Happy Groundhog Day!

Good evening everyone! Let me start off by saying Happy February and Happy Groundhog Day! And Happy Superbowl Sunday! I was sad that I did not get to see the game but congratulations Seattle. Maybe I will see some of the highlights on TV at the gym tomorrow. Oh, the struggles of not having cable, though it is probably for the best as I need as few distractions as possible as I try to buckle down and escape from under my huge pile of never ending school work! It was a busy, busy week here at Bishop's and there does not seem to be an end to this busy streak in sight (except maybe the end of April). But I am doing my best and hoping that I can keep up with everything going on. 

So the week got off to a bit of a rough start. My associate teacher was sick on Monday so we had a supply at school that day. I decided to go ahead and try my drama lesson anyway but to say the least, my lesson did not go as planned. I had wanted my students to break into groups and create a skit about a chapter in their books but this is not exactly what happened. There was some confusion with forming the groups and assigning the chapters and with my expectations so we unfortunately had to cancel the lesson and do individual seat work. However, I have revamped my lesson and am going to try it again tomorrow! I have made the instructions a lot more direct and have cut the workload for the students in half and am hoping that tomorrow will go better than last week. As a nice surprise though, my supervisor Connie came to visit at PEES so we had a chance to catch up and discuss my goals for the semester. It was nice to talk to her after my not-so-successful lesson and she helped me regain some of my confidence. She also gave me some great ideas on how to improve the lesson and was happy to hear that I was going to try it again. At the end of our meeting, she said that if I ever need someone to run my ideas by, I can contact her because she thinks that I have a lot of ideas inside that I need someone to hear. How right she is, so I will definitely take her up on her offer. In fact, she asked me to email her about how my lesson goes tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

The rest of Monday was just as busy, as I had two classes and then a Golden Key meeting. At the GK meeting, they asked me if I wanted to apply for an executive position and so I thought about it and you are now reading the blog of the GK's new Webmaster. I haven't decided if I am going to take the position or not but I think that I will as I think it would be fun to maintain the website and Facebook page. I just may need some computer training before I begin. I based my application on the fact that I want to help other members of GK be more informed about all of our activities and I hope that I will be able to do this as the Webmaster. So that will be a new and exciting role to take on. After the meeting, I went to the gym and then came home for dinner and to do some homework. It was a long 12 hour day away from home so I was happy to finally go to bed that night. 

Tuesday I got up and did a lot of homework before going for a swim at the gym. I stopped in to see a prof on my way to campus and made an appointment to meet with him again on Friday. I stopped in the SUB to sign up for some of the Mental Health and Wellness activities taking place on Friday, as it was Mental Health Awareness Week and a bunch of free activities were being offered to students and faculty. I signed up for bootcamp, yoga and a quinoa cooking session. After swimming, I went to my afternoon classes and then came home to do some homework and have dinner before heading to my night class. We had our first Reading Circle meeting and my group has decided to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Matilda and Where the Wild Things Are. We will be doing our group presentation on Alice and we are really looking forward to it. We have named our group The Royal Croquet Committee and I am excited to see the direction our project will take. 

After class, I finalized my exchange application so that I could hand it in the next morning, which I did. So as of now, I have officially applied to study at the Université Francois Rabelais in Tours, France next year. I am still really undecided as to whether I will go for the year or just a semester because picking courses is super difficult so I will keep you updated on what I decide. Luckily, the exchange application process is the same for one or two semesters. After handing in my application and going to the gym, I went to my afternoon class and we watched School of Rock, which our teacher says is the Quebec curriculum in action. I think we may have to write a response on this. I really like the movie, though the one thing that bothers me is that a guy with no teaching experience just takes over the class as I feel it kind of undermines teachers in a way. But at the same time, it is just a movie and reminds us all that school should be fun. I hope that one day my students will be as engaged in my classes as the students are in the movie. (If you haven't seen it, go watch it. (It's often on the YTV kids network)

