Meeting new friends …

Hey there again!

It’s already 5 days again since my last entry – so here’s a new one. Saturday evening I went to a party at the climbing gym as I let you know with my last entry. I was invited by Anisa & Zak, which are in my sports events management class. The party was the official end of a boulder series and so there were lots of people. First we were bouldering around a bit – Zak & Anisa are really good climbers. Around 10 p.m. the gym officially closed and we started slacklining. Surprisingly this trend sport seems to be quite new to Canada as there were quite a few people taking their first steps on a slackline. Simon (one of the owners of the gym) and Craig were pretty good on the line. We had some beer and snacks and Alejandro put up some nice tunes on the stereos; altogether it was a nice evening with lots of new faces and names of which I can’t remember the most
On Sunday I did a lot of readings for my sports events management class, basically all of them about Olympic legacies. On Monday I got back my Spanish exam; and Stephanie did a really good job teaching me: I reached 91 % of the possible marks – a perfect start into the week. I also went swimming on Monday, but wasn’t really motivated and so I did just 20 lanes. Motivation came back on Tuesday where I 60 lanes. It was also the day of Anisa’s birthday and she invited me to her birthday party on Wednesday. The rest of Tuesday I spent reading sports events management chapters, which was also the plan for Wednesday. I just wasn’t alert that my high regarded cousin PeP is only on Skype now – when I realized that it was just some sort of invisible force dragging my mouse to the call-button we ended up talking more than 2 hours …

Anisa’s birthday party in the evening was a potluck party, i.e. everybody brings along some food. I organized some greek & thai salad and went down to Kelsey’s place around 6 p.m. The party took place there ’cause Anisa’s living in the residence and we just wouldn’t have had enough space there. Anisa chose to do a pyjama party which was quite funny & her wearing a d*** hot night dress we had a lot of fun that evening and I got to know a lot of cool new people. We left from Kelsey around 10 p.m. trying to do some learning, but I just left it with the attempt.

Thursday morning we had our exam in sports events management for which I have the worst feeling of all my exams so far. Hope it’s still positive … well, if not it’s still just 20 % of my final grade. In the afternoon’s conference management class I got back my paper about an conference industry sector; I got 33.5 out of 50 possible marks, which is a C+, but I got the possibility to turn it in again for some better grade. Afterwards I went to NO1, which is a local skate & ski shop to have a look at the new LINE collection – I think I’ll get the Mothership

In the evening I went to the residence to visit Berni & Natasha and their boyfriends for having a coffee; they got free coffee every Thursday at the res. provided by a local church’s youth. I went there by car as I’m lending it to them for a week (they are going to Seattle and flying to Hawaii from there). Before they left around 11 p.m. we went for some chicken wings (I had chicken teriyaki) and some beer. We met with Stephanie & Marc and some other German & Canadian guys.

So far that’s all I can remember about the last days …
Hope you’re all fine at home.

Be blessed and feel hugged,
Gergi

Mid-terms

Hey there

This week was quite busy having 4 mid-term exams. It all started on Monday with a mid-term in community & cultural issues in tourism. As far as I can say that one went quite well. Intermitted by a Spanish class the next exam followed with marketing at 6.30 in the evening – that one I got back already on Wednesday – it’s 54 out of 65 points

On Tuesday I studied Spanish with Stephanie in the afternoon, which we also did on Wednesday just before the exam. This one turned out to be very easy and I was done within 50 minutes. In the evening I then started preparing for next days mit-term in conference management. Phil, my teacher in that class, is becoming my favourite teacher I guess – the exam wasn’t too easy, but with a bit of logic the problems were quite easy to solve.

In the evening I was invited by Berni & Natasha for “Kaiserschmarren” – yeah, good old Austrian cuisine. As you can imagine I wasn’t the only guest there: friends from Sweden, Germany and Switzerland enjoyed Berni & Natascha’s cooking as well I was also doing a bit of sports, going to the Aquatic centre on Wednesday and Friday for swimming.

After I lent my car to Berni & Natascha for the weekend (they’re getting their friends from Vancouver) I spent the rest of Friday and today for reading some chapters for next week’s sports events management mid-term and for having a good long sleep and tonight I’m going to a lil’ party at the climbing gym with Anisa, a collegue from my sports events mgmt. class.

That’s it for now,
greetings & be blessed,
Gergi

Weekend n° 8

Hey there!

