Chocolate Dipping & School Wrapping Up

Hey Gang,

Today is November 23rd. How did this happen?!

I've already done my first group assignment presentation, booked all my final exam slots, finished all non-semester exams as of last Tuesday, and have two weeks left of classes. Only two group projects, two labs, and 5 exams to go until the semester is over for me. My last exam is December 13th and then we're on to Christmas holidays! In the meantime, here's a fun little ditty. This was a quiz I had in my biomechanics class. You had to use the software to make your model do two swings and land a triple flip combination. It's a lot harder than you'd think. You have to account for the motion of each joint in every single frame, find the right release time, and make sure your little buddy doesn't land on his face. Our prof is marking by international standards which means points are lost for bad technique and falling but also granted for aesthetics, sticking the landing, and the higher the difficulty, the more points your tricks are worth. Fun, hey?

(It is easier to see what's going on if you make it full screen by clicking on the box in the bottom right corner of the video player)

One other exciting piece of news: My physiology professor asked me if I wanted to do an independent study with her next semester. What this boils down to is I will be earning credits to help her with her research. Pretty sweet gig! I'm also pretty stoked because generally independent studies are student driven where you have to come up with a study idea or literature review topic, approach a professor, request that they supervise you, and do all the leg work to make it happen. I'm really quite honored that she said she had "had [me] in mind" for this project. We're working out the details now but I'll let you know what the extent of the study will be. The professor is one of my favorite professors too - glad she thinks highly of me as well!

Other fun news, last weekend I was in Calgary to do annual Burt Family Chocolate making. Yay! My grandparents, my brother, a family friend, and myself spent a good 9 hours in the kitchen up to our elbows in chocolate, fondant, nuts, coconut, and candies. As always it was great company, lots of laughs, lots of blood sugar spikes, and every year my technique gets a little better :) Here are the few pictures I snagged off my pa's iPhone. I'll post real camera pictures when I get them.

Not much counter space was left when all was said and done :) Happy problem to have!

My brother is amusing me just out of the frame :)

She's a pro! Been at it for 40 years!

Of course the Party Pants are appropriate attire for the occasion.

 Love to all and catch you after finals! :)

Jacqueline

October 2012

Hello Everyone!

This month has gone by in an absolute flash. In fact, the semester is half over.

This past week I had 5 midterms in 3 consecutive days and 3 midterms were on the same day. I can legitimately say I have NEVER studied so much in my entire life. The exam stress was actually giving me unpleasant dreams. Literally nothing but class, the library, the gym, and my desk for over a week straight. Throughout the course of that week it went from beautiful to blizzard. Behold:

River valley picture taken October 18, 2012

Slightly different shot of the same river valley only 5 days later.

A group mate and I cramming in a library study room.

Suffice it to say I couldn't be happier to be done. This weekend I'm headed up to Calgary just to get away from Lethbridge and relax out at the Boyfriend's place in the country. Some fresh air and playing with the dogs should do some much needed good for the soul :)

More later!

Jacqueline

21st birthday - Spoiled Rotten!

Hey Gang,

Last Friday, September 14th, was my 21st birthday. The whole weekend was phenomenal and definitely gave me insight into how caring my friends and family are.

Friday flew by so fast. I had a morning class, birthday lunch with my mother, and another class. After class ended I whipped up to Calgary to spend the evening with my closest high school buddies. We kept it pretty low key and stayed in which was nice after a very busy and long week. They got me a strange assortment of treasures. I think the highlight is the package of paper clips and each one is shaped like a different style of mustache. They're too funny!

Saturday I spent with the boyfriend. He's house-sitting for a relative out near Cochrane so it was nice to go spend time walking the dogs through the woods and sit out on the porch and enjoy the sunshine without the hustle and bustle of the city. He surprised me with flowers, my favorite cake, and an awesome owl necklace. Considering I told him not to get me anything (repeatedly), he really outdid himself. He even forgave me when I fell asleep watching one of his favorite movies later that night ;)

Sunday was a lovely BBQ with the family. At my request, we had bbq teryaki chicken, garlic parmesan quinoa, grilled zucchini... yummy. Earlier that day, my pa had stopped by the farmer's market and scooped up an absolutely out of this world carrot cake. It was SO good and it was the only occasion all weekend that I got candles and sung to. Thankfully, it was an absolutely honking enormous cake and there are leftovers in the freezer for whenever I visit next :) The birthday that keeps on giving!