After class, my friend Amanda and I boarded a bus to head to Montreal because the time had arrived for my much-anticipated interview for Walt Disney World! We took the bus to the mall near Amanda's house where her parents picked us up and took us home for dinner. We had a pretty relaxing night, in order to prepare for our big day of interviews. I could hardly sleep I was so excited! We got up just before 7 to catch the bus downtown. Then, we had to take the metro to the Sheraton and for some reason, we just had really bad luck with the metro that morning. The first metro was really slow, making really long stops at each station. The second metro was so full that we didn't get on the first train and had to wait a super long time for the next one to come. Luckily, Amanda knew someone else at the interview and called her and had her tell the representatives that we were on our way. We got there just as the clock struck 9am and the presentation was about to begin. The presentation was really useful: it talked about the different jobs available, the living experience, the benefits of working there, what to do before arriving, the wages, etc. Essentially, the job would last from May to the first week of August and we would live in an apartment complex with other Disney workers. We would work between 30 and 45 hours a week for US minimum wage, different rates depending on the job. The most jobs are available in the quick service food and custodial sections, which are not really my top options but we will see what happens. After the presentation, the interviews began. Since our interview were not until 1:30, Amanda and I hung around in the Sheraton lobby, doing our homework and then we went out for lunch. Then we came back to be interviewed. There were 3 Disney representatives there, but we were only interviewed by one. My interviewer asked me about myself, my work experiences and how they would transfer to Disney, why I applied for the positions that I did and why I would be an asset to the Disney company. I talked about my work as a counsellor and in retail, as lifeguard and retail and restaurant hostessing are my top interest areas. I think that it went really well! We hear back before the end of the month, so again keep your fingers crossed for me!

Hoping my interview was magical! 

After my interview, I made a stop at the Montreal David's Tea and then caught the bus back home. I made a quick stop at my house before heading to campus to work. It was a pretty quiet night in Mackinnon, but Hannah and Jocelyn came by to hang out with me and some of my residents, so it was nice to have some company. Vicki was there for the last hour so I was luckily never alone or I may have fallen asleep! Amanda Beker let me stay over in her room which was also really nice so I didn't have to walk home at 4am! However, I still did have to get up early as Jocelyn and I had signed up for 8am bootcamp the next morning!

I got up and dragged myself to meet Jocelyn at the gym only to find no instructor there! I got an email about an hour later saying the class had been cancelled due to low enrolment. It would have been nice to have known that earlier but we stayed and worked out anyway so at least we were up and moving (though I was not moving much on only 4 hours of sleep). We then came home and cleaned our house a bit and then I went back to campus for my quinoa session. Only 4 people showed up, which ended up working to our advantage because we got to take all of the leftovers home! We made a hot quinoa stir fry type dish and two different salads - one with chick peas and a red wine vinegar dressing and one oriental salad, with sunflower seeds, tomatoes and a soya sauce dressing. They were all amazing! And now the two salads are in my fridge to feed me for the rest of the week! I put the recipe for the oriental quinoa salad on my Pinterest board, which you can check out here: 

Oriental Quinoa salad! 

After the quinoa session, I met with my prof to help me pick my courses for next year. For three of the courses I want to take, I need to pass a test with a certain level of French, so my prof is going to give me a placement test to see if I am at the required level. Also, it was great to learn that they have reworked the French program here so now all 3 of the French courses I have taken count towards my minor as opposed to just two. I also learned that 2 ECTS credits (credits in France) equal 1 Bishop's credit so that really helped me with figuring out courses. I have a pretty good list so far but have not been able to find the schedule which makes it hard to determine if I will be able to take all the courses I have selected, so more research is required. After that meeting, I went to another meeting with Recruitment as I was volunteering with them the next day and we were running through the itinerary for the day. Following that, Elizabeth (and Taylor, our chauffeur) came down to meet me to pick up our billet students. This weekend, Bishop's hosted a debate tournament as part of our Up for Debate weekend and we offered up our house to visiting students. We hosted two boys from Mount Allison named Clay and Liam. They got here around 4pm on Friday and Taylor was kind enough to give us all a ride to our house. After settling them in here, the 4 of us went to the weekend welcome dinner in the Cleghorn room on campus. The dinner was really nice and we got to meet some of the other students who were here for the weekend and enjoy a catered meal. After the dinner, there was a special lecture from our principal's cousin, Dr. David Goldbloom in Centennial Theatre. Elizabeth and I both went and took our billet boys as well. The talk was pretty interesting, though I have to admit that my lack of sleep did hit me and I may not have been fully awake for the entire presentation. Unfortunately, I was also sitting in the front row so my nap did not go unnoticed. Oops.

