Hello everybody!

I just got back from a short trip to see some relatively nearby universities and colleges with a school group. We all had to get up at 4:30 AM to make the bus, but it was worth it.

After some time travelling, we finally reached our first stop: Simon Fraser University. We walked around there for awhile, but I didn't find it particularly interesting. Maybe it was just too early in the morning or something, but the concrete buildings (award-winning concrete, no less) didn't really appeal to me. The library was cool though.

Next, we went to the University of British Columbia. In a word, it was busy. The university has about as many students as my hometown has people. Before the tour, we stopped at the Sub, a veritable mall in its own right, and had lunch. I think eating the best sausage roll I have ever had helped me wake up, because I was more focused for the tour. We mostly just looked at the buildings again, but we were talked to a bit about the history of the university. There was also a question-and-answer session regarding the programs offered at UBC.

After that, we went to our hotel for about half an hour before walking over to the bus stop and heading to a nearby mall. The first hour or so of shopping was pretty good. Vancouver malls have awesome shops like EB Games and Sakura Media that simply don't exist where I live. I spent a lot of time determining what to buy. EB Games had Geometry Wars Galaxies and Star Trek Conquest which looked cool, but I decided I'd never have time to play them. Instead, I went to Sakura Media and poured over everything in the store that I could read. I ended up walking out with three CDs (two of Inu-yasha music and the FFTA2 soundtrack) and some Final Fantasy figurines for characters I don't know but looked cool and are just about the right size for D&D purposes. They're sitting above my desk right now.
However, while the first bit was great, there really wasn't enough to see at the mall to warrant staying from six-ish to 9:00. I mostly just talked with one of the chaperones for the rest of the time. Also, we had to wait forty minutes for the bus back. If we knew where we were going, we could have walked faster than that.

This morning (4:30 wake up again...) we boarded the ferry for Victoria and went to see the University of Victoria. I must say that I was actually more impressed with UVic than UBC. I just felt more at home there. We actually went into the math building there, and it was just like waling into one of the schools at home. Also, though UBC had awesome sausage rolls, UVic makes a mean slice of pizza.

We finished with a college I don't remember the name of. It was exactly like the college in my home town except bigger and blue instead of red. Oh, and it had million-dollar rapid-prototype builders and water-cutters, but whatever.

Anyways, after more long hours of travel, we returned home at around 6:30 PM. I had dinner, ripped my new CDs, and scanned in the album art. Currently, some FFTA2 song with a Japanese title is just fading out and I'm typing this.

So, what's up with everyone else?