I'm glad I have such happy memories to relive because this week has been piling up on me. I just about dropped out of school today when our group sat down to work on our physiology lab. What we learned several hours later after the 8 of us had given up is that the prof hadn't given us all the data we needed to complete the lab. *Sigh*

I know there is no way I'm stopping now but it does make me entertain the thought of taking a bit of time off before I do a master's degree. This semester is going to burn me right out. Fortunately, I am able to look at it as only 3.5 months. I've lived through many 3.5 month periods of time in my life and I can think of several that were guaranteed worse than this. Hurray for the brightside!

Cheers,

Jacqueline

And We're Back

Howdy Folks,

Classes started last Wednesday and I have one doozy of a semester ahead of me. I was right to think that physiology would be one of my tougher courses. The first thing the prof says to us is how important it is that we have the prerequisite course because of all the references to that material that we will be making. Thankfully I have taken it... two years ago. To put it mildly, I am rusty. Some reviewing will definitely be required.

My semester will basically boil down to the balancing act of labs, classes, studying, and reading. I am fortunate in that only 3 of my classes have required textbooks and I was able to acquire them extremely cheaply compared to other years. My roommate was not so fortunate. She ended up paying over $800 for hers. Yikes.

So speaking of roommates - I really like the place I'm living in. That townhouse is really nice, really well taken care of, modern, and a great deal. Only down side is that it is slightly farther from campus than I would like. Thank heaven for bicycles. I may be singing a different tune in December when it is 4 feet of snow but we will get there when we get there.

View from my room: picture of the sunrise taken by my (very poor quality) camera phone

My roommates seem like a pretty level bunch. Both girls are serious students and fairly clean. We're still in the stage of learning one another so I don't want to form too strong of an impression one way or the other but I think I will only go minorly crazy in comparison to other years.

So far I've managed to get involved in a bunch of little things. For example, I helped tour the new international exchange students around the campus, volunteered (for class credit -woo!) at a Parkinson's disease fundraiser, rebooted my healthy eating/working out lifestyle (down 2 lbs already!) and have been catching up with my Lethbridge peers. Tomorrow evening I'm doing dinner with a bunch of friends celebrating a Baha'i festival. It's all been nice and I know this doesn't really make sense but honestly something feels like it is missing and a little piece of my happiness is missing with it.

Wish I knew what it was.

Jacqueline

Fourth Year

Hi Everyone!

After talking to some family lately I learned that there are actually people reading this blog. Right on! Thanks guys! Might as well keep you up to date.

September 5th marks the first day of classes for the 4th year of my degree. I have a pretty heavy semester ahead of me (3 of my courses have labs) but my schedule is pretty alright. Check out the names of my courses:

• Epidemiology: The Ecology of Health and Disease
• Physical Basis of Ergonomics  
• Exercise Physiology
• Biomechanics
• Therapeutic Exercise Foundations and Techniques

Physiology and biomechanics are guaranteed to be my toughies and time consumers. Thank goodness I have a really good set up for accommodations this year. My roommates are both really studious and mature, the house has a decent location, the rent is really good, and it is all new and fully furnished. Can't believe how much I lucked out. Even my landlords are great.

Actually, funny story. My landlords are the parents of one of the girls I'm living with and they decided they wanted to meet me to make sure I was a good fit for the house. I've never been interviewed by a landlord before but it basically boiled down to my landlords invited my boyfriend and I out for dinner at a golf course club house just outside of Calgary. It was a weird situation and honestly kind of felt like a blind date. Ultimately, however, we had an absolute blast! It was great conversation, good food, I got to meet my roommate and all her family, and we all conversed for about two and a half hours. Too cool.

I've only got 9 more work days left (yay!) and then will head up to Calgary for the long weekend to help my friends move into their new place and spend one last care free summer weekend. Should be good.

