Got on the plane from Montreal to Calgary, and watched two movies. I watched the new X-men movie, .... meh, at least Ryan Renolds is attractive. But if I wanted that, I could have watched the Proposal. ANYWAY, I watched the first part of Star Trek, but didn't get to the ending. I'm dying to know what happens, but nobody tell me!
That's it. My plane arrives in Calgary. I have to get my luggage and meet the rest of the group in the airport at 12 (Calgary time). This would be about 12 hours into my traveling adventure. We leave the airport on a big yellow school bus and head out to our VOC, volunteer orientation camp. All of the Canadians are here at this point, and its a 45 minute drive from the airport into the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. We go into a session about how we are going to greet our South African and Kenyan counterparts. Then we have supper and decide that we are going to decorate our camp (where we slept in bunk beds). The girls arrive at about 10-11pm (by this time it is about about 2 am my time, awake for 24 hours). We greet them and then we GO TO BED.
We are at the camp until Saturday, where we had various activities to help get to know each other, begin to understand each other's culture, and let us know what is coming ahead of us. The whole time, I had no contact with the outside world. Parents? Who are they! Friday, we find out who our counterpart for the next 6 months is going to be. Mine is a lovely South African girl named Busi. Then Saturday, Busi and I meet our host family for the first time.
My host family is from Pictou County of all places! They have a 16 month old baby girl, and a 4 year old dog. We live in a suburb thats very south of downtown. Sunday our host mother took us on an adventure through Calgary. She showed us the hip places, an indoor market, the red mile, a park by the river, and we went walking around and driving in her parent's convertible. We were obviously the coolest people in Calgary. Then today Busi and I had our very first adventure.
We went to take the bus (all by ourselves I might add) to go to our friend's place in the northwest. We had it all planned out, considering we were new to the city and have ABSOLUTELY no idea of time, space, and place. We end up at our destination where we are supposed to be according to our directions, and realize that the house we are going to is next to impossible to find. After quite a bit of frustration we end up knocking on a random door, where a random woman answers. We tell her that we are lost, and trying to find this address. She invites us inside and says she doesn't know where it would be either, so we call the number that we have for our friends (seeing as we don't have cell phones). We call and find out that the address we have is completely wrong! It is several kilometers east of where we are, and so we have to hop on another bus to get there. We get on the bus and the driver isn't sure of where it is, so she tells us to get off at a stop that is too early. Luckily we only had to walk from about 700 to 900 (house numbers). It took us somewhere around 2 hours to get there, a trip that should have taken 1 hour and 10 minutes.
I think it was a good experience to get lost for the both of us. Busi told me that you can only ask mothers in Cape Town for help and directions, or in the shops. Busi learned that in Calgary, you can ask almost anyone for help and they will usually help you. I have found this to be similar in most of Canada, and in the part of Seattle where I visited. Now we know how to take the bus into town (and beyond). Tomorrow we have to do a treasure hunt, so we are going to take the train into town so we know where/how to take that. We'll be Calgarians in no time at all. Although technically I already am one (its on my birth certificate.... but i moved when i was three).
I think that's all I can write for now... it's almost time to eat. Oh, and we made it back with no problems because we're almost professionals at the bus system now.
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