The AIESEC Way

I should be sleeping right now...or at least being very very tired. Instead I am working on my OGX manual :) I got back from my trip to Ottawa this morning at 9...slept for two hours, then finished the preparations for my training I gave this afternoon at our culture shock preparation working, went grocery shopping for the Global Village after and then went to university to do all these things. Yes, my dear non-AIESECers, this is what we call the AIESEC way. This would maybe be bearable to the average student if he or she had a weekend full of rest and relaxation. Since I was visiting another interesting place with way too many interesting people, this does not apply to me. I woke up very early on Thursday morning, went to Ottawa by Greyhound, visited the Museum of Civilizations in f...french-speaking Canada. Then on friday I visited the Parliament (I was not aware Canada has such beautiful buildings) and went shopping. At night there was a big party at the AIESEC Intern's house, because one of them, Danny is going back to Ecuador soon. It was sooo much fun. Especially because I was not aware of the number of people I know in Ottawa. When the AIESECers showed up for the party they all asked me: What the hell are you doing here? And I recognized them from ORC, I had just forgotten they were actually from Ottawa. On saturday I did not feel very well in the morning, neither did the others so we just moaned and complained to each other about the mess in the house. I also visited the National Gallery, but for some reason I could not fully enjoy. There were also some Contemporary Art installations that very much reminded me of what I refer to as "mess" or "pile of crap" in our living room. So I went to hang out at Second Cup to read the Economist instead. At night I went for dinner and more drinks and then took the night bus home. Unfortunately I was awake the whole time. Sleep is overrated anyways. Even though I don't feel very much alive at the moment, I very much enjoyed my visit in Ottawa. Nice place, European in a way but also not...Canadian would probably the best way to describe it. I have pictures which I will upload soonish. Once I have slept.

In conformity with the AIESEC way, there are also many many things on my mind these days. I am haunted by my future. You would think somebody like me would be haunted by the past, but I handle that very well (Chantal does the trick hehe). Instead I spend all the time thinking: what is next? where is next? what is important? what do I eventually want? I can't complain about a lack of options, but they all sound so nice and exciting and every option has their own advantages and disadvantages that I am unable to make an informed decision about what to do. Which is obviously very bad and keeping me busy all the time. If it comes to this kind of decisions I would rather not leave it to chance or to see what works out. AAAAARGHHHH. I have made one important decision and that is that for now, as much fun as AIESEC is, school has to be finished. It was not easy, but that's the way to go. Only that this decision made the range of choices available more complicated. Staying in AIESEC would have meant choose the MCs I want to apply for and do that and go where I get accepted. Now it is to decide which specialization to choose for my thesis, decide on a country where to write, what kind of company...advice of any kind is greatly appreciated.

The fire alarm in my apartment building just went off. I couldn't be bothered to go outside, because it is cold, my Ipod is empty and it is probably fake anyways. I decided that if it gets really bad, I could still climb out of my window. Of course it has stopped by itself, before the fire brigade even arrived and now they are two huge trucks outside my window making noise. And why is that? Because as usually I complained about how boring Guelph is. Only that this time there was a real fire, as I just found out. But it was just small so nothing to worry about.

Another thing I had on my mind and I wanted to tell you all the time already is that on November 11th it is Rememberance Day in Canada. I find this an interesting choice of date, but Canadians are probably not aware of what we call Carnival in Europe and that it starts on November 11th as well. So on this Rememberance Day the Canadians remember their veterans and everybody who died in battle. I was puzzled to find out in how many wars the Canadians actually have fought. My armyfriends here told me some things, and then our MCP gave me this article: http://beatles.ncf.ca/canada.html. READ IT!!!! It gave me some new interesting insights.

Fulfilling the AIESEC way, I will now make an agenda for my meeting tomorrow morning (at 9, why???) and probably peacefully fall asleep with my head on my laptop. Maybe it's finally time to put it away...

Winter Wonderland

Some of you were maybe already a little bit concerned, but I survived my trip last weekend. After a very very busy week with Review Board for my future Exchange Participants and Elections for the new Local Committee President (which after 3 ties were won by my dear Brett) I went to party thursday night. We had picked a rather interesting location: THE RANCH!!! This is the place where Canadians from the whole area dress up in Cowboyclothes and go and dance to Countrymusic.

I found this very interesting at first, but after a while and some cowboys who asked me for a dance I got used to the idea and enjoyed myself. I have some pictures but not may which I will upload later and my friends who I went with will probably put theirs on facebook too.

The next morning it was time for me and Brett to go West as well and we took the bus to Windsor. It took us five hours to get there, we met some nice people in the various buses we used and then we arrived to Windsor. Dickey (whose real name is Richard but noone except for his parents uses that name) picked us up, gave us a nice detour of the town in his car and then, because there was nothing else to do before the other AIESECers came to his house for our party, took us to the mall. Which is exactly like the Guelph mall, but okay. This gave us the opportunity to go shopping at the monopolist for the party. I hadn't been in a while so once again it became clear to me how nice Europe is, for sooo many various reasons. We then went to Dickey's house and I cooked mashed potatoes, Sauerkraut and gravy, better known as zuurkoolstamppot in the Netherlands. I had also brought some other Dutch cookies and liquorice, so we had fun times and some AIESECers came to visit. Dickey's parents were on vacation and so we had the whole high school feeling of being home alone and house parties. Those fun times...We played werewolf for hours and hours and I finally overcame my nervous me that does not permit me to be a good werewolf. When I was a werewolf I lied and betrayed and of course I won. Unfortunately I was so good that noone wanted me in the game anymore and in the next two games I was killed in the first rounds. Late at night most of the AIESECers went home, some stayed the night and we talked and shared some interesting stories until early in the morning.

On Saturday, I was excited to go to Detroit and see how bad it really is, but unfortunately we only woke up after noon and everybody was too tired to do anything. The guys also decided that Windsor by daytime is kind of boring, so we went to see the new James Bond movie. Which was not as good as Casino Royale, but still quite entertaining. Especially the scene with the Canadian Intelligence Agent in the end made us laugh sooooo hard. Either you get it yourself or I will explain to you when the time has come. After the movie we went for dinner, to hang out at Danielle's place and then to the Casino. Since I had never been to a Casino before I found that very exciting. All those lights...noises...people. I didn't play though. But it was nice to hang out there for a while. Then we went home, because Brett had to leave at 7 in the morning, he had to work in Guelph. I stayed in Windsor and slept very long on sunday. When I woke up I met Dickey's mum who had just returned from vacation late at night. Since there was nobody else awake, I chatted with her for a bit. Then Dickey woke up and I wanted him to go to Detroit with me, so he started to think of something to do there. It was snowing and really cold, so we couldn't come up with anything except for shopping and it was just not the right time for that. So we went for a snowwalk on Windsor's riverfront instead, which is very nice because you can see Detroit's skyline. After that we had coffee and nice Sushi Lunch/Supper and I got back on the bus to Guelph. The first bus was late, so I got a little bit restless about my connection in London. The bus was also almost full by the time I got on, so I had to sit all the way in the back, getting slightly sick. The weirdo sitting next to me asking me creepy questions also didn't really help. Later a nice girl came who went all the way to Ottawa (which is very far) and sat between me and the weirdo, so he talked to her instead. And she told me about Ottawa which was also very useful. I caught my connection in London, but then there was an accident on the highway and the second bus was also delayed. Luckily my bus to Guelph waited in Kitchener and I finally got home, after 6 hours on different buses. I also met some of the people I got to know on friday. So I had a nice little meaningless Canadian chat with them. Guelph was covered in snow by the time I got here and the ground was also frozen and slippery. I somehow managed not to fall until now, but I better start wearing my helmet again.

I did lots and lots of AIESECwork ever since. Yesterday I unfortunately couldn't find a reason to get up and stayed in bed for half the day. But yeah, things have to get done. Cold makes lazy though. Now I also really have to pack my stuff, because tomorrow at 7 in the morning I am taking the bus to go to Ottawa for the weekend. It is cold, but not snowing there and I am very very excited. Three days in Guelph have already made me want to go away again!!! Even though I really like my AIESECfriends here, I am already looking forward to go home in a month. It's probably a combination of my AIESECwork being almost done here, cold, boredom and wanting to get on with my life...so I have to seek some distraction for now.

New York, New York

I knew that I would probably like New York, after all I have heard and seen of it. I didn't know that I would like it as much that I'd want to move there any time now. But that is the case. I had soooo much fun and I am still under some kind of spell (luckily, because Guelph is not only as unspectacular as always but now also freezing cold and it is snowing and snow is not melting right away). It is a special place, with many many people, all different. And vibrant. And it is so easy to find your way there, because of rectangular streets with numbers. With all the culture and shopping going on, I had the time of my life. And I can't wait to go again. I found a good german phrase to explain to my mum what I liked about it, but it escaped me because I slept all day.

