Winter Extravaganza

For Reading Week I joined the Outdoor Club, actually Yuval and Dan, for a trip to Silent Lake Provincial Park. We stayed there for 4 days (3 nights), being taught all the secrets of winter camping. This included sleeping in a yurt, quinzee (kind of like an igloo, but less room inside), and for some in a wall tent. The trip also featured soap stone carving, snow shoeing, wilderness first aid, navigation, and - last and maybe even the best - dog sledding. The survival skills I've learned even include lighting a fire in the cold and chopping wood ;-) We had a great trip with a nice group and perfectly prepared leaders. As usual, I've got a lot of photos (>200) and I've selected some for you to view in my photo album.

Snow Day!

It sounds incredible, but today McMaster University is completely closed due to the amount of snow! No exams, no library access, no food courts - because of 30cm snow. This is called a snow day and seems to be quite common, as Canadians do not use snow plows as much as we do, but just use salt to get rid of the snow.

I heard that Austria does not have a lot of snow right now, so I thought you'd like to see some pictures of Hamilton in its white dress - please visit the photo album! We also have temperatures down to -18°C, which turns out to feel like -32°C because of the wind! *brr*

Start of Term Two

Greetings from Canada! The new term has started and campus life goes on as well. I've founded an indoor soccer team for the intramural championship of McMaster, called Team Europe. So far, we've won two games and only lost the first one, so we're improving. I also went to the bowling afternoon of the International Office, joined some parties of my friends, learned how to play Poker and Guitar Hero, and watched the McMaster Marauders Basketball Team on the road to the play-off. See the campus life photo album for some pictures. After some weeks of hard decision-making, I've finally figured out the courses I want to take. It's quite hard to do that, as the university seems to cancel courses just as they like. For instance, I was sitting in a lecture hall and half an hour after the planned start of the lecture the secretary came and told us, that the course won't be given for that term - great :-| However, my courses will cover neural networks, medical image reconstruction (for MRI), and biomedical instrumentation, so I've got lots to do!

Christmas Break in Austria

As the first term in Canada ends already before Christmas, I was able to return to Austria for two weeks. Of course, these two weeks weren't really a break but there was a lot to do! The photo album tells its own story: my mum and my brother Christian picking me up at the airport in Munich, playing icehockey with the Omicron team, visiting the Christmas market (hot wine included), some winter hiking and skiing trips with my friends & family, tobogganing at Berguen (longest track in Europe), New Years Eve in our cabin in Furx, chocolate fondue in Hard (one of my Christmas presents), and finally driving carts in Linz. Leaving Austria after such a great time was very hard, especially as Julia is staying there this time and I've got to continue alone over here. However, we knew that before and we're both looking forward to Easter, when we'll go to New York!

Review Nov/Dec 2007

Thanks for keeping an eye on the blog, although nothing happened for a long time. Finally I'm publishing the review for November and December 2007, but the descriptions are much shorter due to lack of time ;-)

Toronto
We visited a lot of sights including CN-Tower, China Town, Kensington Market, City Hall, Eaton Center (Shopping), and the Royal Ontario Museum. We also checked out all kind of food, for example the Korean barbecue during a visit of my brother Klaus.

Trips
Before the exams started in December, there was some time to visit Canada's Wonderland for the Halloween weekend. This trip was very nice, as we were able to both ride some rollercoasters and enter haunted houses with frightening clowns! Another trip we joined lead us to Niagara on the Lake, which is quite nice this time of the year. We continued to see the colored falls and to have a look at the entertainment district of Niagara.

Campus Life
During the first term, a couple of exchange students met quite often on Wednesday to play pool and foosball at the Phoenix, which is the on-campus bar of McMaster. This photo album also contains pictures of some Halloween parties, the Christmas dinner of the International Office and a "German Food" party. We prepared traditional "Wurstnudeln" for this event, which were called "Nudelsalat" by the Germans...!

That's it for now, I'll be back with more news from Canada soon!

Scholars Education Centre

On the 22nd of October I started with my work at the Scholars Education Centre. It is a private highschool and in the afternoon a tutoring centre. I have nice co-workers with whom I have lots of fun, sometimes we eat together our lunch- by the way most of the time sandwich or pizza.

The first week was a little bit chaotic, because the last Education Coordinator quit the job and so the new one started the same time as I.

But in my third week I developed an even rhythm. In the morning I update the binder of the tutoring students, check the teachers’ comments and make a plan what the student should work on next. When I'm finished with this, I help the education coordinator with her work, make the timetable, talk to parents, and copy some sheets especially for SSAT preparation, a special test for the students who would like to attend a private high school instead of the public one.

I also have to answer the phone, which I first thought would be quit difficult to understand the people, but after some talk, I have now no problems any longer to understand them.
At 4 pm the tutoring students come and I mostly tutor some of them, most of the time for one hour, but sometimes two hours. I mostly tutor them in English, which is sometime quit challenging for me, because they are native speaker. At first I was a little bit afraid, but now I really enjoy it and I learn a lot in English, but also for my later job as a teacher. I also help them with there problems in Mathematic and Science and I also do some SSAT preparation.

Montreal/Quebec

The McMaster Outdoor Club offered a Montreal Trip over the Thanksgiving Weekend. We always wanted to go there and so we joined them. On Friday afternoon our journey began, again in our beloved yellow school buses. It took us almost 9 hours to arrive in Montreal, because there were lots of traffic jams due to the long weekend.

After the long bus tour we all went for a Cider and afterwards into our room, which was by the way very big and nice, except the bed. You can see the reason in our photo album. But we had luck, because Andi and I we got a room just for ourselves whereas most of the others slept in a 6 or even 10 beds room.

The next day we visited most of the famous placed in Montreal. In the morning we went up to the hill, where we had an excellent view over the city and in the afternoon we went to see Vieux Montreal. We also wanted to take a short look into the basilica of Notre Dame, but there where 5 weddings on that day. I forgot my dress and Andi his suit and so we weren’t allowed to have a look inside. In the evening we went to see a movie and the famous Underground City. However, we were a little disappointed, because it just consists of some connected shopping centers.

We also behaved like Chinese people, but somehow the Chinese guys looked astonished about us - you can also see that in our photo album.

On the next day we decided to rent a car and then travel to Quebec. One of our group members, Soeren from Denmark, joined us. When we arrived we were fascinated by this city, it’s such a lovely city with narrow streets and little houses. It was also a beautiful day and so we had lots of fun, discovering Quebec. Again, we visited a Fairmont Hotel and even sneaked into the magnificent washrooms, which are usually reserved for hotel guests. At the end of the day we ate crepes in a restaurant and afterwards drove back to Montreal. The next day the yellow school bus brought us back to Hamilton, which took us the whole day and caused a lot of pain for our bodies.