Humdrum week

As you may have noticed I updated the look of the blog. As I am looking towards this summer I am realizing that only spend about 50-60% of my time in Toronto and the rest of my time is spent elsewhere on planet Earth. So I thought it was time to broaden the scope of the blog!

This past week was pretty humdrum after Rich left on Tuesday. Thursday of this upcoming week is the last day of classes for the semester (yes, we end VERY early here at University of Toronto). So that means chaos is about to break loose with final papers, exam marking, and all the great things that go with the end of school.

                                                                                   
Monday: Faculty Club
Monday morning Rich and I attended a friend's dissertation defense. Because defenses are closed in my department we really just waited outside the room while our friend, anxious and exhausted, awaited the verdict of the committee. It was good news for him! He passed his defense and in celebration the committee took him and all of his supporters out to lunch at the faculty club.

Note- I felt it was a bit gauche to take a picture of the faculty club while we were there so I used wikipedia's photo of the faculty club.

Tuesday: Sushi on Bloor and the Distillery District
For Rich's last day in Toronto we went to our favorite sushi restaurant (Sushi on Bloor) and then I took him to the historic Distillery District for a cup of spicy, mayan hot chocolate.

Wednesday: Wellesley Street
Welleslley Street is my home street!

Thursday: Green fruit bowl
This is another one of my favorite items in my apartment. My good friend from high school, TK, sent this to me in college because it exactly matched a fruit bowl from one of my favorite short stories, Amy Bender's "The Bowl."

Friday: Front door
The view every time I walk into my apartment.

Saturday: Cumbrae's Butcher
Cumbrae's is a local butcher in my neighborhood. They have very nice quality meats and prepared foods. I stop by here when I need meat for a recipe because it is easy to buy portions for one (I can't possibly use up an entire family pack of chicken breasts).

Sunday: Term Papers
As I said, it is the end of the semester here and with the end of the semester comes term papers. This year I'm a TA for a literature course and so part of my job is grading term papers. This is the pile of term papers is a good representation of what my weekends will look like in April.




Sorry for the mundane nature of this week's post. Hopefully this upcoming week I'll get out a little more and take some pictures outside of my apartment/neighborhood.

I added a few people to the e-mail notifications list this week. I only post once a week on Sundays, but if you don't want to receive e-mail notifications about my posts just let me know and I'll take you off the list!

A weekend visit from Rich

Rich is visiting right now so I am a bit busy right now. We're having a great time enjoying Toronto!

Monday: Cabbage soup and whole wheat bread
It may not be the most glamorous meal, but cabbage soup can be really tasty on a cold winter night or even on a chilly spring evening. The whole wheat bread is my first attempt at making whole wheat bread at home. It turned out pretty tasty.

Tuesday: Film set in the park
These orange cones pop up all over town and once you see one, it is a sure sign somewhere around the corner filming for a movie or a t.v. show is going on. Toronto is a big film town (cf. Toronto International Film Festival) and it is also a cheaper location to film than L.A. or other large cities in the U.S. Tuesday morning I passed the film set in the park and of course the large cones surrounding the equipment trucks down the block.

Wednesday: Spring Awakening 
Continuing the theme of spring, I went to see a friend's production of the musical Spring Awakening. It is always nice to catch a bit of theatre, especially when a friend is involved in the production.

Thursday: Stacks in Robarts
Robarts is the main library here in Toronto (click here to read my post about University of Toronto libraries). This is a picture of the shelf I visit the most. It contains most of the books on Daniil Kharms, one of the authors I'm writing my dissertation on.

Friday: Daffodils!
On Friday my friend and neighbor surprised me with a potted daffodil plant. It is sitting on my windowsill at the moment and blooming abundantly!

Saturday: Rich Arrives
To get to and from the local airport here in Toronto you have to take a ferry between the airport, which is on an island, and mainland Toronto. If you look closely at the left hand top window you can see Rich  waving at me as he arrives!

Sunday: Maple Syrup Farms
Yesterday Rich and I rented a zip car and got out of town for a while. We went to a maple syrup farm and sampled the local fare. Quite tasty! The picture to the left is of a modern maple tree tap. All the tapped trees are connected by these purple tubes. The tubes run downhill into the "sugar shack" where the syrup is heated and purified.













I'll leave it at that for now! Next week I'll post more pictures of the adventures Rich and I have over the next couple of days.

Spring is in the Air!

Spring is in the air in Toronto! We've had unseasonably warm weather between 16 and 21C (60-70F). I am extremely thankful for this nice weather. It is a reminder that summer will be here soon and hopefully a little bit of a break.

Monday: Swimming
I am trying to get my swimming in during the mornings now so I don't get caught up during the day and miss getting to the pool. This picture is of my pull buoy, paddles, and water bottle, all essential pieces of swim equipment.