In the meantime, since returning from Quebec, I've just been working, managed to hit up Stampede for the 100th anniversary, went camping with some friends, learned how to drive standard, and have spent every other weekend up in Calgary visiting friends and family. Here's a good picture of our camping crew in Dinosaur Provincial Park and one of me at Stampede pouring salt on some french fries :) Nom nom.

I absolutely love the face Brian is making behind Meghan (third from left)

Getting my cowgirl on ;)

So I will keep up on posting through the school year. Knowing me, I'll probably end up traveling at some point anyway.

Love to all!

Jacqueline

Montreal encore and Home again

Hello all,

The adventure is over but what an excellent ending.

In what can only be described as seamless, Kat, Ryan, and I departed Trois-Rivieres and got to our Montreal hotel by 3:30 pm on Friday. After a quick fresh up, we hit the downtown to meet up with Ryan's cousin, Sam, who is living in Montreal for the next couple months. Considering they're only cousins, the family resemblance was really strong - both tall, blonde, blue-eyed, boys with ridiculous stories and a skill for telling them. Sam took us on a quick tour of his neighborhood and to this mobster owned restaurant where we had a great time trading stories and eating good food. Afterwards, we spent a big chunk of the evening wandering the Fringe Festival which consists of live music and Ste. Catherine Street is turned into a big pedestrian walk with all sorts of stalls set up of all sorts of jewelry, clothes, etc. We ended up turning in early (on a relative student scale) since Kat had a 3:30 am wake up time and last metro was at 12:30 am anyway.

Yay! We figured out the metro!

Kat made it off just fine and Ryan and I crashed pretty hard, not getting up until around noon. By the time we got up, wandered back downtown, ate breakfast/lunch, and met up with Sam and his friend from New Zealand, it was solidly the afternoon. We climbed Mont Royal which is a huge hill (the locals call it a mountain...) in the middle of the city with awesome views and hung out until we got hungry. After some good Thai food we went our separate ways so that Ryan and I could wander more of the festival while the other boys prepared for some anticipated nightlife.

View from the top of Mont Royal with the boys

Ryan and I wandered until we got peopled out, returned home, repacked our bags, and hit the hay in anticipation of the early morning flight. Although we underestimated our flight time by 30 minutes, we still made it with 15 minutes to spare prior to boarding (still cutting it too close for comfort) and had a good flight back to Calgary where Meghan and Ry's mom were waiting for us.

And just like that, 5 weeks completely completed.

What an amazing program and experience. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone and will apply to do it again next year if at all possible - especially since I've possibly convinced Meghan to give it a shot :)

Thank you all for following along. Knowing I have friends and family reading my blog keeps the lonelies away.

Love & Light,

Jacqueline

Au Revoir Trois-Rivieres!

Hi Everyone!

FINISHED!

I don't think 5 weeks have ever passed so quickly.

Monday was our last day of actual lesson and she presented us with our oral presentation topic. It was actually a really cool set up. The class was divided into two teams, the defense and the crown, and every person was assigned a role as either a judge (3 people), witness (9 people including the doctor who performs the autopsy, the police investigator of the crime scene, the neighbor, concierge, two secret witnesses, the best friend, a bar employee, and the person who discovers the body), the accused (1 people), or a lawyer (8 people). In its own way, it was a brilliant idea for an oral examination; not only did it allow us to practice material as we memorized our stories and learned new vocabulary, but on the day of the presentation, a lot of improvisation was required. By doing this, each student had a chance to really shine if they put the time into it or if they were naturally good speakers by nature.

I was assigned to be a witness and thankfully got a really easy role. As the doctor who performed the autopsy on the victim, I had no story to keep straight and merely had to answer questions relative to the facts that I was given for my character. It was probably pretty strange for Steven though. I used him as my consultant the night before and he got a handful of texts asking about being stabbed in the lung without being given a context.  In my role I was a member of the defense.

All day Tuesday was devoted to preparing our final oral examination in our teams and it took us the whole 3.5 hours. The twist in the case is that each team has a secret witness that they get to create the story for and that doesn't get revealed to the opposing team until the witness is on the stand. It was actually more difficult than expected to create a story that didn't clash with the statements of all the other witnesses while creating a plausible alibi for the accused.

