Well it has been a long time coming but we’re finally all here in Waterloo (Bryan, Sam, Qiao Rui and I) and have experienced a taste of orientation and our lessons for the term! We all travelled separately and I was the first to arrive in Waterloo and see our housing for the term ahead. I couldn’t help but take a pretty cool shot of the street sign leading up to our place!
It’s a pretty cool place just a short walk from the University of Waterloo and my room was pretty big!
The very first day I was there, our landlord brought me to the St Jacobs’ Farmer’s Market as an introduction to Waterloo’s Amish origins. It was pretty eye opening seeing such a huge open market with freshly grown produce, cheese and meat products sold by the farmers themselves! I probably wouldn’t have seen that in Singapore ever.
Another eye opening thing I found out was that short and slippers (Singaporean/SUTD Style attire) definitely wouldn’t work out! I was literally freezing walking around the market and our landlord wished me good luck for the Winter ahead :O. ( Unfortunately I forgot to snap a photo of the Farmer’s Market but I’ll surely visit it again)
Over the next few days, Qiao Rui joined me at our new home with Sam yet to arrive for a few days more. Bryan lives separately and he might have a different experience which he might elaborate on in the weeks to come.
Qiao Rui and I pretty much settled a few boring but important tasks at the University over the next few days such as making our WatCards -A Bus Pass, Payment Card and Identity Card all in one (much like our SUTD card) and doing some housekeeping!
We even tried cooking, something we were both severely underskilled at. I have to admit Qiao Rui’s attempt looked much better than mine pictured below :D!
Soon enough Orientation events had started. We met some pretty interesting people at the Exchange Orientation such as Adi an Indian student from Hong Kong, Sammy a French student and Miguel from Madrid. We even caught the much hyped play put together by Waterloo students called Single and Sexy.
Our view of the play:
What was pretty awesome was that the play managed to incorporate advertising many of the services offered to students at University of Waterloo while being entertaining at the same time.
Over the next few days, I took some time to go hang out with out new-found friends and also to explore the region of Waterloo on my own before classes started.
While walking past a lake one day, I almost had a altercation with the infamous Canada Goose, but luckily he/she/it backed down phew!
GEESE:
Now, it’s the end of our first week of lessons and everyone has pretty much settled down although we’re still meeting new people in our individual classes.
Stay tuned to more updates from us here in Canada. It’s gonna be a fun term ahead!
Signing off ,
Kunal
