007- Je suis Bond, James Bond

Day 32 - (le 31 juillet) End of Explore Banquet

So like any other day I went to class and then had lunch, after lunch I took a nap and got up around 6 and changed for the 007 themed gala. The gala was basically I time for us to receive our certificates and also to have fun with everyone. There were a number of group acts that really summed up our time in Moncton. It was an overall fun night, the gala ended at about 10pm so there was really no time for dinner. What I did eat after the gala was an apple and I had a package of instant chicken noodle soup.

Here is a map of where every one is from!

There were also some students from Brazil and the United States

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MAN VS MICROWAVE

For Lunch: BBQ Pulled pork burger with potatoes and corn, Acadian chicken soup, salad, cookie, chocolate milk, ONIONS and a coca cola for later :)

For Dinner:
So I didn't take a picture of my dinner since apple and chicken noodle soup is pretty self explanatory.

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Day 33 -(le premier août) Take home exam and Food babies

Thursday, guess what? It was pretty different from all the other Thursdays! We went to class but had to take our placement exams again because they wanted to see if the program worked. I finished my test and did the oral portion and still had almost an hour until lunch. When it came time for lunch, we all went to lunch and then went back to my room to work on my take home exam (my prof is awesome so he gave us a take home exam to do on Wednesday and we had to hand it in on Friday during our 10 minute oral exam). At about 5 we went out for dinner. We went to a restaurant on Main street called Tide & Boar. (The name is a play on words because Moncton is famous for the tidal bore that happens twice a day in the petitcodiac river also known as the chocolate river) Apparently it was recommended on some sort of food channel and is very well known in the Moncton area.

Let me tell you the food was awesome! It was definitely a gourmet meal and was definitely worth the hour walk there and hour walk back :) STAY TUNED FOR PICTURES!

After dinner, I continued my take home exam until it was time for bed :)

Now time for some dorm/campus room pictures! :p

Champlain library

Lafrance my dorm building, its 11 floors high

my messy room, I was packing :D

the bug inside my room (between the netting in the window and the window)

The sun set! :)

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MAN VS MICROWAVE

For Lunch:  Deep fried pork chop, seafood chowder, salad, fruit salad, potatoes, peas, chocolate cake, coca cola for later and ONIONS!

Mocha made with chocolate milk and coffee :) So delicious

For Dinner: ARE YOU READY?????????

Home made lemonade

One of the girls had a 2 oysters

 A few girls had the Parm Haddock with the Tide & Bore salad, they said it was really good!

 I had the Boar Poutine :) SOOOOOOO GOOOOD!!!!!!! The red sauce on top of the boar is something that tasted like ketchup but wasn't really. We think it is their house made ketchup :)

For Dessert:

A friend and I shared the beeramisu, let me tell you it was sooooooo goood!!!!!!

Beeramisu

The other girls shared a dessert that had a lot of caramel and a chocolate crème brûlée

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Day 34 - (le 2 août) Bittersweet goodbyes

August 2nd was the last day we were all going to be together. On this last day, I got to sleep in until 9 because my oral exam was at 9:40am! :) After getting up and doing some last minute packing I went to do my oral exam. My prof said that I improved a lot in my placement exam!! :) After a casual conversation with my prof, I returned back to my dorm to finish packing and give some of my extra food to my friend. We all hung out for a bit and then at 11am we had to leave our rooms to turn in our keys. After that we all hung out in the lounge area until one of the girls had to leave. She left the school at 11:45am to catch her flight. We waited until she left in order to go to lunch. After lunch we returned to the lounge and began watching Footloose, we also weighed all of our luggage and thank goodness none of it was over weight! We watched the movie until 1:45pm when I had to board my taxi with a few others to check in for our flight. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 4:00pm (it ended up being delayed until 4:10pm )we arrived 2 hours early and passed through security in less than 5 minutes. So we had 2 hours to kill in the Canadian departures wing (is that the only wing?) of the Greater Moncton International Airport. The area that we were in housed 4 gates and was quite small. After a while more participants of Explore showed up in the terminals so we all sat together and chatted until it was time for a few of us to board our flight to Ottawa.

