Her Campus McGill is featuring a new blog by “The Exchange Student.” Check out her first impressions of McGill and Montreal here.
As an exchange student, I get the opportunity to try new things and travel more often than normal. I get to meet incredible examples of the human race as well as lost members of Hades. While for the most part, exchange students are like any other full-time student, there are a few characteristics that make us stand out. For example, we are usually more lively, outgoing and energetic. Why? Well, because we are only here for a semester or a year. In other words, our time is limited. We have to travel, party and socialize as much as possible in a small time frame. Frosh? Hype Week? Carnival? All amazing, I’m sure, but you should have seen the sh** that goes down with the exchange students at, for example, Rep Your Flag. To be fair, as students go we probably don’t drink a huge amount, but then I don’t consider the thing Montrealers do as drinking. More like chugging.
With that in mind, imagine a ski trip full of exchange (and a few international) students. Did you picture us running towards the mountain like those Spartans in 300 going off to war? You got that right. Actually, I think even a comparison woth the movie doesn’t do justice to the energy and the speed at which we went to grab our skis. Also, there would be no comparisons for our facial expressions, especially those displayed by the students from really warm countries. I, for one, had never seen so much snow, either on the ground or falling from the cottoned sky. If any of you were there, you would have seen me and asked yourself, “who’s that madwoman standing in everybody’s way, looking up with her mouth open?” The main course of the trip started once I woke up from my trance. I didn’t fall as much as I thought I would, but when I did, it was pretty amazing. Not to say epic, just that it’s too bad my falls weren’t caught on film – I’d have liked to become an Internet sensation on YouTube.
Never get between a snow-starved exchange student and her first Montreal ski trip.
However, the best part of the trip was neither the falls nor the skiing itself. It was the people I spent it with. This trip wouldn’t have been the same without them. They bring out my best and my craziest side. They are people I can rely on, and even though I haven’t spent a long time with them, I know that our friendships are more than passing. We went partying, and one person turned out to be an amazing limbo dancer, another had some crazy moves…I also walked from the hot tub to the lodge without any pants because I lost a bet (but with a swimsuit, let’s just make that clear). We played different drinking games until we couldn’t remember anything, we shared stories, crushes, anecdotes, and now we’re planning on going to Igloofest together.
Between you and me, I think something more than friendship developed between some of the people I met on that trip, so things might get more interesting soon. Hey, maybe someone’s even interested in me and I can’t see it because I’m too busy being cheeky about the big picture of other possible romance around me. Who knows what the coming weeks of my exchange will bring? With this, I say goodbye until next week.
P.S. A huge shoutout to the the McGill International Student Network for making this ski trip possible, especially to our hardworking execs for putting up with all our craziness.