I'm still alive!

First of all: I am so sorry, I haven't been blogging for ages. Life is just so busy here at the moment and as soon as you look at the calender, another week has passed.
We didn't do any other excursions on the last weekends because we were pretty busy with other stuff. I had two midterms last week and another one tomorrow, besides there are assignments to be done and then there's the normal everyday-life to live.
I've been telling you mostly about our excursions in this blog, which is why this post is dedicated to the "normal" stuff. I've been doing a lot of activities here, which is why my schedule is pretty packed.
In the last weeks, Mariona and me attended a knitting course. She wanted to learn how to knit and I wanted to start knitting again so we went to a tiny shop downtown that is full of yarn and had two nice knitting lessons. We first knit a hat and as I finished already, I started some mittens in the second lesson.

Mariona and me at the knitting shop

Winter has come to Kamloops last weekend so I will need some warm stuff. On saturday morning, it snowed the first time, causing excitement with all the exchange students. This morning when I woke up, everything was covered in snow again. By now, it is already gone. However, temperature dropped to 1°C and the my winter jacket is officially in use. The change of the seasons was pretty fast. Last week we still had 20 degrees during the day and now it's pretty cold. 

I have also been attending a rock climbing course for 4 weeks. It was organised by the gym in our university and we went to a small climbing hall near the university. It was really funny and a good balance to all the studying. Especially last week, where I had an exam on wednesday and one on thursday, some climbing between the studying helped a lot.

 While not studying, I've been spending most of the time with my friends. I can't say often enough how lucky I was to meet such great people here. I've known those guys only for two months and still I feel so close to them. It is a unique experience to go abroad, to a new country and meet new people there. We all make this experience, which unites us but still I think it's not usual to get connected to well and so fast. I am forever thankful to have met my friends here and I already know that these friendships will last, even though we all live hundreds of kilometers apart from each other.

Mikaela, Me, Phil, Ester, Mariona

I am trying not to think about the fact that half of my time here is over. The countdown on the right side of my blog is counting way too fast and it only shows 60 days my now. 60 days is by far not enough. The time is flying so fast that as soon as I don't pay attention for a second, it will be december. I am trying to use my time as wise as possible and do as much as I can possibly do with the time I have (I quit sleeping, by the way). And I am thankful for every day I have here.

Vancouver Island

Last Monday was Thanksgiving Day in Canada. I can't really say much about Thanksgiving as I neither had a turkey dinner nor any other Thanksgiving activity. However, I had a long weekend.
We decided to spend our precious three free days in Tofino, a surfer's paradise on Vancouver Island. There's basically two things you can do on Vancouver Island. Visiting Victoria (the capital of BC) or doing holiday at the beach. As the weather is still nice, we decided to go for the beach and, to get the whole experience, camp there.
We left Kamloops on Friday afternoon, after buying a lot of supplies and trying to fit everything in a car (we made it!).

 We headed towards Vancouver where we had dinner and then went to Tsawassen south of Vancouver to get the ferry over to the Island. We arrived in Nanaimo at 1 AM and then drove for another three hours to get to Tofino. We parked our car on the first parking lot we found, unpacked our sleepingbags and went to bed. In the car.
Next morning we found out that we chose a very nice place to leave our car. After walking a short way through the forest, we stood on the beautiful Chesterman Beach. We took a morning walk, then went to wake up the others and cooked breakfast on a campfire.

 Then we did what everyone does in Tofino. We went surfing. We rented the boards, wetsuits, shoes and gloves at a local surf shop, Dennis showed us what do do and off we went into the cold Pacific. In the first 10 minutes I drank an estimated 20 litres of water. But after some time, when you manage to actually stay on the board it is really nice. (Even tough I have to say that surfing will never become my favourite sport.)
After three hours of surfing we were pretty exhausted and it was time to get ready for dinner. We made another campfire and cooked some stew (= vegetables, onions, potatoes, sand, and whatever else we found mixed together and cooked on fire), watched the sunset and had dinner on the beach. Afterwards we sat together, drank some rum and grilled some marshmallows.

We decided to keep the tent in its bag and sleep under the stars. To be entirely honest, it wasn't even cold. With my sleeping bag, sweater, warm socks, hat and gloves I slept pretty well, considering that it was on a beach in october!

In the morning I was woken up by some crows exploring our campsite. It was kind of weird to wake up while people next to you are taking walks on the beach. After a breakfast on the beach and washing our hair in teamwork with some bottled water we started our Sunday program. Some of us decided to go surfing again while Ester, Mariona and me took the car and went to Long Beach, one of the many beaches around Tofino. We were walking on the beach along the sea for hours and it was really beautiful.

In the evening after dinner it was time to leave paradise again. As we took the early ferry we had to get back to Nanaimo. We slept a few (!!) hours in the parking lot and then boarded the ferry at 6 AM. We saw a wonderful sunrise as we were heading towards Vancouver.

After a nice breakfast at the Cambie (the place I stayed in my first days here in Canada) we drove back to Kamloops where I was really glad to get into the shower and put on some clean clothes.

A Taste Of The Okanagan

Last Saturday we did a wine-tour which turned out to be more of a food-tour, actually.
It was an organised event by ISAP, so we took a bus at 8 am (way too early after getting to bed at 3 am) and drove to the Okanagan Region. The first stop was an apple orchard where we rode a tractor through the apple trees and heard a lot about apples and could also taste and buy some. Right next to it was a place called Planet Bee which is a apiary where we heard some interesting facts about bees and could watch the bees and taste honey and mead (honey-wine).

Mariona and Me enjoying the tractor-ride

After this we got on the bus again and drove to Kelowna where we visited a goat farm and tasted some goat cheese. Then, finally, we went on to the wine. We visited two small wineries and had the possibility of tasting some wine. All day long we could see Okanagan Lake which is a huge lake that spreads through the whole area. Before going on this wine tour, I heard a lot about the region and it's beauty. However, coming from Styria with our wonderful wine region all around I was a bit disappointed. The Okanagan Valley is pretty dry and apart from the wineries it all looks really brown. The lake is beautiful though and the food is good.
(I will upload a picture of the lake later, when I'm at home. They are still on my camera)


I've been quite busy lately, that's also why my posts are getting rare. University gets more challenging now, the midterms are almost here and assignments start being due. I spend most of my time on campus to study and do assignments as there are a lot of really nice places around here and I prefer studying with others. When I'm not studying we are ususally cooking and eating together which is why I spend almost no time at home except sleeping and taking showers. However, as I'm doing all those study sessions during the week, I'm free on weekends and we still can do trips. After all, I'm only here for about 11 more weeks..