Hi to all of you out there,

I am now more than halfway through my stay in Vancouver, and I am still enjoying it over here. Apparently I was a bit too quick when I declared that the days were getting greyer and wetter. By a stroke of luck we have seen the sun countless times since then, and only the occasional rain showers remind us that we are in a region with the same climate as Denmark at the end of October. In other words, we should be spending most of our time indoor, looking out at the rain… Since this has not been the case we have been able to enjoy the beautiful autumn colors all over campus including a trip to the small Japanese Garden we have here. Furthermore, in the true "Blue Crew"-spirit, we have attended an additional number of sports events at UBC, but since our teams keep losing, I imagine that this will end soon…

On October 11 I took a trip south of Vancouver to Steveston Village - a nice little fisherman's village with lots of boats selling freshly caught fish and restaurants selling fish and chips. I went there along with Jonas from Denmark, Nico from New Zealand and Verena from Austria. We spent a long time getting there and back, but it was nice to get away from campus for a change. After the fisherman's village we went downtown, where Jonas and I walked around False Creek to see another and more quiet side of the city. On the way back I also definitively noted that my local supermarket might be on the more expensive side with customers arriving in a Lamborghini…

On October 16 it was time to get a bit further away from it all. In the evening I dragged my luggage through to the rain to the bus to go to the airport from where I was flying to Montreal overnight. I arrived early in the morning and met up with Alexandra in the center of Montreal. After checking in to a nice hotel we went for a long walk to Vieux Port, along the water and back along the main shopping street Ste-Catherine. After a nice dinner we decided to call it a night due to jetlag (3 hour time difference) and lack of sleep on the 5-hour plane trip. The next day we headed to the Olympic Village and the leftovers from the 1976 Olympic Games. First we went to the Biodome where they had recreated a number of ecosystems and showed the different animals living there. After the Biodome we went to a large and very nice botanical gardens. There they had special gardens such as a Chinese, Japanese, and First Nations Garden. There was also an exhibition of decorated pumpkins in honor Halloween, and the Chinese Garden had been decorated with lanterns that lit up at night.

After a long day we met up with Alexandra's brother Guillaume and his friends at a Tibetan restaurant. The next day we went for some shopping before taking our bags from the hotel to Guillaume's place to spend the night there. The next day we went on a daytrip to Mont Tremblant along with Guillaume and his friend Basile, who had borrowed a car from his parents. Mont Tremblant was a ski-resort 2 hours away, but it was nice to get away from the city and see something else. There was no snow yet so we walked up one of the ski slopes and looked back down at the fake-looking town. Later we went to Basile's parents' cottage in the woods to spend the afternoon there. We had to go back early because I had arranged to meet for dinner with Maria from CBS, who I have been writing projects with the last two years. We had a nice evening together and shared experiences about being on exchange. I spent the last day going shopping alone before meeting up with Alexandra in the afternoon. Even though people are very kind here, it was nice to talk and be around people I know from home, and I will miss that the coming months before going back.

Now I am back in Vancouver, catching up on my readings and working on a couple of assignments. This week I also got my midterms back and both of them had been passed without big problems. I guess the only thing to do now is pave the way for my trip to Hawaii, so I can go there without feeling guilty about the schoolwork I should be doing.

Take care and talk to you soon,

Michael