Day 11 - St. Francis Xavier, Cape Breton

Hello friends, today we visited two of the smaller Engineering schools in the country, combined with the worst weather on my trip thus far. It's been a different day than any of the others on my trip, but I guess it's all a part of the experience.

We woke up and got out of the house by 9 am today, and Anthony had to go take care of a few things so we only properly hit the road at about noon. It was pouring rain the entire time, and that meant 3 things: low visibility, unsafe driving condition, and terrible drivers. Rough start to the day, but we made it through. We drove from Halifax to a town called Antigonish, where we went to visit St. Francis Xavier University (StFX). When we got there, the rain was pouring hard and the wind was relentless, so in an attempt to get to warm place, I completely forgot to film myself tapping my ring on their sign, making this the only school on my trip that I haven't been able to do this on. I plan on stopping by Antigonish again on our way back to Ontario to make sure that I do it. Anyways, the school itself had a very vintage feel to it, but also had the architecture that I would best describe as "Aristocratic" with many columns surrounding their entrances and a very fancy-feel to everything. One main difference I suppose between this school and many others would be that while the buildings on the outside had a classic/old-timey feel to them, they looked completely brand new and modern on the inside, which was pretty cool. Fun fact: the name of their school teams are the X-Men and X-Women.

We then drove down to a small town named Baddeck because it was suggested to us by a friend, but I guess it was a bad time of the year to go because there wasn't too much to see. We did learn though that it was the birthplace of Canadian aviation. We continue our drive through the rain and made our way to Sydney, NS to go visit Cape Breton University. A very cool thing we learned about that school is it's appreciation for multiculturalism and heritage. They had historical murals all over the place, and a variety of flags from nations across the world hanging around their buildings. They even had a wall that says "Welcome" in the world's most common languages surrounded by flags, which was pretty cool. One common theme of the smaller schools in Nova Scotia is that they have ridiculously small Engineering departments (and hence not much Engineering space), and they are all really into sports, which was a fascinating change from the larger schools known for their STEM programs.

Despite the day being rough in terms of driving conditions, and the fact that I forget to tap my ring at StFX, it's been an overall good day, and now we wait to board the ferry over to Port Aux Basque. By tomorrow morning, we'll be in Newfoundland!

 StFX + Cape Breton: www.instagram.com/p/BiniuGfl9M3

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