Super University Trip

Itinerary

06:55. Leave school.
10:00. Arrive in city of Waterloo.
       Choice of Tour Waterloo or Laurier University.
13:00. Leave city of Waterloo.
13:40. Arrive in city of Guelph.
       Tour of Guelph University.
15:00. Leave city of Guelph.
17:00. Arrive at school.

My alarm started blaring at five thirty-two in the morning. The sun had not yet cast its rays upon the still black sky. I pressed the snooze button. Remembering my purpose, I rose from the bed with strong intent. I had a shower the night before, and so I radiated of a subtle cleanliness. My hair, having dried in bed, took upon itself to curl in various places and irritate me throughout the day. I gathered a clean sweater and a probably-clean pair of jeans from the mountain on my floor.

I hobbled out to the kitchen, shaking off my stupor, and stood in the middle for some time and decided to make lunch before breakfast. I quickly made myself a lopsided sandwich of cold cuts and whole wheat bread, and no butter. For breakfast, I mixed cottage cheese and sliced up a banana in a bowl. I got the idea from chancel.

Driving to school, the windows were fogged up most of the way. I came to the empty school parking lot and put the car near the back of the school. All the doors except the front were locked at this hour. Too bad, so sad. I ran around to the front in an effort to get my blood running.

In the building, I went to Mr. I's room and slipped my one-day-late biology assignment under his door, then went upstairs to Ms. C's room and taped a note on her door stating I would be gone. The lights were off upstairs and when I flicked on my keychain light, all the lights snapped on themselves. It was the janitor at the end of the hallway.

I came down to the cafeteria to wait for the bus to arrive, and greeted my friends E and V. The bus was about five minutes late, and at six fifty we quickly left with its arrival.

The windows of the bus had an archaic mechanism for opening and closing. My window and the one E and V shared would not stay shut. Behind our backs the windows consistently wanted to open to the one centimetre mark. The bus was hardly half full, with many empty seats.

We took highway 401 westward from school, and spent two hours on the road. During the trip, the three of us conversed, and napped sporadically. If you live in Toronto, every city is adjacent to the next and you never see typical highway stretches unless you go really far out. Today was one of those days, which reminded me of my trip to Cleveland.

Twenty minutes before our arrival, the teacher, Ms. Co, stood up and alerted us that we could vist Wilfrid Laurier University or Waterloo University, but not both. I chose Laurier for its music program, E. chose it for history, and V. chose it for the humanities and social sciences. So that worked out for us.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier University has a relatively small campus, with a strong community environment. It is down the street from Waterloo University, which is convenient. We were greeted by two tour guides who attended WLU. They gave our group a fitting tour of the place, and at lunch they seamlessly blended in to the pedestrian mass of students in the lunch area. E, V, and I ate our lunch and left, and headed for the strip mall between the two universities, wherever that was. Supposedly the bus was parked there.

Over the hill, the strip mall revealed itself, inconveniently right beside Waterloo. That's not very fair to us, is it? We walked at least a kilometre. What really annoyed us was the bus; it wasn't there. Two school buses passed, and many other regional buses in the span of almost an hour before our bus came. Boarding the bus, we headed on a forty minute trip to Guelph University.

Guelph is out in the middle of nowhere somewhere in central ontario, surrounded by vast stretches of farmland. The campus of Guelph University is midsized. Bigger than Laurier, yet smaller than U of T. Because of the bus driver, we were almost an hour late for our tour, and the tourguides had become impatient, and rushed us to get the tour finished by three. It was just as well, as I had grown tired and unattentive to the things around me. The cloudy weather of the day had produced a low-pressure headache in me, and I was extremely hungry, in the cursed way that human males often find themselves. In our tour group, K asked a legitimate question and the guide insulted him with a pompous slap-in-the-face.

K: Is this a party type school? Because I'm a really social type.
G: I don't know. I'm not really into that sort of thing because I have higher goals in life, and so I am devoted to my studies.

He carried on about this on the bus, to my amusement. Maybe it's because I don't get out enough. On this bus ride home, I had many sporadic naps while ignoring the state of my pounding head. When we finally arrived at school and stepped off the bus, I walked to the parking lot, got in my car, closed the door, and screamed.