Thanksgiving and a day of rest and essay writing

Yesterday we three Canadians exchange students did our Thanksgiving dinner, it turned out really well, though we didn’t do turkey and I feel bad for not realizing there were a couple vegetarians who were coming (I’m really sorry you two!). Our meal was two chickens (we rubbed butter on the skin and then spiced them, it made it taste awesome), sweet potato mash (they were really hard to cut, Anne accidentally cut her finger open, we had a fun time keeping that from bleedingL), oven baked stuffing that Emma made, and for dessert we had an apple crumble type pie experiment from Jeremi and a chocolate frozen cake from Halley. Overall, it was very tasty and well done by everyone. We invited more than just us Canadians, since cooking that much food for three people is a bit on the insane side, so we had my housemates, Cameron from Wales, and two of the American girls.

We all had fun and afterwards we all helped clean up and straighten up the kitchen and then all went our separate ways. Most headed towards the Jolly Sailor, a pub in the town centre, and I headed across the street from my place after resting for a bit and hung out with Riona and the rest of the Freeman Court. I tried for the first time, Pimms, which was very interesting with all its fruit. I stuck around until I was exhausted (which was only around midnight but late enough all considering what I’d done all day) and went home to bed.

Earlier though, yesterday, I had to go to Augustine House because my student card had finally come through. As I was waiting in line to ask for the international office at the i-zone, Jane-Anne Kilvington actually ended up calling me and asking me to come in because I had been talking with her assistant and mentioned I hadn’t been having a good time so far in dealing with the university, getting everything sorted and getting in touch with the people I needed to speak to. She asked me what was going on and I discussed some of the problems I’ve been having since I got here, and how frustrating and stressful some of them had been since no one really knew how to help me or who to speak to about it. She told me, should anything else come up I should come speak with her first, which was nice, and that way she could help send me to the right people if she wasn’t able to help me herself. Things seem to be finally sorting themselves out, the dinner (or maybe it was getting my student card) seemed to be the point where things started turning for the best.

I went afterwards to get my CV checked out, since the university here is doing a careers and employability week in order to talk about many of the things needed to gain experience, skills and to be aware of them and boost your confidence in the job search and interview process. My CV is almost finished, apparently what I had was on the right road to being a good one, I just needed to finish filling out sections, and we spoke about how best to present my visa working limits, since the word Limitations isn’t very nice. CV’s here are really nice though, you don’t have to attach information like birthdays because the businesses here are not allowed to discriminate against age except in certain industries (serving alcohol comes to mind). Just about finished it, but had to leave my room and go out because I was getting too distracted, and my bed too appealing.

Now I just need to continue writing my essay, and find that map of Germany I'm supposed to be doing a poster with. Yay history and evolution of Global Cities!


As and aside and an edit, have I mentioned just how awesome aero hot chocolate is? I swear to god I am going to miss it when I go home. Also, eggy bread (french toast without vanilla/cinnamon/syrup) is awesome when you feel crummy.