This record was written for report of NKFUST, and I was trying to remember

everyday’s experiences in Canada.

照片記錄

抵達 Edmonton 機場 絕對不會迷路的城市(東西向為 Avenue, 南

北向為 Street)

街景 街景, 白天氣溫兩度

找尋出租公寓
WEM, 世界最大的 Shopping Mall 中午 12 點的太陽, 太陽永遠都是斜角

從 ELC 11 樓看下去 大樓多在市中心, 其他地區的房子大多是小

木屋
First week (11/07~11/14) Temperature 3~-5℃
After totally 13 hours flights and connecting time, I arrived at Edmonton, the
festival city, and began a whole new life in Canada. Frankly speaking, I felt
exciting and also nervous. After couple of days, I found that people in this city
are very friendly, I did everything very smoothly. In this week, I completed
following things:

1. apply for a bank account;

2. apply for Student ID;
3. register courses;
4. search for living places (one- or two-bedroom apartment);
5. apply for personal cheque;
6. rent a nice one-bedroom apartment and deal with a rental contract;
7. and, shop things and grocery for living.

Everything was fresh to me and I tried to enrich my experience by doing

abovementioned things by myself. Each one had a story and became my
unique experience. I was a lucky guy because many people helped me.
Especially Dr. Maiga Chang took care of everything that I need in Canada, and
gave me a lot of advices and assistances. To sum up, I had a quite busy
however fascinating first week.
Second week (11/15~11/21) Temperature 3~-5℃

The most important task in this week was renting an apartment. After
searching and visiting five places, we found a beautiful one-bedroom
apartment which is near the intersection of 110 Street and 108 Avenue. For
me, it’s able to walk to ELC (at the intersection of 109 St. and 101 Ave.) and
also convenient to go to several supermarkets. Because the two-bedroom
apartment was too expensive and too large to us (two people), it was around
CAD 850 to 1000, I thought that we could make the living room be one
bedroom. In addition, the space of the one-bedroom apartment was big enough
to 2~3 persons to live.

The apartment locates at a quiet and safe place, the rental is $663/per month.
The price is for one year lease, so it actually has two free months. In other
words, it means the original price is $795/month for twelve months, however,
due to there are two free months we need only to pay $663/month, that is (795
* 10 months)/12 months. The price is a good deal because the apartment
locates at a convenient place and has a very nice environment. We are going to
move in on Nov. 25, and then Dr. Maiga Chang may feel relieved and go
abroad.

In this week, we also start our first research meeting about the project and my
master research topic. Both of my research topic and the project follows Dr.
Chang’s proposal in iCore project: Story-based Context-awareness Role Playing
Learning Activity Generation. Because he had done a lot of researches in
knowledge map, ubiquitous learning, educational game, game-base learning
and so on, he has explained the details to me very clearly.

To sum up, what I need to do now is reading academic journal and conference
papers and studying necessary programming technologies and skills. Just like
the new environment I have faced in these couple of weeks, I also have many
new challenges in the research domain, but they are interesting and
fascinating. So far everything is good. I do believe that I can overcome these
new challenges very soon.
 Kingsway Mall, 內含三家百貨
Zellers, The Bay, Sears, 以及眾多店
家

Dr. Chang’s
home

City Centre Mall, 從

ELC
Oliver Square, 有 Safeway 超
市 , 銀行 , 加油站 , 店家組成的一 走路約十分鐘
個方形區域

Save-on-Food 超市 , 從 ELC 走
ELC,
回家路上 , 常有東西特價 .
workplace.

At ELC
At iCore research room

Furniture and stuff for living

Third week (11/22~11/28) Temperature 5~-10℃

This weekend I saw the first snow here, it’s really impressive and beautiful. But
the cleanly white snows were just kept for a while. After cars drove through it
and people stepped on it, the snows became dirty and slippery.

Our big task in this week was moving in the new apartment. Before I moved in,
I needed to contact with power company and internet service provider. The
former one was to put the address on my name, and then I will receive the bill
every month.

Internet services in Canada are really expensive, now I realize that we have a
very fast and cheap internet environment in Taiwan. I have applied the high
speed internet service via cable (7.5M/512kb) and it will charge me $35/per
month.

Everything is well-prepared and we move in on Nov. 25. The apartment has a

brand new kitchen and bathroom, by the way, in Canada, people use washroom
rather than restroom in American and toilet in Europe. The bedroom and living
room are of course empty and need us to fill it up. The good news is that we
have purchased a lot of furniture and stuff for living, so I show some pictures
and share this nice place following:

Living room is my bedroom

 Another empty bedroom (I forgot to turn on
the light)

Kitchen

There are two storage rooms The brand new bathroom