Honestly, I don’t know what to write for this blog entry. Every time I sit down and think about putting a week’s misadventures into words, I don`t know where to start. And in case you were wondering what «`» is, it`s supposed to be an apostrophe. Well it`s not really an apostrophe, but the real apostrophe is somewhere my muscles don`t like reaching. As well, French keyboards don`t have quotations, only little half arrows. Culture shock. Here is a recap of highlights from one week of shenanigans.
Day 1: We played an incredibly funny and slightly embarrassing game of «Ride the Pony» where everybody started dancing like it was the 60`s. After a morning of icebreakers, we participated in a Secret Ceremony, inspired by Post Secret. It was a very very intense activity, as I learned secrets about everybody here at Shad.
Day 3: The boys decided to go all blitzkrieg on the girls’ team in Capture the Flag. Too bad we outnumber them 28 to 20. The result was a very funny chain of captured boys. We wiped the floor with them…no matter how much they argue otherwise.
Day 3.5: Stayed up late for an incredibly chill party sleepover in Le Grand Salon until about 4am. It was only the second or third day (semantics…), but it felt like we knew each other so well already (oh no…mushy territory!).
Day 4: As a Reach for the Top player, I loved the trivia rounds in our House Olympiads. I won the last round for my team, The Pink Panthers, by knowing that Al Capone was arrested for tax fraud, not illegal alcohol smuggling. Hooray for paying attention during History class!
Day 5: Lunch was especially scrumptious: lasagna—I like that stuff. The girls, once again, wiped the floor with the boys in Canadian Jeopardy. The score was around 7000 points for the girls and 4000 points for the guys. And then it was Final Jeopardy, in which we can wager points to gain or lose depending on whether our team answers the Final Jeopardy question correctly. Us girls wagers 4000 points, and the boys…wait for it… «ALL IN! ALL IN! ALL IN! ALL IN!» We won because the boys had 0 points. It was unfortunate to discover that many French-Canadians don`t share the same enthusiasm for Canada Day as many of us do, so we had a little impromptu dance party (we`re dancing on tables…yippee!).
Day 6: I woke up to «Oh ****! It`s 7:57am!» as my roommate eloquently put it. It was wonderful, going out the door in less than 2 minutes. Reminds me of the good ol’ times when school was still in session. Luckily, many other people were quite late as well. We spent the majority of this day working on our towers for a friendly competition. After about 3 hours of calculations and physics, we finally got to test it out. My team «Size Matters» won with over 5 million points! That night, we played Capture the Flag in the dark in the forests of Laval University.
And now, I shall go back to residence and start packing for our camping trip!
BerBer Xue, Shad Valley Université Laval 2010
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