All class Wednesday was the court case itself. I'm pleased to say that the defense got the accused off by establishing a lack of distinctive evidence and a lack of valid crown witnesses. We got pretty lucky though. One of the crown's witnesses did an absolutely abysmal job of his story; it was as if he didn't read over his statement at all and decided to freelance it. Oh man did it blow up in his face. His team was of course pretty choked and tried to recover but the damage was done. What was particularly interesting though was the comment our teacher made. I guess every year she has a problem with people getting disrespectful with each other (one year someone even stormed out and slammed the door) but this was the first year that both teams kept it together. Kind of a compliment but hard to imagine how worked up some people can get over fiction! Mind you, it is fiction that is worth 20% of your grade... it is a little understandable that if someone is making you look bad you'd be upset.

Thursday was a double exam day. We had our course exam in the morning and the program post-test in the afternoon. As far as the morning exam went I was surprised by how easy the grammar section was and was surprised by the vocabulary and expressions. Especially because I studied in inverse and felt really well prepped for the vocab/expressions and was ready to accept my fate with the grammar. For the second exam, it is for the program to perform comparative analysis of our progress, hence it was the same exam as the placement test. It was kind of neat to the see the test again and recognize and be able to apply the concepts we've been learning. At the same time it was difficult because now that you're aware of the concepts, you're aware of how you don't know them as thoroughly as you would like. Regardless, it was relatively short (1 hour) and relatively painless. And that's it! Courses finished and credit transfer applied for.

Last night they actually held a little certificate ceremony (they called it a diploma ceremony but let's be real... they were participation certificates at best) for the students. Everyone dressed up nice and got called up on stage individually to be given the certificate by the program director. It was a nice touch and a little tedious as any of those ceremonies are but it was nice to sit together as a class one last time. And then of course, with it being the last night, people went out, partied, stayed up fairly late, and of course regret it today. I'm feeling my 3 am bed time right about now but am looking forward to the nap I can take on the bus from TR to Montreal at 12:30 pm.

Group S - looking fancy at the diploma ceremony

This morning has been spent finishing packing and cleaning in preparation for our departure inspection and deposit return. Wish me luck on getting back to Calgary. When I flew here the gate attendant let the fact that my bag was 9 lbs overweight slide but now I'm sweating it out thinking that my next check-in won't be so lenient. I've managed to whittle down the weight be a couple pounds but not nearly enough. Fingers crossed that Ryan as some extra room and can help me out!

See you soon!

Jacqueline

Class Picture & Flash Mob

Bonjour!

For your entertainment, here is my class picture :)

Back Row L-R: Justin, Sarah, Me, Graham, Sophie (Prof), Catherine, Fatima, Graham, Larissa, Robert, Alex, Kevinrae
Front Row L-R: Rebecca, Emma, Cassandra, Sydney, Lakshmi, Claudia, Christina, Lisa, Joanna, Aliya

Although it isn't overly apparent, they had a bunch of things for us to dress up with. All the hats, flags, sunglasses, tiaras, etc., made it pretty fun.

Also, today was the flash mob in the cafeteria. The video has already made the youtube rounds. It was particularly entertaining to watch it because they had to go in and edit... At one point in the real thing, a table breaks and a couple kids go down. In this video, they (unfortunately) edit it out (but if you look at the tables as he's doing the last quick pan of the room you'll see it). In the version my roommate has you definitely hear it and see some heads disappear from a distance. Also, to my disgrace, they have a really good shot of me forgetting what comes next. To be fair, we learned it last Thursday and haven't really gone over it since. That was a good 5 days ago, sheesh! You're watching for lots of curls and a royal blue shirt who is roughly the front row about 20 people deep on the right hand side of the screen... Enjoy :)

Cafeteria Flashmob

Cross it off the bucket list!

Jacqueline

Montreal & T-Minus One week

Hello All!

