housemates and other people

Although my housemates and most of the students of Queen's are leaving this week, I want to publish some pictures of these guys.

First of all there is Will.
Will is one of my landlords, which basically means that he owns the house I'm living in. Actually he and Scott, who is on an exchange in France right now, bought the house and rent the rooms.
Will is a major in Economics and loves to work out in the PEC (Physical Education Center). Besides that Will loves cooking more than any other guy in the house and he makes crazy meals, like pork chops with grilled Asparagus or other things that need a lot of time to cook and he does it when he feels like it, no matter if it's a Tuesday or any other day of the week.
Some of you might think, 'well that's cool', but sometimes it's just a pain in the ass, because everybody makes his own meals in the house unless you planned it together. So just imagine you come home from work, you are hungry and the whole house smells like steak and other tasty stuff and you don't have anything in the fridge...
(In the picture on the right you can see Will and his girlfriend Jenn.)

Then there is David. I don't really have a lot of pictures of David yet, because he is rarely at home. David is an undergrad in Mechanical Engineering and last month he has spent more time in the library than at home. So I haven't really had time to get to know him fairly well, because he get up some time around noon and doesn't return from the library before 2 in the morning. David is originally from Ghana and he is the only guy that will stay in Kingston for at least the next few weeks.
He is a fun guy, though, and I'm glad I'm not all by myself in the house. In the picture on the right hand side you can see David with Beth, a friend of the house, at a barbecue we had last week end.


Then there is Julian. Julian is originally from Toronto and the roots of his family lie in Italy. He is a major in Mining Engineering and History, doing a dual degree. Besides that he started learning Italian a year ago and will go to Italy this summer. After two months in Venice he'll travel around in Europe to visit Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic.
Jules works at a beer store and knows a lot about beers and is really looking forward to visit the Hofbräuhaus in Munich and Prague and have some of the best beers in the world.
One day after my arrival Julian turned 21 and so we celebrated his birthday and I had my first party a little more than 24 hours after entering Canada... In one of the pictures you can see Jules and Ruth, a friend of the house.
Jules likes cooking as well, he is kind of a pancake junkie and loves to barbecue.


And last but not least there is Malcolm.
Malcolm is a major in civil engineering and the youngest guy in the house. He is definitely a fun guy and kind of a ladies man, but although partying a lot, he gets really good marks. Malcolm will be doing his internship next year and won't come back to Kingston until September 2008. He is a crazy recycling guy and just loves everything, that has less packaging or a really good energy efficiency, just like low energy light bulbs or hybrid cars and stuff like that.
He also likes cooking and sometimes just hydrates 2 kg of kidney beans to make a bathtub full of chilli con carne. As you can see in the pictures he likes to wear costumes and is really creative in making them.

Altogether I love these guys, they are awesome and even though I just lived with them for a month now, I had a whole lot of fun with them.

Just last night we had a fight night, which basically means that Julian and Malcolm got their costumes from last halloween and wanted to fight against each other. Since Julian went to a different party than the other guys they haven't had the chance to fight each other so they made it up last night. We also had a lot of fun barbecuing or just running around in Kingston, hitting the bars and clubs or eating poutine.

two-weeks-report

After arriving in Kingston Barbara and I took a look at the city, but although it is said to be one of the nicest cities in Canada, the weather just didn't make it look like that at all. Therefore we were not really doing much this week, but it was nice to just relax and do nothing. What we did though, was cooking. Canada is a lot more European than the US when it comes to groceries, so Barbara enjoyed to have 'real' bread again and to go just foodseeing instead of sightseeing. We also managed to take some pictures and I finally have some pictures of my new home.
Unfortunately Barbara had to go back to the US after what seemed to be just too short a week. A day after that it started snowing heavily and we got 15 cm of snow over night. This made even Canadians freak out. They assured me that this is actually not supposed to be the weather for April. Anyway, I did take some pictures of 'my' house in the snow. The crazy thing about this, two days later we had beautiful weather with 15 degrees Celsius and sun, and the weather has been like that for almost a week now. Finally spring has arrived in Kingston and I'm telling you it is really nice outside and if you walk around you'll see almost everybody barbecuing or just sitting on the porches or roofs and relax/study in the sun and enjoy the nice weather.
That's basically what we (my housemates and I) did last week, barbecuing almost every day and do some activities outside like playing football, soccer or throwing a frisbee. Unfortunately this is the last week of exams here at Queen's and almost all of my housemates are going to leave Kingston at the end of the week. Malcolm is already leaving tomorrow and Julian and Will will be gone by Friday or Saturday. Only David will stay some more weeks maybe even some more months but even with two guys the house will be like a deserted place. Nonetheless I don't think it will get boring over here, since I have enough things to do and there are still some guys in Kingston to have fun with.

On Friday last week Janine visited Kingston for a few hours. She was on holiday, traveling around in the States and Canada with friend of hers. Since her friend's sister lives in Ottawa and since Ottawa is only 180 km away from Kingston she just hopped on a bus and I picked her up at the bus station. Then we were just walking around in Kingston, went down to Lake Ontario, to University, had a coffee and a cone of icecream and then she had to head back to Ottawa. It was a really short stay, but it was really nice having her over here and talking to her. By this time I think she's in Germany again and I hope she'll send me the photos she took soon, so I can share them with you.

Besides that there hasn't happened a whole lot here in Kingston.
Worth mentioning might be the sudden death of my laptop, which just stopped working on a rainy day a week and a half ago. The thing that drove me crazy was that Windows as well as Linux just died, so I figured it had to be something with the hardware and it just turned out to be the case. Fortunately Ben, the husband of Sarah (Ph.D.-candidate in my group), is a computer administrator at Queen's so I just went to their house and we found a bad stick of RAM, causing the problems. Now my laptop works again even though a little slower, but I'll get a new stick of RAM sometime this or next week.

That's all that happened within the last weeks that's worth telling you. I uploaded some pictures of the week after easter and you can take a look at them if you want.
I hope you have a great week and hope this finds you in good spirit!
Cheers!

easter in kingston

some photos...

Finally I have some photos to show you...

toronto & niagara falls

Barbara flew in to Toronto on Good Friday and I picked her up at the airport. Saturday we walked around in the city to do some sightseeing, but since it was freezing cold we didn't take a whole lot of photos there. Anyway, the next day we drove to Niagara Falls and you'll see some pictures of a whole lot of water...
Now we are back in Kingston and I hope to be able to show you some pictures of Kingston and Queen's University some time next week.
Take care!

awesome...

Today I went to a concert at Queen's University.
The one and only Ben Folds was playing and I'm telling you, it was just awesome. I guess most of you guys don't know Ben Folds, but you should listen to some of his music, you might like it - although he's even better if you can experience him live on stage!!!