Adventure Day!

I had an adventure today. Several in fact. Today my cousin and my aunt took me into downtown Toronto where the campus the master’s program I’m looking at is located. I was... floored, astounded, kind of speechless.

This place is massive. And I only saw one campus. I knew it was going to be big. Logically I couldn’t escape that reality. But holy crap I had no friggin’ clue. One of the first things my cousin pointed out to me was the library. There was an entire, multi-level building dedicated to the library. Even I can’t imagine how many books are in there. The closest thing I can picture is when the Beast in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, takes Belle into his library and it’s floor to ceiling books. At my current school, the library doesn’t even take up half the floor it’s on. And our whole school is one campus in one building. Two for visual arts students. This one campus took up blocks! God I’m from a small town.

After that we went to the CN Tower. I’d been near the tower but never up it. Today I got to go up. Apparently, and from what I can remember, the tower is about 114 floors... I think. It was over 1100 feet anyway. The elevators got us from the bottom to the observation deck in under a minute. I’d tell you how fast it was but I get all mixed up with my km/h and m/h. It was fantastically cool to look out and down and see people no bigger than ants. It was really cool to see the traffic, the trains, the streetcars and planes all moving at the same time in these organized patterns I did not understand. And the buildings! As far as I could see there were sky scrapers and all kinds of strange and bizarre architecture that I never get to see back home. On the way back down, my ears popped about five times and I was pretty off kilter stepping out of the elevator. It was... amazing.

With that done, we started to make our way back home. My cousin, who as far as I know is unaware of my lack of heterosexuality, took us through Toronto’s gay district. Sometimes it was... difficult to hear what my family was saying, but for the most part, it was a relief seeing people like me, living in public. In Hetero-Middle of Nowhere I’ve yet to see a mature (as in outside of high school where it’s generally an experiment among girls (where I’m from)) same-sex couple holding hands. It was nice to see an aspect of myself for a change. Gay culture where I’m from is like a secret underground society.

On the way home, my cousin drove through the neighbourhood of the rich and frivolous. I’m talking iron gates with initials on them and intercoms to be aloud passed said gates. At this point, I could not speak in my regular Canadian English. It was just too vulgar. I chose to adopt a hoity toity accent which my aunt and cousin also took on. To complete the experience, we went to a grocery store in which a credit rating had to be presented before actual shopping could commence. I’m kidding, but could you imagine? Anyway, I was totally disgusted when I saw rhubarb for sale at the price of 5$. IT’S A FRIGGIN’ WEED! PLANT IT AND YOU WILL HAVE ENOUGH FOR THE REST OF YOUR STINKIN’ LIFE! There were also pre-cut celery sticks on sale for a dollar more. My cousin bought some dried fruit (mango, strawberries and blueberries) as well as a quiche for breakfast. Whatever... the mango was good... I’ll admit.

So that was my day out on the town. I was glad to be back “home” though. Very exhausting all that walking. Oh, and tonight for supper we had risotto with apple and walnuts, beer can chicken, broccoli and garlic bread. I love food.

Lauren.