Marks came in for our first course. It is a mixed feeling of relief and disappointment. Although I did well on the final exams from last week, all things said and done I ended up with a B+. Not awful but truth be told it is my first B and I'm a little disappointed. To be fair though, the marking scheme here is shifted differently... had this been a U of L course I think it would've been an A-. Regardless, it is nice to be moving on to new material. The past week was more oral presentations, more tests (two on the same day... one of which we ran out of time for and had to continue the next day), and our teacher constantly reminding us to have courage. Yikes.

Yesterday was the program's day trip to Montreal which was incredibly enjoyable. The morning was a guided tour of old Montreal, we had a couple free hours for lunch, had our choice of an afternoon activity, and then had some free wandering time for dinner before heading back. For lunch we hit up this crepe place where Kat and I split a chicken/brie/asparagus crepe and a dulche de lece crepe with strawberries and bananas. Mmmm. For our afternoon activity, we selected the Biodome. It is kind of like an indoor zoo where you move through different biospheres like the rain forest, woodlands, etc. It was really well done with a surprising variety of animals and different views into their habitats. That being said, the best part of the trip was definitely the last couple hours. We selected an outdoor patio for dinner and right as we sat down, an absolutely fantastic duo set up for busking right beside our restaurant, facing us and the crowded walk way in front of the patio. Dinner and a show in 23 C sunny weather. Couldn't have asked for better. From there on out all the street performers came on full force and we dwindled our final hour and a half eating ice cream and watching the super diverse entertainers. It is a very very cool city with a distinctly European flavor.

Side note: On the guided tour we saw the Notre Dame Basilica which was raised to Basilica status by none other than John Paul II and is the site where Celine Dion got married and Maurice Richard's funeral was held. Unfortunately it was closed for some event but if you look at pictures of the inside online, it reminds me so much of Europe.

Picture time!

This week is going to whirl by. Everything is shifted to make room for the wrap up events such as the student talent show, what appears to be some sort of certificate ceremony, departure day, and various inspections and check outs.

Home in one week!

Love and Light,

Jacqueline

Rain, Rain, go away...

Hello!

It has been pretty much nonstop raining for the past 4 days and unfortunately our trip to the national park was delayed and ultimately canceled. I am quite disappointed - I have a buddy here who is a pretty hardcore canoe guru and he was going to show me the ropes on this gorgeous lake. Dang. Instead, I ended up playing lots of cards with the roommates and the boys across the street, watching the series finale of House, cooking a really makeshift soup with Ryan, and doing P90X with the girls. Although it was nice to have a more laid back weekend, I'm here to see Quebec - not the inside of the residence!

Today we jumped straight back into our class work and received more homework than ever. It is interesting to ask our prof to compare what we are learning to when kids in French grade schools would work on similar things. For example, last week we covered some things that were probably 4th grade level. This week we're touching high school material. It is intense to think that we only have 6 more days of actual class. Next week the Wednesday will be an oral exam and the Thursday will be the written. After that, Friday is departure day. Kat, Ryan, and I went ahead and booked our stay in Montreal for the two nights we have to spend there at the very end of the program. I'm looking immensely forward to it.

Love & Light,

Jacqueline

Chez Dany

Salut Everyone!

Yesterday's oral presentation went well enough. Our teacher arranged us into groups and would listen to the presentations in groups of 6. Unfortunately, we ended up going last and all the pre-class rehearsal I had squeezed in had mostly left my head by the time I got to actually start speaking. Oh well. As far as I can tell I used all eight of the verb tenses we've been working with and fulfilled the time duration requirements. At least it is over! Same goes for the written exam today. The test was divided predominantly into two portions consisting of technical grammar (verb tenses) and vocabulary/idioms/prepositions. Picking the right verb tense can always be a little challenging but I know I nailed the second portion. Again, just glad to be done. The next course is quite intimidating as it is going to comprise completely new content, literally a whole declension of verbs tenses that I didn't know existed but on the bright side it will give me a leg up when I return.

