Half Way Home!

As the title suggests, I'm at the half way point of my summer in Ottawa. Last week was incredibly stressful. I was trying to get everything done and handed in as well as study for an exam. In the end, I managed everything, except for one essay. Now, don't go thinking I skipped out on one essay. My Political Thought prof gave us an extension on one of our essays, as long as we handed in two on Thursday. So, I decided to use that extension so that I wouldn't have to pull an all-nighter on my Criminology take-home exam. Now that the first session is over, I'm glad to be done those classes. They weren't bad, but I'm just excited that I only have about 7 weeks left here and then I go back to Toronto before returning for my "break".

Anyway, because of the extension, I had to do an essay over the weekend. Yes, I know, in one of my previous posts, I said I wouldn't do anything related to school during that weekend and take advantage of the weather. Well, I had to break that promise and do an essay. But since I wanted to play rhockey on Sunday, it meant I had to lock myself up in my room on Saturday to finish the essay (I already had a rough draft of sorts done. It was just a matter of putting everything together to make it sound coherent). Anyway, I got it done. Whoo hoo!

I had to bring my hockey stuff to church (including my stick) because no one lives in the downtown core/east end. Anyway, it was weird lugging my stick into service. People were looking at me like "what the heck?". hehehehe. oh well. After church, I had to wait around in the lobby for Leon and his family to finish having lunch so I just chatted with Andrew (co-op from Halifax). Anyway, after lunch, Leon drove me to Subway for lunch and then proceeded to his house where all three of us changed into our gear and applied tons and tons of sunscreen. We got to Tanglewood at about 3pm and even before the game started, I was already sweating! I think Sunday was honestly the hottest day yet...32 degrees plus humidity! oh boy. I was about to give up at about 4pm because it was sooo hot and there was barely any shade. There was the occassional breeze, but it was insufficient. I chugged down all the water I could. It started to cool down at around 4:30pm but we were still sweating like pigs. Ew. Anyway, it was a good game, although I cherry picked my way through the first half and then played more defence in the second half because I was soo tired. I managed to score a nice goal. Whoo hoo. I brought my camera with me, hoping to take some pictures, but it was honestly too hot and I was too lazy to stand in the sun and bake. Good thing I didn't get sunburned. I probably have a faint tan (suprisingly), but it's not too noticeable yet. Maybe because it takes me forever to get a tan.

That was my weekend. New classes started this week. I only have two this semester: POL 3511 (Organisations internationales universelles) and POL 3115 (Development and Political Change). Looks like this semester will go pretty fast as well, considering I've got presentations and group projects to do in both classes. Good thing both my classes have take-home exams. Which means, the faster I get them done, the faster I can get out of here! I'm also interested in the topics that we'll be discussing in both my classes.

The downside to my classes are my professors. My POL 3115 prof has a nervous twitch. So he likes to stall in between words and sentences and has the "ummm uhhh...ehhh..ummm" thing going on; something that is really bad when you're presenting because it's easy for people to doze off or in my case, not understanding what the heck he's trying to say. He also speaks very softly. Geee.. double whammy. On the other hand, my POL 3511 prof has a loud and clear voice. But, he's a Franco-African and has the African French accent. Generally, in my experiences with speaking with people from Africa, I have difficulty understanding them. So, I hope my experiences with this professor will be more of a positive one and hopefully, it will help me understand Franco-African accents better. At least he does PowerPoint lectures and posts his slides on WebCT, so I can get something out of the lectures.

7 weeks and counting. The last possible day I'll be here is August 12th, when my POL3511 take-home exam is due (but we can hand it in earlier, if we wish).