International Students Association

Report on get-together with colleagues from Nova Scotia Agriculutral College, Sept.21,1991

The sun dominated the skies by 9:30 on this lovely Saturday morning. I heaveda sigh of relief. ‘‘We are going to have a beautiful sunny day afterall’’. A lot of time and effort had gone into hosting the twenty-eight international students we were expecting later in the day. We did not want our efforts thwarted by rain.. Judging by th weather on the 2 previous days, another rainy day was concievable. Thank God, the sun was bright this morning suggesting all would be well!

The day began with a car wash before at Wendy’s Restaurant on Grafton Street. We started the wash before the restaurant opened for business. We, there- fore, had to wash the cars of some of our members to attract othercars. Thanks to the artistic skills of Jane Beedle, we has signs notifying passerby drivers of our presence and offer. The management of Wendy’s advertised the car wash for us on their board. We really appreciated that! After about halfan hour of washing no ‘‘out-of-association’’ cars, we decided to adobta rather agressive marketing strategy. Some members stood by the roadside to shout and yell (which ever you prefer) to attract attention. I wonder how Jana Lifang Tan today. She yelled so loudly and for so long I thought she’d lose her voice. I was surprised when I relised on Monday morning that she could still talk.

Other members present were doing a good jobat washing thcars. Atabout 11:00, we received acall from the university telling us about the arrival of our sts. We invited them to join us at Wendy’s.....and they did. They were allso neatly dressed that we could not help but forbid them from joining the car ash. Just when the fun was beginning to peak, God ian opened the windows of heaven...Rain!! We had give up the car wash. Meanwhile our guests had f to drive around the city. We met them again at 30 at the Confederation Centre.

¢ toured downtown Charlottetown on foot, all

irty or so people. Can you imagine that? The rain

jad stopped then, The personnel at the Conferation Centre of the Arts were kind enough to show us

it P : nd the building. Fortunately, there was no offi- ial rogress so we had the whole place to

September 26, 1991

ourselfes.

After taking all kinds of pictures around the centre, we proceeded to Province House. We were shown a slide prresentationh of the history of Canada and the relevance of Province House in that context. The show lasted only 15 minutes.

Our guide then took us around the houise and showed us around the various rooms. She was patient enoughto answer all the questions that were posed to her. She did a really good job. All members of the group that I spoke to after the tour of the House were improved both by her performance and the signifi- cance of small PEI in Canadian history.

Our next ‘stop’ was the Arts Gallery. By this time, people were getting tired so we decided to restrict the length of our stay to less that 30 minutes. I took a bunch of our guests to the Confederation Court Mall to show them around. I must say they were not......I’ ll keep their opinion to myself. At about 3:40, we left the Art Gallery and headed forthe university. We stopped at the Tourist Bureau to pick up tourist information kits. By the time we got to the university, it was raining agian so we put off our tour of the campus and began prparing supper- BBQ in the rain, No, not in the rain.

We had the use of MAPUS lounge in Bernadine Hall for our evening activities. The BBQ was to have started at 4:30 but due to ‘‘ Operational Difficulties’’ particularly with starting the fire, it was delayed for 30 minutes. Derek and Tanya, with the help of Raymond had all the necessary items in place. Once the fire got going, we knew we were in for a real treat. Supper was good, VERY GOOD; that is what our guests told me. We had a nice time eating, play- ing games from various countries, making friends, listening to foriegn music and some just danced away. Our guests had originally planned to leave UPEI at about 6:00 but they decided during supper that it was worth spending some extra time. They were having too much fun. Their only concern was with catching the last ferry from Wood Islands. After cheching with the appropriate iffice, we realized that they could stay until 8:00. They helped clean up, put things in their right places and went back to playing games and dancing,

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