Monday (my last day of summer!)

Monday was not the first day of school, but I spent it at school. At 11:00 there was a meeting for exchange students, so Annabel and I strutted down from St. Cathy's and took our time finding the right room. It was a bizarre (Bizaan) room, it could have been used by the united nations. There were layers of desks, and each desk had a microphone. All we needed were some name tags to identify us from where we were from. But no surprises at this point - many of us were from Australia! As over the past couple of days I have met a ridiculous amount of Australians. And other people tell me about how many Australians they have met, and how many of us there are! You're telling me! We are everywhere! So the lady running the event got us to shout out where we were from, but then once the place had been named - there was no need to shout it again, she even knew how troublesome Australians are! She said "for example when someone from Australia says they are from Australia, there is no need for four or five more Australians to call out too!" To spite this lady when she said go: I yelled out Australia really loud, but so did lots of Australias too. She said alright, now where else is everyone from. There were quite a few other countries, and somehow I had managed to sit myself in-between someone from California, and someone from Singapore. Annabel was surrounded by Australians. So after the conference a group of exchange students all went to get coffees, I was very excited and went along - little did I know the entire group was... AUSTRALIANS! Well there was one chick from merry old England and a guy from Denmark, but pretty much a cluster of Australians. There are about 30 or something from the University of Melbourne they were telling me, and somehow I keep meeting them. I think I will have met all thirty when my time is up!
So we all lunched for an hour, exchanged emails, phone numbers, last names for facebook; a drill I am now quite practiced at. I know my Canadian phone number off by heart!

At 2:00 I went on a tour of the library! I thought, why not! The people on the library tour were less friendly, but also less Australian! They were all really quiet and shy and looked scared when you even walked a little bit too close to them. So no friendships formed there, but I do have a good idea of the library system. They don't run on good old Dewy Decimal. And the system takes a while to master they say! Then in the full spirit of library participation, I did a computer class. They taught me how to be a good researcher. Then at the end they said since you all came here, you all have the chance to win an iPod touch! The chick next to me won - I was so close. Then when we were all finished and waking out of the library, she pulled out another one from her pocket! She already had one the hoe! I was cut!

I then felt the need to spend a lot of money - on textbooks! So I went down to the McGill bookshop basement, pottered around, asked a couple of staff members for help, and they could only direct me to the help desk, where there was a big line. So, I gave in to the help desk and finally was told which books I needed and how I could find them. I then picked up as many of my goodies as I could find, and left $200 poorer. (by the way this was only textbooks for two classes). So there is more textbook shopping to be done, when this other book comes in / when the lecturers tell me what they want me to buy. So there is hope for more money to be spent yet! I lugged these books home, and had a flip through. I can't even begin to express how happy I was to notice some nice geological cycle diagrams. So happy! And I was less happy with my history book which is a solid 500 pages of worded, picture-less glory. No, it will keep me entertained, and I will now know what it feels like to be an arts student. This I hope we all realize gives me the official right to diss on arts students!

I was really craving vegetables today, so I made a nice pasta salad with CORN, and some other vegies. So nourishing. My body thanked me for finally putting decent food in it. Ah, the joy of having corn for dinner! I chilled out with Annabel, Aurelian and Tim for a while, then had a early night, as I want to be my freshest for my first day of school!