Please enjoy by attempted pictures at the terminal and in the air :) Most of it is clouds, if you look really close you'll see land!!! :)

After about an hour and 30 minutes in the air, we had arrived in Ottawa! :) 

This is the waterfall that greeted us in Ottawa :)

This is where the 3 of us who were on the Moncton to Ottawa flight had to part ways. There were three of us on the flight, 2 of us were travelling back to home on the same flight and the third person was going to Regina. We waited  around until about 5:35pm to go to Tim Horton's because we were hungry, but at this point I had realized that we weren't sitting anywhere near our gate and our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:10pm. We quickly ran to our gate and heard them calling for passengers to board, so we didn't get Tim Horton's and left our friend to wait for her flight to Regina :(

We boarded the plane with empty stomachs and only the snacks I had in my backpack (6 maple cookies, 2 packages of M&Ms, a pack of smarties and a pack of Scooby snacks....) We were quite hungry halfway through the approximately 6 hour flight, so we ate my maple cookies and the M&Ms.

I watched an episode of new girl, listened to some music and watched Skyfall.

But before and after I did all of that I checked the map to see where we were. After watching New Girl and chatting with my friend who was sitting next to me (We were able to get seats next to each other for the long flight!), we saw that we were near Thunder Bay

excuse the bad photographs guys! :)

After hearing that we were preparing for landing we checked the map again and we were still just near Thunder bay..... The map was soooo trippy!

Anyways, after a long flight we were excited to be home. The things we were all most excited about was seeing our friends and family, sleeping in our own beds, having eggs for breakfast and cooking food without using the microwave! 

This was an awesome experience and I would recommend it to everyone who is interested, it doesn't matter how much french you know because I GUARANTEE you will get better! :) 

On a side note:

One thing that I definitely picked up during this experience is how to use a Canadian French keyboard, it is so hard to switch from the US keyboard to the Canadian French keyboard but it made life so much easier when I was doing homework to have the Canadian French keyboard

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#YOMO #ratchet #ghettomoncton 

After coming home, I realize how much I miss Moncton and how much I miss the friends that I made in Moncton. I had a blast and hopefully we'll all meet up to hang out soon! :)

Il est trempé jusqu'aux os.

Day 30- (le 29 juillet) The last MONDAY ever!

So July 29 was the last Monday ever in this program! It is quite bittersweet! Nothing much happened on Monday, I went to class and then went to the workshop (language and work). After the workshop, I went to the bookstore and then afterwards, I TOOK A NAP! (This time it was only 1.5 hours :( ) After the nap, I had dinner and then hung out with my friends. Overall it was a very chill day, not much happened.

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MAN VS MICROWAVE

For Lunch: Shepard's Pie with salad, some sort of tomato soup, chocolate milk and ONIONS! 

This was a very filling meal! It was also super good!

For Dinner: I FOUND ANOTHER INSTANT NOODLE IN MY LUGGAGE SO I HAD INSTANT NOODLES FOR DINNER! :) I WAS PRETTY EXCITED! But I didn't take a picture because I figured you probably already know what it looks like (go back to previous posts if you want to see, I made it the same way)

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Day 31- (le 30 juillet) le pays de la sagouine et la dune de Bouctouche

So like any other day, I got up to go to class, after class I went to the cafeteria for lunch and then rushed back to my dorm to change in order to be ready to go on our trip to le pays de la sagouine and la dune de Bouctouche. We had to be ready for the buses at 12:30 and I finished my test in class at 11:50... That did not give me a lot of time to eat or change. But I made it!

