Brace yourself, the winter is coming!

I had to take four three-hour exams in ten days. Three of them were from economics and one from Spanish. At the end of the semester, I also had to submit a lot of essays and assignments so I spent most of the days in the library behind a huge stack of books. One day, when I finally left the library, I was pleasantly surprised by 20 centimetres of snow everywhere. During exams, I didn’t get to enjoy the snow very much but on the day of my departure, east Canada was hit by a fierce snowstorm and so my flight was delayed by 24 hours.

Like in September, the second semester in Canada started two weeks ahead of English universities. Instead of New Year’s celebrations, I was packing my suitcase and I had the traditional New Year’s lunch somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean during my flight to Calgary. The first day of school was very special because Kelowna was hit by a snowstorm (first time in the past 40 years) and therefore afternoon classes were cancelled as neither teachers nor students could get to school through up to half a meter of snow, which fell down during just one day.

Even though I live in Kelowna almost half a year now, the weather still surprises me. While the temperature in the summer was hitting 40°C, at the beginning of January it was below -20°C. A thick layer of snow suddenly covers sandy beaches and tourists are renting ice skates instead of romantic boats. In January, I visited a ski resort called Big White, which is situated just outside of Kelowna. I was impressed by its size and the quality of service provided. Even though I do like Czech mountains, Canadian Rocky Mountains are definitely more formidable.

In this semester, I again chose four economic subjects and one Spanish course. The most interesting one is definitely microeconomics, where we look at monopoly and the models to analyse differentiation of products such as the Hoteling’s model of linear city. Another very interesting subject is International Finance. We study there the influence of interest rate and other factors on the exchange rate.

As part of my extracurricular activities, I continue to play volleyball and I also became a member of a student committee that oversees the Standard of Appeals in university accommodation. This committee revises breaches of resident contract that might lead to its cancellation.

Canadian winter is indeed beautiful but I must now concentrate on my midterm exams, choose courses for my final year in York and “ace” the finals again.