Elephants

Everyone here likes elephants, right? Good.

Tuesday Mornings

There's a place inside my school called The Sanctuary. It's like a second cafeteria, except it's a little classier. It's got booths and tables like a restaurant's, but you still have to go to their kitchen area to get food. They serve beer here, too. It's kind of a novelty to drink beer inside of a school. There's a catch, though. They only serve beer on Tuesday mornings.

Isn't Tuesday morning the exact least appropriate time of the week to be drinking? For some reason, it feels even worse than Monday or Wednesday mornings.

The beer they serve is their own brew, too. That's right. I think my school has it's own brewery.

I only have one class on Tuesday, and it's at 1:00 pm. Needless to say, it's the least-attended class of the week. Besides being perfectly positioned to tempt people to drink before class, a lot of people who commute don't like to pay gas prices for just one class. We get maybe half the class attending every  Tuesday.

At first I thought it was weird that if the school was going to serve alcohol, it would do it on Tuesday mornings, but then when I thought about it, I realized that the least-appropriate time of the week to drink is also the time when students are most likely to be cautious about their drinking.

Nobody's ever come to class with alcohol in their system. Or at least if they did, I didn't notice. Is it against the rules to be in class with alcohol in your system? I kind of assumed it was, but now that I think about it, I'm not sure.

The Tuesday morning drinking time is really popular. They're usually packed. Everybody seems to get a buzz off the novelty of drinking in a school.

Car Crash

I saw a car crash on the way to school today. All these cars stopped and this other car didn't even slow down. This was on the highway, too, so it was going pretty fast. I was right next to the collision, close enough that I might have been caught by flying wreckage. The car that crashed into the other car bounced back on collision and lost the whole of it's front, but  the other one wasn't damaged at at all. It actually drove away without the driver getting out to check on things.  The other students kept walking. Nobody stopped to help the person who'd crashed. All the other cars just drove around her and kept going. One student stopped to give assistance.I stopped only long enough to see that the girl was up and talking. I'm ashamed to say I made it to class on time.

That's the kind of thing that will haunt you. It would've been worth being late for one class so I could think to myself "I'm the kind of guy who helps out in a crisis." Even when I was walking away,  I was thinking "Not worth it, man. Not worth it."

Ashley Nichols

We have a celebrity at our school. Her name is Ashley Nichols, and she is the Muaythai world champion boxer.  She participated in a competition of 1000 participants from 108 countries, the largest competition ever to be held outside of the art's native land of Thailand. Not only did she win, but she beat the former champion, who was from Russia in the semi-finals, which led her to fight Germany in the finals.

She's also the Athlete of Cambridge two years in a row, and she is the North American champion at kickboxing. She's going to compete at the Ottawa Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu tournament,and she's been asked to represent Canada in kick boxing at the Pan Am Games in December.

I know of this because she is a former student in the program I'm taking right now. Her achievement was broadcasted over my program's online messaging system (it's called ANGEL, don't know why). I watched her fight, and I gotta say, she was FEROCIOUS! It was the championship match, and you could tell who was going to win before the match even started.

In her interview, she is so cool and calm, with so many perceptions of her opponents. Her fighting form was fiery, but her perceptions are cool.

I saw this girl get her picture taken with her trophy in front of the Aboriginal services office. I see her across the school. She doesn't seem to get the kind of celebrity focus you'd expect. I should ask her for her autograph.

ESL Conversationalist Interview

Yeah, I think I landed the English as a Second Language conversationalist position. The interviewer said that I was "Obviously a good conversationalist", she asked me if I could take on more than one client, and she asked me if I could continue working with them into next semester. She also recommended some other places in the school that I might consider volunteering at, and she asked me to look for more potential applicants. Oh, and I have training next week. So I've elevated past the interview stage.  I'd have to screw up pretty bad to not get it at this point, I think.

The only place that I think I might not have done so hot in, was when she asked me how I would engage a client who wasn't talking much. I gave the standard of asking about their interests, their subject, their family. But then I said "I would ask them to teach me a little bit of their language, so that, if they were self-conscious about the way they sounded in English, they could hear me struggle with their language and it might make them more comfortable." She said that that "Sounds like a great icebreaker, but don't forget, the focus is for them to learn our language."

Respect

I've been accepted as a Respect ambassador. I just went to my first meeting today. I think I'm the only heterosexual white able-bodied male born and raised in Canada. Seems like the organization attracts people who feel like they've been denied some respect. We're organizing a Random Act of Kindness day... Still don't really know what it entails. It was supposed to be 4:00 to 5:00 but they got me to stay until 8:00. I spent the extra three hours packaging bookmarks. Kind of assembly-line style. Oh well, got free pizza.

I have an interview to be an English Conversation Partner tomorrow at 1:00 PM.

Got the chance to talk to the person in charge of the Social Service Worker program. She said that the Respect volunteer thing is prefect. So I've got Canada World Youth and Katimavik backing me, and then I'll top it off with this Respect program, and hopefully the English Conversation Partner. The other important thing is English. If I can keep my English mark over 80% and I've got this volunteer bit, I should be a shoe in.

I really have to stop procrastinating, though. So far, I've gotten everything in on time, and I've passed everything with flying colours. I'm one of the very top students, but I'm still nervous, because despite having done well so far, I've only managed to stay a half-step ahead of my game. I shouldn't be pulling all-nighters for every major assignment. Eventually I'm going to have several in a row, and no matter how well I'm doing, if I've got three assignments due in one week and I've put everything off until last minute, then I'm gonna burn out.

I got my first two major papers back. 100% and 95%.

My door lock is broken. My roommate managed to get in, so he let me in. I went down to the front desk, and the guy came up, looked at the lock, said he didn't know how to fix it so he'd send up a guy at 11:00 who knows this stuff better than him. It's 11:47 right now and he hasn't shown up. If I leave the room to go to front desk, I'll be locked out. Looks like I'm getting locked out tomorrow!

Aboriginal Services Office

The other day, a friend of mine was like "Have you been to the Aboriginal services office yet?" and I was like, "Why would I have been to the Aboriginal services office?" and she was like "Because the elder is really nice" and I was like, "But I'm not Aboriginal, and you're not Aboriginal, and I'm wearing my Chisasibi hoodie and he'll think I'm a poser" and she was like "No he won't. Let's go to the Aboriginal services office."

So we went to the Aboriginal services office, and  it turns out that the elder knows people in Chisasibi. A lot of people. Well.

It was actually pretty sweet, but we could only talk for fifteen minutes. He said I could drop by and talk at any time, and he told us about a smudging ceremony that we'd be allowed to come to. something about smoke going in the air.

I've got some application form to volunteer for the Respect campaign, which I don't really know what it is except that it involves encouraging diversity and understanding, and I'm applying to be a consultant for students entering Canada. I'd be teaching English and explaining Canadian culture.