antics in canada: spillages, suspect hotels and fratboys

After sad goodbyes at Norwich airport my journey was relatively uneventful apart from knocking water onto my crotch, then more water onto my neck pillow, on top of which the woman next to me spilt beer.

Between numerous food-servings and hot wipe deliveries I watched movies, got a bit claustrophobic and panicky for a bit (deep breathing is yer only man), and swung between sadness, excitement and fear. I thought a lot about how strange time is as well, but I won’t pontificate about that.

Vancouver airport is big, quite nice…very recently built. There are totem poles and indigenous sculptures to let you know how “inclusive” Canada is (my first few Indigenous Lit classes have confirmed my suspicion that this is something of a grand claim). After a big sweaty passport queue I got into a bigger sweatier visa queue.

When my taxi pulled up to the ‘family hotel’ I’d booked online my heart sank a bit. It was basically just a house with no sign and the door wide open. I asked the driver to wait and walked in to find a surprised-looking guy in the kitchen. I asked him was I in a hotel and he yelled someone’s name and walked off. A guy who I assume was the owner arrived and helped me with my bags.

As I paid the taxi driver he kept repeating ‘stay safe’, which was none too comforting. The owner showed me my room and after making sure there was a lock on the door I paid with a weird flimsy card-reader attached to his iPhone. Being exhausted and anxiety-prone I figured I’d be put in a pie. No WiFi access was the last straw and I cried for a while, which is silly in hindsight, but at the time I felt bombarded with things to cry about.

In the end I rationalised the situation and decided the owner was sound, just a lad turning his house into a hotel (he was pretty much constantly doing DIY). Having gone to bed at 7pm I woke at 6am and snaffled a load of Hobnobs. Then I hovered around the WiFi box in the kitchen to try and book a taxi. A nice couple from Calgary helped me.

A glimpse of mountains from the taxi

Having moved in I bumped into my friend Ellen (who is also at UEA and by coincidence was on the same flight) who was planning to go to IKEA. We found a couple of English guys who wanted to go as well and we all shared a taxi. I mentioned how I ‘don’t particularly like IKEA’ and the guy with a backwards Obey cap remarked ‘I thought all girls liked IKEA, you know, domestic stuff.’ Since I was wedged next to him in a taxi I said nothing and stared at some mountains.

IKEA was IKEA – a one-way purgatorial experience. At the end I walked away from the self-service having forgotten to pay so an assistant hauled me back to do so. Back on campus we were curious about the toga party but were almost ill with jetlag so we decided not to and practically went straight to bed.

The next day Ellen and I headed to the supermarket and bought so much that we weren’t able to get to the bus stop. We had to call a taxi in the end even though the sign said ‘no student drop-off or pickups - WESBROOK VILLAGE RESIDENTS ONLY’ – which is a bit bizarre seeing as Wesbrook Village is on campus.

(Just a quick note about size – everything here is HUGE. Campus is like a town in itself. Each road takes about half an hour to trek across. You can get like a pint’s worth of ketchup for $3.)  

Blurry beer pong

That evening we headed to a party – ‘we’ being three of my flatmates, Ellen and I. My flatmates are really great. There’s six of us and we’re all from different places – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, Turkey and the UK. I hang out a lot with Amelie the Aussie and Tamsin the New Zealander. At the party we played beer pong, danced, ignored sleazy advances, and went to bed in the wee hours (but I still woke up super early because of jetlag).

The view from our kitchen

On Monday I went for a walk around campus with Amelie and Tamsin. This place is so beautiful. All around there are lakes, the sea, distant mountains, gardens and some really great architecture. Also there are black squirrels which is REALLY exciting to me. After this we went back to the flat and started planning a Canada bucket list.

The view from the rose garden on campus

That evening our RAs hosted a BBQ for all of Walter Gage residence (which comprises several 17-floor tower blocks). We met a lovely girl called Cavanagh, who’s Indian and grew up in Ireland before her family moving to the US early on. The queue was about an hour long and we discussed things like crosscultural identity and Ireland and the importance of travel and the idea of education as a right not a privilege. She was quite curious as to why I’d chosen an American Studies degree since I’m clearly not a big fan of America as a country and I said ‘how are you supposed to make the world a better place if you don’t understand how the world has been made a worse place?’ It’s interesting how conversations with strangers will help you realise and solidify things about yourself, because I honestly hadn’t come to that many solid conclusions about why I’m studying about America.

That night we went to a frat party which was fun, hilarious and disturbing in equal measure. I think it was fun because we were in a good group which stuck together whereas usually groups split up because everyone’s there to cop off with a randomer. The frat houses are on their own little area of campus (next to the police station which is very sensible). They’re big, proper houses with big enough rooms and a basement to form a mini-club with a bar and such. We were let in ahead of loads of people because we were a group of women, one of whom flirted with guy on door.

Frat friends

For my part you know you’re older than everyone else when you bring Pocket Tissues because you’re sure the boys won’t have bought enough toilet roll for their guests.

I said ‘fuck off mate’ a lot. I’m also 90% certain a load of white people were line-dancing to King Kunta but my perceptions may or may not have been somewhat skewed by alcohol. They were definitely stamping in unison. The whole shebang included a lot of white people dancing stiffly to rap and hiphop, myself included.

I talked to a guy who went to Harrow for a while, mainly because I really wanted a smoke off him. Then there was some guy telling us something about a sloth that got brought onto the frat area and people were poking it or something and we asked where’s the fun in that and soon he went away. Then we headed back to Gage, got yelled at some more by bros, and tried to decide if this guy sporting a topknot was from Hackney or Brisbane.

Thus concludes my first weekend in Canada.