February Reading Week in Canada

For the past week it has been Reading Week, classes resume on Monday and so as the week is coming to an end I thought I would do a blog post about it.

At one point I had been considering going off for a holiday over Reading Week, however in the end I decided not to. I decided that the best use of my Reading Week would be to really push myself to get ahead on my work load. Partially because I have a lot of work due over the course of March, I am naturally organised and I always like to be ahead in my work whenever possible. I also wanted to get some of my assignments done because in March I am going to be away over a weekend to staying overnight for a Comic Con.

I was actually very surprised to see just how many people left on Friday – the last day of class before Reading Week. Usually when I’m at Uni back in the UK a few people will leave for Reading Week but the majority of people tend to stay. The university also tends to run events throughout the week so that there’s something going on. But here in Canada the campus and residence has been pretty much deserted for the entire week. To be honest it has been weird seeing the campus so empty but it also has been pretty quiet which has given me a good working environment.

I haven’t just been doing work, I did go to Toronto on Monday and I did have a good day.

Also over the course of Reading Week I have decided to give up being vegetarian. I just missed eating meat a little too much. In fairness my New Year’s Resolution was only to try being vegetarian, I never intended to make it a lifelong commitment and I did manage to be completely vegetarian for a decent amount of time. I do plan to keep on cooking veggie meals, I’m just going to be having meat every so often. My plan now is to treat meat as more of a luxury item than an everyday foodstuff.

So in conclusion, I definitely had a productive Reading Week and even if it was maybe not the busiest I still had a good time.

Halloween is Over

Well it’s the start of November today which means that it is the beginning of Christmas season and the end of Halloween 2017. But before we completely say goodbye to Halloween I wanted to share a few thoughts about my Halloween in Canada.

In the weeks running up to Halloween there was quite a lot of anticipation amongst most people I know. Especially after Thanksgiving there seemed to be a lot of excitement building for Halloween. To be honest in the end more things seemed to be happening over the weekend instead of on Halloween itself, in the UK at uni we tend to do Halloween stuff both on the weekend and on the night itself.

For me Halloween really began on Saturday with my trip to Haunt at Canada’s Wonderland which was undoubtedly the highlight of my Halloween this year. I had a really good time.

Tuesday, Halloween Day went more or less as a normal day for me. This year for Halloween I was Clark Kent/Superman, I was actually going around all day in my costume just with the shirt buttoned up for most of the day. I guess the glasses really do mean that Superman can hide in plain sight.

It was more or less a normal day until I went to my night lecture, then suddenly about 5-10 minutes into the lecture the lights suddenly went out and there was a powercut. I’m 90% sure that the powercut must have been caused by ghosts. Either that or it was karma for scheduling classes on Halloween night. We got let out of the lecture and I walked across a darkened campus to my residence. Everyone was just gathering together and hanging out in the dark. Usually we’re a very social group in my accommodation however something about the dark made us all even more sociable than usually, maybe it was because without power we were all forced away from our screens. This was not how I expected my Halloween night to go but honestly it was actually a lot of fun. There’s something inherently spooky about being in the dark without power but then when you’re enjoying spending time with friend it’s even better.

So maybe I did not have the Halloween I had been anticipating but I have had a good one this year.