After my slightly disturbed last post (because Rebecca hurried me) we got on the bus and arrived to New York around 10 in the morning. We would have arrived earlier, but our bus drivers were confused and we did some special detours on Manhattan Island. We stayed at Central Park Hostel, right next to Central Park (yes, really!!!) and also next to a subway station, very convenient. After unpacking and changing out of our bus clothes we went to Central Park for a walk and to see Strawberry fields and after that to Times Square for lunch/late breakfast. I was amazed for the first time. We walked around there, checking out all the different stores, which fascinated me. Marketing and Corporate Communication at its best. We also visited the Rockefeller Center and went shopping to Macy's and I bought a new watch. I don't know where my other watch is and I wanted a new one anyways. We then went back to the hostel to change and visited a comedy show at night. I found all except for one of the comedians very funny, telling about how the only way to regulate the temperature in a New York apartment is by opening the window, making fun of the subway and of course my favourite wannabe-VP Sarah Palin. We went for dinner after that and walked around on Park Avenue for a while and took a cab home. Laura has developed some great skills in flagging cabs...since in Guelph you can't really do that and have to call one. I wonder why that is...I doubt the reasons are the same as in South America. After that we went straight to sleep, because we were exhausted from walking around and the traveling. Also my friends who I spent most of my time with are all 20, so they will have to wait a year until they can enjoy New York nightlife. I will have to go back for that :)

On Saturday morning we first went to see the Statue of Liberty by taking the Staten Island Ferry. Unfortunately it was very misty, so I wasn't able to take very good pictures. We also visited Wall Street and Ground Zero and then went back to Times Square, because we wanted to see a Broadway Show that night and tickets for the same day are half the price. We had to stand in line and wait for the booth to open for an hour, but we got some really good tickets for Chicago and we took turns waiting there. In the afternoon we went shopping and then got into kind of a hurry, because some subways were under construction so we had to run through different stations to get back to the hostel and we also were in a rush to get to Broadway on time for the show. Chicago was really good and I enjoyed it. I am not a huge fan of musicals because of the low information density which always makes me want to read a book beside it, so I brought my Economist just in case, but I was entertained well all the time. Either I have grown up and can focus better now or it was just a really good musical. I have to see some more in order to find out. After the musical we went out for dinner and took some crazy pictures. I was going to go out with other people from our group that night, but I was getting really sick and cold so I didn't :( which is very sad. But next time...

On sunday we went to Soho because the girls wanted to shop on Canal Street. Apparently that's THE place to buy fake purses...so the moment we got out of the subway station some Asian woman showed us pictures of bags and told us to get into the back of her van so we could buy some there. I couldn't be bothered to go, so I waited outside and amused myself about what was going on. From there we walked the street and almost every shop has a secret back room where they sell fake handbags for 20-50$. Which is not bad...if you want a fake handbag. Another moment when I realized that I have grown up and it is time for me to graduate and find myself a nice job: I don't want fake purses. I want real ones. I got exhausted from all the random shops and people walking towards me all the time telling me to come whereever and look at their bags. Still, I didn't find it as annoying as a middle-eastern bazar. I was very happy when the other girls had finally bought enough bags (I think 10 divided by the 4 of them) and we went to real shops again. I spent most of the time looking at things because of my luggage issues and taking back stuff. But I have already made a plan: I will wear three layers of clothing when I leave and throw some things out. It should be fine then. We went to more exciting stores, many of which I always wanted to visit and I bought myself a nice new purple wallet at Bloomingdale's. We had a nice Cheesecake and then split up, because Tara, Laura and Shannon wanted to go on shopping and Rebecca and I wanted to look at stores on Fifth Avenue. We met Lauren and then did that. Even more motivation to graduate :) Unfortunately Tiffany's was closed. Later we met the other girls and had a Chinese Dinner and then the time had come to go back to the hostel and get back on the bus. I was very sad, but I know that I will go back sooner or later (hopefully soon). I didn't get on top of the Empire State Building or the Rockefeller Center, because it was misty and would have been pointless and I want to visit some of the museums and buy more things and also just take time and hang out in different places. Very much looking forward to that.

I was back in Guelph at 8.45 this morning, just in time for my portfolio meeting. And after that I went home and to sleep and woke up just in time for our meeting with the Board of Advisors of AIESEC here. That was very nice, the last meeting was in April and a lot of things have happened since then. Our advisors were flattered and they were very happy with my presence here in Guelph. We also have a very busy week ahead for AIESEC, with elections and the review board for future exchange participants on wednesday. Apart from that I will spend a lot of time writing manuals and documents for the future of AIESEC here these days and finally work on my "internship report" for university. And there is so much left of Canada for me to see: this weekend Brett and I are going to visit our friends at AIESEC in Windsor and that also gives me a chance to visit Detroit. I am very much looking forward to this trip, not only because we will have a Dutch night for which I will cook stamppots and buy Vla and it gives me another chance to escape from my messy dirty house, but also because my Lonely Planets encourage me so much to see those cities:

"Tell any American you're planning to visit Detroit, then watch their eyebrows shot up quizically. 'Why?' they'll ask, and warn you about the off-chart homicide rates, boarded-up buildings with trash swirling at their bases, and plummeting population. 'Detroit's a crap-hole. You'll get killed there.' Clearly, the motor city has an image problem. While the aforementioned attributes are true and while the city does waft a sort of bombed-out early East-Berlin vibe, it's these same qualities that fuel a raw urban energy you won't find anywhere else."

Not as promising, but also interesting:
"At the southwestern tip of Ontario, across the Detroit River from Detroit, Michigan, Windsor is the only Canadian city south of mainland USA. Like Detroit, Windsor is a 'motor city', but with the car industry feeling the pinch, what was one a net, civilized town is becoming run-down and haggard. Real estate prices are on the slide, and Windsor's future prosperity seems uncertain."

Thank you very much for your warm words, dear Lonely Planet authors. I also read somewhere that the only good thing about Windsor is the Detroit skyline. So if you never hear from me again, it's probably because I got shot in Detroit. Not in Windsor probably. Windsor makes me think of Windsor castle, this nice civilized place in England. Why can't the Canadians be more innovative when it comes to their city names. Or at least pick more appropriate names and call their Windsor Liverpool or Manchester!!! With high expectations for my next trip I leave you until next week...

Yay Global Warming!!!

It is 20° these days. I am walking without my jacket and Canadians even wear miniskirts without stockings again. And I enjoy biking very much. But I finally also have a bus card so I can decide every morning if I really want to bike up the freaking hill.

I had very much fun on Halloween. I still don't get the whole idea of why being scared is supposed to be funny, but I liked the dressing up part. Check the pictures...When we did Trick or Eat we got sooooo much food from for the Food Bank. In total during three hours all the participating students raised 47ooo pounds of food. People were so nice. And I saw a couple of really cute kids. My favourites were the little unicorns. After that I finally went to my first kegger ever. Two of my fellow AIESECers had a party at their house and a lot of beer...the police came twice and of course the beer was up at 2 am. On saturday I wanted to have a great pancake breakfast but only Krista and the Romanians came. Ever since I have been freaking busy, I kind of missed the weekend because of too much AIESEC work and right now I am on the point of going to New York for this long weekend. I am going with some of my friends from AIESEC, the trip is organized by the Hotel and Tourism Management Faculty and everybody knows me because I did classroom presentations in their courses. I am sooooo excited and will get back to you on monday with stories and pictures!!!!!

Halloween

It's Halloween!!! Well, almost at least. I am very excited since it is my first real Halloween.

But I have experienced many many things since the police let me back into my house after the bomb threat two weeks ago. I have never heard anything about it, if it was real or fake, nothing online or in the papers...
I am almost at the end of a very busy second recruitment period. We had infosessions for students who want to go abroad with AIESEC last week with great turnouts, most of them don't want to go immediately (which is fine with us) and a lot of interviews this week. Yesterday I had seven interviews non-stop. Four hours long, all on my own. My head started to hurt really badly after a while. Luckily there is a bar on the same floor as our office so I could go and relax with a beer after :D. We also had some very important appointments this week: the most important one was with the coop-department of the university, that sends students on internships as part of their studies. We found great enthusiasm on their side for AIESEC and its services and I hope for a successful cooperation in the future. For when I'm gone...the thought of me being gone is very present in my mind these days, not only because I miss Europe but also because I want to ensure sustainable success for AIESEC here and not have everything fall apart in the future. I have made manuals, will make even more manuals, given trainings, will give even more trainings and everytime I want to do something for somebody now just because it is faster I pause myself and say: come and watch. Very interesting...and I get more and more patient :) Now I only have to find myself a good successor as VP OGX (who I think I have already found luckily) and the LCP elections have to bring a good next LCP who carries on the positive change. It would make me a very very sad person to see that all my work was for nothing. If any of you have more suggestions on how to ensure sustainability, please let me know.

I also finally have a life outside of AIESEC in Guelph :). Last week it was Dollar-Beer-Night in downtown Guelph so we went to party. I discovered the cocktail "Alabama Slammer" which has made it onto my list of favourites. Originally because I thought they put Ketchup in it (after some dollarbeers), discovering only later that it was actually Cherry Sauce. It is still very delicious. I was at 5 different pubs/clubs whatever they call those here and was almost back in my Danish party mood, when at 2 am: You have to go home now!!!! I was very angry. How considerate of the Canadian Government that they send all their citizens at home and ensure they don't have enough time to get drunk. I don't like that. Especially because they don't seem to care about the people that live downtown and that might be slightly disturbed by the fact that a huge group of drunk people is standing on the street and making noise in the middle of the night, whereas if they could stay longer they would not leave all at once. The partying people make the choice themselves, the sleeping don't. But yeah, whatever. I just go out more often then :P That's exactly what I did last weekend. On saturday I also went to a three-hour long Restorative Yoga workshop. Very very relaxing. And that's a good thing in these busy times.

