Finals & Holidays

First of all, I would like to apologize for not having written in such a long time. As you know, MANY things can happen in a span of three months. I intend to briefly point out some of the things that are worthwhile talking about. I will do my best not to bore you with my narrative, and I will try to tell as many funny or odd details as I can.

Without entering into gory details, what I have been doing during these last months could be summarized in three words: School, Toronto and Agenda time.

I started taking my finals on April 16th, and I finished on April 24th with integral calculus. For this last exam, I had to stay up late studying because I had had my Biochemistry final a day before. I got to the examination room –a HUGE room – not even knowing where to sit down! I went all the way to the front to ask a TA – Teaching Assistant – where was I supposed to be sitting down. She asked me what my class section was. And guess what! I had no idea! Now, that was a problem because there were around two thousand students taking the same exam. In her strong Eastern European accent, she asked me to sit down at the front of the room and to write down on a piece of paper some of the details of my section such as the name of my prof, time of my lectures, etc. And so I started my last final exam.

Now I will try to satisfy your curiosity regarding the outcome of my calculus exam. I have to admit that it was one of those exams that make you laugh – or cry – once you see them. In other words, it was the HARDEST exam ever! I finished not knowing whether I had passed or not, and that is bad because the passing grade at the UBC is fifty. Thus, I was really surprised when I found out that I had gotten an A-! How did that happen? I don't know. They either did a massive scaling or I did not do that bad in the final after all!

As for the rest of the exam period, everything ran smoothly. Well... sort of. I would get to the library at around 8:00 a.m., and I would leave at around midnight to have supper at my house. I know that this might sound a little bit excessive, but suffice it to say that the friends that I was studying with would get there earlier and leave at two or three in the morning, and many of those finals were worth sixty or seventy percent. The good thing of studying so many hours is that I got to know better the people with whom I was studying, and I even had a chance to meet some of their friends.

Once I was done with my exams, I worked for a landscaping company (www.isidorelandscapes.com) for a week. No incidents were registered during that week except for one. A fellow landscaper and I were working at a house, and we were taking out some big boulders that had previously been jackhammered. We were putting the last boulder on the pick-up truck, when I lost my grip, and it just slipped from my fingers. Somehow, a sharp edge of the boulder happened to be in contact with my jeans at the time, and so they unchastely ripped. Now picture this, a white Mexican landscaper walking around with ripped jeans, and exposing the upper part of his right leg. I was SO embarrassed. As soon as we got to the headquarters of the company, I got some tape and tried to put my jeans together. It did work, but I had the appearance of a homeless person until the end of that day.

On the second week of May, I flew to the East. It was my first time in Toronto, and I must admit that it is a beautiful city in its way. There is not as much greenery as in Vancouver, but it does have way more tall buildings and a CN Tower. But funnily enough, I did not stay in Toronto Toronto. I stayed in Belfountain, a small city on the countryside located half an hour away from Toronto. What did I do there? I studied philosophy, did sports and rested. I even had a chance to visit some touristic places such as the Toronto Zoo, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Canada's Wonderland (an amusement park), all pretty damn cool! I kissed Toronto goodbye on May 27th, and I arrived back in Vancouver that same afternoon.

At the beginning of my post I titled the third activity "agenda", and this is precisely what I have been doing for the past couple of weeks. There are several projects that will take place during the summer here in Vancouver and in Mexico, and I am giving a hand to organize all these. At the beginning of my post I also said that I was going to try to make the post short, my apologies because I was not able to keep my word, but there were so many things to tell!

I will make an effort to continue writing during these coming weeks. I will probably write posts regarding some of the episodes that I have lived since I arrived to this country two years ago. And they will be shorter than this one!

Reading break

I hope you won't get upset once you hear about my decision of changing the blog's language (or the language of at least some of the posts) to English. At first this idea seemed to me somehow out of place, since I am a Spanish speaker. However, I have been living in Canada for almost a year and a half, and I just don't see the point in continuing to write in Spanish.

As for my language, the only people to whom I still speak in Spanish are my parents, and of course, some of my friends. At my house there are several Spanish speakers, but I barely talk to them in Spanish. I say barely because there are certain words that are really hard to translate into English... you know what I mean.

In order to avoid boring you, I will start to talk about the post's actual topic. Had you ever heard of a "reading brake" before? Probably not. Last year it was the first time that I heard it too. Personally, I think it is odd to have a break in the middle of February, when the weather is still chilly, cold and ugly. I ignore the reason why it is called a reading brake, but I think it is one of those dates that originally had a purpose, and then just stayed in the calendar. It is sort of a spring brake but not quite. The name itself suggests a study break (forgive the contradiction), but some people just party the whole weak and get wasted. The rest of the people (myself included) use this week to catch up with the material in all of our courses, and manage to do get some exercise done.

To be more concrete, I will try to do sports every day and to go on a hike at least twice. The rest of the time I will be studying and doing practice problems. The courses that I will be studying for are five: integral calculus, introduction to biochemistry, introduction to medical microbiology and immunology, and an english literature course. Unluckily, I had all of my midterms before the reading break, but that is not as bad because now I will have a full week to replenish my "batteries".

I hope you enjoy next week as much as I will (am I smelling envy here?).I will try to keep on writing on this blog. I have to admit that I am terribly bad at keeping my blog up to date but I will do my best. Special greetings to Robespierre for his comment about my blog's inactivity haha.

Oh! And by the way, we had a sunny day today! yay!