Take a hike!

A glimpse of what hiking up to Signal Hill is like.

My Room

Above is an attempt at a Panoramic of my new bedroom. Compared to my bedroom at home it is a bit smaller. Not just in floor space but in every kind of way. The ceiling height is around 6'6'' high. Making the door 6'2'' high. I have to duck to go through the door. It didn't take long to learn to duck after banging my head five or six times. I really enjoy older homes, they always have some quirks. I like having huge windows with some what of a view (previously mentioned Signal Hill from the window closest to my desk).

I've learned that this house was built in 1902. Well actually it was rebuilt in 1902. In 1892, St. John's was devastated by a fire known as The Great Fire of 1892. It started off as a small fire in someones barn and wasn't seen as that big of a threat but according to Wikipedia several things happened that allowed the fire to devour the city.



Above is a picture of the city after the fire was finally put out. You can see the only thing left standing are the chimneys to houses, and the large stone church at the top of the hill. I now live straight down from the church in the photo, near the barn that's still standing. Another interesting thing with this house that we found out while the carpenter was working on the floor in the bedroom next to me was that the wood still had smoke soot and ash under the floor boards. Back then they used anything they could salvage to rebuild their homes. It's cool to think that it's been trapped in the floorboards for 105 years now.

Everyone had arrived

I moved in to my new place on Colonial street a little over two weeks ago now. Only to find that they were still doing construction work on one of the floors on the third floor. Luckily it wasn't my room. An other plus was that the carpenter helped me move my box spring in to my room by cutting it in half (the box spring is new large to manoeuvre around the tiny staircases). He even found me a junky looking dresser, which turned in to a nice looking piece of furniture after I realised he sanded it and stained it for me.

My room is the on the third floor, facing the front of the street. It's not that bad living down here either. It has it's charm. You do sometimes see the "crazy" lady with the large platform shoes and then leopard print jacket walking down the street with a shopping cart yelling "Does anyone have beer bottles". That was something new and interesting I had never seen before. If you look out my two bedroom windows, you're looking straight in to the windows of the house across a very tiny street, so blinds are a must. Other than looking out the window as I sit at my desk I can see the peak of Signal Hill, which is really cool.

My office/bedroom view of Signal Hill

All of my roommates moved in shortly after I did. The last one to arrive was Shanna, and that was late Sept 1st. The following morning we decided to take the hike up to Signal Hill. Luckily where we are now living the hiking trail started only several minutes down the road and around a few turns.



The entire hike took us approx. 2 hours. An hour and a half to walk up the dirt trail that spiraled around the huge rock formations, and then a half hour to walk down the paved road. The weather was excellent, though we all overdressed assuming that being right next to the water the wind would freeze us, but it wasn't very strong at all.



I need to take some more pictures of the downtown that's around my place. A park at the one end of the street, a pizza place on the corner, convenience stores in every which direction you take, the harbour, and the downtown core streets. As well as my own place inside and out.



Back to the now: School is okay, school is always just okay. I find my two business courses, Accounting and Marketing very interesting, which I think is a good sign. Calculus again is boring and a waste of my time, but I am trying to stay positive and pass it this time. Third times the charm! Spanish is hard. It seems by having two Spanish courses already under our belts that we should now know how to speak fluent Spanish, and for me that's not that case. I have forgotten most things, except for the basic. Hola, como estas? De donde eres? Soy de Nova Scotia. Folklore also seems like it's going to be an interesting course, so 3 out of 5 classes I like, which is pretty good, for now.

Finally!

After 16 long days I am back online. It's hard to believe how much we depend on the internet. Not only to stay in touch, but for news and nowadays universities are dependant on it. Teachers have all their notes online that they want you to print before coming to class so that all we have to do is follow along. I think it's a great idea,it just sucks when you don't have the internet. Now that I do have the internet I am going to try and blog everyday, seeing as there is more happening here than there was at home.

Anyway I am going to go for now but I will be back with pictures and maybe stories of my first few days here.

The count down is still counting down.

4 days, 18 hours, 3 mins until I fly back to St. John's and only a short few days after that will I be in school. I would rather not go back to school so soon, I'd much rather tour around St. John's while the weather is still fairly warm.

I only have 3 more days left of work. After working a full week with no breaks I am sure to be tired. Luckily once I see the huge paycheck Ill be getting from it, Ill be happy.

Sunday Night Movie

This evening Jordan, Jason and I went to see Superbad, the teen comedy. I have to say I had high hopes and those hopes were fulfilled. It was a very funny movie and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys that teen sort of comedy.

"And the lightning strikes"

Around 2am this morning a thunder and lightning storm rolled in. So I got out my camera and started taking a video clip hoping to catch chain lightning. Here is a part of the video that I cropped out.



If you noticed about nine seconds into the clip you see a chain of lightning come down towards my window (in the basement of my house where my bedroom is). I don't think it hit the ground because I didn't hear anything, but then again the video could be off a little bit and making it look like it came down closer than it did. My parents think it may have come down in the ditch across the street.

Due to the quality of the video I have uploaded a few snapshots from the video of the three most important seconds.