Tomorrow I am going to a symposium on Corporate Social Responsibility to network and get free food :D and after that I put on my fairy costume and go do "Trick or Eat". The concept is the same as what children do for Halloween to get candy, only that students in Guelph go from door to door to collect food cans and other food for the food bank so it eventually goes to the poor people. I like the idea. After that I am going to Pat's and Justin's Halloween Kegger (still with my fairy costume, I hope it doesn't carry the unlucky charm of the Helly Kitty costume). It is the first kegger I will ever go to, so I am very excited. I learned that a kegger is a party where there is a keg of beer and everybody drinks from it. I bought Sprite so I don't have to drink pure beer and...most of you know what happens :P Especially after I heard the stories from their last kegger. Carlos still has some mopping to do I think. And then on saturday morning I have invited all my Guelphfriends to my house for my pancake-massacre breakfast. I have been in Canada for 2,5 months now and not had any maple syrup, so it is time for that. And maple syrup gives energy which keeps warm. The Canadian winter is coming slowly but surely. It is snowing sometimes, the snow doesn't stay but is getting colder and colder. I am still biking though, but I got over the novelty of my helmet and always forget to wear it :(

Truly exciting Guelph

All good times come to an end and so did my nice chill-out thanksgiving weekend. Hard work had to be done, because we started to recruit students to go on AIESEC internships last week. Unfortunately Brett didn't nominate a "director of recruitment" in time and so I was still in control of everything, but contrary to the september recruitment I had many many helping hands and the future director of recruitment helped out a lot. Still, on tuesday we didn't have a space booked to set up our booth, the flyers weren't ready and I had to do everything last minute myself. When on wednesday morning during the Executive Board meeting everybody came up with more brilliant ideas what we could do for recruitment even though I was busy all day just doing the things that had to be done I was very close to a complete freakout. I have troubles imagining a bright future for AIESEC Guelph when I'm not here anymore, so making all my work sustainable is what I am working on most. My Outgoing Exchange Team is working brilliant, the girls are so into AIESEC that they skip classes (I have to interfere :D) and they will be running for Executive Board next year. So maybe things will change.

Anyways, on wednesday night it was time for us to to the most traditional Guelph-thing: paint the cannon. There is an old cannon on campus next to the University Center and tons of students walk past it every day. It is a tradition for different clubs to paint it, but that can only be done during the night. And you have to guard it before and after, otherwise another club can come and paint it over. So, at 5 pm we started guarding the cannon so we could paint it later. Heather guarded it during our meeting and then we hung around it untill 11, danced some AIESECdances and Elyssa made nice garbage bag dresses and shoes for me and herself. In the attempt to carry buckets of paint from the office to the cannon, I poured half a bucket of paint into my backpack :) Of course I know that it is not a good idea to put a paintbucket that has been opened before upside down into your backpack. I am just not clever enough to transfer that knowledge to my specific situation. Whatsoever, before I did that, I put my phone and camera into a nice small blue bag, so I could fish that bag out of the paint and phone and camera were fine. Most of my stuff was and even my backpack is now, because it was waterbased paint and I washed it. Only my Economist is not. But there are always casualties.

We painted the cannon, first white, because it was orange and black from the night before. Unfortunately we had the water-based paint and since it was raining, it all rained off again. We waited for a while and when it seemed to stop raining we painted white again. But it didn't really stop, so our art was threatened to be destroyed again by mother nature. To prevent that, we just sprayed yellow spray-paint on top of the white. During the night it didn't look very pretty, but we were far beyond caring. We sprayed our message on top of that and then, at 2 am, decided to leave it at that. It was raining, we were cold and not really convinced by our piece of art. Instead of staying out in the cold to guard it we all went home to our warm beds.

So when I arrived to campus the next morning and saw the cannon was still painted with AIESEC things and actually looked quite nice, I was very happy. Together with the hardcore new AIESECers I carried a table outside and put signs into the lawn and set up our roll-out banner and then we just sat at the table. People came by all the time to ask what AIESEC was about and how they could go abroad and we collected 50 emailadresses. I didn't expect that at all, since I secretly find sitting at a table all day with some signs around a bit lame, but apparently that works fine for Canada. After being out in the cold all day I was frozen at night and got a bit sick :(

On friday I had my very well deserved day off from AIESEC, or at least from AIESEC in Guelph. I slept in, did laundry, went for all-you-can-eat-sushi-lunch with Whitney and then went to Toronto. As the last time I went, driving into downtown I felt happy about being here. Liking the place, the people and just enjoying. Crazyness. I went to the Induction Day of AIESEC at Ryerson University and told them about AIESEC, the international structure, history and my experiences. That was fun and after that we went out for drinks. I brought Brause and we had nice Wodka-Brause shots and we also went to a Diner that had Chocolate-Baileys Milkshake. That is definitely a nice thing to have. I stayed with Cesar, my friend from Mexico who is in AIESEC and we slept through half of the saturday. Saturday during the day I went shopping and finally got myself a winter jacket. And some other nice things. I was planning on going to the Madonna concert in Toronto saturday night, but unfortunately my dear friend Carlos, who was guarding my ticket, was not able to find the tickets. Very very very angry me. I had fun times with Cesar, but still!!!! How often do you have the opportunity to see Madonna? And reasonably priced tickets? Aaaaargh...

For some reason I like staying at other people's houses, so I also stayed there saturday and went back to Guelph today in the afternoon. And I was sitting on my bed, watching Grey's Anatomy, when the police bangs simultaneously on my door and my window and tells me to leave. There was a bomb threat in my building!!!! I firmly believe this is because I complained to my Toronto friends that Guelph is too boring. Last time I extensively complained I had to get up at 6 in the morning because of a fire alarm. I have the feeling that I should stop complaining. So I grabbed my computer and my hard drive, since those are the two things I under no circumstances want to be in an explosion and left the house. I went to the police station for a bit, but got bored very fast. I didn't bring my power cord and also no other entertainment. I visited Brett at Tim Horton's, but I also couldn't distract him all the time. So I went back to my house, which was still evacuated and told the police I had to get my passport. They were like "I have to tell you there is danger and I don't advice you to go in, but I can't keep you." So I hurried into the house, got my power cord and now I am still at Whitney's, too lazy to leave. Of course there was no bomb, so all the trouble was just for keeping me entertained for a while and warning me for not complaining anymore.

Turkey Dinners

As announced earlier, I travelled to Cobourg (that's the way it is really spelled) on thursday night. It is a cute town with 18,000 inhabitants right on the shore of Lake Ontario between Toronto and Kingston and it is home to Rebecca, my Vice President of External Relations. She lives in a big house with a pool that looks just as the houses in the Northamerican countryside that I know from TV. I was very happy staying in a big, clean house and sleeping in a comfortable bed.

On friday Rebecca took me downtown, to the beach and to Walmart. Every stop on this journey was special. The Walmart because it was, like everything in Canada, sooooooo huge and had everything one could need. I think I could live in a Walmart store. The rest of the day we watched makeover TVshows and prepared the food for the night. Because Rebecca's dad is working on sunday they had their Thanksgiving Dinner on Friday. 32 relatives arrived in the late afternoon, bringing more food. I was introduced to everybody, but I wasn't the only international guest. Rebecca's uncle's family has an exchange student from Finland living with them. I exchanged some views over Canada with her and spent the rest of the evening talking to the aunts and uncles about their jobs. One uncle is a funeral director, the other one has an apple farm (which I consider very Canadian, so I was particularly interested) and the other one builds roads. After everyone was stuffed with turkey, mashed potatoes and pies the relatives left and Rebecca and I went to friends of her boyfriend's parents. They were having a dinner party and were quite drunk when we arrived, so we had fun times. One of the guests was originally from the Netherlands and opposite to most Canadians who claim they are Dutch he actually spoke Dutch. What a nice opportunity to speak Dutch, especially because his Dutch is as messed up as mine at the moment. On saturday morning I played Wii Fit with Rebecca and her Mum. That was really cool and made me miss my Wii. I'll get one if I ever spend more than half a year in one place. After lunch I took the train to travel to my second Thanksgiving destination. I enjoyed travelling by train very much. The rails first go right along Lake Ontario and the scenery is very very beautiful, with all those trees (very Canadian) which are changing colour at the moment. Unfortunately my camera's battery was empty all the time and I didn't bring my charger, so I couldn't take any pictures of anything. Whitney and Rebecca took some, maybe I can get them. Back to the trains...they also have power plugs for every seat (not as in Germany where you have to span the cord along other people if you dn't happen to sit at a table). The trains also have wireless internet and are quite comfortable, so I had a good time. The only not really ideal thing is that you are seated in a car according to the station you are leaving the train at. I understand that they need a way to organize their passengers, but it is not really convenient leaving a train when everybody else in your car does.

Arriving to London, Whitney, my Local Committee President picked me up and took me to her parent's house. Their house exactly looks like the ones we know from American series playing in the suburbs. Double garage, pool and a beautiful garden. We had dinner and then went out to a party at the Penthouse of Whitney's High School friends. Everybody was in town for Thanksgiving and excited to see each other again after a long time, so nobody really paid attention to me. Finding that weird at first, I was very happy after a while just relaxing in the massage chair. The party was over at 1.30 when everybody went to the bar, but since bars close at 2 am, we just decided to go home. On sunday we took a walk in a forest close to Whitney's house. It was very nice, again I was amazed by all the beautiful colours of the trees. After a little nap some of the relatives arrived (we were only 11 people this time) and had a nice dinner. Whitney's sister announced that she had bought a house and was pregnant, so everybody was very excited about that. I had more turkey and other nice things and I learned a new Canadian dish: Apple Crisp. Apples with crispy things on top, very very yummy. After all the relatives left we just sat down doing AIESEC work for five hours, being very surprised when we found out it was already 2 am. Today Whitney took me for a ride downtown. We walked through a nice park and had a coffee and went to a very nice store called skirt. I found a really cute cardigan and after we decided that we could cut my hair ourselves and I can save the money for the hairdresser I bought the jacket. So no freezing in Canadian winters for me. Then we went to a "Hot Yoga" class. The room temperature is...I don't know how high but very hot and everybody is just dripping sweat. But because of the heat I was much more flexible and I enjoyed it a lot. I was surprised how the room didn't smell. Later Whitney cut my bangs and it looks really good. I am happy. After another nice dinner, a shower in a clean bathroom and some more AIESEC work I am now going to sleep the last night in my comfortable bed. Tomorrow at 6.15 (bah bah) we go back to Guelph. I want to stay here!!!