Tonight was the night we went to "Chez Dany" - a traditional Québecois style restaurant. They had live music going and served each table a wide variety of dishes. Most of  (aka all of) the dishes contained pork, which many of you know is something I try to avoid so that was interesting. I gave everything a try except the ham which was just too outright porkish for me. Otherwise, they had some sort of ground pork pie, egg/omelette, fried crispy pork fat, a traditional Canadian lentil/pea soup, traditional style beans (which honestly weren't that different from the canned variety), pomme de terre, pancakes, and of course maple syrup to add to everything at your leisure. It didn't particularly do much for me but the atmosphere was cool, everyone got up and was dancing at one point, the staff busted out spoons for people to play, and at the end we got to do the traditional popsicle dipped into fresh syrup and put on ice. Very cool experience but definitely only necessary once.

Maple syrup - nom nom nom
L-R: Moi, Kat, Maria, Candace

The Québecois Soirée is later tonight and the national park is going to happen tomorrow if it doesn't rain. The fun never ends ;)

Love and Light,

Jacqueline

PS: Something amusing happened on the bus on the way to Chez Dany. One of the guys I was talking to was trying to guess my nationality. Apparently I look a lot like one of his friends who is half Jamaican. On a different day I had someone ask if I was half African. I mean I get it. The hair is crazy. To be fair though I am fair in both skin, hair, and eye color. Plus I am in no way rockin' the black girl booty. The 'guess my nationality' game has always been an entertaining one for me. The Ukrainian/English explanation just doesn't do it for people.

Week 3 Catch Up

Hey Everyone!

This trip is so much harder to blog than Belgium was. I'm going to go ahead and credit that to the fact that I barely have anytime to spare anymore. My course is INSANE. It is extremely difficult and because it is so condensed we don't get any nights off from homework and study. I literally write about 3-4 tests a week and make 2-3 oral presentations. Honestly it can be quite overwhelming.

Our program is split up into two courses. Tomorrow we finish the first course with a written exam worth 30% of our grade. Today we had an oral presentation worth 20%. The rest has been comprised of all the activities from the past two weeks. It all begins again next week but we have now officially moved from the Intermediate III level to Advance I. Aka my life now spirals out of control. We're moving on from indicative verb tenses to subjunctive... Heaven help me.

Regardless, it is still enjoyable on the whole. The few precious moments of free time I do get usually end in guitar jam sessions, hanging out with my roommates, or doing the Explore Program activities.

Tonight we are playing volleyball against the animateurs, Friday we are going to a traditional 'sugar shack' called Chez Danny, and Saturday we are going to a national park if the weather holds.

Last weekend we spent Saturday in Québec city. It has a very distinctly European flavor with all the fountains, parks, and statues. The old town in particular is cobble-stoned and caused me to reminisce of my European wanderings. If nothing else, my European travels have paid off hugely in terms of being able to write about them for assignments and oral presentations. Québec is just adding more fuel to the fire :)

In other news, I learned that one of my friends has the same flight back to Calgary as me. Wooo! That means I have someone to explore Montrèal with for the day and a half I have between program and flying out. Yay!

I will attempt to write more frequent shorter updates (for real this time). In the meantime, here is a picture from our day in Québec with my roommate family.

And this just cracked me up. Immediate flashbacks to 4th grade social class.

Love &  Light,

Jacqueline

First week on Explore

Bonjour everyone!

I should have written sooner! I have so much to say about the last week but don’t want to write a long boring post. Well regardless, it is long. Hopefully not too boring.

I am at what amounts to summer camp en français. We eat together, we live together, we have ‘camp counsellors’, and lots and lots of provided activities. It is just too fun.

Downtown at the waterfront with my roommates L-R: Candace, Kat, & Maria

Explore Bursary Program

Bonjour ma famille et mes amis!

Although I fully intended this to be a blog for my Belgium semester only, opportunity has struck and I will be studying for a month in Québec this summer! Because the French-Canadian culture is so different and it is a further step in my same journey to master French, I figured there was no point letting a good blog go to waste. 

Hence, here is the latest rendition of my travel adventures.
 

3866 km away from home. Not quite Europe but it will do!

I will be in Trois-Rivières, Québec, attending the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières for 5 weeks. Here is the general program concept:

"Explore is a bursary program for students wanting to learn French. Five weeks of discovery, new acquaintances and exchanging ideas, in a stimulating setting for learning your second or foreign language.

