Birthday Weekend

I'm entering a very busy week with a grant application due by Friday. So the post this week will be short and sweet. Some pictures from my birthday weekend spent here in Toronto with Rich:

The "Cheese Wall" from the local gourmet grocery store, Loblaws. 

NYC taxi? Toronto taxi? or... 

a film set in New York produced on the streets of Toronto! 

This weekend featured a tour of Toronto ethnic food including

Japanese, Vietnamese, and Ethiopian food! 

To temper the variety of ethnic food we ate,

Rich and I visited a local favorite, Greg's ice cream

for evening desserts. 

Word on the Street- Toronto's literary festival!

Sorry for the abbreviated nature of this post. Hopefully next week I'll have time for a more detailed update. Have a great week everyone! 

Early fall in Toronto

Well it is back to the stress and the hectic life of school. This week I was busy with getting settled back in to life in Toronto. Fortunately, the early fall weather here in Toronto is beautiful. Almost all week it was cool and sunny out. Perfect weather for walking around and running errands around town. This weekend I got a chance to relax outside of the city, however. My friend Christine invited me to come out to a Harvest Festival with her family at a local Pioneer village and it was the highlight of my week.

Monday: Yonge Street
Yonge Street functions as downtown Toronto's main street. There are often parades and street festivals along Yonge street. On my walk to campus on Monday morning this busy thoroughfare was unusually quiet. As you can see in the distance, Toronto is under construction. There are huge condominiums going up all over town. It is nearly impossible to walk two blocks without encountering a new development!

Tuesday: Canada Post
Returning to life in Toronto means a lot of errands to run. This week one of my errands was to stop by the post office. Because the post office is run by the Canadian government, all of the signage and information is required to be in both French and English. Sometimes walking around Toronto is like a mini-French review.

Wednesday: Entrance to campus
The University of Toronto has some truly beautiful buildings. I've even had a couple people tell me, "your school looks like Hogwarts!" after I've told them I go to UofT. This is generally the way I enter onto campus when I'm going to the Centre for Comparative Literature. I always feel very academic walking through the gates onto campus.

Thursday: Filming notification
Once every few months notices like these appear in the entranceway to my building. The small lane that runs next to my building has several old, historic homes that are used for filming on occasion. It is always neat to see the film crews setting up in my "backyard."

Friday: Early Birthday Wishes
I got an early birthday card from mom and dad on Friday. It was a great way to start off the weekend after a busy start to the semester. I love receiving cards! It is wonderful to get something besides bills and junk mail in my mailbox.

Saturday: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Black Creek is a recreation of a 19th-century pioneer village in Ontario, built from original historic buildings around the area. My friend Christine invited me to come along with her family for their annual trip to the Harvest Festival held at the village. We spent the day exploring the buildings and sampling the delicious foods sold by the local Mennonite and Pennsylvania Dutch. It was a real treat for me to get out of the city for a day. As always, I love doing anything that celebrates the fall. I sampled my first cup of hot cider for the season and indulged in my first slice of pumpkin pie! To see more pictures from my visit click here.

Sunday: Football day!
Sundays are reserved for watching football and preparing for the week ahead. Today I enjoyed the Eagles and Chargers victory with a side of the Mennonite sausage, sauerkraut, and green beans I bought yesterday at the Harvest Festival. I washed it all down with a tasty German beer given to me by Christine's dad, who is from Germany.












The weekend has almost come to an end and that means another busy week lies ahead of me. On Thursday Rich is coming to visit for my birthday. I'm really looking forward to spending some of the beautiful early fall weather outside with him!

The end of summer and return to Toronto

Well the summer has officially ended. This past Monday was my final day at the pool for the summer. After that I had a couple days in New York to prepare for my return to Toronto on Thursday. I am sad the summer has come to an end. It was such a great summer, but I am looking forward to an equally eventful and busy fall.

Monday: Rye Golf Club
As I said Monday was my last day at the golf club. After 150 hours of work over 2 weeks I was feeling pretty ready to be done for the summer. Still, I did feel a bit sad to leave the poolside, knowing that I won't be spending more than a few hours a week outside during the school year.

Tuesday: Book Culture
On Tuesday I visited my favorite book store, Book Culture, which is conveniently located only several blocks away from me in New York. What I love about this store is it has a huge selection of academic books and books in foreign languages. It is so nice to be able to drop by the book store to pick something up rather than waiting a week for it to arrive from amazon.

Wednesday: Bubbly Columbus Circle
As a way to say farewell for now to the city I took a long walk around the West Side. I walked past the Lincoln Center (where the Metropolitan Opera and the NYC Ballet are) and meandered over to Columbus Circle. There is always something going on at Columbus Circle. On Wednesday people were making giant bubbles by dipping strings attached to two long sticks into a soap solution. It seemed to mostly excite the younger viewers of the crowd, but bubbles are mesmerizing to watch at any age.

Thursday: Flight to Toronto
I decided to splash out and take the luxury way back to Toronto. I flew instead of taking the usual bus trip. Canada has this small airlines called Porter, which I flew up here with. Porter is one of the most relaxing and easy modes of transportation I've ever taken. The flights are short haul, the planes are small, and thus the baggage check, security lines, and waiting areas are all relatively uncrowded and the staff that works for Porter is extremely friendly and helpful. But the real perk of flying Porter is all the freebies. Porter offers complimentary drinks, snacks, and wifi in their waiting area and every flight no matter how short serves a meal with complimentary wine or beer. It was nice to return to Toronto in style.

Friday: Late Summer in Queen's Park
I walk through Queen's Park almost on a daily basis on my way to various places on campus. The park transforms drastically with the seasons and I thought I would document those changes here. I'll be taking a picture from this perspective each month so you can see the metamorphosis between summer, fall, and winter. 

Saturday: Hockey Spirit
After my grocery shopping trip this week I came across a local university's preparatory performances for one of their hockey games. It's not every grocery trip that you get to see a line of snare drummers dressed in kilts on the way out the door!

Sunday: The smells of fall
One of my favorite things about fall is the great smelling candles I get to burn during this time. My favorites are made by Yankee Candle. They have so many great fall scents it is hard to choose. This fall I purchased "Autumn Leaves," "Pumpkin Pie," "Harvest Welcome," and "Apple Pumpkin." They really make my little apartment feel home-y and festive.












Tomorrow is the first day of classes and although I am neither taking nor teaching classes this semester, this means the start of a busy time. As always I have some start of semester jitters especially since I'm embarking on new territory-- a semester with no classes. My time is all mine to dedicate to research and as nice as that is, it is also a challenge to properly manage the time I have. Here's to a good start to the school year and I'll be writing to you all again next week!