How | Spent My Winter Vacation Travis Paterson, OP Features Editor For the general population, family obligations precede everything during the Christmas holiday, and for parents, the chance to escape the Canadian winter is a sure bet, even at the cost of paying for the whole family. I recently spoke to a cross section of students to find out a little more about where they went over the holidays. Home for the Holidays We're a college, not a university, and few of us will fly back east to be with our family for Christmas. But there are a few of those DC students who made the return trek home to spend the holidays with family in small-town B.C. “I guess. a 16-hour bus ride is not the most ideal way to start a vacation, but it’s nice to get away from it all once you’re there,” said Ryan Wettlaufer, 24, of Terrace, taking general studies in his first year at the New Westminster campus. “There are some pros about spending the holiday in a small town,” said Ryan, “Not only are you free from school’s responsibilities, but you have to think hard to realize, just what the heck did I do before I left town?” In the end, Ryan said he ended up “skiing a lot, eating like a pig, or sleeping like a cat.” A Week in Mexico Sponsored by mom and dad, some of us are able to enjoy the endless freedoms that come with the family trip on an all-inclusive package to a popular Mexican resort. “I only partied really hard a couple of nights. I felt I owed it to parents to at least have a few breakfasts with them without my eyes glazing shut with tequila-vision,” said Jill Mueller, 22, a part-timer upgrading for BCIT next year. “My parents actually expected me to party more, but I think they forgot how much ‘pre-drinking’ went on with them. Each night they’d buy us a few rounds of drinks, then they'd head up to their room by 9:30, and me and my brother were like, okay, what do we do now?” The Ski Resort Whistler, B.C., the old standby—with the best conditions in maybe a decade, announcements of the 2010 Olympics have driven up prices and made it even harder to maintain the anriual family getaway to the upscale Village. Thomas Savage, a former DC student and current Harvard MBA student talked about his families’ strategy. “Yeah dude, my parents bought a cabin on Creekside in 1984, and they were like, ‘oh shit, what if this mountain has an avalanche and no one wants to ski here anymore, maybe we made a bum purchase.” Luckily for the Savages they justified it by spending as many weekends up there as possible. “Yeah, we’ve never spent a Christmas away from Whistler,” said Thomas. When asked if they’d consider any other holiday vacation, Thomas was stumped, “No way dude, Whistler is the only way to go, and it’s got the gnarliest back country now, it’s all I wanted for Christmas.” Surfing in Tofino Fourth year Medical student at U of T, Phil Allen has made it two consecutive holiday-trips to Tofino, and lauds the opportunity of big winter waves without the usual crowded beaches along the shores of Tofino, “Tofino is diamonds anytime, and the winter swell is a totally good score,” said Phil, a future surgeon. “Last year I made it up with just a couple of buddies, and we crashed in a motel for the week- end, but this year I convinced the ‘fam’ to book a cabin for the Holidays.” ; The Tofino downtime worked out for the whole family, said Phil. “It was serene, my parents spent the days hiking and in the hot tub, and my siblings and I played in the swells until we got noodle arms.” For most students’ families, it’s hard enough just to get everyone together at the same time, and sometimes the reality of a family” vacation isn’t viable. For Jhazed Rhabi, a UVic student, this winter was a chance to share time at home with the family. “The time flew by. I just watched movies and read magazines, and it was over.” However the holidays are spent, there’s a common theme where family time is put first, what- ever the religion or culture, and that sentiment carries throughout students studying in BC and Canada.