Fall in the City

"Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain." ~Pierre E. Trudeau

Fall has arrived and with that hockey pre-season. Now I am starting to understand the Canadian obsession with hockey. It's everywhere. In other news, I finally got the hang of the subway and street cars. The buses will have to come at a later date, but shouldn't be that bad. It's just hard to find the street car stops because they don't do a very good job of marking them. And in the rain, it's rather easy to walk right by them.

Canadian TV commercials, to put it bluntly, are just strange. They are either ridiculous jingles (such as the Cadbury commercial jingle set to a Beach Boys song) to the "milk rap" to the Sunsilk hair commercials that take place in a women's room where three girls talk about sex and almost nothing about hair. I haven't quick gotten used to how odd they are.

I'm eating Smarties at the moment. Not the sugary-sweet candy in the States, but the kind you find in places like Britain. They are the chocolate candies that sort of want to be M&Ms but have a different taste. I think they're good. In fact, I haven't seen a Snickers in a while. Instead Canadians have lots of Cadbury candy, Smarties, Aero bars, Coffee Crisp and Bounty. I actually have to admit I prefer this candy to the candy in the States. I can't tell you why and I have a terrible sweet tooth. Thumbs up for Canadian tasty treats.

Canada has also launched a major "Peanut Free" campaign for candy, granola bars and other things that used to say "may contain peanuts" on the packaging. They're trying to make things more "friendly" for the people with peanut allergies. So the package of my Smarties read "Peanut Free" and "Sans arachides."

Best Buy just had a Grand Opening two weeks ago. So, they hosted artists in Dundas Square for free concerts. I went to the John Mayer concert that Saturday with girls from my program. He was awesome. And it was free.

I admit, I have a lot on my plate this week, including an interview, but I'm just excited to get it done so I can have Kat come visit this weekend. I am so excited! My first visitor here in the True North. I hope I can show her just what a great city Toronto has been so far.

And to take to her to her first on-campus pub. Because American University was a dry campus there wasn't a pub, but Ryerson isn't. And aside from eating "street meat" on campus (aka: hot dog vendors) there's a cool pub the boast cheap eats, beer and pool. It's nice to have a place to hang out that's not the Tavern at AU. The only downfall, Toronto is colder than DC ever was.

Sacrifices had to be made. I've got my winter boots ready.