AIESEC crazyness

Dear non-AIESECers: this piece contains a lot of insider information, explaining it all would go beyond the scope of this blog and probably also confuse you even more than only this does. I hope that after reading this you can still take me serious in the future.

I find myself very very exhausted after a great conference this weekend. Friday afternoon I went with Alison the racecardriver and one of our new members to Hamilton, where this year's Ontario Regional Conference was going to take place. It was hosted by McMaster University. Why would you call a university like that? Somehow it doesn't transfer the image of high-quality education to me, but whatever...together with Brett and eight of our new members we went there on friday, staying at the Crowne Plaza downtown. We were just about to leave for the opening plenary when we realized we didn't have the right version of the dance we would use to present our Local Committee and had to adapt our dance to the version we had. Which was actually a huge success, because we won the award for the best rollcall!!! As I experienced before in AIESEC Canada, winning things in Conferences always gets rewarded with booze in one or the other way, so when we were at a nightclub later that evening, we got a bottle of wodka to celebrate our success. Very very nice. The party was fun, unfortunately, as always in Canada, we got kicked out of the club at 2:15 because it would close. Why be so reasonable??? The bouncers also marked Gelaine's hands with two big black crosses, because she is underage and was not supposed to drink in there. That looked sooo funny. After the official party we had an afterparty at the hotel with some uninvited Russian guests who showed up in their underwear and attracted security attention. For once it weren't AIESECers causing complaints in the middle of the night at a hotel!!!

Getting up at saturday morning was hard, but not as hard as in other occasions. I had a long day of interesting sessions, I didn't really learn anything new (since this was my 10th conference not very surprising), but I got a bunch of new perspectives on things and I just enjoyed being there. Our new members were awesome and involved and participating and dancing all the time, which made Brett and me feel like proud parents. On saturday night there was a banquet, so we all dressed up nicely and had a fancy dinner and danced for some time. There was of course a huge afterparty at the hotel again, which I unfortunately missed because I went to my room to change, got into a very interesting discussion with my roommate from Indonesia and her friend from Korea and then passed out on my bed. Considering the details I've heard from the "never have I ever" - game the next morning it is probably better for my peace of mind that I missed it. And I also was fully awake and functioning, which is a good thing, since I was running group sessions on what a CEED is, how cool it is to do that and telling people what exactly I am doing. That would have been hard if I have been in the same state as at NOGX. To finish the conference we watched a small movie which I'd like to share with you:



After the conference our whole delegation had lunch at the mall, where we decided, after discussing the highs and lows of the conference to scare some people and perform the chair roll-call in the middle of the food court. It was a Brazilian saying illustrated by gestures and judging from the gestures it was x-rated. We did that, I took a video (it's on my facebook) and after that we left quickly, since people gave us very funny looks. Unfortunately Alison forgot to take her purse with her and when we were back at the hotel she realized and ran back to the mall, together with Alexey. He arrived before her, but the bag wasn't there anymore. Also people were giving him funny looks and repeated some of the hand gestures we made before. So he went to the security guard, who had taken the purse in right after we left. Apparently our little perfomance seemed like hexing it and people were afraid. Alexey, half-russian and a member of the Canadian army asking for it 15 minutes later also didn't really help restoring our image. But whatever...

I got home at five, exhausted but very very happy, read my sugarcubes and got even happier and now I am back in Guelph everyday life, which is as busy as always. Unfortunately I am still exhausted, so I better go to sleep. A lot of things have to be done and this week is shorter than the others, because on thursday night I am going to Coburgh with Rebecca, our VP ER to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family and then on saturday I go to London to my LCP's family's Thanksgiving. Finally, exciting times ahead again.

The princess helmet

Luckily I didn't have an accident with my bike yet, but the speed my bike reaches everytime I go down the hill combined with some awful stories and my clumsiness which will not allow me to do crafts if I hit my head and can't use it anymore lead to the decision to go out and buy a helmet. Of course it couldn't be just some random coloured weird formed helmet, no...
I got myself a princess helmet. Luckily I am in Guelph so nobody cares if it ruins my hair for the day. And apart from looking nice an protecting my head it is also very useful, for example as a shopping basket.

I have finally made my peace with living in Guelph, I visited the homecoming football game, some parties, the movies as always and last saturday I went shopping in Toronto. Life is good. To prevent myself from being overwhelmed from the variety of items to shop (as happened in Montreal) this time I made a list of things I might need and decided only to look at those.
And I succeeded, without being overwhelmed and also without getting really really poor. After 5 hours of shopping around in Eaton Center (very sad but I haven't seen much Toronto Daylight that day) I returned to Guelph with a pair of snowboots, a sweater and a dress. Very happy of course.

And it is good that I bought boots, it is not snowing yet, but today I declared that summer is officially over and changed my ballerinas for boots and wore a jacket for the first time. It is amazing how long it had lasted, I even got severly sunburned during the footballgame last weekend. Ooooh, Canadian Football, by the way, weird sport. Or like my Romanian friends like to put it: "sportidiota". The actual game takes two hours, but then they stop it all the time to rearrange their teams and exchange people, every team consists of an offense and a defense team and they change all the time (I couldn't discover the rythm or reason for that, but I am sure there is one). A lot of other weird things that happened became clear to me during the four hours that the game lasted. Brett explained the rules to me beforehand and during the game I could enjoy Bogdan's expert comments. Lucky me. Still I want to watch more footbaal so I can fully understand it. Canadian Football is almost like American Football, with some rules changed. I recommend watching it on TV, there will be less breaks.

AIESEClife in Guelph is exploding, all those new members are around now and they are really cool!!! We had our Induction Day on sunday, where we gave them trainings and general sessions about AIESEC. Upcoming weekend we'll all go to Hamilton to the Ontario Regional Conference and in between they come into the office for their first office shifts and we get them started on everything. Soooooo exciting. I have my own team now, 6 awesome girls with who I will send many many people on exchange. Can't wait...and we have a new computer in our office, it was about time. As it is for me to get back to work. I hope I will experience something truly exciting soon to share it with you.

Canadian wildlife and the latest AIESEC news

I already showed you a picture of the groundhog and mentioned the variety of Canadian wildlife earlier. This week it was time for me to experience it. On monday a squirrel scared the hell out of me, because it jumped out of a garbage can with a donut in its mouth right in front of me. Since in my worldview squirrels are small, shy, red animals the black Canadian squirrels (fat, black and very cheeky) I am quite confused everytime I see them here. Especially if they appear out of nowhere. Talking about this to Krista I discovered that squirrels are also mean: she told me she was once sitting under a tree and a squirrel kept dropping nuts onto her head. I wonder why...

Yet I have to report another clash with Canadian wildlife: this happened on tuesday. Unfortunately most of you don't know Brett, so you can't enjoy this story as much as I do, but I will tell it anyways. My room had been a mess for some days, inspired by Brett and busy with other things I just kept clothes all over the place. I was watching Scrubs when I saw some small thing moving from my under my bed to under my desk. It was fast, so I couldn't tell what it was, my guesses ranged from small toad over small mouse to large spider. I tried to find the moving thing, but I didn't manage to. Scared by the thought of something running through my clothes I started folding them and restoring order in my room, when some time later the thing was running around again. I had never seen anything like this in my life, so I just jumped onto my bed and started screaming. Luckily, Brett came. With his excellent knowledge about animals he could tell me the thing was a centipede. I was surprised, I always thought centipedes look like this: But they actually look more like this:which is slightly more disgusting. Bah bah. Brett was not fast enough, so the centipede went into hiding again and I continued cleaning up my clothes. 10 Minutes later it was back and, clever as I am, I put a box on top of it. Brett brought a plastic container, but he wasn't fast enough, so I had caught it. I told him, since he's the man of the house (whatever kind of man) he should get rid of it. And what does Brett, the super-vegetarian-recycling-"we love trees-no flyers please" stickerowner propose: "do you have a shoe?" Of course I have shoes but nooooo way the thing gets killed in the middle of my room. Double bah-bah. In the meantime the centipede was clever enough to escape from under the box and ran up the wall. So Brett stepped to the wall and caught it in the plastic container. We both looked at the container, me pleased because the thing was in there and out of my house soon and Brett...I don't know what he was thinking. What he said was this: "We can keep it as a pet." "No, we can't. We already have a bike." (Since we don't have a shed I keep my bike in the living room :)). "But we could feed it little ants and look at it eating it." "We can also get cable and watch Discovery Channel." In the end Brett took the plastic container out of the house and released the centipede far far away outside.

Yesterday Brett found another bug which we couldn't identify, it looked like dust with legs. So Brett put it into a box and gave it cereal and some vegetable leftovers. He named him Ichabod. Someone apparently has loneliness issues. That's what living in Guelph for four years turns you into. Ichabod has also been released yesterday night because he didn't eat the stuff Brett gave him and he didn't want him to die. How nice :P.

