Firstly, on Tuesday the 11th, the well-known Canadian novelist Camilla Gibb visited our campus for a reading from her memoir. In my Canadian Prose class (my favorite of my courses) one of our assigned readings was Gibb's book The Beauty of Humanity Movement. The novel spans multiple generations in Vietnam from the ousting of the French in the 1950's to the present day. I had absolutely loved the book and was extremely excited to meet Ms. Gibbs. The reading was expressive and thought-provoking and made me eager to read more of her work. Afterwards she answered questions and signed people's novels. When it was my turn to have my copy signed, we talked a bit about her novel (she hadn't known that my professor, who had organized her visit, was also teaching one of her novels).
My book signed by Camilla Gibb!
In her memoir, Gibbs visited PEI with a friend.
The beach above is referenced in her memoir and I was
lucky enough to get to visit that beach this past weekend.
The following night, I attended a Harry Potter trivia night hosted by the on-campus pub! Many groups were participating but I joined the English Society's team. We figured we had the contest in the bag, but the hosts, trying to up the difficulty from the previous year's tournament, had made sure to choose extremely difficult questions (What fragrances does Firenze use in his classroom?)! We were also an honest team and nobody googled any answers unlike some other teams with less moral fiber than us.
Finally, on Saturday, I attended my first ever hockey game featuring the UPEI Panthers versus the Universite de Montreal . As this was also my first time to actually watch hockey outside of a cinematic setting, I went in with absolutely no idea as to the rules of the sport. My two friends I attended the hockey match with were equally clueless and over the course of the game we were more than a little surprised as to what was constituted a foul and what didn't. From one goalie losing his glove in the midst of a pile up, to a player having his stick cracked in half, to players grabbing the puck out of the air with their hands, to a guy who actually threw down his stick in order to go after a member of the opposing team, play continued on, uninterrupted, to our ever raised eyebrows.
We were only three rows from the glass, guaranteeing excellent
views whenever the players pushed each other into the walls.
--My friends and I were sitting in a section with a lot of other international students and the first time the puck banged against the high fiber glass walls separating us from the rink, we all jumped back in surprise--
Selfie-time at the rink. During the game we also discussed what
the most popular sports are in our respective countries
(US: football. Taiwan: baseball. South Korea: baseball and soccer).
The rink was also very cold and by the end of the first period my toes were feeling rather numb. Still, the game (unlike most sports) held my attention and when what I thought was the final period came to a close, I was surprised at how fast the time had gone by but happy at the thought of leaving the cold rink...except there are three periods in hockey, not two, so I had to settle back down for an additional twenty minutes. Luckily, I got some hot chocolate during this intermission and was sufficiently warmed to continue to cheer on the panthers. They had led for most of the game but in the final five minutes, UdeM scored, leaving us in a tie. Overtime was enacted and in those five minutes, UdeM managed to score again. As soon as that happened, the game was apparently over, even though over three minutes still remained on the clock. It seemed unfair, but by that point it was clear that hockey rules would remain a mystery to me. Still, it was an exciting night and a definite must on the Canadian culture experience scale!
The panthers may have lost but it was still a great game!
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