|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Come on, come on...
put your hands into the fire
So, I'm in Calgary for about six weeks now and haven't written anything, yet. I guess I should change that.
Things have worked out pretty great so far. The flight was comfortable and didn't seem too long (thanks Harry!) and after a heartstopping moment at the immigration centre, I finally got to see Colette again and met her family for the first time. They dropped me off at my homestay family, Norman and Kitty, a Chinese couple, grandma, Duck, a Korean guy (it's only his nickname, okay?), and Christian, who is from Germany, too. Now I live in a pretty nice house and the people are friendly and helpful, too. And you never get hungry here. ;)
I guess you'd like to know what I've been up to all that time, so here are some of the things we did and visited since the beginning of August.
The zoo was about the first Calgary attraction I saw and it's a good zoo! I can recommend it. Kristen and Rob, who have season passes, came with us and it was a fun day. Then there is ultimate frisbee every Thursday evening, which is intense and maybe even more fun than the zoo. We went to Shakespeare in the Park, too and saw As You Like It in the 70s version. Of course we also had to go to the Calgary Tower, because you haven't been in Calgary, if you haven't been to the tower and we went to Globalfest, which is a fireworks competition and it was pretty amazing. Also, Colette's parents are sacrificing their time to show me the region a lot. We did Elbow Falls, Drumheller, Moraine Lake, Lake Louise and Banff so far and nature is really impressive here. I've never seen lakes the color of Gatorade. ^^
If we're not doing daytrips, Colette and I are watching a lot of movies, meet with her friends or play some DDR, Wii, Settlers or Blokus, which is always fun.
After I finally got into all my courses, school started this week and there aren't really huge differences in the lecturing style. I guess they explain things more detailled here, so that everybody has a chance to get it and I like that we have Midterms, so that the final exam doesn't count 100% of the mark, as it is in Germany.
So after catching up today, I'll try to post more frequently to let you know what I'm doing here!
| | |
| Dazzled by the beauty of it all...
Time for an update, I guess.
So there's been a few things going on since my last entry. I booked my flights to Calgary, bought the health insurance (amazing, that you can even do that online) and chose my courses for fall. So as far as Calgary is concerned I can't really do much more, except maybe getting an international driver's license and trying to find a way to communicate with my homestay family. Both could come in handy ^^. The only unconfirmed thing still is the grant, so I'm quite a bit nervous about that, because I think I'll only get the confirmation when I'm already in Canada. I hope it works out.
University is going well so far, though there's always work to be done. It started with the labs and we thankfully got into an early group, so we'll have more time in the end of the term to prepare for exams. I chose to do four of them before I leave for Calgary and they are all pretty close together. There will be "Systems Biotechnology", "Bioprocess Engineering", "Technical Chemistry II" and "Processdynamics & Control"... So yeah, the labs kept us busy in the beginning with the tests, reports etc. and now I've got this seminar paper to worry about. It's kind of good that I got a topic you barely find literature about, because that makes it easier to sort out and scan the amount of articles and me and my instructor are happy about every piece of information. So now I've got a first outline and will take it from there. Apart from the paper I'll also have to prepare a presentation about it and finally present it (that wasn't too hard to guess...). Ah yes, we also had our first presentation ever in uni two weeks ago. It was about plantibodies (antibodies from plants, ha!), went pretty well and even was a bit fun to show it to the course in the end.
Apart from those rather stressing events, some really amazing things happened, too.
So last weekend I finally got to meet Colette in Paris for the first time in my life and it was just awesome. I've never been to Paris before and hopping from sight to sight with her, her friends Alex, Jen, Kim and Mark and Andreas from the moo was great. Well, I'm running out of superlatives (even if I didn't use a single one). we went to Notre Dame, the top of the Eiffel Tower, Versailles Castle, the Louvre and saw plenty of other sights from outside. Pretty touristy, huh? ^^ The trip home was pretty sad, but this Monday I'm going to see her again in Heidelberg (finally somewhere I'll actually be able to communicate with the locals :D). While in Paris, I missed out on my sister's birthday, but I had a present for her
prepared at home and Colette and I called her from a bridge over the
Seine and I hope she didn't mind too much after all.