Three and a half hours of courses are given every morning from Monday to Friday. In the afternoon, students attend different workshops to improve their French such as: songs, dance, phonetics, theatre, environment, newspaper, conversation etc."

Throughout the duration of the program, I will be staying in the on campus dorms with other students in the same program. On top of the classes, the program provides us with the opportunity to take advantage of the culture around us. Here is a sample of the activities they plan for us:

• Welcome activities
• Tour of Trois-Rivières
• National historical site, "Forges du St-Maurice"
• Tour of Quebec City
• Tour of Montreal
• Day trip to the Mauricie National Park
• Folk evening at the sugar shack
• Indoor and outdoor sports
• Movies
• Thematic evening
• Casino evening
• Traditional Québecois evening
• Student show

Although I didn't get a home stay exchange as was my preference, I lucked out with my location. Trois-Rivières is absolutely perfect because you're exactly half-way between Montreal and Quebec City and get to take advantage of both.

I'm excited! I really think this will be a fantastic opportunity to continue my French and get to know and love my country even more. Having never been farther east than Ontario, this will be an exciting new experience.

The best part? Since it is a bursary program, the only thing I have to cover are my flights! :)

Love & Light,

Jacqueline

Home Sweet Home

Hey Everyone,

Life has finally slowed down enough for me to sit down and write a final post to this chapter of my life's adventures.

If we're being honest, there are no words to describe the feeling that comes from moving across the world, establishing yourself in an international community and then leaving it all behind. I miss it already. I look up Europe flights every couple of days in hopes that a seat sale will tempt me back across the Atlantic. The people I met have absolutely inspired me to be more aware of the broader world out there. The lifelong friendships will be cherished more than I could have ever imagined.

Because I'm at a loss for words, I felt it would be most appropriate to look back at the very first post I did in preparation for my Belgium exchange. I outlined four goals for myself. Copy and pasted from the source, they read:

1) Learn how to survive on my own in a foreign country
2) Become fluent in French
3) Travel as often and as broadly as possible
4) Seduce a handsome Belgian Prince and create a Canada/Belgium mega-nation

I feel like the best way to summarize my trip would be to assess how much progress I made towards those goals.

1) Without doubt I learned to survive on my own in a foreign country. To be fair, I had a lot of help. I had no idea how much of a family all the Erasmus students would become to me and how much we would all come to rely on each others' experience, friendship, and support. The increase in my self-efficacy and self-confidence has increased immensely.

2) Although I didn't reach the level of fluency I had hoped to attain, I still made a fair amount of progress. My background in French was school courses from grades 4-10 followed by four years of absolutely no French at all. To jump back into it, I was both impressed and discouraged. Firstly, I was impressed because I remembered a heck of a lot more than I expected. Discouraged because I realized I had never really learned all the much. So much of those early years is repetition and verb conjugation work sheets that I realized I had barely any oral comprehension. Furthermore, the Belgian accent was unlike anything I had heard before. To be fair, they couldn't understand my French accent either. If nothing else, I am now more determined than ever to continue my French studies and reach a true fluency. I came back to Canada and immediately enrolled in a French course. Additionally, I am planning to write my DELF exams and do an exchange to Quebec this summer.

3) Overall I was pleased with the amount of travel I squeezed in. Given that I was taking four classes, I was somewhat restricted to what I could visit in day trips or weekend trips. I was pleased with how much of Belgium I got to see as I had wanted to get a good feel for my host country, its people and a variety of events. All said and done, I visited Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Malta, England, and Sweden. Adding this to my prior travel experience in Canada, USA, Mexico, Czech Republic, and Austria, I'm starting to feel like I'm finally starting to actually get out of the shell that is Southern Alberta.

4) There may indeed be a Canada-Europe mega-nation someday. But it won't be with Belgium.

So thank you to all of you who followed along with my adventures. Your comments and presence in my visitor statistics was immensely appreciated.

As I continue on with my post-secondary education and entertain thoughts of pursuing a master's degree in Europe, I feel I may live to blog again. Presently, I feel a sincere gratitude and love to everyone who I met, who helped me along the way, who supported me,  and who made the four months of exchange the best of my life.

Love and Light,

Jacqueline