Oh Hai Toronto.

Recap: I am grouchy, snappy, smelly excited rage monster who just arrived on campus.

Dragged all my bags across campus because taxi man could only get just inside the gate due to construction everywhere.

Fun fact: you can't go 50 paces in Toronto anywhere without somebody building something! 

 Stomped across all this wet grass in classic lazy Australian style of not being bothered to go around on the path, which was a brilliant move. I'm still finding clumps of dried grass in my room.

(Remember am lazy Australian and am writing this nearly two weeks after the fact hahahaha)

Anyway.

Went to get my room key (:D) from the night porter's office and had the following convo with girl on duty: 

"Welcome!"

"Thank you."

"Oooh, are you from England?"

"...No, Australia."

"Ooooooh! Well, the accent is kind of similar."

"...No. No, it's really not..." 

She was lovely, it's okay. But have certainly had that convo a few times since. 

Also, I will do a separate post about my residence and my room etc later. I know you all want to see my beautiful 70s-inspired shoebox. 

Today was the international students' orientation. A bloke who was supposed to meet me in the residence lobby didn't rock up (an excellent start) so a staff member came instead and gave me a tour of the place. Then he brought me to Glendon Manor (there's a manor!) where the orientation was, and where I tried to listen to things, be nice to new people from many interesting places and not fall asleep. 

Anyway, writing is boring, and pictures are not, so here is the rest of the day photographically. 

There was a free lunch, and we went outside to eat. So here is my campus. 

Meh.

This is actually the rose garden. At the back there is the manor, and to the left is the Frost library. That'll be hilarious in Winter.

Lunch with Germany, Belgium and the US. 

The Manor's garden.

Manoooooorrr.

After that, I went to bed.


No, seriously, I could barely stand, so skipped the last few speakers and went to my room, nearly drunkenly put on a sheet over the mattress (wasn't that tired) and flopped on top of it. I should mention now that from that moment I had a particular and acute fondness for my shoebox and my room, after the events of sleeping-in-terminal-brilliant-idea-Lu-let's-do-that-again-you-cheap-moron.



Later that afternoon though was a trip to downtown Toronto (the CBD, city, whatever is called 'Downtown') with all the international people. Public transport is pretty easy. There's a bus right outside campus that gets you to Lawrence station, then about a 20 minute subway ride straight to big and interesting places.

It's not very hard. Here's why:

Accurate.

Here we go.

Oh hai Toronto.

Toronto's a pretty damn nice city, with great buildings. It's also quite Americanised, lots of billboards, neon signs, Starbucks etc. 

They have tram tracks! For streetcars, whatever.

First glimpse of CN tower.

This was outside the department of immigration or something. 

Giant, obscure public art! I feel right at home. 

We walked all the way south to the water. Toronto is on the shore of Lake Ontario. 

Walking with the US, Finland, France.

A concert arena right on the waterfront. Yep, it's on my to-do list. Which is very long, btw. 

Tired feet. 

Because we're now adults or something, we were left to our own devices afterward, and I tagged along with this Mary thing and we had dinner. 

Hi Mary. 

I figured my first proper meal in North America had to be a burger and fries. Yeep.

Before.

After.

Our dinner view.

End of day 1. Next up soon :)