Apart from domestic animal trouble, I have been hardcorebusy doing AIESEC recruitment, more presentations in classes, infosessions and yesterday night finally: the first General Meeting of the semester with 22 new members showing up!!!! And people keep e-mailing me saying they couldn't make it to the meetings but want to join anyways. So for now I have reached my recruitment target. Now we have to make them stay in AIESEC. Since they are Canadians with a much smaller sense of responsibility this is more challenging than it is in Germany or the Netherlands, but I am looking forward to do this. And my whole Executive Board with me. So things are going well...tomorrow and next week we'll have Personal Development Talks with the new members and then allocate them to portfolios. Things are getting exciting. Even in Guelph.

Good things about Guelph

1. AIESEC in Guelph
2. The farmer's market
3. Meow and other vintage boutiques
4. The bookshelf
5. The Dutch Store
6. The running trails at the river
7. Cheap cocktails
...
(hopefully to be continued)

I'm a car

Yes. By Ontario Provincial Law, I am a car right now. That is because I have a bike. And as a biking participant in traffic, I get treated as a car. Unfortunately I am not as fast and as strong yet, but I just got started. 

I bought my bike from Carlos' (the ecuadorian intern) roommate who moved to Vancouver and obviously could not take his bike with him. I feel a little bit bad because it is a very expensive and good bike and I only payed 70$ for it, including a lock, but I guess that's life. The bike has 21 gears, but I only know how to use 7 of them, which is enough for me. And it is much more flashy and fancy than all the bikes I had before, because it is a Mountainbike. Those are obviously not necessary in the Netherlands, but here they are. University and downtown are on hills and my house is in the valley between them. Anywhere I go, I arrive very tired. But after a long day at university I just get on my bike and I am home in no time and with no effort. Unfortunately the hill university is on is very steep, so me and my bike get very fast on the way down. Stay tuned for news on upcoming accidents :P

Apart from buying my bike, this week was a very busy week for AIESEC. We got our shirts, the last two days were clubdays, so I was standing in the University Centre all day having people walking past and saying: "Oh, you're from AIESEC. You were in my class the other day/someone told me about you/I saw it on the internet and I want to join." It was very easy and at the moment it seems like it was also very successful. Before the clubdays I was sending out emails, making posters and doing classroom presentations. And, the most special marketing thing I ever did: we wrote AIESEC things with chalk all over Campus. It all was a lot of fun, but I realize today how tiring it also is.  

So I'm glad it's weekend and I have two days when I don't have to bike up the hill and can do what I want to. Read, go to the farmers market, go to the movies, go running at the river oh and Krista wants to take me to a Cowboy's bar tomorrow. I might stage a bike-accident to avoid that. And I am soooooo excited about next week, when we have infosessions and the first General Meeting of the semester and I will discover if my work payed off and we actually get members. All the Vice Presidents are curious about how it will be if we are actually having other people to do all the things we're doing on ourselves right now.

Unfortunately Guelph is not a very exciting place, so I don't have really exciting things to tell. I almost gave up hope that that will ever change. 

The All-Canadian Tourist XP

Finally, things start to get busy in Guelph. Summer vacation is over, the students are back in town and every night they are drunk-walking past my window to go out downtown. It also has a lot of positive effects, and they clearly outweigh the annoyance of nightly noises: my real AIESEC-work started!

On wednesday, we had our first booth during the orientation week resource fair and we talked to a lot of first-year students and told them what it was all about and why they should join AIESEC. I hope to see some of the back at our info sessions next week. I also made a classroom presentation (which I won't be able to use in some cases, because the classrooms here don't always have projectors, another little culture shock for me) and emailed a lot of professors and did many other different things to ensure next week everything runs smoothly. It feels very good to be busy again. And to have more people around - the number of people I know in Guelph probably tripled this week.

And even more reasons to be happy: this weekend I did a lot of things that were on my to-do list in Canada: visit Toronto, an Icehockey-match, the Niagara Falls and the US. Martijn, a friend from AIESEC in the Netherlands who is on an internship in Ottawa right now came to visit me and we played tourists. On friday we went to Toronto and explored the city. Absolute HIGHlight (haha) was the CN-Tower, a very very tall tower (553m). The elevator girl said their top platform is the highest viewpoint in the world, but then in the leaflet it says it does not hold the record anymore, so I am not sure what to believe. Truth is: it is freaking high. Weather was not really good, on nice days one can see 100 kms. They also have a glass floor in the middle deck. That was very very scary. I did not feel really comfortable up there, but it was definitely an experience. There are not so many other exciting sights in Toronto, so we visited Lake Ontario, the Rogers Centre and the old and the new City Hall and just walked around. It's a nice, huge city, but I was not as impressed as I was by Montreal. It's a sort Rotterdam. Even comes with the tower. We had to head back early in the afternoon, because another highlight was planned for the evening: The Guelph Storms played against Brampton Batallion, another local icehockey team. They were handing out free tickets during the resource fair, it was a great opportunity. The match itself was not very spectacular, since it was pre-season. The mean Me would have liked to see some more fighting going on, but I liked the atmosphere and the experience. Although my nose got cold.

The next day we had another adventure awaiting us: the Niagara Falls. Going by bus via nice places like Hamilton and St. Cathrines, we arrived there around noon. And I was officially impressed. Even though the Falls are not as tall as the one I saw in Quebec, they are much wider and because there are rocks under one of them, you get way more wet. We did not enter the city of Niagara Falls, which is basically a big Carnival for all the tourists. They have some quite impressive buildings and I have heard of the haunted houses, but that was not really necessary. What really was necessary for me was going to the USA, since it was only a bridge away. Very exciting. Leaving fingerprints and everything. And I learned the correct answer to: "Why are you coming to the US?" is not: "We just want to cross the border." Once we explained the "true" reason for our visit, to watch the Falls from the American side, we just had to pay 6$ and there we were in the country of unlimited possibilities. Our "true" reason was a lie by the way, because the view of the Falls is much better from the Canadian side. After running back from the US to catch our bus, we travelled back to Guelph via Toronto. And it was not over yet: since we hadn't seen "The Dark Night" and many people have told me to see it we went to the movies with Brett and Krista. And for the second time of the day I was officially impressed. I had high expectations and they were not disappointed at all. For some reason I had difficulties taking a Batman movie serious as a truly good movie, but I learnt better.

After all this exhausting activities Martijn and I just had coffee today and hung out at the Café of the bookstore in Guelph (I am very excited about discovering it, since it is really nice) and when he left I caught up on my AIESEC work and discovered the new facebook, which I by the way strongly dislike. It looks as if they got it inspired from Office 2007 (which I like, but not for facebook!!!). Anyways, it is dark outside again, the student crowds walk past my window and I will also go out now to the to see an Indian movie with Whitney and then sleep and next week find a lot of new AIESECers.

Home, sweet home - II

I am back from my petite voyage to the lovely province of Quebec. Those were fun times and it was a bit sour to return to Guelph, even though I should be considering it my home sweet home now. I almost burnt down the home sweet home by making toast with our medieval toaster. I was in my room when I heard the fire alarm going off, the whole kitchen and living room where covered in smoke :) Luckily there was no fire and the toaster still works.

Right after my last entry in Montreal, Nikolai came to pick me up from the café where I was in and we climbed Mont Royal, the mountain/hill of Montreal. Laila and I were very lazy and Nikolai had to kick our asses various times in order to make us go up to the highest point, but I am still deeply thankful to him that he did, because the view was amazing. We had no real plans for the night, so after we climbed down the mountain again we decided it would be fun to crash the Executive Board meeting of AIESEC Concordia. Courtney, our host for the last two days is LCP there, so we knew where and when to find it. Unfortunately the meeting extended over three hours, since it was their recruitment planning meeting and we were there, hungry and eventually also getting bored. Still it was very very useful to me, because I can consider everything I heard there in my own planning. Since we were all exhausted after the meeting and it was already midnight we just went home, discussed some global issues and fellow AIESECers and went to sleep.

On Saturday, Nikolai went to visit the Olympic Stadium and the Biodome but I had enough of the touristy stuff and decided to enjoy myself in the shops downtown. I got myself some nice new black shoes and some other small things I really needed. I think I was just overwhelmed with the variety and quantity of stuff there is to buy, that's why I couldn't just shop randomly. Too many things. A long street, full of stores, which already amazed me, but when I took a closer look, there appeared to be a several malls behind this front row of stores. So after three hours of gazin at stuff I gave up, also because shops in Montreal close at 5pm on saturdays. WTF!
So I went home, cooked a nice dinner for me and the guys and we started to get ready for Montreal nightlife. A crazy metro ride (chasing each other through the different wagons of the metro) lead us to the village, the gay part of Montreal where we went to Sky (that's what I think it was called, I have trouble remembering :P), a gay bar, but according to Courtney it's half gay half straight people there. I believe I haven't seen many straight people, but never mind. We had a lot of fun. For details, please skype, e-mail or facebook me.

Unfortunately I could only get two hours of sleep and was kind of messed up when I got up to go to the airport, it was also later then I planned. My flight was okay, I didn't feel too well. Still, Canada looks amazing from an airplane, because there is a lot of fascinating landscape, tons of lakes and forests. Since I was flying with Porter Airlines, I didn't arrive at Pearson, but at the downtown airport of Toronto, which is located on an island. Landing I had an amazing view of Toronto. I took the metro and then the Greyhound back to Guelph, where I went to bed, dressed as I was. So much for my Montreal adventures. I love the city and the people there and I think I'll pay it another visit before I leave Canada.