Just a short notice about the last fiew days …
Thursday I went out for Thirsty Thursday at Heroes Pub on Campus with Hannah, Sophie (the Swedish girls) and Anna (from Germany). We got there early around 7 p.m. cause the girls wanted to have a snack there. Daft that Heroe’s kitchen closes at 7 p.m. – so the girls got nothing to eat. The girls had some fun dancing, while I was just watching them, as I’m no good dancer at all … all the more I had fun with the Australians later on when they arrived. Chris & Dan are really funny dudes

The Friday I did some learning before some of us (Stephanie, Natasha, Berni, Anna, Stephanie, Marc, and me) met at Hannah & Sophie’s place to have dinner together. We had some typical Swedish meat balls and Austrian chesse spaetzle (oh yeah, believe it or not – that’s what the dictionary says). After having some wine Hannah & Sophie taught us the dance for “Cotton Eye Joe”. While preparing dinner the girls already put on their togas for the evening @ Heroes (for the special toga night). I dressed up just before going to Heroes as some sort of Roman legion, although Steph said, I looked more like one of the Three Kings as the party was really lame at Heroes with just a view people we intended to go downtown then, but as we had to wait for the bus for almost half an hour I decided to get off at my stop and do some readings for Monday’s exam.

My Saturday consisted of reading from morning till evening with a view breaks for some snacks. Basically Sunday started off the same way until I went to the Residence centre at 4 p.m. to meet with the 2 Stephanie to discuss the topics of Monday’s “Community & Cultural Issues” exam. We finished around 7 p.m. and that’s it …

Well … guess a weekend can be more stirring, but that one just wasn’t …

Hope all of you reading my blog are doing well.
Feel hugged & be blessed,
Gergi

Pics online!

Got some pics from the trip to Seattle online now, so check out the gallery!

Greez & blessings,
Gergi

Back from grunge city Seattle …

Hi everybody out there
It’s been a while since I wrote my last entry.

For the past weekend Stephanie and I went to the US for visiting Seattle. It was just the 2 of us, cause all others well-behaved studied for their mid-term exams – so I picked up Stephanie at 4 o’clock in the morning and we started our adventure down the Transcanada highway. In Hope (which is not spectacular at all) I had a break for my first coffee, while Steph remained in the car for having a nap We then went on to the border in Abbotsford where we arrived around 7.15 in the morning. After waiting some time at the border and giving away our fingerprints and photos we finally entered the US at 7.45 and went further down south.

On the way we had some fruity breakfast: bananas & apples, but also some bread with spreads (you see: Austrians are always prepared for a trip) Around 9.30 a.m. we reached our first goal, the “Premium Outland Center” north of Seattle, where our first task was reserving a room at the Green Tortoise hostel – hey, call us early birds we then got our first dollars and spent them immediately I got 2 new LEVI’s, 2 shirts and a stylish Zoo-York Hoodie for 140 bucks – try that in Austria!!!! Stephanie got some nice stuff too (among others a pretty cool neckerchief) and around 3.30 p.m. we got back onto interstate 5 to perfectly hit rush hour in Seattle.

We reached downtown around 5 p.m. and started searching for a parking lot close to our hostel and finally ended up in a garage for a cheap 16 $ (!!!) for 24 hours, which is a reduced price already for people staying at the hostel. After making use ot the incredible slow free internet at the hostel, we got to our room where, believe it or not: we did some readings for university and got to bed early around 11 p.m. after having had a long day.

The next day (Saturday) we got up at 8 p.m. and had breakfast at the hostel (which was for free). After some yummy waffles with maple syrup, a brownie you could die for, a banana and some orange chinks we went down to Pike place market, where people were setting up their booths for the daily market. We then walked to Space Needle, well-known as Seattle’s landmark and got up the 160 metres to the observation platform. Having shot a lot of pics and even taken a short movie (oooh yeah … will come soon) we went down again and went into the “Experience Music Project”, which’s a museum about contemporary rock music, covering all of Seattle’s famous musicians like Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, etc. We also searched for the Seattle Grace Hospital, because Stephanie wanted to have a ride with the elevator there she was kind of desperate when we were told that there is no hospital called Seattle Grace

After having lunch we had a walk downtown, so Steph could check out where to shop the next day we then made a short stopover at the hostel and went back to the Space Needle in the evening to get some night shots of downtown Seattle. As we had been running around all-day long we decided to go to a close Italian restaurant for a pizza, which tasted really good. We then headed towards the hostel again and one more time stopped for a coffee. We had a short look on the internet, where we discovered the tradegy about J. Haider in Austria (RIP) and then went to bed around 12.30 a.m. and already were excited about the next day.

