Tuesday 26 June 2007

Updates

Hey peeps. I got a job working door to door for a charity, trying to sign people up to help. I only get paid for working 1-9, but I usually am expected to be there around 11am, and I finish back in the office around 9:30. So I leave home at 10am or so, and don't get back until 10:45 or so at night. It's tiring. The job is hot and hard, and I'm useless at it. I fully expect to be fired in a few weeks, but no matter, a few weeks is all I need to finance the rest of my time here I think. At pay of $8 an hour, 7.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, that's about $300 a week (depending on how much I get taxed). So 4 weeks should be enough I think! When it's 35+ outside, 2 weeks is too much, but I'll try and last!

In other news, I booked my tickets to Europe on Sat. I leave here August 25, and get back to Vancouver for Christmas on Dec 5. Yay!

Thursday 14 June 2007

accents

A while back, there was an 'intrepid journey'( or something else like that) where Paul Henry went to the north of Norway to meet a guy that takes people out to fish for north atlantic salmon up in the artic almost.

Anyways, when Paul was in Norway he came said something like (I paraphrase):

"All the norwegian men are very slick. They dress well. In fact, it looks like they're all gay".

He then proceeds to crack up and say things like - oh you can't keep that, I can't say that. It was quite funny.

My point? The toronto-ian accent is odd. Like New york accent with a lifting, twangy sound (to my ear) which rises and falls quite often. On the girls it sounds like they are all 17 and so eager to talk. On the guys - well, honestly? It sounds like they are all gay.

*giggles*

Friday 8 June 2007

Birthdays

It's my birthday! Well I figure I get a 2 day birthday, because it was yesterday I was born oh so long ago, and today is the actual date in North America. (I live in the past)

oh, and there's a cute boy sitting next to me at the library. Good start to a day. Makes a difference to the smelly people that usually sit next to me!

Wednesday 6 June 2007

Newfoundland!

At the last minute on tuesday last week, I decided to hop in a car with a guy offering a ride to St John's, NL. The route we took can be seen here.

Basically, it was a 3200km drive. We drove from Wed evening until Thursday night, then jumped on a 7 hour ferry to Newfoundland. Then we drove up to a place called Robert's Arms and stayed the night there. Finally on Saturday we drove through Newfoundland to St John's.

OMG, the drive was so nice. Upper Quebec is gorgeous, and so is Nova Scotia. (New Brunswick was ok, but not as pretty). There were a lot of old farmhouses, and wells, and barns, and basically a lot of pretty places with friendly people that was a change from the brown brick of Ontario. I had fun looking at the scenery, the old churches and the farms. Oh, and the ferry was the best ever, I think if I didn't know better I would have thought we didn't move the whole time. This compared to the last ferry I went on in NZ, with 10m swells and nearly the entire (overly full easter crowd) passenger group throwing up. Even my iron stomach was forced to go outside and look at the waves after an hour of extreme motion. But the ferry to Newfoundland - great! Although less to do, so I'm glad we went overnight and I could sleep. During the day it must be boring as.

Newfoundland itself is amazing, there's only one real city and all the rest of the islanders live in little 'bay towns'. They are traditionally all fishermen. We had a lot of fish and chips on the way over to St John's. And it was cold! We came through the centre of the island, and it snowed while we were driving. Insane, snow in June. Hello - it's summer?

St John's was awesome. I had such a good time. We stayed with these mexican students. They were great.

On saturday night they had a party for some guy's birthday and I had a good night chatting to all of their crazy international friends. I think there were only two people who were orginally from newfoundland, but it was fun. Sunday I walked all around downtown St John's in the morning while waiting for everyone to wake up! St John's is gorgeous. It's like someone took all the quaint houses in Te Aro and the Terrace, you know all the villas, and made a whole town of them. And then painted them bright colours. It, again, was freezing cold, like a sunny wellington winter day (but in summer!), but the town is beautiful. I enjoyed all the hills around town.

That afternoon, we drove up to Signal hill (apparently where Marconi sent the first transatlantic telegraph signal) and saw icebergs out to sea, as well as views over the harbour. At night we had a huge BBQ, with homemade tortillas, shish kebabs (one of their friends is Pakistani so it was real fusion cuisine!) and shrimp. The kebabs were soo yum, ugh.. the food.. making me hungry again! I flew back to toronto monday morning

Anyway, St John's is gorgeous. I recommend everyone go visit sometime, and driving through Nova Scotia is beautiful too. I took lots of photos, and as soon as I work out how to get them of my camera when I don't have a computer, I'll post them.