and so life begins in Canada

so finally i sit myself down to post an entry. here goes!

*** Toronto ***


the night i arrived, i went to a new year countdown at Nathan Philips Square with Season and her church friends and i nearly died because it was SO cold. that night, i concussed from 3am to 8pm the next day. so much for jetlag being psychological eh, teow?


here's the ROM (no, i didn't get married. it's the Royal Ontario Museum)




look, Marche! the water fountain thing is how you get your drinking water.

advert on the subway. buddy, this is for you!

"I can imagine settling down with my one true friend. Too bad we are both looking for Mr. Right"

i went out ON MY OWN. cool eh! i was so excited (:

shopped around at Yorkdale for a (long) while before Jasper came.

that's Jayne, she's from SMU. she reminds me a lot of ebay!

*** London ***

met up with Grace at the Greyhound station and off we went to London! this was our first meal.

this picture is the 'before' of my room. we had quite a bit of a shock. not that our rooms were terrible or anything, but it was kinda dingy and a tad dodgy. for mine, the random paintings around the room got me a little claustrophobic, so i took them all down except for one and shoved them into a cupboard. as for Grace's room, there was too much furniture around for her liking, and so she shoved quite a fair bit into same said cupboard. then we went about adapting the rooms to our liking. the whole process was hilarious. and, we did things like remove ALL the sheets and dump them somewhere, vacuum and whatnot. i'm sure the landlady must have felt offended in some way, but well, whatever makes us happy (:

see that cupboard behind Grace?

this is what went in. the paintings from my room, two cupboards, one swivel chair etc...

the returns from our first trip to Walmart.

Daddy, here's where your money went!

this cupboard beside me opens to a sink, but somehow i just find it gross so i shoved some stuff into the cupboard, pushed the fridge out and henceforth, cupboard and sink shall remain shut and unutilised.

parts of my room after Operation Make-Room-Habitable.

you know you're in a girl's room when

(i) part of a bookshelf is amazingly transformed into a dresser

(ii) there's a (pink) trash bin beside the mirror.

so yes. to the left it's the pantry, and to the right it's the dresser.

this box of Oreos cost $0.43!

our first bus ride. we were going to Walmart. yes, again.

over here, they sort their trash kinda like Japan does. so Grace and i find that cumbersome and brought our trash out to dump. after throwing it into this green bin, we notice it's for cardboard only. oops.

returns from the trip out. we went into Dollarama (everything's at a dollar) and we so wanted to refund stuff at Walmart and get them at a dollar instead! but we decided we'll just take it as a lesson learnt.

our first cooked meal on Monday night. Grace can cook man. yummy (:

tonight i'll be attempting murder when i cook curry chicken.

there's one thing for which i don't know whether i wanna get annoyed at, or just settle for finding it funny. the landlady seems to think we have poor English. the day we arrived, she was telling us how there would be preparatory notes online for helping us to improve our English in preparation for school. and, when she heard Grace and i talking to each other while we were having dinner, she said 'oh it's great you're practising your English'. thanks.

since arriving, there are really so many things to be thankful for.

Aunty Ann's hospitality, having Season bring me around, being able to roam about on my own that day and meeting Jasper and Jayne, having Uncle Kam and Ryan lug my luggage for me to the Greyhound station, Marilyn picking us up from the station, Shiwei and his uncle's family coming to visit us and driving us to Walmart. if not for these people, things would really have been so much tougher. also, though i applied for SEP prepared that i'd have to be alone, i am very thankful Grace is here. i realized if otherwise, it'd possibly be depressing and it'd definitely be hard to get by. like, when the sun goes down, it's really dark and it'd be scary to go out alone.

so yup, thank God (: there's a cross on the college near our place, we're hoping there's a church there so we can go. we'll see about that soon!