A reading week with very little reading is the way it should be!

Well it's been back to reality for a few days now, though the reality part hasn't really hit me yet. I really do still think I'm on holiday, as for the past two days I have somehow managed to stay in bed until at least 11:00am... So brutal, haha. My body just hasn't gotten used to the normal schedule of going to sleep sometime before 3:00am - sounds like trouble. (Photo - Fellow guide Ben (McMaster) and I out at The Brig in Ottawa)

So yes, I'm still relishing in the beauty that is reading week, though I'm still unable to figure out why they call it "reading week". I mean honestly, very little reading usually gets done, though there are those select few who are just incredibly hardcore and get like, a paper written or a book finished or some serious lab work done or something crazy like that. But me - oh, no - no reading for me! The only reading I did was finishing one novel and starting another, just for pleasure - what a novelty! But besides that, my break was absolutely awesome. As some of you may know from having read a few of my past blogs, I worked as a Parliamentary Guide in Ottawa last summer and met a ton of great people, a lot of them who still go to school in Ottawa. Sooo, I decided it would be a fantastic idea to head out to Ontario for a little over a week and do some serious visiting and catching up with my wonderful guide friends. And this is how it went! (Photo - Jess, Tejas, Liz and I in downtown Ottawa)

I got to Ottawa on Friday night and was enthusiastically welcomed by two of my best friends, who were also guides last summer, Liz and Tejas. Liz went to Mount A last semester but now goes to school in Ottawa, where her family lives, and Tejas is from Vancouver and also goes to the University of Ottawa. We were an inseparable trio during the summer so it was just awesome to be back with the two of them :) I stayed at Tejas' apartment in downtown Ottawa for the week and it felt like we were an old married couple by the end of the week, haha. She had a big week of work and I was on vacation so I had tons of time to spend doing whatever. So, since I live in residence and go to meal hall and all that, cooking and grocery shopping and all those things are a bit of a novelty to me so I would go grocery shopping, cook us dinner, bake dessert.... Hahaha, it was so much fun and made Tejas pretty damn happy so it was great :) (Photo - Tejas, not looking too impressed at the paper she was writing during my visit)

Some highlights from my time in Ottawa included some serious shopping (put a student from Sackville in a big city with a large mall and watch out!), meeting up with my high school volleyball coach who now lives in Ottawa, visiting my apartment from the summer and my most lovely roommate Martha, heading back to Parliament to see the sights and Question Period with a Kelsey, a friend from MTA, and going out on the town with as many old friends as possible :) (Photo - Parliament Friends: Andrew, Marc, me and Ben at Zak's Diner)

So my time in Ottawa came to an end and I hoped on a Via Rail train bound for Toronto and then bussed to Hamilton to visit my friends Ben and Zsuzsi who both go to McMaster Univeristy. My trip there was pretty short, only a few days, but we had lots of fun nonetheless. Ben showed me all around campus, I went to see McMaster's production of Cabaret, checked out a house party with people from his programme (Arts & Science) and even managed to get a chapter or two read for my Islam class, haha. And then on Sunday afternoon I was off to the Hamilton airport, where I met a friend from Mount A, Mal, and we flew back to Moncton together. Since then I've been attempting to get back into the swing of things here, but really, I'm still very much in break mode. I'm having too much fun and not getting enough work done, but hey - we all know university is about more than the academics! (Photo - A notice to McMaster medical students in the Health Sciences Library, just in case they couldn't figure it out)

Much love,

Sue

sjhumphrey@mta.ca