Monday to Monday isn't a week, you protest! Well okay, that's fair. But it was still somehow filled with many things to see. This city is filled with so many sights to see! It is honestly exhausting.
The most exhausting event was on Monday the 2nd -- the Resistance Town Hall, held at MacEwan University. The campus is riddled with stairs disguised as ramps, posing adversity for myself (using my mobility scooter). The layout is absolutely confusing -- somehow Building 6 is not clearly connected to Building 7, meaning that I arrived just in time for the event. Despite arriving probably 15 minutes early. Then in the room itself we had to take in chairs from outside.
It was absolutely worth it to see the Town Hall -- to understand the anger and frustration people in Alberta face over extensive (perhaps even historic) budget cuts. To see in full detail those cuts. To see why exactly people were so frustrated. Unfortunately, the event focused less on data and charts and more on the frustration part. This was a rally after all. But for me, the great benefit was understanding the political landscape of this city and province. (May or may not ever go to one of these again, though.)
Simultaneously, I signed up to give a speech for Toastmasters! It was a half meeting and we had hoped to do one speech before the potluck. The planned speaker backed out and I saw my opportunity!
I actually finished the curry and rice ahead of time, and put it away. But I did not decide what to do for Toastmasters yet....
The day of the meeting (Wednesday the 4th)
, in the afternoon actually, I got my food ready to go and picked out a blog post of mine for sharing (http://nighttrail.blogspot.com/2017/12/yona-in-blush-of-dawn.html) with the club. I was very nervous because of the high fantasy elements, but I badly needed something to present.
My nerves were at an all time high as I recited the story. I read from my laptop, while trying to act out some scenes, add vocal emphasis, and exclude unnecessary parts. (The original story was definitely written for a native English audience.) I was wondering if this was even a good pick. I started nervously sweating.
Because this speech was a little different than normal, we changed our approach to the evaluation. Instead of a single evaluator, we had a group evaluation focused on my vocal variety and on the themes of my story. Perhaps a bit like English class!
To my great surprise, people enjoyed my story's themes around flight and disability -- I was told it was relatable while being eye-opening. Funnily enough, I also helped people learn about different models of disability (the oldest being of disability as being a straight up curse). People did point out that my laptop got in the way and that I need to work on my breathing control....which are very fair points. My evaluators also let me know that they appreciated the great risk I took in completely deviating from the normal speech structure. It was tough...but it was worth it.
After that we talked about various things and ate food. I was the only person who brought a dinner item -- so I was worried no one would eat it. But people tried and enjoyed my chicken curry, even though it was cold and with the chicken and rice separately. (Unfortunately, without a spoon no one could add curry onto the rice to unify the dish.)
For me, this meant that two big risks -- the cooking and the speech -- had paid off well and I finally felt a sense of moving on.
The next day, the 5th, we had a dorm event where we made holiday snowglobes. As luck would have it, they had hot cocoa there too! (What a festive event!) Thanks to the excessive glitter I placed in my snowglobe, it turned purple, probably from the purple glitter's color rubbing off. None of the other glitter had this issue! It's incredible that each color of glitter could have slightly different physical properties. There's glitter of all colors in here. But it only turned *purple*.
The next day, out of kindness, I gave it to the PhD student who spends so much time putting up with me and teaching me. (He had previously asked me about how people make snowglobes so it was a natural fit.)
This was also the day of the JCC holiday party. (Wow it's incredible how many holiday parties I attend, huh?) The first 2 hrs were the combined conversational club party -- we played Kahoot and Werewolf, which felt very lively. Unfortunately, though I know quite a few people in the JCC now....I did not feel comfortable joining any groups of people. I asked the club president what group to join -- and he told me to join any. So I just picked a group based on someone catching my eye -- they had talked to the club president and seemed friendly. So I joined that group. Turns out they were friendly! The friend they sat with was very friendly too! Thanks to joining this group, I was even able to connect with another person over potential in-person DnD games. (Lately, my online DnD group has not been meeting much...sometimes we pass 2 weeks without any progress of any kind. These are supposed to be all Sunday long! )
There was a group photo too! I joined a few people in squatting, including the aforementioned two people in my group. Afterwards, I asked to take a selfie with these two because we're close to the same height. (Especially interesting as one of the two is a pretty tall girl!) Usually, I'm far too shy to do things like that -- but it was fun!
Afterwards, there was an after party at a ramen place. Unfortunately, there was less to say here, as I spent much of the time on my phone.
But the vegeterian ramen (so I did not have to have pork broth) was quite delicious! One first for me was eating tofu (which apparently is much more enjoyable in ramen than on its own). The broth had a great spiciness to it that satisfied the Indian part of me. I was impressed by how much of it I consumed before giving up and getting the remaining broth as leftovers.
I never said this before -- but I had leftovers from the Toastmasters party AND I got this ramen leftover. So naturally this past Saturday I combined the two and had fun enjoying the two very different flavors together. (I also added some spaghetti noodles to try to replicate the ramen experience.) It was far from perfect but it was fun! (I truly must be my mom's child with how I like to reuse leftovers.)
There was a small Christmas Carnival of sorts in the dorm on the 7th (this past Saturday). Just snacks and making cards. I talked to my sister during the event, on the phone, and that inspired me to make the below card. It's a very basic card! But it was a fun gesture.
This past sunday was a boring day where I did not get much done....Except I streamed some anime for online friends, and vice versa. And inbetween those two streams...I received an email from the professor giving me lots of feedback on my literature paper! ...Which I still need to work on. Whoops.
Hopefully I'm alive with my next post to tell you all about the paper!
One last item: I had a pleasant surprise with Indian style chicken manchurian. It ended up being my lunch AND dinner yesterday (December 9th). There was a sufficient level of spice and overall flavor that kept me enticed. This was all from a fast food-y place! So it was a good shock.
Until next time, take care!
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