Hi there again …
So, now some time has passed and we have had our first days of classes, starting last Wednesday, where we dropped into our 3rd semester with 4 courses (!!!) on the first day. We started off with Marketing at 8.30 a.m., where I still was on the waitlist to get into the course. That was followed by “Community & Cultural Issues” with 1 hour of class, which seems to be quite interesting, but also a little weird 
for that course Stephanie still was on the waitlist. The next course to follow was the introduction to statistics, which we both hoped to skip (we just chose it, because we at first were told at the FH that we had to cover the subjects from the semester at home in Salzburg). That was basically the most prosy class I’ve ever taken :S – after the first 50 minutes we started to play Hangman and started to fill our TRU organizer.
Before we took our first spanish classes in the evening we went to the Acquatic Centre again, for 40 lanes to swim. Refreshed we got back to the University for our Spanish class, where we did almost do nothing that day, but got Job’s news that Stephanie would also have to buy the Spanish book (which costs 172 Canadian $).
On Thursday we started the day with 1 hour of sports management, where our teacher is also Anne Terwiel, which we have in marketing too (she is quite experienced and working a lot with the ski resort of Sun Peaks north of Kamloops). Because our next classes where scheduled for the afternoon our decision again was to go to the Acquatic centre. In the afternoon I took my class in conference management (the only class I’m in, where there is a male teacher! – quite different to Austria) and Stephanie took hers in Hotel Operations.
On Thursday evening we went to the Campus Activity Centre (CAC), which held a movie night, showing “Old School” and “300″. After watching the first film we tried to get into the Heroes Pub at the CAC, but they have quite strange rules there and so just 50 people were allowed inside although there was space for around 200. After waiting for around 40 minutes in front of the pub we did not feel like going out anymore and went home for sleep.
Friday was the day of the big “Welcome back barbecue” of Thompson Rivers University. It was arranged almost like a fair with numerious different organizations and service providers presenting themselves, so we got a lot of free goodies (mmmh macaroni) and also tickets for the evenings ice-hockey exhibition of the Kamloops Blazers, which played at 7 p.m. It was just an exhibition game against the Chiliwack Bruins, therefore only a few spectators were there, bur nevertheless the match was quite fun because of some really intense fighting scenes. Afterwards we went out to the Maxx were we got a drink for free (also because of the BBQ before). Later on we went to the CJ’s (Cactus Jack’s) – quite a nice place for shaking 
On Saturday I went swimming in the afternoon and in the evening we again went to the CAC where a Indie rockband from Toronto was playing a concert “Rock against tuition”. I also watched the 2nd half-time of Austria’s victory over France in the soccer game!!! (live streams on internet are great) On Sunday we had an international barbecue – you realize: we have BBQ almost every day – at Hospitality Inn (where I live) with our friends from Sweden, Ireland, Germany, etc … in the evening we started our first preparations for classes when we printed some documents in the Campus’ computer labs (printing is for free – you just have to bring your own paper) and did some Spanish reading.
Barbecue with some of the international studs @ Hospitality Inn again
Today we finally could skip our hated statistics course, when we got the signatures from the teachers in our waitlisted courses. In the morning’s marketing session we also had to introduce ourselves in a “memorable way” – we’ll soon put the video of this online somewhere. Thereafter, guess what … we went swimming – we’re now doing already between 50 (me) and 60 (Steph) lanes. For lunch I prepared some macaroni with cheese and tomato sauce which was quite fine. In the evening session we had Spanish, which was a bit disappointing (at least for Stephanie, who knows Spanish quite a good deal) because of the general low level.
Now we’re already looking forward to the weekend when we will go to Banff National Park for some hiking with the 2 other Austrian girls, Bernadette & Natascha and our Swedish friend Rabin.
Stephanie has also posted some (german) news on her blog. Check out!
That’s it so far!
Greez,
Gergi
