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So What's My Story?

After 3 years of being a poor social worker (the work I loved, the pay I didn't), I decided it was time to go back to school and get my Master's! After weighing my options (school far away from home, or school in a different country that is only an 8-hour drive from home) I decided to try my luck in British Columbia, Canada.

For a year I lived in Surrey, BC while attending Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. However, as the final component of my work toward my Masters degree in Criminology I have moved back to the states to complete an internship at an Independent Living Program for youth leaving the foster care system.

Here is the story of my adventures as a graduate student in a "foreign" country as well as my current work back in the states.

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Thursday, April 9, 2009

Holidays


It's been a bit of an adjustment getting use to holidays up here in BC... very few of them are scheduled the same time as those back home, and some that we have at home just don't exist in BC. I have been forced to take a four day weekend this week for Easter. The good people of BC observe Good Friday and "Easter Monday"... I say I'm forced because I actually did have stuff I needed to do tomorrow, and, as Canadians are less consumeristic than Americans, practically EVERYTHING is closed on government holidays... including grocery stores apparently. I knew about Easter Monday, but I was unaware that Good Friday is a government holiday up here, so I'm just hoping our grocery store is open sometime before Easter 'cause I'm cooking my first turkey and I need to buy stuff for it!

Here are some other government holidays I've had to figure out ...

Victoria Day... celebrated May 18th this year
Canada Day... July 1st
BC Day... August 3rd this year
Thanksgiving... MONDAY, OCTOBER 12th (BEFORE HALLOWEEN... NOT RIGHT!)

The Canadians have the same Christmas, New Years, Halloween, Easter... and they have equivalents to our Labor Day, Veterans Day... though no Memorial Day, and because Thanksgiving is more than a month earlier in BC, my mom had to reschedule our Thanksgiving for me since I HAD CLASS on that day! lol They also don't celebrate their independence on July 4th as we do, but they have plenty of fireworks on their other "days" (Victoria, Canada and BC)
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1 comment:

  1. catesterApril 10, 2009 at 12:21 PM

    Thanksgiving completely freaked my out the first year or two I was in Canada. What the heck is Thanksgiving doing in October?!? Here's an old blogpost about it: http://ftoc.blogspot.com/search?q=thanksgiving

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