Being back in Guelph was a bit boring in the beginning, but I have watched a lot of Sabrina and got everything prepared for recruitment which will start tomorrow. I am very very exciting and hope we will find a lot of people to join AIESEC. I think I am the best proof of how much fun it is. Tomorrow I'll also have my first meeting with the Executive Board here. Exciting!!!!

Christina <3 Montreal

Montreal made it to the top of my "cities I'd like to live in"-list. It's awesome. We had some fun times hanging out in Quebec City, exploring the city and it is also a nice place, but it was not really special to me. It could have been anywhere in Europe. And it's home to the seperatists :D. Luckily they didn't kill me for insulting them in public :D. Still, after 3 days I was done with Quebec City (though Eastern-Canada's biggest mall was next to our hotel and I probably could have spent some more time in there).

So on wednesday after a short shopping-excursion we last-minute jumped on the bus to Montreal. Unfortunately our AIESECfriend whom we were supposed to stay with cancelled so we were homeless in Montreal. Which didn't really improved my mood, but I was still very impressed and amazed by the city, I just had some troubles showing it. We walked around downtown and finally found out we could stay at one of the other AIESECers places, Rafaelle. She lives in a very nice house outside the city and we had a great bed and a great breakfast there, so we hoped the next day would be better. But we didn't count on the Montreal public transport system. We had to go back from somewhere in the suburbs of Montreal to downtown, so upon entering the bus we needed to buy a ticket. I already got used to the fact that in Canadian buses, you always have to pay the exact price because they don't give change, but the Montreal ones don't even accept bills. So there we were, bus went without us until we found someone to change our money. Very annyoing. Luckily, right after this incident we could start enjoying Montreal by walking the Old Town. There's a Basilique Notre-Dame here, it looks exactly as the Paris one from the outside, only a bit smaller. Quite different from the inside, but still awesome. Very interesting light installations. The rest of the old town was also very nice. The contrast between old-town things and american-style city makes Montreal very very special. And the contrast between English and French...my french keeps getting better and better. Especially my shopping french :)

Yesterday at night we had dinner downtown and then went to "The Village", which is the gay district for drinks. A lot of gays here. Sometimes, Canada seems to me like a very very big version of the Netherlands. Lots of gays, even more weed...apart from the farm close to our congress venue, I often see people smoking or making the smoking preparations. Right now I sent Nikolai to a museum so I could catch up on my AIESEC work, facebook and write some e-mails. I decided I have seen enough museums in Copenhagen and these things also have to be done. In the afternoon we will climb the Mont Royal. And tonight finally explore Montreal Nightlife!!!!!!!

Oh and the pictures are coming...

NOGX - finally another congress for Christina

I am still in Quebec and tomorrow I am leaving for Montreal. The past weekend I spent on a farm close to Quebec in an AIESEC congress, dedicated to Outgoing Exchange in Canada. I believe this is the right time for some explanations, especially since I have received subtle hints from non-AIESECers that they didn't really know what I am doing all the time and why I am in Canada in the first place.

The whole story started last year in May when I joined AIESEC, the biggest student-run organization in the world back in the Netherlands. Check our supermovie explaining what AIESEC is about:

There’s another one which explains in depth what is cool about AIESEC, it’s made at second conference I attended, the Scandinavian Leadership Development Seminar in Finland.

After a year, I didn’t feel like leaving the organization so I looked into opportunities I had and one of them was going on a CEED to Canada. CEED means that I would be a member of a local committee (always abbreviated as LC) and work there. In my special case I am helping the local committee of AIESEC in Guelph with recruitment. Since they don’t have a lot of members and doing a good recruitment is a lot of work, they had me come over and do that. I am closely working together with my dear roommate Brett, who should normally do that with his non-existent team. I am also the Vice President of Outgoing Exchange right now until I have recruited myself a successor, since there is nobody in the LC knowing about OGX at the moment. So, last weekend I was at the National Outgoing Exchange Congress.

In that congress I got to learn how AIESEC in Canada works, which is not entirely the same as AIESEC in the Netherlands. The Member Committee (MC, the national board) in Canada gives advice and suggestions on how to do things, whereas in AIESEC in the Netherlands there are procedures for most things and the LCs are just supposed to follow them. The Dutch approach obviously works better, but the Canadian one probably sometimes evokes less frustration on local level. I also got very very motivated to work for AIESEC in Guelph , I met really cool people and...I partied. With dancing on a table and everything. Sooo much fun.

After the conference we went back to Quebec City, where we stayed with some of the delegates, explored the city, did some shopping and today we went to visit some waterfalls close to Quebec. I forgot what they're called, but they're actually taller than the Niagara Falls. Apart from Nikolai (who I am very happy to see again), Laila (the UBC VP OGX) and me, everybody has already left Quebec. Ooooh and I am forgetting about Matthias, the VP OGX of AIESEC in Münster, the twin LC of my Dutch LC and of course my hometown in Germany. He is also on a CEED, here in Quebec. It was very funny to meet him, since I was faciing in their Newiescongress in May. He will stay here and we will go to Montreal tomorrow.

Concerning my work here for AIESEC, it's finally getting serious. This morning I randomly found out that there is an information fair at the university for all kinds of student organizations. So there is a lot of things that have to be prepared and the fact that I am in the nice province of Quebec does not really help, but since we have Internet in our hotel room and I still wake up early every day I get a lot of stuff done and it will be alright.

Check the pictures of beautiful Quebec, I will post them tomorrow. They are actually not my own pictures, since I am a very lazy person when it comes to that but Nikolai was friendly enough to let me post his genious pictures :D.

Je suis à Quebec...

Rien important est passé cette semaine. Le lundi je suis commencé travailler dans la université pour AIESEC et je suis alleé une autre fois au centre commercial. Comme je n’ai pas un bici je suis allée de pied et j’ai realizé: tout en Canada est très grand et loin. Bien, le mardi j’ai aussi travaillé tout le jour et après j’ai vu un film au cinema. Se s’appelait Amal et joue en India, je le recommends. Après il était temps d’aller bikehunting avec Carlos, le trainee de l’Ecuador. Malheureusement le bici était trop petit pour moi, mais peut-être le roommate de Carlos me va vendre son bici parce que va vivre en British Columbia. Le mercredi j’ai passé 8 heures avec installer des programmes dans mon ordinateur et j’étais furieuse après. J’ai aussi lavé mes vetements et fait mon valise pour aller à Quebec. A six heures nous avions un Potluck dans notre maison, comme la semaine passée et cette fois était le Potluck pour decir Au Revoir à Nilu, la fille de l’India. Je suis très triste qu’elle s’en va parce qu’elle est très agreeable et a une opionion interessante à beaucoup de sujets.

Après le Potluck on a pris le Greyhound à Toronto, ici on a pris Coach Canada à Montreal où nous sommes arrivés a 6:30 dans le matin et avec un autre bus nous sommes allés au Quebec. Tout le jour nous avons vu la ville, allée aux magasins et fait autres choses touristiques.

I will stop writing in French now. It’s a lot of fun, but my French has been better in the past and since I can’t be bothered to speak it here because I have such a hard time making a full working sentence and an even harder time decoding what the other person answers, I just speak English which also works fine. It’s really bad, because I should work on my French, but Canada is the wrong place for it. And since I am not used to having such a hard time speaking a foreign language, it annoys me a lot.
Writing in English I can also elaborate more on what we exactly did today. I tried ‘Poutine’, which is a Quebecois specialty, fries with gravy and cheese, and yes, it is as disgusting as it sounds. I would rather have ‘patat oorlog’. And I visited a Christmas Store. First one I’ve ever been to and of course I was amazed and had to stare and ‘oh’ at all the things that were there. I want to grow up very fast and have my own Christmas tree and buy a lot of stuff at the Christmas store to decorate it. Unfortunately the things there don’t really match my parent’s taste. I have also visited the Jade museum, to please my dear roommate Brett. The best thing there was that I was secretly charging my phone while staring at a lot of stones in weird shapes. I think ‘mystical creature’ was the description given in most of the cases, since it was not clear what was depicted. Later we met Andrea, a girl from AIESEC Victoria, which is on Vancouver Island.

Tonight we are staying in the university dormitories to go to a congress tomorrow afternoon. In the morning I will be working at the office of AIESEC here, since I won’t be in Guelph the whole next week and there is a lot to prepare for the next weeks. I will stay in Quebec and then travel from here to Montreal and stay there until next week Sunday. Nikolai is coming to the congress tomorrow as well and we will hang out after. It will be so good to see a familiar face and have someone to share all my evil thoughts with after such a long time!!! And I’ve had a lot of them recently :P. Also I can’t wait to be in another congress, since the last one was in may and that’s a very long time for me to go without congress. Though this one will probably not include crazily jumping around and dancing, since I don’t want to mess up my back again. We’ll see how this reasonable thought works out in practice.

A bientôt!

First Guelphish weekend

My first weekend in Canada is almost over and I am not really awake right now, but I will write something anyways and then go to sleep after. The reason I am so tired is that my body still thinks I am in Europe and wakes me up every morning at 7 or 7.30. I get tired around 6 pm and then, at 11 or 12 pm, I really have to go to sleep. I think this will be alright somewhere next week.