Tuesday: Hart House from Queens Park
This is a view of one of my favorite places, Hart House from the adjacent Queen's Park. Most week days I walk through Queen's Park to get to the library or to work. It is a quaint little park right in the center of UofT's campus.

Wednesday: Course Reader 
On Wednesdays I have class in the mornings. The photo to the left is a photo of the course reader for the class. It covers most of the articles that we read for the course this year but doesn't include the dozen or so books that we read in addition. We are almost through it all!

Thursday: Tea Cookies
One of my many TA duties this year is acting as "hostess" to the weekly Russian Language Table at the department. In essence this means I am the official "snack-getter." I never thought such a thing would be on my list of jobs as a TA, but there are definitely worse jobs!

Friday: Spring Flowers
These little flowers are the first to pop out this spring! I was so excited to see them!

Saturday: St.Patrick's day
Saturday I spent with my friends from work at the theatre. It was our friend's birthday as well as St. Patrick's day. (Notice I'm wearing the requisite green.) Toronto really gets into St.Patrick's day. There were celebrations happening all week!

Sunday: Star Lantern
I didn't take any excursions this weekend. I've been trying to rest and prepare for yet another crazy week ahead. So, I thought I'd show you just a little bit in my apartment. This lantern is hanging in my apartment and it is one of my favorite things. I bought it at a market in downtown Portland a couple years ago and it has been hanging here ever since.



I hope everyone has a great week! I'm looking forward to next weekend when Rich will come to visit and we have some adventures planned!

A hectic week

Well this week was a hectic week! I spent the week trying to find someone to sub-let my apartment for the summer and helping out at my department's annual conference. On top of my regular course work and LOTS of marking (grading) for the classes I teach/TA for, it was crazy. However, I got through it and I'm taking Sunday as a real day of rest before it all starts up again tomorrow.



                                                                                   Monday: Pizza Pizza 

One of the Canadian pizza places here in Toronto. Notice how they sneak the maple leaf into their logo!

Tuesday: Cafe De Flore
Some of my friends and I have been going to 5-dollar movies on Tuesday night. This week we saw Cafe de Flore,  a romantic movie with a surrealist spin. It was a really thought-provoking and visually engaging movie.

Wednesday: Tim Horton's Coffee
For those of you acquainted with the cult of Dunkin' Donuts on the East Coast, Tim Horton's is the analogous coffee/doughnut place here in Canada. Every spring they have a "Rrroll up the Rim" giveaway. Once you finish your coffee, you roll up the rim of the cup to see if you've won one of the prizes!

Thursday: CN Tower from the library
I popped into the library at Hart House (where I work) to get some reading done. The library has a great view of the iconic CN tower, especially at night when it is lit up.

Friday: Welcome table at the Comparative Literature Conference
This week at the conference I helped man the welcome/registration table and I moderated a panel titled "Ambiguous Absences."

Saturday: Closing Night of Night of the Iguana
Saturday night was the last night for Night of the Iguana at the Hart House Theatre. Always on closing night there is a cast party, to which the cast, crew, and front of house staff (that's me!) are invited. The picture to the left is of one of the other ushers, Amartya and our House Manager, Chris at the party.

Sunday: Kensington Market 
Today I went to a local market to buy fruit and other groceries for the week. Kensington Market is a very colorful place especially on nice weekends like this one. There are all sorts of interesting buskers (street performers) out like the gentleman in the picture. It is definitely a great atmosphere to do your grocery shopping in!


That's all for now. I hope you all have a great week and I'll be back next Sunday!

A picture is worth a thousand words

Hello everyone! I know it has been a while again since I've posted. I've been trying to think of ways to make consistent posting a little easier for me. Since I have to spend so much time writing for school it is really difficult to sit down on a regular basis and write here too especially after a long week. I was thinking and thinking and thinking and I simply could not figure out how to fix the problem. But then I had a EUREKA! moment... Recently I was inspired by some friends' "Photo-a-Day" project I saw on Facebook and it occurred to me this could be the answer! I decided to start my own "Photo-a-Day" project. The way the "Photo-a-Day" project works is each day I take a photo of anything I want. Then at the end of each week I'll be posting 7 photos here, one for each day. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The way I figure it, 7 pictures will be worth 7 thousand words and make up for the lack of writing!

Starting this project this week has been really fun for me. It has inspired me to get out and go places a bit more. It is also nice to document some of the little parts of Toronto that I see every day. I am by no means a photographer, but it is also great for me to work with my camera a bit and learn to use it a little better in the process. I hope you enjoy this new format!

Monday: Ballet slippers 

I have ballet class every Monday. It is one of my favorite parts of the week!

Tuesday: Bulldog Latte and blueberry scone

Toronto has a great coffee house culture and amazing indie coffee shops sprinkled all over the city. This is one of my favorites, Bulldog Espresso Bar!