We boarded the buses to le pays de la sagoine, basically it is a little island that displays traditional Acadian culture. It was quite interesting but we didn't have a lot of time to explore and also since it was all in french and the people who work there have quite thick accents it was hard to understand. The views, however, were amazing. We take a little walk down to the little island and I took as many panoramic photos as I could! I will post them all here! Notice also the clouds in the sky because those will come in to play later on.

towards the island

notice the clouds?

towards the island

the island

the view from the island

the view from the "mainland"

After exploring le pays de la sagouine we boarded the buses and then went to la dune de Bouctouche. This is a beach that was very pretty that also had a board walk type thing that takes you along the beach. It was very cute and I really enjoyed it. We tanned in the sun for a little bit and then decided to go for a walk. Since we only had an hour at the beach we really had to move fast! While on the beach we could see the dark storm clouds, see the lightning and  hear the thunder. When it was time to go we quickly washed off the sand from the beach and packed our stuff and waited for the buses in the loading areas. 

the beach

HI EVERYONE!

Look at those clouds! If you look closely above the green grass you'll see what I mean by a "boardwalk"

la dune de Bouctouche

All of a sudden, it begins to rain, (no big deal, it rains here and at home all the time and I was prepared, I brought my rain jacket). BUT THEN, it began to pour, when it first started to drizzle I was already trying to pull my rain jacket from my backpack, I wasn't even halfway done opening my bag when I felt like someone just poured a bucket of water over my head. It rained so hard and so much and came at us sideways that even after I got my rain jacket on, I was soaked from head to toe and all my layers were soaked even my backpack was soaked. Rather than stand in the middle of nowhere, everyone took cover under the trees and then we were instructed to go back to the building. While waiting under the awning of the building we watched the rain continue to pour. About 10 minutes after it began pouring rain (by pouring I mean really pouring, nothing compared to back home. It was basically like standing in a shower with all your clothes on...) it stopped raining. It was as if it never rained, the only evidence that it had rained were the puddles and all of us looking like we just got hosed down.

Take a look at the video that I took while it was raining (try to take into account the amount of rain coming off the one story building with a not so steep roof...) Notice how wet everyone was....

After the rain stopped we boarded the bus and found that the bus was also soaking wet because the windows had been open. So not only were we all soaking wet, so were the seats that we were supposed to sit in for the next hour. On top of which all the windows were shut so inside the bus it was very humid. All the windows were fogged up and the rain started to pour as we were driving down the highway.

After we got back to the dorms, I took a nice warm shower and then found 2 leaks in my room :(

They are still in the midst of dealing with that now, hopefully it will be resolved soon!

Anyway, for dinner my friend and I decided to go to subway to get food :)

Only 3 more days! (bittersweet)

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MAN VS MICROWAVE

For Lunch: Lasagna with potato balls, cream of broccoli (DELICIOUS) and ice tea!  

For Dinner: (I cheated....) Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki!

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SEE Y'ALL SOON!!!! :)

(sorry for any spelling mistakes! the spell check isn't working!)

Le Dernière Fin de Semaine

Day 28 (le 27 juillet) - MAGIC MOUNTAIN

the blue and yellow slide is the Kamikaze

So on Saturday I got to sleep in because the activity of the day was in the afternoon. After sleeping in until about 10 in the morning I got ready for my day! We went to a water park called Magic Mountain, it was pretty fun, although I must admit it was not as good as the one I went to in Quebec but it was definitely fun! The only downside to the water park was that it was quite chilly because the sun wasn't out. When the sun came out for a little bit it got better. But near the end when we went back to change it began raining so we were glad we were dry and ready to board the bus. I had a bunch of favourite rides: the Kamikaze (I literally felt like I was going to fly off the slide! The near vertical drop was so scary I screamed and then I felt like I was going to fly off and just shut my mouth and hoped that I made it safe to the bottom!), the Turbo tunnel, the pro racer (you use a mat to go down and there is a drop where you feel like you are going to fly off the mat as well!), the tornado (it is similar to the Black hole but not as many drops, we tried to form a chain down the slide but we were unable to stop so we formed a little raft at the edge of the pool :) ) and lastly the lazy river was awesome! (its pretty self explanatory, its a river where you sit on a tube and just go for a tour, it was surprisingly fun! I don't have a good picture of it... At first I was expecting it to be like the Big Jim's river run, but it was not really like that...) All in all the trip was fun, it would have been more fun if there was sun but oh well.

