He Who Must Not Be Named is now stealing, honestly where will it end

On the side of the road going to Peggy's Cove

Those of you used to seeing me during Uni term time will remember that essentially I spend most of my time half asleep, looking more lost and confused than normal. Well I'm glad to be able to inform you that I have continued that here. My general state of alertness was not improved by training 7.30am on tuesday then supposedly having a session at 7am on the wednesday, I slept through that one, I had a quiz at 8.35 so I thought it was justifiable. Basically I like to wake up sometime between 9.30 and 10 and life conspires to stop me doing that for which I am most certainly not grateful.

Can just see the lighthouse on the left

A little island

My friday night was fairly interesting, after the place we had decided to go to decided it didn't know what a provisional licence was we had to leave and find somewhere new. Where we ended up had some nice cocktails, not exactly cheap but wasn't "out on lash" as such, so had a casual few. There was also music, as always, first an acoustic chap so as not to annoy the restaurant below, I got the impression from some of the girls he was "alright". This chap then returned with the rest of band for a set which was pretty good actually, quite folky. Then the last band came on, all in fancy dress for Halloween, the singer appeared to be dressed as a raven it was quite impressive. Anyhow they had one of the longer sound checks I have heard, which involved the accordionist doing something which could possibly be described as some kind of freeform poetry, but essentially he just went on saying random things for quite a while. Anyhow the music seemed to be a mix of Irish and Russian folk, wasn't too bad but was getting lake and fairly sleepy by this point so left fairly early. Should point out they were called Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra which seemed like a cool name. I also proved my assumption that Martini is a foul drink to be correct. The best bit of the night, however, occured walking home, a totally sozzled tramp in a 3/4 length leather trench coat with long scraggly hair meandered towards us carrying a sign saying "Voldemort stole my wand, need $$$$$ for a new one" quite hilarious, trust me.

The harbour at Peggy's Cove

Saturday was a quieter night in, ended up watching drunk people in costume wander up and down my corridor trying to find a party, presumably they were failing as I'd see the same people every couple of minutes. Ironically one of the least ranchy outfits I saw was the person dressed as 50 Shades of Grey, who'd have thought. I also watched a drunk person go into my room, realise it wasn't the toilet and then come out again, I suppose I should be grateful they realised.

They seem strangely obsessed with Bagpipers here and this
one only knew about 3 songs

Yesterday I went on a trip with my mum to Peggy's Cove which is a fairly famous tourist spot around here, it's a quaint little fishing village with a lighthouse and some fairly incredible scenery, so having remembered to take my camera I took the pictures in this post.

SoCo and lemonade please

Ok, so another eventful week has passed. I've finished my midterms, for now at least, made essentially no progress with my project and seen my Mum as she flew out to visit me.
Having my Mum here has two main advantages: one, she has a hire car and two, free food. So over this weekend I have been taking advantage of these things, the food is probably the better of the two as cafeteria food can become rather monotonous, so the baby back ribs where wonderful, made even better by the fact the rack was larger than the plate. Also had the pleasure of finding somewhere that does bottomless lasagne on sundays for $7, this was after 3 hours training and through some careful restraint I only had 3 plates. The getting to see other places has also been good, went to a beach just outside Halifax on Saturday, which was very pretty, essentially sea then right next to it pine trees and some maple trees in various stages of colour, so a wonderful patchwork of green, yellow, orange and red. It was however really rather windy, could just about still walk in a straight line. Yesterday I finally made my way to Point Pleasant Park, which is right at the south of Halifax, essentially it's a wooded area with some old British forts next to the sea. It's very pretty and helped to prevent the French and Americans from taking the port, so really it's quite a marvellous place. The wandering was sadly cut short by a quantum mechanics assignment, involved lots of head scratching and googling. Also I'm afraid there are no pictures of either of these excursions as I forgot to take a camera with me both days.
On Saturday I managed to meet my first unhelpful Canadians. While at a bar and hungry we attempted to buy some food, only to be told that we could not order food without a table and a chair, the place was packed and no-one looked like leaving. So after some time we managed to find a chair and sat up by a bar, asked to order food only to be told that the kitchen was closing so we couldn't get any. We left, and I got a Subway.
I also introduced some Canadians to Southern Comfort, and elicited some incredulous looks and half finished confused attempts at sentences by calling Sprite "lemonade", I know revolutionary.

