Unlucky for some.

Well. Here I am. Somehow alive after yesterday's ordeal. I went to sleep at 4am yesterday. I didn't really want too. I wanted to go to sleep straight after my exam, but I was just enjoying (the illusion of) freedom so I decided to stay up until my eyes started to melt. My intention was to sleep indefinitely, but apparently Orange had different plans as they sent me 4 texts at 8.30. I looked at my phone in despair and went "Oh shit. I'll never get back to sleep after thzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzz" and off I went again til 11.30 or so. The result is that I'm a little sleepy right about now, but I have basically done nothing all day so I should uphold my commitment to this blog which I created all those months ago in Luxembourg, before I had even found a suitcase to bring with me to Canada. Now, here I am 8 months later and with a mere 13 days left of the Canada experience. Alas, the next 4 of those Canadian days will be spent cooped up in my room revising for my Children's Lit exam as my brain is being a little selfish and seems to have forgot pretty much everything after february. I have been making progress towards going home though. Today I started packing. I probably could leave it til later, but I don't want to be doing all of this stuff right at the end so I thought I should get a headstart and the under 2 week mark seemed appropriate. So now I have packed away all the clothes that I don't want to wear in the next 13 days, a few toys (yeah. I'm 21 bitch.) and my "the more I talk to people, the more I like cats sign"...so you know, just the bare essentials. I have also put my flute up on kijiji which is good because I can probs get some money to spend on tacky Canada merchandise, but mainly because the word kijiji entertains me. Kijijijijijijijijijijijijijiji.

I have also noticed that I have been getting quite a few more Candian views so I would just like to say that
Canada is perfect and so is every Canadian.

I could write about my wild day of cartoons, battleships and lindtt lindor balls, but it would probably be more appropriate to talk about the last few days with my Dad finally manning up and doing touristy activities. The day after the last day that I talked about (yeah, my syntactical are pretty poor these days) I carried on with my early morning wake up training and managed to rouse myself from sleep at 9am in preparation for Wednesday's big 7am start. 9am was substantially more bearable than 7am, and I possibly felt more awake than I had for a long time. I than ambled on over to the War museum to meet ma Pa. I'm not the biggest war fan in the world (I mean fan of learning about war as well as being a fan of the act of war itself), but I found the war museum fun. Some of the highlights were the models:

Although, I do have an irrational fear that these models may just be people in disguise/they will somehow come to life in Night at the Museum fashion and I shall cry.

I also enjoyed:

 The opportunity for dress up time

 Beavers looking fierce

I found seeing Hitler's parade car fairly interesting. It was a little beaten up, but I figured that it was nothing that Gavin from Autoglass repair couldn't handle.

I also did a brass rubbing of a fighter plane. Most of the children were looking at the exhibits, but you know..arts and crafts are fun no matter what age you are. I also took the "could you have been in the army" test and failed on almost every account. I also learned that my feet are a bit on the flat side. It was a poignant moment in my life.

After a few hours of war and about 20 minutes worth of peace we went on down to the Civilization museum to watch an imax film on the history of the Rocky Mountain Railroad. It wasn't as good as the orphaned orangutang film, but I'm sure if the train film had been narrated by Morgan Freeman too it could have been about a piece of fluff and people would have enjoyed it. I did enjoy the film though as it is something that I am pretty ignorant about and I got to live vicariously and see western Canada through  those who were responsible for the construction...however the irony there was every five minutes the narrator said "...and this crew of men all died." I'm not sure if it was deliberately made to seem like this, but both my dad and I seemed to think that that the edit was both comical and border line racist.

The narrator would keep saying things like
"400 men died that night."....dramatic pause..."most of them were Chinese". I can't really explain how it was done via text, but the way it was said, it almost seemed as though what he was really saying was "400 men died that night ....BUT most of them were Chinese" as if everyone could breathe a sigh of relief. 

Later that evening we went to the works. I don't really need to say much about the works. It speaks for itself. It is heavenly. The burgers, the mash, the onion rings, the fruit crush...why oh why must we part so soon Works burger :( Luckily we are making one more trip there before the final adieu. I'm pretty sure Jess and Alyson will have to drag me as I hold on to the door handle screaming and crying. On the plus side we got a voucher for  free onion ring tower (SUCCESS!) which I delivered to Jess in a Christmas card because it was a cause for great excitement which had nothing to do with the fact that I had christmas cards left over and felt like using some of them up instead of throwing them all away. Nothing. At. All.

Then I went home and nursed my food baby until the next day where I cracked on with (i.e. started) my French revision for the next day. Luckily, just at the moment where I was on the verge in slipping into a Quebecois induced coma I was summoned to Rideau by my dad to get my Birthday gift. We wandered around the jewellery shops of Rideau. I feel a little uncomfortable in shops like that. I was there with my free exeter hoodie and my three pound primark bag surrounded by pieces of jewellery that cost more than my whole wardrobe combined. It was intimidating. As is the rule of shopping we went to various places and then ended up at the 1st place we saw where a Lebanese woman tried as she might to force my Dad into buying the lifelong warranty for my necklace. My Dad explained that getting a lifelong warranty when I only had 2 weeks left in Ottawa might be a little bit pointless, but she was adamant that it was necessary. She said that maybe I would come to Canada again, because destiny had brought me here. I didn't want to burst her bubble, but it definitely was not destiny that brought me here. I chose a course with a year abroad which had 3 Canadian options. Exeter and Carleton's exchange agreement brought me here, not destiny. She also suggested that maybe I would meet a Canadian man who I would fall in love with and then move out here to live with. Well...Canadian men..you have 13 days left to woo me and convince me to stay, and if you do you owe the woman at the jewellery store about 100 dollars. Thanks. Oh yeah. And I think Charles would be a bit peeved. 

On the plus side I did get a nice necklace:

I mean it doesn't look great there, but that is due to my terrible photography skills. I was originally going to get something a bit smaller and discrete, but we figured that even if it wasn't "destiny" and the will of God that brought me to Canada that it would be nice for me to have a present that would mark my 21st and be a constant reminder of my year in Canada. So here is an inuksuk with his Canadian diamond chest, and even though I will probably rarely wear this necklace from fear of breaking it when I do wear it I shall be reminded of my year in Canada and all the people animals that I have met along the way.

Well, I'm going to go and enjoy my evening of freedom before I put my revision hat back on tomorrow.

Night night Canada. See you in 2 weeks England. See you in TWO! WEEKS!