Another amazing thing was to get to know that my other Calgarian moo friend Kristen got engaged a few days ago! I'm so happy for her and I wish she has found the love of her life and that she doesn't stress herself out too much planning her wedding ;)
So finally there's a pretty silly topic remaining: Human tower rushes.
What the...? I mean it's just not authentical, is it? Okay, okay, it's also not authentical to have heroes setting themselves on fire to hurt their enemies or shooting searing arrows from the back of a snowtiger, but I just wouldn't get the idea of sending some people to the threshold of my enemy's base and built up some solid towers. The problem is: It works. And if you're good at it, the opponent has no chance of countering it. So I, as a believing nightelf player, tried it. It looks so easy, let's do it...yeah right it looks easy. I lost every single game, because I'm a HU n00b. Meh. Huntresses are prettier than towers anyways...
| | |
| Must Be Dreaming...
I think it's time for a first real entry.
Last fall I decided to come to Calgary to study there for half a year. It's been a long way from then and there's still a piece of road ahead of me, but I think I can start telling what I've been doing all the time up to now.
Maybe you'd ask me...
Why I am going to study abroad anyway?
So first I'd say that studying here isn't really complete without going abroad for at least one semester. It isn't really necessary, but companies really like it when you've managed to go abroad, because it takes a lot of effort and shows you're ready to take on challenges and new experiences. You're not stuck at home, at the same university all the time, which makes you look more flexible and open-minded. So yeah, the companies like it, when it's in your resume.
And I think the companies are right. I haven't been on vacation for so long now (stupid exams) and I really love to travel. I've spent my whole life living with my parents in the same city and I've got the feeling that I could be missing out something. It's obvious that I'll miss my family, but getting to see things from a different angle, diving into a different culture, meet new people, make new friends and see new places are things they'd also like me to experience.
But why am I coming to Calgary then?
Well, that's quickly told. When the idea of going abroad came up first, I wanted to go to Sweden. My university has an exchange program with two universities there and it would have been easy to get the courses acknowledged here and so on. I figured Swedish people were very nice and even registered for a Swedish course, when I changed my mind.
I take part in that text-based Harry Potter RPG and as people don't pretend to be a wizard most of the time, it's just a sweet place to meet people from all over the world and talk to them. So once you get to know the 'regulars' you get a feeling for who you like and of course you get to know them better. Amongst those were two people from Calgary, Kristen and especially Colette. If I was about to go abroad and provided that I'd manage to get that grant, why not go to Canada then?
So after a short time in which I considered to go to Lethbridge instead, I started to organize things heading towards my stay in Calgary.
Is it complicated?
Hmm, it's really not super much to do, but it's the waiting times that really suck. To get an e-mail answered by the U of C it takes more than five days, sending a letter takes a week. The office hours at my university are like 8 to 10 a.m. and if I need to go to two offices I'd be lucky and they wouldn't be open at the same weekdays. Not to mention the immense queue in front of the registrar's office. There's also the thing that my uni has no exchange or cooperation program with the U of C, so I had to organize everything on my own. You get it...
It was time to get things done then.
I went to that heap of unstructured HTML attempts...Err! I mean, the U of C website and found out what documents I'd need to apply and fit the requirements. Same for the grant institution.
The first thing that gave me the creeps was the English Language Proficiency requirement (ELP). I've had ten years of English classes, including two years of an intensive course in years 12 and 13 at school, but did it matter? No!
