season because buying a present for every other person can get stressful both on the wallet and on the deciding process.

The thing is, we are an extremely diverse group, including Jewish, Jehovah's Witness, Atheist, Pagan, Muslim and then me rounding it out with Christian. And even though Santa has NO direct connections with Christianity, some people thought it was awkward to call it a Secret Santa.

So my very creative friend came up with the idea of calling it a Secret Koala. And we all agreed. Cause we're cool like that.

We drew names this afternoon and I got someone that I haven't known for very long so I don't really know what to get her. All I know is that she adores One Direction so I'm going to go for there. A good idea that smacked me when I was walking home from school was to bake something! No one can hate food.

Also regarding gift exchanges, I'm the kind of person that really wants to know who has me but really doesn't at the same time. So I always firmly tell everyone involved that even if they know who has me and even if I'm begging them to tell me that they should AVOID DOING SO AT ALL COSTS. I will always spoil any surprises for myself so it is up to other people to stop it.

It's a secret koala...

Nice One, Self

So this thing happened to me today.

I was sitting with some people for lunch and a guy offered me some of his root beer. I refused since I don't like it and that's all fine and dandy but I refused it with the words "It's brown. I don't like it." Of course, my friend just happened to be from India.

I was just stating a fact. It just so happens that all the pop I dislike is brown-coloured. So instead of numbering off pepsi, coke, root beer and all that jazz, I label them all brown drinks. No biggie.

But in the end it was fine, he called me racist and I protested and then we made some jokes and no one's feelings got hurt.

My Emotion is I-Want-To-Punch-You-In-The-Face

Not you specifically, I barely know you. Although that could be remedied if anyone COMMENTED.

Anyway. Completely off topic there.

My friend just lent me her copy that I gave to her for her birthday of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. (No, I totally did not premeditate that by buying her a copy I could forgo the massive line waiting for me if I ordered it from the library.) And I have been reading it whenever I could all of today. Secretly during chem class, all of my spare and while my sister was hogging the computer.

Now let's zone in on when I was reading it during my spare. I was sitting with the very same friend who will be known in this post as The Owner of the Book and a friend from Data class who will be known as The Spoiler. The Owner is raving about the book as I'm reading it, starting and stopping in the middle of her sentences as she tries to convey the awesomeness of the book while not actually telling me any details. The Spoiler knows nothing of the book but steals it from me and reads the blurb in the front jacket flap. (Side note, isn't it cute how they're called jackets? Like the book is getting all dressed up? Or is it just me? Thought so.) He then proceeds to GUESS THE PLOT TWIST and say it out loud. Now, let's just say that my dear, dear Owner of the Book friend would be terrible at poker as she just does not own a poker face. Maybe it got lost in the mail. Maybe she was given faulty information of when and where we were to obtain them. Who knows. But she completely gives it away that that indeed is the plot twist that left her bawling alone on her couch.
That's when I declared my emotion to be I-Want-To-Punch-You-In-The-Face.

I have tried to push what he said to the back of my mind and carry on enjoying the book play by play but it was incredibly annoying to have it spoiled like that.

Sorry for any vagueness about what the actual plot twist is but I felt like this is the kind of thing you should not pay forward so for anyone who hasn't read the book, I won't spoil what it is for you.

I might possibly do a book review for it (without spoilers, calm your muffins) when I'm finished but I'll have you know I kind of suck at reviewing books. But then again, not being able to sing doesn't stop people who can't sing from singing.

Shout out to John Green for being awesome and writing The Fault in Our Stars.

DFTBA

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