The family flew home tonight, and that wasn't as hard as I thought it'd be. I think they know I'm going to be ok -- more importantly, I think I'm going to be all right. That's not to say I won't miss this, though:
We had a pretty fully day of sitting around, through some very nice speeches and long bits of advice and pretty awful (but boxed and packaged) sandwiches. I had my first class -- Lawyering -- today; we sat around and argued about a hypo(thetical situation) and whether an ice cream truck in a public park constituted a parking violation. The most noteworthy part was that we all got nifty and individual spiral notebooks afterwards.
As for meeting people, it's been an interesting day for that! I seem to have no shame around pure strangers, and since Smooth-Over Man isn't here to keep me from making many a faux pas, I've been introducing myself to everyone in sight and banking on being a Canadian novelty. I don't know if it's working, but I've managed to find an SFU grad at the law school and a UBC pharmacology grad doing her PhD in biomedicine here so far, so I'll consider those minor successes.
Justin's right, though -- the roomie really is good for me. We attempted to go to a comedy club tonight, but they wouldn't let us in twelve minutes before. The cut-off time was apparently 15 minutes before. We went to Terra Blues instead, where I drank coke and listened to a trio of fairly amazing blues guys -- just like on that eternal Pepsi commerical. I may lack cultural exposure, but I remember the Pepsi guy.
Lastly, in a testament to the draw of this place, I'm thinking about going to a performance given by Anna Deavere Smith (a.k.a. Secretary of Defense on "West Wing") here at the university in September. We studied her work on the race tensions in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after a Hasidic driver's car jumped the curb and killed a black boy (Fires in the Mirror) in my honours seminar last year; she interviews witnesses, records them, and learns to mimic their gestures and voices exactly. She chooses select monologues and produces a collage of people, all played by her. It's quite astonishing, really, and for $5, the only other thing I could do is go to a Yankees game -- which I just might, too.
We had a pretty fully day of sitting around, through some very nice speeches and long bits of advice and pretty awful (but boxed and packaged) sandwiches. I had my first class -- Lawyering -- today; we sat around and argued about a hypo(thetical situation) and whether an ice cream truck in a public park constituted a parking violation. The most noteworthy part was that we all got nifty and individual spiral notebooks afterwards.
As for meeting people, it's been an interesting day for that! I seem to have no shame around pure strangers, and since Smooth-Over Man isn't here to keep me from making many a faux pas, I've been introducing myself to everyone in sight and banking on being a Canadian novelty. I don't know if it's working, but I've managed to find an SFU grad at the law school and a UBC pharmacology grad doing her PhD in biomedicine here so far, so I'll consider those minor successes.
Justin's right, though -- the roomie really is good for me. We attempted to go to a comedy club tonight, but they wouldn't let us in twelve minutes before. The cut-off time was apparently 15 minutes before. We went to Terra Blues instead, where I drank coke and listened to a trio of fairly amazing blues guys -- just like on that eternal Pepsi commerical. I may lack cultural exposure, but I remember the Pepsi guy.
Lastly, in a testament to the draw of this place, I'm thinking about going to a performance given by Anna Deavere Smith (a.k.a. Secretary of Defense on "West Wing") here at the university in September. We studied her work on the race tensions in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, after a Hasidic driver's car jumped the curb and killed a black boy (Fires in the Mirror) in my honours seminar last year; she interviews witnesses, records them, and learns to mimic their gestures and voices exactly. She chooses select monologues and produces a collage of people, all played by her. It's quite astonishing, really, and for $5, the only other thing I could do is go to a Yankees game -- which I just might, too.
