2nd last week of classes!

This past week has been a very surreal week as classes have started up once again, but many of my courses finished this week, so next week is just review for our exams. It seems very odd since I'm still a bit in holiday mode from our long Easter break, and it doesn't help that about half the students at my school are getting an extended holiday break thanks to Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Many of the students either went home or travelling over the break so when the volcano erupted flights were cancelled for about a week due to ash. Some of the students who were stranded in Europe managed to take over priced trains and/or buses back to Birmingham, but many waited to have their flights rebooked. On Sunday I found that many students have started to arrive back at University, but I know many more came on Monday and the rest will likely trickle back over the next few days.

Although many students weren't back we still had to do a group presentation last Thursday on Pointillism for my Optics and Medical Imaging lab. It was just a small 10-15 minute presentation with only 7ppt slides. Our presentation turned out pretty good (i think, we'll find out when we get our marks back), but I was very proud of our powerpoint slides as we had some pretty neat animations and the verbal presentation when fairly smoothly. Also after the presentation there were several questions, which we managed to answer fairly well, so I think we did well. My other labs last week had us just identifying several odd lens types (many of which we will never see again) and the other lab saw us practising our Retinoscopy and Jackson Cross Cylinder (JCC) refraction skill, since this week we will have an assessment on these techniques. The Retinoscopy and JCC went pretty well for me in the lab, so I think I'll do okay on the assessment.    

The weather had been awesome all week long as it had been mid teens and high teens over the weekend, so very much nice summery weather. Since it had been so warm I actually started to wear my shorts occasionally, and unlike some people I don't really like wearing shoes with shorts. My normal sandals are the sporty type with straps and Velcro, but unfortunately I forgot them in Canada, so I had to buy new ones, but since I had perfectly good ones at home I decided to just purchase a nice pair of flip-flops that I had found. The first day I put on the flip-flops I quickly remembered that I had never worn flip-flops before, but figured it should be a big deal. To my surprise it's a lot harder to walk in flip-flops then I had ever thought! I am trying to persevere, and so far I've worn them for about 5-6hrs/day for three days, and I'm starting to get the hang of it, but still no long walks into town with them, yet.

With the nice weather I have found myself spending at least a few hours a day hanging outside. One day earlier last week I had been walking around town and on my way back to campus I saw a sign for a Cadbury Crème Egg McFlurry from McDonalds. I had never seen or heard of anything like that before, but wasn't too surprised since there is Cadbury chocolate everywhere here. After I saw the sign though I knew I had to go try one, especially since it was a limited edition flavour.

Let me tell you that McFlurry was awesome with all the chocolate pieces and creamy caramel! It really hit a spot and I just hope that they have it next year too and keep it around until I head back for the summer.

My evenings have been a bit busy, as I have been able to watch all of the Ottawa Senators and Montreal Canadiens first round games. Aside from hockey, on Friday I went out to a little dinner party that one of my friends was throwing. It turned out to be a really fun evening and we ended up having a fantastic feast of Iranian food which was all so incredibly tasty. On Saturday they had a 24hr walk for cancer starting at noon where they walked around the lake/pond in the middle of campus to raise money for campus research. During this walk there were several musical acts performing, so I ended up spending most of my afternoon just listening to the music.

In the evening they ended up lighting a bunch of candles and putting them all around the walking trail, and many of us just sat out and supported those taking part. I was really surprised to see how many people were actually there watching at 11pm, but i think it was likely because the weather was so great.

Well now my fairly standard week which seems kind of boring when I actually write out down what I have done like this, but so hopefully next week will be a bit more entertaining. 

All for now, 

Jeff

*Word of the Week: What we call "pants" in North America, they call them "trousers" in the UK.