Wednesday: Morning snow

Although March is the first month of spring, we're still getting regular flurries here. No snow on the ground though.

Thursday: Ho's Team Barber

This may seem random, but Ho's Team is a barber shop in my neighborhood that has 3 locations within the span of two blocks (why? I don't know). Rich and I always laugh at the slogan on the sign: "Specializing in barber hairstylist."

Friday: The Night of the Iguana opening night

Friday night I had work at the theatre. It was opening night for Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana. It is really good and I can't wait to see it again!

Saturday: Grocery shopping at No Frills

Saturday I braved the crowds at my local, cheap grocery store, No Frills. Because they have such good sales, No Frills is only a little better than Target on Black Friday. People just go crazy over toilet paper on super sale!

Sunday: Public sculpture

This is in a secret place that I'm taking Rich to when he comes to visit at the end of the month. I don't want to give away what it is so you'll have to wait too! Need less to say, it is a very cool part of Toronto that I've been meaning to check out since I got here.

Well that is all for now. I hope you enjoyed this "new and improved" format and I'll be back at the end of next week!

Just a note: If you click on any of the pictures you can view them in a larger format in a slideshow!

Purgatory and Pierogies (or My Weekend)

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I had quite an interesting weekend, both dramatic and multicultural.

Let's begin with the dramatic (that is purgatory, if you couldn't guess). Friday night I went to see a play called The Queens, which was being produced by the drama department alumni of University of Toronto. The play was based on Shakespeare's Richard III and followed the women of Shakespeare's original play, focusing on their relationships to each other as they individually struggled to gain power over one another. The director's note describes the play in the following way, "[The play] is an endless cycle for these queens, collectively reliving their greatest sins and ultimate defeats. They are all in different states of understanding, different distances from redemption. Those who do not learn their lessons are forced to repeat them until they do. This is their painful cleansing process. This is their personal purgatory."

In short, this play was not a comedy. However, the acting was beautiful as well as the creative use of props. The play was performed "in the round" (meaning the stage was in an oval shape and the audience sat around the stage). I sat in the front row, which made it even more intense, leading me to conclude that if purgatory is anything like the play, I hope I never go! (Though I wouldn't mind wearing the fancy costumes!)

After glimpsing into "purgatory" on Friday, I moved onto a more lighthearted diversion, the Polish Street Festival. A couple friends from my department invited me to join them last minute and we hit the street ready for polka and most importantly, pierogies. However, obtaining pierogies was no easy task. There were the usual crowds to sift through and since we arrived at dinner time, it seemed the hungrier we got the more people there were blocking our way to the pierogie goodness. Our second challenge of the pierogie hunt was to discern which vendors were actually selling pierogies. We came across all sorts of cultural foods from Mexican to Thai to carnival-type foods before we actually found pierogies! (I never knew the Polish were so multicultural!) Once we found the right place, we purchased our Polish dinner and enjoyed the doughy, cheesy meal while watching a myriad of people pass by and while listening to the happy polka tunes churned out by the accordion players on the street.

All in all, the weekend was very satisfying for my intellectual side and for my stomach!

A trip to Greg's Ice Cream

Well September is back and that means I'm back to school and back to Toronto after having survived the wrathful (or the slightly cross) Irene. The start of the semester has been busy as usual, but I did make time for a back-to-Toronto adventure. I have recently recruited my Torontonian friend, Christine, to be my guide for all things Toronto. To start off the year (and to take advantage of one of the last warm days before the cold) we went to a local ice cream parlor, Greg's.

On the outside, Greg's seems like a pretty normal type of shop. In fact, I would have likely passed it up on my own and moved towards one of the more flashy-looking and trendy yogurt shops, which were conspicuously lining the street. I quickly learned that would have been a mistake.

A simple front- deceivingly simple

Once we were inside, I was elated to see a great menu of creative ice cream flavors (or "flavours," if you're Canadian): stout, banana nut, smarties, maple cream, cinana (banana + cinnamon). I couldn't decide which flavor to try first. After much deliberation and a couple samples,  I chose a scoop of maple cream and a scoop of cinnamon. Christine informed me that all of the ice cream is made using a sweet cream base and real ingredients are added to flavor it (not artificial flavorings). The cinnamon was made with real cinnamon and the maple cream was made with real maple syrup and you could taste it!

Note the Canadian/French spelling of the word "flavors."

While enjoying our ice cream, we chatted with the girl behind the counter who is a friend of Christine's. She informed us that pumpkin ice cream would be arriving soon and I decided then and there that ice cream is no longer a warm-weather-only indulgence. I'll most definitely be breaking from my work this semester to venture back and taste their Greg's fall-flavored treats!

Note: Photos were borrowed from blogTO's review of Greg's Ice Ceam