Tag Archives: Weather

British University vs Canadian ‘School’

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14324411_10210698710769059_8881947420531825965_oWhy hello again you fabulous readers! So, I’ve almost been in Canada for 8 weeks now, and miraculously I’m surviving just fine, actually, I’m still having the best time ever! A lot has happened in the past few weeks; had a great weekend in Banff (read my other blog about it here), a spectacular Thanksgiving meal, and everyone is getting super excited about the upcoming four day Halloween weekend, they take it very seriously over here! Continue reading

Katie makes friends at Frosh Week

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That’s what they call it here: Freshers are called “Froshmen”. How weird. They also don’t say “half past” the hour, at all, they don’t know what it means.  Language barriers are more common than I initially thought they would be, but fortunately, these encounters come across in more of a cute way than a communicatively obstructive way. For example, a girl laughed at me today in the lift (sorry – elevator) when I asked where she’d bought her “chips” from. I should know by now that they call the deep fried potatoes “fries” by now. Yesterday I saw a sign that said “Please put your trash in the garbage” – how Canadian!! Also they don’t know what “jumpers” are. Continue reading

Oh I do love to be beside the seaside…

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It can’t be denied that one of the best things about living in Spain is the weather. Whilst in my first couple of days in Granada in February the shroud of grey sky threatened scattered showers of rain and the peaks of the Sierra Nevada were coated in a thick layer of snow, a few weeks later things had really begun to heat up. Primavera, por fin! By the beginning of March it was definitely time for a beach trip. Continue reading

A Rain-Softened Brit: Coping With The Cold In Calgary

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My friends and family back home just love asking me what the temperature is.  It’s pretty much always the first thing we talk about when I appear on Skype. The English have a fascination with the weather which is certainly not just a false stereotype. That’s why Calgary is so enthralling for us Brits. Its unpredictability and pretty unforgiving winter weather makes England’s look vanilla in comparison.  The phrase ‘it’s a bit nippy out’ doesn’t quite cut it when you sometimes have to walk to class in painful wind chills of around -20°C. It feels like a slap to the face. I think the coldest temperature I’ve experienced so far, was around -40°C. I think I hibernated that weekend. And the first time I saw millions of tiny ice particles glistening in the air, one bright and frosty morning, I thought I was dreaming.

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An unexpected snowfall, a visit to a Roman city and a sad farewell in Jordan

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snow 1So, unexpectedly to me (a girl who lives in London: the land of “fear of potential snow”, and goes in university in Durham where snow is half expected and wholly unwanted), snow came to Amman this year. As you may have seen on the news snowstorm ‘Huda’ swept over the Middle East recently bringing even the capital to a standstill. School was closed, the roads were the closed- essentially everything was closed. Unfortunately we didn’t have central heating in our apartment so we spent three days in bed with a gas heater pointed at us whilst we struggled to make the Wifi cooperate. I have never been so eager for my teacher to call and tell me I could come into class!

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January Sun

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I’ve come to realise that my mood is drastically effected by the absence of sunshine. As a result, I’ll probably become one of those tanned but wrinkly pensioners who retire in Florida, wear visors and play bridge. I really miss the sun during winter and January is especially hard. Amazingly, this weekend was gloriously sunny and surprisingly warm (19 degrees!) so I caught a bus to Seville to make the most of the weather. I’ve been to Seville a few times now so for this visit I decided to hop across the river to Triana.

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