Life of an Exchange Student Week 3

17/01/2016-23/01/2016

Sunday 17th January:

Woke up nice and early for yum cha at Golden Ocean Seafood Restaurant. This may be hard to believe, but I’ve only ever tried yum cha once or twice in my entire life , and honestly, I don’t recall the food tasting that great. (Sorry Yum Cha lovers!!!)

We ordered pretty much everything on the trolley and stuffed ourselves with Chinese buns, dumplings, chicken feet, egg tarts etc. We each paid $15, which was reasonable considering how full I was after the meal!

After a very filling brunch, we spontaneously decided to explore Queen Elizabeth Park as it was within walking distance from the yum cha restaurant.

I’m a pretty crap photographer so the above photo doesn’t capture the beauty of the view, but I can assure you from where I was standing, the garden looked exquisite. It would’ve been better if it wasn’t cloudy that day; the garden would’ve looked even more stunning under the sun!

Sometime in the afternoon, Jessie and I decided to visit the local cemetery while the rest of the group headed back home.

At night, Jessie and I joined four other people ( Ben, Sarah, Ivan and Jorge) for a late night screening of The Revenant.

I’m going to be completely honest here, I didn’t think The Revenant was that special but then again, maybe I don’t know how to appreciate good films/acting? The entire storyline was revealed in the trailer, and the 2.5hr long movie could have been condensed into 10 minutes and I wouldn’t’ve missed anything (but maybe the whole point of the movie was to showcase Leo’s impeccable acting skills?) Anyway, I almost fell asleep during the movie but managed to stay awake until I got home at around 1-2am.

Monday 18th January:

CHILL DAY FOR MOI. Stayed at home and studied 😀 (First assignment due on Thursday!)

Tuesday 19th January:

The Sumyuku gang plotted a surprise midnight birthday celebration for Sophie. I went shopping for her cake in the afternoon, and just before midnight we all congregated at Gage apartments to execute the plan 🙂 At first I thought it would only be around 6 us surprising her, but when we arrived, a bunch of Sophie’s “other” friends (who are now friends with everyone hehehe) were there to surprise her as well!

THE CAKE!!!!

So as you can see, the candles look so disorganised. We were trying to spell out “WA” (Wing Attack) using 20 candles (because she turned 20!); while I managed to write out WA using 20 dots, sticking 20 candles into the cake was a completely different matter. The above is the result of my failed attempt at using candles to make letters.

Preparing to surprise Sophie!

Right before 12am when I was carrying the candle lit cake,  stupid me decided to say something to someone across the cake and I accidentally blew out all the candles…..Sorry Sophie!!!

Outside Sophie’s door 

Luckily she opened the door. I know if it was me, I probably would’ve pretended to be asleep and ignored the knocker. HAHAA

EVERYONE<3 

OH! And we found some random balloons abandoned after some party so we decided to recycle it and give it to Sophie HAHAHAH.

Wednesday 20th January:

SOPHIE’S BIRTHDAY DINNER!

Awesome food + Fantastic people = Perfect birthday celebration 🙂

We had dinner at Romer’s Burgers and then drinks at 12D to finish off the night 😀

LOOK AT ALL THE DELICIOUS BURGERS!!!!!! Also, Canada has this awesome system where they split the bill for you before you pay – so instead of giving you a bill of $57.74 and expecting everyone to frantically take out coins and work out how much change they need, the Canadian waiters/waitresses give you individual bills and y’all pay individually. HOW COOL IS THAT. I remember seeing $1.78 for the chips on my bill and I was like WOWWW. C’mon Australia, time to adopt this split billing system!!

TABLE PHOTOOO WITH THE BIRTHDAY GURL 

Thursday 21st January:

It’s Thursday, and you know what that means? Yep, PRE’S AT 14D AND KOERNER’S!!!!!!!!

There’s not much to write; A picture is worth a thousand words.

Yup, it was a great night

Friday 22nd January:

Went shopping, had the best hot dog ever (JAPADOG!!!) and spent the night playing cards and chilling at Fairview 🙂

Saturday 23rd January: 

To finish off the week, we went karaoke in Richmond (almost known as China/Asia/Chinatown etc. because it’s literally full of Chinese people, restaurants and signs.)

Life of an Exchange Student WEEK 1

4/01/2016 – 10/01/2016

When you ask someone why they want to go on exchange, chances are their response is something along the lines of wanting to experience a different culture, meeting new friends and embarking on a once in a lifetime trip to somewhere on the other side of the world.