Got up a bit later on Sunday (guess it was 8.30) and had some breakfast again. We then walked down to Pike place market again to the original 1st Starbucks store to get some coffee and a nice coffee mug (it’s really worth going there, cause there’s always some pretty good blues musicians hanging around). Later we took a guided tour through “Seattle Underground”, which is really recommendable and was a lot of fun. On our way back downtown we also had a look at Seattle’s library which is situated inmidst the financial district. We had some Indian food for lunch (yummy!) and passed by the afternoon with shopping and 2 or 3 coffees at Starbucks and “Seattle’s best coffee” shops. At 5 we picked up my ride at the garage and paid the 32 $ for the 2 days there. We then headed to the REI centre, which is a huge store for outdoor sports, because I wanted to have a look at the skiing stuff there.

So now it gets really interesting:
After leaving that store we got to the apartment of a guy called Jacob. I e-mailed to him via couchsurfing.com the day before, asking if we could stay at his apartment for that night. Well … he agreed and so we went to his really cool apartment with that great view to Space Needle and Downtown. He then invited us to come along to his friends apartment, where we had a nice evening meeting a load of interesting people (most of them working for Microsoft, google or as a surgeon at the hospital).

Having spent the night on a great couch we left from Jacob’s apartment around 9.30 a.m. on Monday heading for the university of Washington, where Stephanie wanted to get an i-pod at the apple store (which we finally couldn’t find and so we went to Starbucks instead for getting our breakfast, which we took in the university’s park). Our next thing on schedule was visiting Woodland Park Zoo, which we then cancelled because weather was getting worse and worse. Instead we tried to find the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond (10 miles east of Seattle), which took us more than 1.5 hours to find and is totally unspectacular. So then we decided to go home earlier and after having a stop at Denny’s for late lunch we headed north for good ole Canada

At the border Stephanie was an ace in convincing the customs officer that we had not purchased for more than 50 bucks (I think together we spent 400-500 dollars). Having crossed the border successfully we had some coffee at, guess where: Starbucks and then went back to Kamloops at really bad weather conditions (very cold and raining all the time). Finally we got back go Kamloops some minutes after 8.30 p.m., being happy about our weekend and the impressions from Seattle.

So, I think that’s pretty much the most important facts about the trip. I’ll put some pics online soon!

Greez and blessings,
Gergi

Going to Grunge city :)

Hey there @ home and everywhere!

Just wanted to let you know, that Stephanie and I are going to grunge city Seattle for the weekend, to visit Kurt’s hometown

So, states get ready, here we come!

Be blessed,
Gergi

Weekend …

Hi folks!

Well, weekend went by as boring as a weekend can probably get (with one exception). On Thursday I went to the climbing gym to do some bouldering again, whichs is great fun. There’s still a lot of muscle power missing, but I’m improving – and there are some nice girls bouldering around there

Friday I went swimming to the Acquatic Centre and downloaded “I Am Legend” from the web – great movie with Will Smith acting as one of the last humans on earth, not carried off by a virus caused by gene technologic experiments. Saturday I just worked on readings all day long and the evening I whiled away by doing a “newspaper assignment” for my sports events management class. For the assignment I have to go through the sports section of the newspaper and mark the different categories of sports reported. And guess what: almost 90 % of the reporting is on men’s professional sports (about half of that just ice-hockey – what surprise).

On Sunday again: readings, readings, readings – but now the highlight of the weekend comes: The Dittrich’s, the family we got to know here in Kamloops, invited us for a moved up thanksgiving dinner and so Stephanie & I went there in the evening, bringing along some Austrian wine (a Zweigelt, which I found in the local liquor store). The evening was great with lots of food – of course turkey, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, all kinds of vegetables and a great dessert, called apple crisp, of which Sharon (the Dittrich’s mum) gave me some along for my breakfast today.

Well, today in the morning I first made a call back home to wish my dad all the best for his birthday. Then had marketing classes where we got some new readings to do (f***, da**, sh**, cr**). Then I went on to get my prize, which I won at the scavenger hunt of the university. For the scavenger hunt one had to follow some hints given in the university’s newspaper and answer the 5 questions given with the hints. I won 2 day ski passes and 2 ski rentals at the Sun Peaks resort (40 minutes north of Kamloops). That’s great, because we planned to go there anyway in November

After that, guess what: I did some readings again – they really like that s*** here!!! In the afternoon I had my cultural issues class, where I talked to my class-mate Nick, who plans to come to Salzburg for the next semester. The end of the day I had a Spanish quiz which I really screwed up this time I guess

So, you see – there can be weekends in Canada without any big events as well.

Hope, u r all fine.
Be blessed & feel being part of my heart, buddies!

Greez,
Gergi

Got my ride …

Hi folks!

This is just a short notice to let you know, that I got my ride today. It’s a Honda Accord which I purchased from a local firefighter – below you can see a picture of it.

My ride - a Honda Accord

Hope to have no problems with it!

Greez,
Gergi