So I had to get that TOEFL test. It's an standardized English exam which covers Listening, Reading, Speaking and Writing skills and which can only be taken at special locations at special dates. Those dates are scattered happily across the calendar and appeared to happen once a month at the location that was nearest to where I live. The registration for the test is done over the internet and it was really easy and intuitive. Now I wanted to register for the January test, but it was full. So, I was like "uh-oh, I wanted to have my application done in February." because the results take around six weeks to arrive. But then I clicked on the December exam and DING! there still were open spots! I registered on a Monday and the test was on the coming Friday. Maybe a good thing, because I had less time to worry about it. I completed the online sample test to calm down a bit and it went fine, so I was quite confident, except for the Speaking part. I suck at speaking.
Which turned out to be true. I passed the test with 107 out of 120, with Speaking being the weakest section. Anyway, I got it. Yeah!
To complete my application I needed a Letter of Permission and translated transcripts from my home university. My program advisor was really cool about it and did it all by himself. All I needed to do was pick the courses I'd want to visit and get a confirmation from the professors, who teach similar classes here, so that I'd get the credits acknowledged for my degree. They all were fine with it and finally I had my letter and my transcripts. Oh yeah, the transcripts... Registrar's office. Horror. Ok, let's move on.
Now that I had all the documents and the TOEFL results would be sent to Calgary directly, I could send my application per mail. They only take it personally or per letter mail for Visiting Students and personally really wouldn't work with me...
Simultaneously, I applied for the grant. More documents, a lot more forms to fill out.
My advisor wrote a sweet recommendation for the grant for me, I could prove my English skills by showing them the ten years of English classes, I had to stand in another queue to prove my progress in studies and many other little things.
The bad thing was that I forgot to sign the first and most important form because I sent it while it wasn't completely filled out yet. Oops! ^^
Well, in the meantime I had received a quite informal acceptance letter from the U of C. I've been so happy! It said that I was eligible to enroll for courses and so on, but that they couldn't confirm yet if they'd be offering my choice of courses this fall. So that's still to be sorted out, when the timetable comes out in late April. I'll just send an updated application as they've told me to do so.
They've also sent a sheet that I'd need to apply for a Study Permit, but I found out that I won't need it as I'm from Germany and staying for less than six month. One application less, woo!
Okay, I was sort of accepted. That meant that the next levels got unlocked. Accommodation, flights, more dreams.
Now where should I live in Calgary?
I'd be staying for about half a year, I wouldn't want to live in the Res and I wouldn't like to have to buy furniture. I'd like to be integrated in Canadian life, not an outcast only hanging around with other Visiting Students (which wouldn't have happened anyways, because of my friends). So the answer was easy.
Homestay family!
So I started to search for homestay organisations and found Homestay Calgary, which turned out to be the perfect thing. They choose the families carefully and are warm and caring people. There were those private directories too, but I think that agency was the right thing to pick.
I wrote an e-mail telling them about me and my expectations and after one correction, indicating the neighbourhood I wanted to live in more precisely, I think that I got the perfect spot, right inbetween the Bonavista lakes and Canyon Meadows C-train station. It'll be awesome. I hope that the homestay dad replies to my e-mail one day, but he seems to like the phone better. Couldn't say that for myself. You know, the Speaking part and so on... ;)
That's about all I got done by now. There are still things coming up like booking my flights, which I'll probably do very soon, choose my courses as soon as they come out, send my update, get a health insurance for abroad and send a few missing things to the grant office, which I'll only be able to do when I got those things done.
I really like to plan things, to have a checklist and cross out accomplished items. I still can't fully believe that I'm actually coming to Calgary and feel like it's not my own voice that's replying "Oh you want to do this-and-that in summer? Sorry dude, I'll be in Canada." or "Next semester? Well, I'll be studying in Calgary.". It's kind of crazy to have access to people all over the world and to be able to actually see them and be part of their of their lives. I thank God to have the opportunity to do this and my parents, who fully support me in my plans. It's really a blessing to be able to make those things I've been dreaming about become reality. I hope it all works out. I'm almost sure it will. | | |
| Heyho!
Woo, I've got a xanga! ..and now?
| | |
|