All of the above are most definitely true. But what they probably failed to mention explicitly (but is no doubt implied) is that they want to:
– Stay out every night without worrying about waking up their parents at 3am in the morning
– Go clubbing or drinking every night and not worry about stumbling home drunk and smelling like vomit
– Smoke without having to worry about smelling like cigarettes when they arrive home
– Get high
– Sleep around
– Have funnnnnnn!

The first two nights at UBC were frankly, extremely boring. I didn’t know anyone when I moved in on the first day (Sunday 03/01/2016) and out of my 3 roommates, only 1 had moved in. I literally did nothing on Sunday and just lounged around feeling home sick and deeply regretted not coming here with a mate or two from Australia.

The next day (Monday 04/01/2016) became exponentially better. I met up with someone from UNSW and then found myself in a group conversation with a bunch of other UNSW students at UBC.

Tuesday 05/01/2016 – Had dinner with a Korean girl I met at Orientation and then met up with the other Aussies. I remember I stayed out way past 12 and had to sleep immediately as I had a 10am class the next day.

So, the first few days were quite tame huh? Dinner, hanging out in someone’s living room and chatting until past 12.

Here is where the real exchange life starts.

Wednesday 06/01/2016:

UBC has these weekly “Pit Nights” on Wednesdays, where students party it up at the infamous Pit Pub UBC. I was invited by a fellow Aussie who lives next door to me, to have pre’s at his house with his roommates. They had bought several cases of Canadian beer (honestly, all beers taste the same to me. I just remember seeing the word “Canadian” on the can). The house became packed after an hour or so and in the midst of drinking and chatting, we discovered that the Pit Pub was full and wasn’t letting anyone else in.

So what did we do?

We went to someone else’s house to drink some more. Unfortunately, by this time people were either sleepy or drunk (and by drunk I mean they were basically so loud they woke up the RA’s and neighbours) and so we got kicked out of the house after an hour or so.

And this concludes Day 1 of drinking.

Thursday 07/01/2016 :

Well, well, well, Thursday was the day that all hell broke loose. The UBC Exchange Student Club organised a pizza social and drinks at Koerner’s (the go-to pub on campus for exchange students.) The pub itself wasn’t that big, but it did have a nice, spacious outdoor section with a few benches and one rectangular section for us to play beer pong.

Yep, we played beer pong.

With lemons.

So, initially there were only 10 people standing around the beer pong table and we divided the groups into Aussies vs. Singaporeans. As there were only 4 Aussies in attendance, we were vastly outnumbered ( more Singaporeans came as the game progressed.)  At first it was just a “friendly” game of beer pong, where each of us took turns drinking from the massive red cup. Then somehow we started to up the stakes.

It became strip beer pong.

And as luck would have it, my team lost.

I’m just glad I didn’t catch a cold as it was like 0 degrees outside.

To finish off the night, we went to a friend’s house and I’m pretty sure I got home at around 3:30 in the morning.

Friday 08/01/2016:

Korean BBQ. More drinking. SUMYUKU SUMYUKU. CLUBBING. Spent too much on drinks. Near-fist fight. Saving a mate. Home Finally. YAY FOR SURVIVING.

There’s this inside joke between all those who came out on Friday about how lucky we are to be alive. Long story short, we met a random guy on Thursday who created a group chat the very next day (Friday morning) inviting all of us to his apartment and then clubbing. We were all like “oh yeah cool, let’s go”. On the bus there, we realised that none of us knew anything about the guy except his name. Basically, A thought he was B’s friend, and B thought he was C’s friend but C thought he was A’s friend. For all we knew, he could be a serial killer or rapist. There were around 7 of us on the bus and we were just imagining all the different ways we could die. Luckily nothing happened to us! HAHAH

Saturday 09/01/2016:

Saturday was spent shopping in Downtown, and then making our way to the ESC Club Crawl. Yep, more drinking! And more clubbing!

Sunday 10/01/2016:

After 4 days straight of drinking, my liver was probably on the verge of collapsing. Sunday was the perfect day to wind down and get my shit together before class on Monday HAHA. I slept in till like 12 & decided to go ice skating with a few mates. However, when we got there, we discovered the ice rink would be closing in 20 minutes, so instead we watched the others skate. For dinner a bunch of us grabbed Chinese takeout and then met up with another friend for a spontaneous coffee hangout.

By around 10pm, 2 people decided to go for a smoke and hang out, leaving me and one other person to hang out. Since it was early (yes, 10pm is too early for us to go home and sleep even though both of us had an early morning class.), we decided to go for a stroll/go exploring.

Unfortunately, the only photos on my phone are drunk selfies and 10 second clips of everyone clubbing. I may upload them later for me to re-watch in like 10 years time, but for now, there won’t be any photos.