Ottawa Update #2 - Starting from the Bottom

I don't even know where to start. This has been a very crazy week. I arrived in Ottawa, found a place, moved in, signed up for classes, and now have an interview set up for tomorrow for a job I applied to this afternoon.

my new bed and the crap surrounding it

I am, however, still on the bottom rungs of just about everything. My bed is pathetic, but it's a bed. It's a very thin mattress, but that also made it much easier to carry on the bus from IKEA back to my place in Alta Vista. It's an hour long ride to begin with, add in the fact that on my return trip I hit rush hour traffic on the bus at 3:30pm. Not a pretty sight with me and my mattress and the rest of my bedding tucked in a bag. I also didn't make things any easier on myself by ignoring my own directions and taking a different bus. The problem was totally fixable, but it took me a while to realize where on earth the stop was that I needed to get back on track at the Transitway station I ended up at. I'm not sure which was worse, the bus with the bed or having to walk another 10 minutes trying to maintain speed while it was boiling hot out. At least it wasn't raining.

organized chaos

So, now I have a bed. And a home. Adjusting to that has been a bit weird though. I like my roommates, well, two of the three for sure, but it is odd having to adjust to living with so many people and act like this is my home, too. It's not helped by the fact that no one was home when I arrived, so I had to kind of figure certain things out on my own, and others have just left me confused. I thought Jess was buying a mini-fridge to help alleviate the clutter in the downstairs fridge. Her fridge is purchased and set up, but still the fridge is a nightmare of no space. This is making it difficult for me to want to purchase groceries as there will be nowhere to put anything that requires refrigeration.

the only things on my wall so far

Other than that, things seem to be going relatively well. I have signed up for the French course I wanted to take, which included a bit of a nightmare of an assessment test. I knew I'd have to endure something like that, but I didn't realize how awkward it would be. I could understand about 3/4 of what was said to me, but often could not respond or very, very awkwardly respond with the limited French I could remember off the top of my head. Unfortunately though, there were a few times where the 1/4 I didn't understand, was precisely the most important part of the question. As it turns out, very unsurprisingly, I will be starting at level 1 and trying to work my way up to level 5 or 6 (whichever will get me to pass the TFI with a 305 for admission to Glendon).

Now for the fun part, starting back at basically where I was before I left Victoria: sitting for hours on end writing cover letters and submitting resumes in hopes of finding a job. I do not relish the thought of this; nor of the very real possibility that I will have to work for Subway again. Food services and retail are high on my list of options right now as anything truly worthwhile here, including becoming a library clerk, requires some bilingualism, which I have clearly proven I do not have. However, it seems today that hanging out at the library was not the place for me to spend my time. I received two phone calls while there, one after I'd turned off my phone. It seems that because my phone was off when I got the call, I get only the voicemail left and not the phone number that actually called. It made for a bit of a puzzle just now because I also did not recognize the name of the store it was from. I applied for two positions on the Indigo website, one for Smith Books and the other for an unnamed store at 128 Bank St. It was only after I Googled the name of the store left in the message that I put two and two together. I found the number and called back and I now have an interview set up for tomorrow afternoon at The Prospero Bookstore in downtown Ottawa. So much for proximity, but it is certainly a much better prospect than Subway.