I was just hanging out on thursday and on friday I had my first meeting with Whitney, the Local Committee President (LCP) of AIESEC here about what exactly I will be doing here, so I could get started and I already did make a planning and some nice to-do lists :). It feels soooooo good to finally be doing some AIESEC work again. On friday night Aida, her boyfriend Dan and Amos woke me up because my place is apparently the party place where everyone meets all the time. Of course I knew they were coming, but I had to take a nap anyways. Which extended itself...
With more people around we prepared for a night at the bars, preparing meaning drinking in this case, which I did not join in for a change. We went downtown to a bar at 12, where we danced until 1.30. That was when my back started hurting really really badly again and I had to go home. I didn't miss much though, because bars in Guelph have their last call at 2 am and close at 3 am latest. Poor people here. They miss the whole fun part. Mean Canadian government. There are probably after-bar-parties at peoples houses, but wtf...I already miss Copenhagen party nights till 7 in the morning and I finally understand why all the Americans go crazy once they come to Europe. By the way, the mean Canadian government also has the monopoly on the sales of alcohol. Probably like in Sweden. But as in Sweden I'm not sure it has a positive effect on the population's alcohol consumption.

On saturday morning Krista, the VP ICX (Vice President of Incoming Exchange) and I went to the farmer's market which is every week just across the street from my house. Very convenient, it has a lot of organic nice vegetables and fruits, Amish cookies, dumplings, nice juices, salsas...really cool. And to me, still used to the Copenhagenish price-level, everything seems very cheap there. I think the vegetables are, even compared to Germany and the Netherlands. The Canadians consider the stuff at the farmer's market expensive, because it's not genetically manipulated. Like a lot of the produce you can buy at the normal stores. The onions here are incredibly big and I've also seen some scary cucumbers and tomatoes. And people can't believe me when I tell them that this is forbidden in Europe.

After the farmer's market I went home and that's where I stayed, doing some AIESEC work and reading. I was supposed to go to a Barbecue at night, but since my back was hurting so badly I was messed up by the pain (and also by the painkillers I had taken) so I decided to stay at home and watch a movie so I would be alright today to go to the zoo!!!!

So this morning we got on the greyhound bus to Toronto at 9h45, it took us an hour to get there. Luckily no scary things happened. Scary things related to Greyhound bus travelling in Canada like the decapitation story that happened some weeks ago in Edmonton...bah bah. The greyhound bus has a sign that says "don't bring weapons" and "violent behaviour towards the driver or your fellow travellers will be punished". Sometimes the Canadians are not worried enough. Most of them don't lock their front doors. I trained Brett to do so and when I told him why we do that in Europe and that it also has something to do with insurance of the stuff you have in your house he was like "oh I never thought about that". I hope I didn't worry him. Still, apparently they are as worried about terrorism about Europeans, because they have the same rules for hand luggage, even on domestic flights. . I see a mismatch here. Anyways, Greyhound took us safely to Toronto, there we went on the subway, another subway and a bus to the zoo. Which was quite cool. Unfortunately the main reason we went there was because Nilu, the Indian trainee wanted to see polar bears and penguins. They don't have any penguins anymore and the polar bears are temporarily moved to another zoo, but we still had a great time. I saw more groundhogs. And took a lot of pictures, I'll put them online tomorrow. Unfortunately, walking around the zoo all day makes very tired. I will remember that for if I ever have kids. So I already fell asleep on the bus back to Guelph and am sleepwalking ever since we got here, it might be time to go to bed then. Especially because tomorrow I will start going to the office and everything.

Address

And in case somebody wants to send me letters (which I would of course like very much) or packages (which I would like even more), my Canadian address:

Christina Brauer
31 Gordon Street
N1H 4G9
Guelph, Ontario
Canada

Welcome to Guelph!!!

I made it. And I got a very warm welcome. But let's start at the beginning.

I had all these bags packed, exactly 45,8 kg. I was allowed to take 46. So my father stressed me to leave on time and I was at the airport far in advance, still not early enough to get myself a nice spot somewhere at the aisle which would have allowed me to stretch my poor back. Luckily the nice Lufthansa steward got me a seat in the front row at the aisle later, so I really enjoyed the flight which was also really calm. Food was decent, I had enough space and it was only 8 hours, so I slept and read and then we were there.

I was picked up by my roommate and fellow AIESECer Brett, his dad and his dad's German (girl?)friend. She emigrated from Germany when she was a year old, so she talked to me about prices and compared to Dmark and Pfennige, which I found really sweet. When Brett first took me into our apartment I almost walked backward and out again, because it was sooooooooo messy (and I consider myself pretty used to messy, but this was too much). But my room was empty and my bed and desk were still in the living room, so once we had that straight it was okay...now there is some messiness left but it's not in my room and not in the central living room so I don't care. Once we had everything straight people started to arrive for Brett's weekly Potluck. This involves everybody bringing some random food and then eating it together. So there were Krista, Dan and Whitney from AIESEC here and then the trainees: Carlos from Ecuador, Niul from India, Bogdan and Aida from Romania and Amos from Kenya and Carlos also brought Axelle, a french girl along. I had a great time having AIESECers around me after a long time without, they made me feel at home immediately. And very welcome: they brought a huge bottle of Champagne which I had to open. Soooo cool. I managed to stay awake until midnight and just ignored the time difference. Still I woke up at 6, wide awake but then put myself back to sleep in order to adjust to Canadian time. I hope that was it with my jetlag, but I already feel getting tired and it's not even 6 pm here yet.

This morning Brett took me around town to change money, do groceries, get me a Canadian phone (email me or check facebook for my number) and discover the city and also university campus. Good thing about a university with a large agriculture department: it looks really nice. The town of Guelph is also cute, it has 118.000 inhabitants, so it is not very big, the sense of style of the people is not as good as in Copenhagen, but as far as I've seen also not as bad as in Twente. And I already discovered the Canadian wildlife today: I saw a groundhog. I discovered later that it's supposed to be what we call "Erdmännchen" in Germany, but it's a zillion times bigger than the ones we have at the zoo and I found it really cute. I want one!!!!!

All my bags are packed...

And I am sooooo ready to go. I liked my home intermezzo, especially because it was for a very limited amount of time. It was fun being around my family and meeting some people, but as I realized the moment I entered the ferry from Denmark to Germany and everybody was speaking German and behaving German: I don't belong here. The big question arises where it is that I belong and where I should feel at home then and at the moment the answer is as simple as it is disillusioning: nowhere. In every country I go to I feel like a welcome guest. And I behave like a guest, so everything is fine. I can perfectly live with that. But then I enter Germany...and I don't feel at home. Which I obviously should. Of course my parent's place is a different story, but the country :(, no. When I was on the ferry from Denmark I pretended to be something else and only spoke English to the people. Evil.

Not as evil as the people here. On saturday, I went to get my hair done. I ended up being served by the boss of the place, who was kind of rude and also had very clear ideas about what should happen to my hair. Unfortunately my ideas were not as clear so I had nothing to oppose him and ended up with my hair cut in a way that I wouldn't have proposed. If you have a service business, why don't you listen to your clients?
Next day, same story. On sunday the ongoing pain in my back made me visit a hospital. The normal doctor was fine, he even offered me to have me wheeled to x-rays (I thought that was a Danish specialty), but since walking and standing are the only positions I am really comfortable in I declined. The radiologist was a really mean woman who moved me backward and forward and wasn't impressed by the fact that I was crying from pain by the movements she imposed on me and just kept being rude. If you can't show even a little compassion for the people in pain you're helping, why do you become a doctor?
Yesterday I went to the Netherlands, where I felt like a welcome guest again, so no weird things happened to me.
I also went to see the dentist with my whole family (probably worth a blog entry on its own) and got every single point from my to-do list done. Even with evil Germans in the way doing everything to prevent me from doing so.

Good me, so today I could pack some more and meet more friends which was really cool. So right now I'll take one last rain dance shower and then put myself to sleep with all the painkillers the nice doctor at the hospital prescribed me. I am already looking forward to the moment that I checked in my luggage and can wander around the airport pretending to be a foreigner again.

Home sweet home

There I am. I spent my last days mostly in the library or at Naomi's place, studying for my finals which went okay. Micro went well, Macro went okay, but I think I passed. In the early morning hours of the exam days Naomi and I finally understood the economic way of thinking. There is no forest there. It's only economic principles applied to different situations using pure logic. It took us a longer time to understand that and with every model exam question we answered we were looking for the tricky component of the question: it was not there. If from now on somebody tells me he studies Economics, I won't be impressed anymore. Still, the studying for the exam was quite intensive and the fact that they were over had to be celebrated. With only four hours of sleep every night I was a little bit exausted, but thanks to CULT I made it. Taurin is forbidden in Denmark, that's why they don't have Red Bull, but they have CULT, their own energy drink, which comes even in different tastes. And there is also CULTshaker -the partymaker- pre-mixed Wodka Redbull...

So after my exam I got myself a bottle of this, amongst other things, and went to the city to buy the Mandarina handbag I had been admiring for some time and after the exams I decided I deserved it. After I packed my first suitcase I went off to start the evening with a BBQ at my second residence, Aboulevard. Second residence because I had been hanging out there a lot throughout the whole programme and the last days even slept there because of the exams. Some people seriously thought I lived there. After the Barbecue we went to celebrate Nicole's birthday with cake and Malibu at the harbour, after that we stopped by a house party at another residence and then went to K3, a club where we hadn't been yet. We stayed there until it closed and then it was time for farewell, which was really sad. I went with some people to 7-11 to get something to eat and then to the Metro. Unfortunately it was raining, so the Metro stairs were slippery and I was wearing Chucks, so I fell down half the stairs. At least it looked funny and the guys who were with me had a lot of fun. I am still in pain. Packing the rest of my stuff the next day after 3,5 hours of sleep with an aching back was not that much fun and luckily I had the Lovedoctor helping me to get all my stuff to the Central Station, from where I went by train, by boat, by train and yet by another train to Münster. I managed to change trains with all my luggage, but this time there were a lot of friendly people around. The only thing that's wrong with them is that they all speak German. That's something I really have to get used to. Or not, because I'm not staying that long. Also paying in Euros again feels funny.