Following the lecture, we came home and introduced our boys to Hannah and Jocelyn who had just gotten back from a class trip to a monastery and later to Sarah who had been on a class trip to Quebec City. We all had an early night as the boys had to get up for the debate tournament and Hannah and I were volunteering early in the morning. Hannah was nice enough to get up and walk the boys to campus so that I could go for a run before our busy day. It was such a beautiful morning - the perfect winter running weather. I feel the need to mention that I was sporting all of my new lululemon winter running gear and felt that lululemon might want to put a pic of me on their website as their Lennoxville lulu model. Anyway, after my run, I showered and went down to campus to start volunteering. We were hosting a group of CEGEP and high school students for the day, and we took them to the student debate tournament in the morning and the U4 Symposium talks in the afternoon. I was lucky enough to get to attend the debate that our billet boys were in and my friend from my class was in. They were debating over parents having the right to pull their children our of classes on Darwin's theory of evolution. Though my personal belief is that no they should not be able to do so, the other side of the argument (the boys) were the debate champions. Following that, we went to the championship debate round, which ended up being the two St. FX teams, arguing about Bill 60 of the Charter of Values in Quebec. It was a great debate!! The students did such a good job and I was so impressed! Again, my personal belief is that people should be able to wear whatever they want to their jobs in the public sector but the debaters arguing for the Bill were the champions. 

Following the debate tournament, we took our group of students to Dewies for lunch and then we had a presentation on leadership from a BU professor, Dr. Michael Teed. His wife was expecting twins at any moment so we did not know if we would make it through the presentation, but I am happy to report that we did. He was saying that he wants to name his kids "Garren" and "Warren" Teed. Get it? After that, we took the students to the second half of the U4 Symposium, which was a set of TEDx inspired talks. We heard talks on meditation, perfectionism and depression (which I found super interesting), Ancient Greek literature, and Shakespeare and madness. All were really well done. I was sad to not see the first half of the talks so I will have to look them up online later, in my spare time (<- that's a joke, since I do not have spare time). Following the symposium, Hannah and I bid farewell to the group and met up with our other housemates to attend a formal supper in Cleghorn for all of the visiting guests. We received the invite for hosting visiting students and we were more than happy to attend. It was assigned seating at this dinner and I was at a table with my housemate Sarah, a student from Acadia, two students from St. FX, a prof from one of the U4 schools and Dr. David Goldbloom. We had some nice conversations over a really good meal. It turned out that the girl from Acadia was actually from Waterdown, which is super close to Ancaster so that was kind of cool. 

Hannah and I in are matching BU gear! 

Following the dinner, we came home for a bit before heading over to one of the other billet apartments where there was a party for all of the visiting students. Sarah and I went with our boys to the party which ended up being pretty fun. It was interesting though when all of the visiting students wanted to head to the bar before midnight, which doesn't usually happen here. It turns out that their bars at school close at 2 whereas ours close at 3 so people don't head out until 12:30. Nonetheless, they all decided to hit up the Lion, so I decided to go visit my friends at an apartment close by. When I started falling asleep on their couch, I knew it was time to come home. Just as I was falling asleep, our billet boys came through the door, so I was happy that they made it home safely. 

We had to get up super early this morning to take our boys to breakfast at Dewies for 8 to catch their bus at 9. After saying goodbye to them and all of their friends, my housemates and I spent the rest of the morning eating and studying in Dewies. Apparently, we overstayed our welcome as at around noon, the supervisor came over and kicked us out. She was quite forceful so we quickly got out of there! I then came home to grab my skates and met some of my residents at the arena, as I could not recruit any of my housemates to come with me to the free skating. It was still a lot of fun, as the Mack boys are really, really great. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the library, planning lessons and doing some readings before heading home for more homework and dinner. And as soon as I finish this, there is more homework calling my name and then I will hit the hay to rest up for practicum in the morning. 

Lesson Planning! 

So looking ahead, this week will be busy too, as it is now February and that means I've got to start working on my end-of-term projects. But I am super looking forward to Thursday as the Olympics are starting!! I was watching the arrival of athletes in Sochi on the news today in Dewies. I cannot wait!! I've got all of my Olympic gear ready to go! Oh yes, and in the world of my virtual child, Bridgette is now 6 years old and has a new baby sister named Annie. Virtual Child is definitely my favourite project so far. Anyway, that's all I've got for now, so I wish you all a wonderful week and a wonderful month of February! 

All my love, Erica xoxoxoxoxoxo

PS Congratulations to my former skating team Nexxice Intermediate who took home the gold at Regionals this weekend! You have no idea how proud I am! I cannot wait to watch the livestream of Nationals, though I will be experiencing extreme jealousy when you are all out in BC!

PPS Lauren, I hope you had a wonderful sweet sixteen birthday weekend! Wish I could have been there!! Your dress and cake were beautiful!