Some Red Stuff

Right I'm going to start this with a rant against the most inconsequential of things, a light switch. Now, at home when one wishes to turn on a light switch you push it down, however here they flick them up. Innocous you may think, but consider this: you get back into your room, it's dark and you need to turn on the light but can't see the switch, so naturally you hit the wall and swipe downwards until you hit the switch and 'lo there is light. Why can't you swipe upwards I hear you cry, well gravity doesn't help you to do that now does it? And to really compound the issue, the switches are very large so when you hit on the downward swipe, you get a brief flash, followed by darkness, mocking your ignorance of how electrical fittings work.

Right, now to change the tone, here is a dragonfly,

It's red and has wings and everything

The Chemistry Building.
My office is the second floor, second from the left

And now to more important things. Last weekend was Canadian Thanksgiving, a time to think we have food aren't we all jolly lucky essentially. To celebrate this I managed to get myself invited to a pot luck dinner, basic idea is everyone brings some food with them you hope not everyone decides potatos. It is a great meal as you just get to eat as much as you physically can and then have dessert, before lazing around and chatting. Was all very enjoyable, and the hosts were lovely people and they had a very nice house much, much posher than anything I have ever seen a student in in the UK, I mean the kitchen had marble, well faux marble, surfaces and everything seemed new.

Some red leaves

The week itself was fairly unremarkable, but friday was one of those nights where you think I really need to get some sleep then you get a text and 8 hours later you get back. Was a good night though, went out for one of the chem students birthdays, discovered some more interesting bars. Also there was a nice time where everyone laughed at the organic chemists, just because. Last night was also someones birthday, and I have to say a more competent effort at handling your drink I have not seen. Unfortunately this activity may have destroyed any kind of sleep pattern I had and my 8.35 lecture tomorrow will be quite a challenge.

Strawberry Fields for at least as long as we can stay awake

The Cookie

So I had my first proper midterm this week, that was interesting, probably should've noted it was worth 20% before the day before but what are you going to do. Fortunately most of it was stuff I had seen before, but the thing is midterms are just weird, give my one big exam at the end over this continuous assessment lark any time. There seems to be some sort of idea that Uni should be a kind of constant effort over the year, instead of a fairly relaxed time followed by a week or so of manic revising, who'd have thought.

The Bird trying to eat my cookie

I was invited to the house of the Professor with whom I am doing my project on wednesday, as one of his previous students had recieved their pHD during the day. This meant going to Bedford, it's very strange Halifax Bedford and Dartmouth are far closer together than home, which is the area at the top of the bay. It was a very nice house, which they'd built, plenty of space and a beautiful garden looking out into the harbour. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me at the time, but they have weddings there, it's that kind of pretty. I then got to progress to eating, was truly amazing to have some non cafeteria food for a change, had some lobster and haddock nibbles, followed by a wonderful butternut squash soup to start. The main, some marvellous salmon rolls, served with homemade bread and vergetables from the garden. But it was the dessert that was really something special, a pumpkin pie where the pumpkin had been made into a mousse with a cream and cinnamon topping. I was gladly able to inform my hostess after that Brits are a fan of pumpkin pie. We then retired to the games room, where we finished the night playing some pool and table tennis.
 

The Bay

The Lake

Yesterday I went and explored Dartmouth, which is like a suburb of Halifax really, mainly housing. However in among the houses were some stunning lakes, which if I had arrived properly prepared I would've been swimming in, however the correct attire was accross the harbour. This meant I was only able to paddle which meant, in true British spirit, rolled up jeans which of course got soaked anyway fortunately the weather was really rather warm, so we dried off fairly quickly. Our guide was a local who then took us back to her house to relax for the rest of the afternoon, and since she was a music student meant us listening to some wonderful playing on various instruments. I feel I should also mention the cookie I had in the morning, it was roughly an inch thick and the size of my face. Also the evening was fairly wonderful, but then any night that ends with dancing around to the Beatles at 2 in the morning in the study lounge clearly was.