Photos

Dec, Jan, Feb & the holiday

The past couple of months have been by turn hectic and dead boring.

December was nice, we had a good Chrissy lunch at the Royal York hotel. They had this guy dressed as Scrooge doing balloon animals for kids, and the kid at the table next to us got a dragon/winged serpent made for him. I’m still a little peeved I didn’t get one, it was way cool.

Christmas Eve was the first time I felt truly homesick, talking to the in-laws. Christmas (any family thing really) at the in-laws is usually a lot of fun, with jokes and silly conversations flying left, right, and centre. That’s not to say I didn’t want to see my own family, but as I get to talk to my parents over skype a fair bit, the homesick factor is reduced.

New Years saw us at Nathan Phillips Square enjoying the outdoor concert in a brisk -22 degrees. It was nice to see that Canadians are just as badly behaved as Aussies when they’re drunk.

January was a slow month for me, trying to find a job – and not succeeding. On the positive side, we went tobogganing on a hill about 10 minutes from our place a couple of times, which was way cool. Stacking it at the bottom of a snowy hill is my kind of fun :-)
We went to a kiwi pub for Australia Day where we saw several drunk embarrassing Aussies. Tragic.
We also went to the Niagara-on-the-Lake Ice Wine Festival. Ice wine is made from grapes that have been at -8 for 3 consecutive days, the grapes are taken and pressed in the fields at night on the 3rd day. Each grape is only about 1 drop, so it’s not cheap, but it is bloody delicious ! While we were out that day, C slipped over in the parking lot of one of the wineries and hurt himself. Not too bad fortunately, but it showed the danger of slippery ice.

Feb has been a lot more fun. We had a slow start to the month, in prep for our holiday to the Carribean & Florida Keys.
Sat 14th we flew to Miami, and had a hotel in downtown Miami for the night. I was a little surprised by Miami, I didn’t expect it to be as Spanish as it was. There appeared to be a fair amount of people I came into contact with that could only speak Spanish, but that may have been where we were staying...
Sun 15th we got on the cruise ship (Norwegian Jewel) for our 4 day/5 night cruise.
Day 1 was cruising (and my beloved’s 34th Birthday), which was nice and relaxing.
Day 2 the ship was docked on Grand Cayman Island, so we went to a beach for the day.
Day 3 the ship was docked at Cozumel Mexico. We had a shore excursion on this day, we were taken on ATVs through the jungle to a sink hole that the Mayans sacrificed virgins to. The sink hole was 65 feet deep, and when they explored it, they found human remains and jewellery. Anyway the ATVs themselves were awesome, I can now more fully understand my brother’s love of dirt bikes. At one point I had the ATV airborne over a hill, then later I saw what happened after C ran his into tree (a very slow and small crash that he wasn’t hurt in, made as he was attempting to turn the bike around) . I didn’t see the actual collision as he was behind me, but I did see the bike afterwards and the suspension was a little wonky afterwards. All in all I had a pretty good day J.
Day 4 the ship was cruising back to Miami and I came down with a head cold, which I ever so generously shared with my dearest. He was of course very grateful...... Highlights of the cruise for me were the ATVs, the sunsets over the waters, and the show we saw on the last night on the ship called Cirque Bijou, which was quite a good Cirque du Soleil style thing.

Back in Miami we picked up our hire car and drove to the end of the Florida Keys, which was about a 4/5 hour drive. A very cool drive I might add. We stayed in Key West for 2 nights at a B&B where we went for walks and explored the island. We stood at the southernmost point of continental USA, which I’m sure should have excited me – but being an Aussie I didn’t really care :-)
On Sunday we drove from Key West to Key Largo. We took our time about it, stopping to have a cruise on a glass bottomed boat out to the reef. Monday saw us driving back to Miami to spend our last night of the holiday. We had a big walk about Miami, took a nice walk along the beach on Tues morning and then hopped on a plane back to beautiful Toronto.... and the -3 degrees that it was that day.

Snow

It has been pointed out to me that I'm obsessed with the weather, particularly snow.

That's largely due to the fact that we don't get much snow in Sydney.....

Above are some pics of the view from our place on Thursday morning, after it snowed on Wed night.

Apparently there's a lot more coming tomorrow :-)

I miss my dog

I miss Diesel.

I know we couldn't bring her to Canada with us, but I still really wish she were here.....

Canadian Wildlife

I have fallen in love with the squirrels that are all over Toronto.

They are just so freaking cute !!

November/December

The last month and a half have been an interesting ride....

I started work at a fairly large company doing filing, photocopying, packing envelopes, and a tiny bit of data entry. All this for the princely sum of $12 an hour.
This came to an end after about 4 weeks.
Strangely enough I wasn't upset about that :-)
Did meet some nice Canadians at that job though, which was cool.
Since that ended, I've been trying to find another position, but as it's the silly season I don't really anticipate I'll be able to find something before the new year.
On the plus side, this is allowing me to polish up my online poker skills ;-)

The weather has been a learning curve.
The first time it snowed I was excited - actually I still get excited, but mentally I'm only 7.
There has only really been 2 dumps here in the downtown area of Toronto, neither of them really big, only about 3cm each.
Apparently when it drops too much below zero, it gets too cold to snow.
Gee can't wait for that....
The coldest we've had so far is about -15 (with the windchill factored in).

My definition of cold has gone through a fairly radical change.
We went out the other night, and it was only -4
I said that to C, and then we were both a little bit amused about the fact that it now ONLY -4.
Too funny.

In November we went down to Niagara to catch up with some people from C's Sydney office.
We ended up partying at the Casino until all hours.
But the really cool thing was they bought me 2 more jars of Vegemite !!!
I was already halfway through my stock and was starting to panic at the thought of running out.
And you just cannot get the stuff in Toronto...

We also drove up to Montreal to stay with a friend of C's from a Contiki trip - S, her hubby H & their very cute (and loud) little girl for a weekend. It was a really nice weekend away, and S & H were really cool, and very French. It was quite amusing to realise how people from Quebec really regarding the rest of Canada. Of course I've since realised that the rest of Canada don't think much of the Quebecians either.
The highlight of the trip was a night out at a French style bistro. Really nice place, fantastic food.
But the really funny thing was their special of the day..... Kangaroo !!!
What are the chances ?

Apart from that, not too much going on.
Although we did book a holiday for Feb.
We're off on a cruise in the Carribean for 5 nights, and then we're doing the Florda Keys for a couple of days.
C keeps telling me that once Winter really hits, I will need a week in the sun.
I'm not convinced, I'm still enjoying the novelty of the cold at the moment.
Maybe in a couple more weeks I'll be over it.
Depends if we get a white christmas or not !

Another first

It snowed on me today.
Itty bitty snowflakes, but it was still snow.
I got some funny looks when I was trying to catch the snowflakes, but I had fun :-)