the pro racer

Turbo Tunnel (purple and blue/green)

the blue slide the most left with the yellow and blue exit is the Tornado, you must go down with a tube

After the trip, the bus driver took us to the highest point in Moncton. Enjoy the video, the highest point in Moncton is not very high....

It's not a very good video of the highest point, but I tried. Here is another video that is close to the highest point and I think the view from this video is better (please don't mind the music playing in the background, the bus driver decided to blast music in the background)

After that we returned to the dorms and decided to have a girls night in, we watched The Internship and hung out in my friend's room until curfew :)

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MAN VS MICROWAVE

So I realize now that half the meals that I eat here are not microwave meals (oops I've been cheating!) BUT it was such a great name at the time for this "Segment". It is quite misleading but oh wells.

For lunch: (I USED THE MICROWAVE!)

For Snack at Magic Mountain: BEAVER TAILS! :) THE MOST AMAZING THING IN THE WORLD IT IS LIKE A DONUT ON STEROIDS!

MADE IT EXTRA LARGE JUST SO YOU CAN SEE IT BETTER! CAN YOU FEEL MY ENTHUSIASM FOR THIS DELICIOUS TREAT?

For Dinner: Chicken noodle soup, and chicken rice and celery from the slow cooker (with a bunch of cream of... soups)

DELISH!

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Day 29 (le 28 juillet) - Hanging out #YOMO (You Only Moncton Once)

So today, I went to church! It was an awesome service, we talked about Rahab. I think it was pretty cool that this church was doing the life stories of Christians from the Bible as their summer series, I think it would be a pretty awesome thing to do at our church also! Last week they talked about Joshua and the 4 Cs (Character, choice, courage and commendation), this week they talked about Rahab's blind faith, she could have told the spies she wanted to leave with them, instead she put all her faith in God that he would keep her and her family when the walls of Jericho came tumbling down, I think it is really important to learn from these Bible stories. For me I feel like sometimes I'm so focused on the New Testament and the story of Jesus that I forget about all the other people who have faithfully trusted in God. (Not that Jesus isn't important, HE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PUZZLE!) Often for me though I find that I know a lot about the things that Jesus has done and said but I don't really know how to put my whole faith in God and after reflecting on the story of Rahab I think that it really helped me visualize what putting my whole faith in God looks like (I think what I struggle with most is what putting my whole faith in God looks like.) Does that make sense? I wish I was here for longer so that I can continue with this church in their Life stories series it is very intriguing!

Anywho, after the church service I came back to the dorm and then we went out for lunch at Cafe Archibald! :) After Cafe Archibald we went to the mall, where nobody bought any clothes! All we bought was drinks from Tim Hortons & Starbucks and then we bought food and junk food from Walmart and Sobeys (kind of like save on foods). After that we went to surprise our friend because it was her birthday and she wasn't feeling well. We stayed in her room until dinner where we all went back to our rooms to make dinner then returned to her room to eat dinner and then went to our last group meeting as a part of the Explore program :'(

When we were on our way to the mall we decided to stop by the artisan village, it was pretty cool this is what the sign and the entrance looked like (we didn't want to take pictures inside the market to respect the artists)

Only 5 more days until I'm home (its quite bittersweet) :'(

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MAN VS MICROWAVE (or more accurately MAN VS TIGHT BUDGET)

For Lunch: Home made lemonade and a chicken fajita Crepe

For Dinner: INSTANT NOODLES! (I've been treating myself to instant noodles once every weekend, I know its bad but it reminds me of home!) At least there are vegetables?

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SEE YOU ALL SOON! <3