Week 6-7

Hello, hello! This week's update is going to involve a lot of politics at the end, so be prepared!

Tuesday 13 October

It was a slow day at work. Not many people came during lunch and it was generally very slow. I talked a lot with my coworkers and explained a bit about Dutch customs. We compared Canadian Christmas with Sinterklaas and they were really interested in the origin about it. 

Wednesday 14 October

Another slow day at work.

However, I did learn something about my pronunciation while Leah and I were walking towards the grocery store. I still have problems with the dress and trap vowels (I still cannot quite hear the difference). I keep saying meth instead of math and, uh, it makes Leah giggle every time. She does make sure to correct me every time and I have been catching myself occasionally too. Another vowel problem I have is the oo sound in cook. I still round it too much, but Leah has been giving me tips about it. 

Leah has told me, however, that my accent is almost completely American/Canadian by now, so I managed to filter most of the British out. 

Thursday 15 October

At the hospital it was busy as always. I managed to get a few words in with my colleagues about the flu. Sometimes workers at the hospital have to get flu shots during flu season and I'll probably fall just outside of that occurrence. I also explained to one of them how vaccination works since he hadn't picked it as a subject in high school. When I was done explaining, he said, "Oh. Well, now I finally get why people sometimes get sick after they have one... Wish I had known that sooner."

Friday 16 October 

It was a hectic day. I had to be everywhere since it was incredibly busy, so I had lots of time behind the till as well, taking orders and occasionally a little chat.

Saturday 17 October 

Okay. This is the day I did something incredibly dumb.

Ready?

I blocked my debit card...

I typed the wrong code 3 times. I feel like such an idiot. Especially because I figured out what code I was typing in. The freaking code of my debit card from 3 years ago. So yeah, go me.

I contacted my bank by now and I'm hoping it can be resolved while I am still hear, because I only have 30 dollars to spend for now and that's not really pretty.

Sigh...

Monday 19 October 

In the morning I went to Victoria to the Royal British Colombia Museum! It had a special exhibition about the Gold Rush in Canada and it was only there until October, so I was lucky to see it. They had lots of golden artifacts and a lot of gorgeous things.

There was also all kinds of exhibits with the animal and plant life in BC. They had made life-size dioramas and it was all just so pretty. 

They also had a little town built in the middle of the museum! It was really awesome! 

One of the floors had a big part about the First Nation people, the natives of Canada. They had bits of their languages and since they did not have writing systems, the current way in which the languages are written are phonetically. Of course, the almighty schwa was there too!

I have some pictures of the exhibitions. Leah promised to be the tourist and take pictures for me, but she forgot while we walked through the dioramas, so I do not have many pictures of those (or any at all). Anyway, once Leah puts those on her computer and sends them to me, you will see them appear here.

And this was also the day, that Canada went slightly mental. I mean, for as far as Canadians go.

It was election day. Now, you have to understand a couple of things about the Canadian Government and how it works.

They have a total of 338 seats to be given away during the elections. Every province has seats, with Quebec and Toronto having the most and the territories each have one.

Canada has 5 major parties of which 3 are the top shelf. Generally it's the conservatives (the extreme rights) versus the liberals (in NL still pretty right, but here in Canada they count for "middle"). The third bigger party is the NDP (the democrats and the ones on the left). The other two parties that get seats are the 
Bloc Québécois, which is a party from Quebec that wants to separate Quebec from the remainder of Canada, and the Green party, which is, you know, green.

The leader of the conservatives is Stephen Harper and no one really likes him anymore. The leader of the liberals is Justin Trudeau. The leader of the NDP is Thomas Mulcair. The leader of Bloc Québécois is Gilles Duceppe, but no one but the people from Quebec really care. The leader of the green party is Elizabeth May.

For the past four years, the conservatives (the baddies) have had a majority government. A majority government means that they had a 170 seats or more, meaning that whatever bill they want to pull through, got through. They ruined a lot of things for Canada and were basically trying to turn it into the US. 

The thing here in Canada is, is that while the votes are closed in the East of Canada, the West is still voting (because of the time difference). They have live reports on television, telling (while the west can still vote) what the current stats are for the election, meaning that a lot of people will be watching and thinking that oh, since that party is already winning anyway, there is no more use to vote. It's a sad reality.

Anyway, we were also watching one of those live counts, after all the votes were closed. Let me tell you, it got quite chaotic in the living room. The liberals were pretty much leading the entire time, the conservatives trying to catch up but not really managing. The NDP was really struggling though. Mulcair (leader of the NDP) had apparently had a conference in Quebec about the burka and while I do not know what exactly he said about it, it really didn't please the people of Quebec. The issue has been going on here for a while, whether they should be forbidden or not. Knowing that Mulcair was left, he probably said he wasn't going to forbid them.

Either way, it got really terrifying when the liberals hit a 160 seats, only 10 away from a majority. Since Harper had a majority before this, people were starting to panic as to what Trudeau was planning. He has some big plans about loaning money to get Canada out of the pits of the recession, but it could either go really well or it could go terribly wrong.

In the end, the votes were all out.

The liberals won with a stunning majority of 184 seats (51%). The conservatives had 99 (29%). The NDP had only 44 (13%). Bloc Québécois had 10 (3%). And the Green Party had only 1 seat (0%). 

However, all hope is not lost. Trudeau spent most of his campaign listening to the people and what they had to say, so he is probably the most likely to actually listen to the other parties and to the people of Canada.

I have a picture here with the seats of every province. BC, the province I'm in, has the only green seat. 

So, yeah, there we have it... Liberals won, which is better than Harper, but we'll see how it will play out with the majority government.