Sigh... we're back to the real world and I am sad to say that this is our last album of photos from the far away world of Vietnam. We had a wonderful summer and are happy to be back healthy and with lots of good memories from a summer packed with adventure, learning and fun. It is nice to see familiar faces and be back into our routines and I really am enjoying the comforts of home.
I moved to Toronto from Montreal in September of 2007. So, in just under 2 years of living here, do I qualify to be a Torontonian or am I still a Montrealer who now lives in Toronto? I don't really care either way actually (I think I'm still in metropolitan limbo), but there are people (you know who you are) who care to know what city I identify with or prefer more. For some reason there is a rivalry between these two amazing cities and they're always being compared/contrasted. The fact of the matter is that they are so incredibly different and great. But, as I have experienced, that answer doesn't fly with most Montrealers or Torontonians. They just love to ask, "which city is better, Montreal or Toronto?"
Well I have decided that I can't answer that question. What I CAN do is put together my top 10 favourite things about each city:
It's important to note that a number of the things I love about Montreal are in "response" to my life in Toronto and vice versa (I guess I can't avoid comparing either).
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Today's been a lovely day. It all started out with being woken up by brilliant flashes of lightening immediately followed by claps of thunder at 5:20am. The lightening was so bright I saw the flashes through my eyelids. The best part was that I think it hit the cn tower. I get so excited when it hits the tower because well... I think that's impressive and awesome. (Two winters ago (our first winter in Toronto) we got a couple of thunder and lightening storms during huge snow storms and that was the first time that I had not only heard/seen lightening and thunder during a snow storm, but witnessed lightening strike an object within 300 meters of where I was standing.) Usually I get out of bed and stand by the window to see it hit again, but this morning I stayed in bed skeptical that it would happen a second time. I'm pretty sure it struck a second time just judging by how closely the thunder followed the lightening. Then I fell back to sleep and woke up around 8:30am which I consider to be an optimal sleeping in time. Then I sat on the couch with a coffee in hand a my laptop on my lap (obviously) and read through Sierra's replies to my email about our India plans and what his travel recomendations are. After having read the emails and done a bit more research of my own, I made us breakfast -- a delicious breakfast of fried eggs, Sue bacon and toasted rye. After breakfast Anil and I went to mec and Europe Bound (both are about a 4 minute walk from our house... how lucky are we?!) to buy some things for the trip. I was a little hesitant about going to Europe Bound because I just love mec so much and want to support it and because it's a dog's breakfast in Europe Bound and so hard to find what you're looking for, but Anil wanted to go to for a travel adapter and to browse through their piles of products/equipment. It's a good thing we went because we ended up finding a few things we couldn't find at other stores such as gatorade packets, a battery for my sports watch and mini towelettes. So I paid and we were walking out the door when I passed a rack of little goodies and trinkets and what do I see but a 1 ounce, miniature tin of Bag Balm! As a child I was not as intruiged about Bag Balm as I apparently am now. It was simply a barn product (basically a thick ointment used to heal chapped goat or cow udders) that my parents also used as a hand moisturizer, but today it meant something to me. That little green tin made me reminisce about my childhood and growing up on the farm. It made me think about my parents and about Lenny (my mum and I put it on the pads of Lenny's paws in the winter to prevent the salt on the roads and sidewalks from cracking them and he gently licks your hands while you apply it). Plus, the little tin was just so adorable... I had to get it.
"Since 1899," the tin reads, " Bag Balm has been the farmer's friend. There is nothing like the original, and that's what you get when you buy the familiar green tin."
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