It's not for long though, I already unpacked all my stuff and started packing for Canada, which involves a lot more clothes, because I will also be there in the winter and everybody is warning me about the cold there. So I will bring gloves and a scarf and maybe I even go as far as wearing a hat...

Daß ich nicht mehr, mit sauerm Schweiß, / Zu sagen brauche, was ich nicht weiß; Daß ich erkenne, was die Welt / Im Innersten zusammenhält.

I'm getting there. And the more I learn, the more I am convinced that by understanding economics I actually get a better understanding of the world. I already spent a long time studying for my two 4-hour-exams on wednesday and thursday. It actually feels quite good to have study as my first and only priority.

And even though thinking like an economist is a weird thing for a social scientist like me, I can see progress. Still these models are quite weird sometimes. Where I would always be looking for other variables which might influence what is going on, right now I am to assume that only the factors I am looking at have an effect. Validity and generalizability...go to hell! Luckily I have a lot of people around me who are used to the economic way of thinking to get inspiration from.

Doing sample questions for my microeconomics exam today I had a basic idea what was going on and I knew where to look for the answers...now I only have to get all the stuff into my head. Unfortunately the way of answering exam questions for my courses here differ substantially from the way I am used to do it: We are supposed to answer comprehensively, basically writing down everything we know related to the subject, of course in a prioritized order. And we have ten minutes per question. I am not sure I can do that, but I will try. And I will try very hard.
So I will probably spend the next days without any of the trivial pleasures which I have enjoyed so much in the past weeks and just focus. Which is a pity because there is so much more I want to do here, so many people I want to talk to...but these opportunities will return I hope. Retaking these exams...not an option. Just passing and not trying to do my best...not an option. I am really glad to experience this striving for perfection, I almost thought I lost it during the last year. I have to find out how Danish grades transfer to Dutch grades. In the Danish system grades range from 12 to -3, but it's not equal steps from one end of the scale to the other. And then putting that next to the Dutch scale from 1 to 10 where 10 is something you normally never get...maybe I can leave that to someone else.

In between all the studymania I had another visitor from friday night to sunday afternoon. Mariya, my Russian friend who was an AIESEC trainee in Enschede for the last year and now works in Finland came over for the weekend. Needless to say we had a lot of fun, took another Canal Tour, we walked the city, went shopping, did a Ghost Tour of Copenhagen, partied, visited Christiania again and shared funny memories. Especially comparing her visit with Helen's is something very interesting. Having a really long-term friend and former roommate from your hometown over or a close, but more recent friend from a totally different culture makes very interesting contrasts in what you do and what you talk about. I wouldn't want to miss any of it!

Right now it's time to further work on my profound understanding of what holds the world together and makes it go round, so I can show it on wednesday and thursday.

All my new shoes

Aren't they pretty? I figured, as a girl in Copenhagen it's essential to have different shoes in different colours so they always match what else I am wearing. Of course I have matching bracelets and earrings to each of them. How more princessy can it become? I don't think much more, but compared to the last four years living in Copenhagen is a healthy shock for me. Remembering those funny moments living in Enschede, dressed up and rouged on a normal day and always being asked: "Do you have a party later?". Still, Copenhagen is not the other way round, as I first expected it. The majority of people here is well-dressed (even if they're pregnant), but then well-dressed is of course subjective. Still, they look as if they care about how they look and that manifests itself in different ways. The surprising thing is that the different peer groups don't have a common dresscode. This was illustrated very well during the huge garden party some weeks ago, but I come across it again every day: guys in suits hang out with hippies, they are joined by gangsters and eventually a high-heeled girl with expensive sunglasses walks by and joins the crowd. Very different from everything I've known before, where through your dress you also express the kind of group you belong to, but probably this is the environment in which people can truly develop their own style. I wonder what this will do to me. I already discovered that wearing 3/4 leggings under a skirt is the best invention ever. I can sit on the floor, go by bike, it's not as cold when it's cold and not as warm when it's warm. Perfect. The second day Helen was here she bought leggings too.

As she was in Copenhagen a major part of our programme was shopping, what we did on saturday. We didn't end up buying a lot of stuff but we got nice inspirations. Saturday night we went out in Norrebro, to Rust, which is a cool place where we had almost too much fun dancing, as nobody knew us there (see the pictures) and yesterday we visited the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, north of Copenhagen at the coast. Apart from the artworks it's a really nice place to hang out, it has a park with seaview.

Today Helen left at 11.42 and I'm alone again, after cleaning the apartment I will now enjoy the quiet time and study. I hope I can use the time until Mariya arrives on friday to get a lot of things done. I also have to, with only a week and two days to go until the exams. The time is now!!!

Christinania

On wednesday my visitor arrived: Helen came from Germany! So I took her to class to admire our professor, on a canal tour, all around town, I fed her Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and of course we went out on thursday night to Kulorbar, again :P. We were supposed to have a tour of Christiania on friday at 9.30, but of course we got home somewhere around 5 and decided to explore it ourselves in the afternoon, after some chillout-time on the beach. Luckily Helen brought beachweather.

After lying on the beach for a while and swimming in the sea (cold, jellyfish, stony ground and tons of seaweed, but still a nice experience) we went to Christiania. It's one of the things you have to visit in Copenhagen and I haven't been there yet, so it was about time.

Christiania was founded in 1971 by some hippies who occupied empty military barracks and proclaimed their own free state, right in the middle of Copenhagen. They have their own post, legislation and people live there happily ever after. They really do. Of course some of Christiania's inhabitants have jobs in what I like to call " the real world", but others work there in the shops, the post office, the pubs, some are artists and some just hang out, smoke weed and drink beer all day. Unfortunately Helen and I got scared by all the "No Photos" signs, so we didn't take a lot of pictures. I found a youtube movie which gives you a good impression of what's going on there:



Even though I'm not really a fan of the way of life the people there, the place has a very special atmosphere and it was fun to be there. The Danish government is thinking about shutting it down for years, but they never actually did that. Sometimes the police goes there and arrests some people, probably for drug trade and abuse, because in Christiania, on a street called Pusher Street there are guys standing with small tables and selling pot. Which is of course illegal in the rest of Denmark. And if I was a politician I would not be too happy with a bunch of hippies occupying some part of my country and breaking my laws there. Still, I am wondering why they let that happen in the first place.

But maybe I can learn from the people over there, in case I ever want my own state. And Denmark seems to be a good starting place :D.

back to student life

As the doctor told me: walk as less as possible and cool my ankle, I spent saturday afternoon on the couch with Ally and Ben & Jerry's. This started boring me around 9 pm, so I decided to go out anyways. I put on my new shoes and my new shirt and went with my friends from Aboulevard to Vesterbro, which is another trendy district of Copenhagen. Apparently the places we normally go out are reserved for tourists and people from suburbia, and we were about to get the real Copenhagen Experience. And we got it...walking through the meat-packing district, where at first it seemed there was nobody, we first went to a really cool bar called Jolene, only Danish people there and all dressed in their weird fancy Scandinavian way. The bar was fun and the music was nice, but we decided to move on afterwards to another thing where we had used the bathroom before. I call it "thing", because I don't know any other description that fits it. Some weird underground club thingy, the entrance "hall" and the first room we went through to the actual dancefloor party room were lighted by neon lights, there were tabletop football tables and all that made the atmosphere really strange...especially because from brightly lit hallways we entered the partyroom which was only lit by some candles. The walls were decorated with huge letters (where the candles stood upon), drawers and cupboard doors and the furniture around looked like from bulky waste. Still, I liked the music and the atmosphere, though the fact that they served free pitchers of iced water and people drank directly from the pitchers made me suspicious. Just look at the pictures to see what I tried to describe...

On sunday I went to visit Roskilde, the former medieval capital of Denmark which is located 25 minutes left of Copenhagen at the Fjord. I visited the viking museum where they have rests of real viking ships they found in the Fjord. The ships themself are not that interesting, but again I was amazed of the Danish ability to build relaxed museums. You just walk around and information comes towards you in some weird kind of way. I normally get bored pretty fast, but the museums don't bore me. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I could dress like a viking and walk on a viking ship...

After the viking museum I visited the Cathedral, which is the graveplace of all the royals of Denmark. It is impressive, though it looks bigger from the outside than it actually is. Still, all the chapels of the different monarchs are really interesting, they're all different. The newest ones are the most boring...so I decided there is no point in being a real princess anymore nowadays. After having a pizza we went out in Norrebro at night and then weekend was over. And as I managed to visit only half of my classes last week this week it was time to go to all of them. And it is also time to start studying for my exams, which I really did. Combined with going out at night this leads to my days looking like this: getting up, go to class, have lunch, sleep,visit museum/something else interesing, study, dinner, study, going out, sleep, getting up...maybe this is not healthy in the long run but for the moment it works perfectly. Tonight I will go and get Coniurata from the station who is visiting me this weekend, so maybe I have to adapt my rhythm back. Still, for now it's study time!!!