So, the past few days have been… crazy. I was feeling really overwhelmed when I first arrived, then I went and walked around Ottawa in the light of day without the entirety of my belongings in tow and it wasn’t so daunting anymore. The city centre is not that big, although there are a lot of people… everywhere. Ottawa is busy. It has amalgamated several former towns into Ottawa suburbs, plus all the people living in Gatineau and Hull that cross the river every day.
I am finding the weather to be more confusing here than in Victoria. It is cloudy but extremely warm on one day. Then rain, lots of it, for the next two days. Yet still mostly warm and now the sun has reappeared with a vengeance now that I finally have proper shoes for the downpour and even bought an umbrella. It figures. Oh well, at least I am prepared now.
I’ve been doing things in bite-sized steps because otherwise I truly will have a meltdown and not get anything done. On day one, I went to Ottawa University in hopes of finding a posting board with people looking for roommates. I wandered around there for at least an hour, maybe two, with little luck. I came away with two phone numbers, one of which sounded very unlikely to satisfy. I also figured out how to go about changing my phone number and did just that.
I also intended to try to properly orient myself within Ottawa, downtown Ottawa at least, and took a walk. I ended up venturing all the way into Quebec, which really isn’t that hard to do. It amuses me greatly that one can cross any number of bridges and be in the next province. Promptly after my arrival on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River, I was given the opportunity to prove just how poor my French is. There was a group of girls walking ahead of me and I stopped to sit down for a bit, they came over and started speaking to me in French and, without meaning to, I looked back at them in utter confusion. Thankfully, they switched to (fractured) English and asked me whether I’d seen someone texting on a phone because apparently one of them had lost their phone and someone had picked it up and tried to notify the girl through her friends. It just made me feel like I had to stop lingering on the French side of things as I’m clearly out of place in Quebec at the moment.
To whoever questioned why I would move to Ottawa in order to learn French (and I know there were a few) must not have spent much time here. Honestly, there is French everywhere and it seems like with a lot of jobs, if you don’t speak French, you won’t get the job. Besides, Quebec is literally a walk away for when I want to practice.
It was also on my first day here that I found an ad on Craigslist for a room in a house with three other girls. Normally I’m quite wary of all things related to Craigslist, but this sounded like exactly what I was looking for and the ad had only been posted that afternoon while I was wandering back and forth between Ontario and Quebec. I answered the ad and over the past few days have had contact with one of the girls to set up a time to meet and see the house. I did a dry run to get out to the area yesterday because I know my tendency to get lost, and also my tendency to get extremely anxious when I don’t know where I’m going and have an appointment to keep. I set a time to meet the girls for this morning… and realized after setting out the time that I did not have the exact address, only the area. I got the address emailed to me at 10:30 this morning; I was supposed to meet the girls at 11:00am and it takes twenty minutes on the bus to get out to Alta Vista from my hostel. Well, thankfully for my wandering around yesterday, because I knew where the library was located and with my new library card I was able to check my email and acquire the address. The directions were to head toward Heron Gate Mall because the house is directly across from there. I had walked there yesterday as well and knew it was no more than a 10-15 minute walk and, therefore, knew exactly where I was going this morning. I met the girls and saw the house. It’s small, but nice; and getting my own room again after two weeks of shared accommodation is going to be absolutely wonderful… even if I don’t have a bed or blankets or even a pillow. And just to prove how much this is providence and God’s hand at work: precisely when my time at the hostel will be maxed out and I will need to find somewhere else to stay is when I get to move in to my new home! There is some room shuffling happening over the weekend and come Monday I will be residing in greater Ottawa officially, and not just as a guest.
After getting my phone number changed and initiating contact with Jess, one of the future roommates, I spent my second morning in Ottawa getting a library card and getting my resume, without a proper address, to two temp agencies: Man Power (who thanks my aunt and uncle for telling me they exist) and Kelly Services. I am not entirely surprised by what happened at Kelly’s: if I don’t speak French, it’s unlikely I will get a job through them because the federal government tends to require bilingualism. However, it is a step. Now that I will have an address, finding a job will be much easier to do as well.
Now for the fun stuff: My plans last night had been to shower and read then go to bed early because I have been exhausted these past few days. A fellow staying at the hostel, Akshay, started trying to chat with me last night. When I told him I was trying to settle in Ottawa, he asked me if I’d care to join him and his friends who live in Ottawa. Of course, I said yes. I may have been tired, but I know I need to meet people here so I can’t afford to turn down an opportunity like that. Having done so, I felt a bit like Jim Carrey’s “Yes Man”: you never know what may happen.
We ended up doing a tour of downtown Ottawa mini-pub crawl, but the weather was horrendous so we chose to initially bide our time at the hostel bar Mugshots. I got to meet Akshay’s friends Julianne and Sean. Initially, I felt a little weird because they hadn’t seen each other in a while and so they were trying to get caught up with a stranger in tow. In the end though, I ended up having a good chat with them both and with a few other friends of theirs who showed up a bit later. Sarah will laugh at me for this, but I ended up having a bit of a conversation about Dostoevsky with one of them, but there was a reason for it. I am not just obsessed. Jennalee had said to her boyfriend Fraser something about him only liking books that have unhappy endings; I couldn’t help but ask if he liked to read Dostoevsky in response to something like that. Considering I had started the evening out as a stranger, I was a bit surprised when Julianne said she wanted me to bond with her friend Amanda that night. We didn’t talk much, but I look forward to speaking with her again and seeing more of her artwork after hearing Akshay rave about how great a painter she is; and from what I’ve seen so far, I have to agree. I could certainly learn a thing or two from her. Julianne has also decided she will take me for my first poutine after she returns from Belgium in a couple of weeks.
So, indeed this has been quite the whirlwind three days. I can’t believe it’s only been three days since I arrived in Ottawa! And already I have a house to call home soon and well on my way to making friends. This just proves that I was meant to be here and not in Victoria at this time. As with when I was in Spain, if I could transport you all here with me, it would be simply perfect. As it is, I am glad Sarah was correct in calling me gregarious; I will be just fine making new friends because of that fact.
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