Fall in Ontario

Hello! This year Kara and Rifqi and I have decided to try and explore a different part of Toronto every Saturday, or at least go out and find some cool free stuff to do outside of campus and our part of downtown. Last Saturday Rifqi couldn't come, but Kara and I went to Evergreen Brick Works out by the Don Valley Parkway. It's an old abandoned brick factory that they're turning into a community center/park thing. So they were having some kind of grand opening or something, even though it's mostly not done yet. But there was a lot of cool old broken buildings around, and a LOT of awesome free food.






Also we got a little lost and found these cool shelves.



Colourful milk crates! The food was amazing and very autumn-y. There was spiced apple cider that tasted like liquid apple sauce (which is a good thing), and I had roasted corn for the first time and it was awesome. There were pumpkins lying around and the fall colours were just starting to come out.





East coast fall looks different to me than west coast fall. I think there are less oak trees here. It's really pretty.

In the evening we went to a mini film festival on Queen St that we had free tickets to. They showed 7 short films, 4 Canadian and 3 international. They were better than we were expecting them to be. Before we went to that, though, Kara wanted to get poutine...


...so I had my first-ever poutine experience.


It tasted pretty much the same as it looked.

Still unloading photos from the summer

I will post pictures of my room and stuff soon, I just need to neaten things up a bit and get around to actually taking pictures of it! School is going well and I like all my classes, especially physics, premodern east asian history, and philosophy. Today I spent a few hours volunteering at the massive book sale going on at the Vic main building, working at the coat check. It was weirdly fun. Tomorrow I'm going with Kara to some sort of park opening/farmer's market event, and then in the evening we're going to a film festival we got free tickets to. I found a little camera store about three minutes away from my building where I can get film developed, yay! I think shopper's drug mart might also have some kind of 1 hr 35mm thing, I'll check next time I'm there.

A while ago I got this little blue plastic underwater 35mm Snap Sights camera from Goodwill. I took it out of its casing and ran a roll through it, and I really like it. Here are a few pictures from it, I have more from this roll though. But these were taken at the fair.








For some reason I really like this picture I took while waiting outside Claire's forest path. If you look close you can see the deer in the yard. Click to make it bigger. Blogger makes everything so freaking tiny.




I'm so hungry! They closed my favorite take-out place on Yonge for renovations. :C
I must look like I live here now because a lot of tourists have been asking me for directions! And I'm actually able to help them most of the time! First years have been asking me where things are too. Oh shit I forgot to do laundry today! Bye!

Celebrities everywhere!!

It was the first day of classes today! I had calc and physics in the morning, and east asian history at 6. When I left for history I went out the door and saw....


THE FONZ!!! (Better known as Barry from Arrested Development)

I only had time to take one picture but I like how it turned out! He was a few steps down the street at Bader Theater (where I have philosophy!) because they're screening movies there for the film festival and I looked it up and his son wrote the screenplay for the movie that was there tonight. Uma Thurman was apparently coming in a second, but I had to get to class.

Later tonight I went with Kara and Rifqi to where Natalie Portman's movie was premiering. It was a lot more crazy and even though we got there almost an hour early there was still a HUGE crowd at this barrier they had up around the pathway that the people walk down. I pushed through a little but it was so packed that I couldn't get any further. So almost all of my pictures came out like this:


Reaching as far up as I could, because I am short and everyone else was normal-sized. Fortunately there was a very nice tall guy next to me who saw that I was freakishly short and offered to take some pictures for me. Thanks, tall guy!! Here's Natalie Portman:




Winona Ryder was also there, I saw her but didn't get any pictures. Also Barbara someone and Dominic someone (not Charlie). I got this picture of the white tent thing they walked into so that the paparazzis could get photos. I think the person in there is Mila Kunis, cause I know she was there but I wasn't sure which one she was cause I couldn't see very well. All I know is that people started shouting "MILAAAAAA" when she came out. It doesn't really look like her, but I think it is?


Here's a terrifying picture of the paparazzi...


It was definitely a weird experience. I preferred bumping into Henry Winkler though. Here is a closeup of him and an intimidating asian guy. And a girl who looks weirdly like me in the background.

I need a rug

Hi! I got to Toronto yesterday and brought all my stuff up to my room, and now it's about 85% unpacked and organized. I'll post pictures of my room after everything is finished. It's bigger than my room last year, plus I don't have a roommate! I have a normal, non-lofted bed and a normal desk and a bookshelf and a closet. I got the suite at the end of the hall on the fourth floor, and I have three suitemates, and one of them is the don of the floor. This means probably no parties in my suite, less suitemates, and a bigger and nicer common room in my suite! Yaaayyy! I haven't met the other two girls yet. One is from New York and one is from Quebec.

These are some photos from my second roll of film from my Fujipet camera. I bought it off of someone from Flickr cause it's hard to find, especially outside of Japan. I didn't post the first roll cause it didn't come out very well, except for this picture of a guy juggling basketballs on a unicycle in Corvallis:




So anyway, here are some pictures.




















Today I spent the day shopping for stuff for my room and toiletries and stamps and school supplies. And unpacking and organizing my room. Then I went to a free concert with Kara at a record store called Sonic Boom (where I saw the Weakerthans last year). It was a Toronto band called The Beauties who are "alt-country folk rock." They were not very good but not very bad either. For a free concert I would say it was worth it. Then we went and hung out at Kara's place for awhile. Then I walked home. Soon I might watch a movie with Hilary the don and someone else.
Tomorrow I'm going to the clubs fair in the morning since Elise is getting everyone to sign up for Amnesty International because she's the president and pretty much the only member right now. Then Kara and I are going to Little Italy to see Little Italy, and also to buy Matt & Kim tickets at Soundscapes. Then I'm going with Kara and Paula and probably Paula's boyfriend to a luau-themed frat party, even though I hate frat parties. However, I was assured that this one would be different... since it's luau-themed.
On Thursday I'm going to Ikea with Bachan! I hope I can find a good rug. If I don't find one at Ikea, I have absolutely no idea where else to look! So yeah I hope I find one there.

Hauling all my stuff across the continent

Hello! I'm in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. We are waiting out some storms here and going to Brantford, Ontario early tomorrow morning.




These are some photos from a Holga roll I shot in Nova Scotia (except the first one which is in Portland). Half the roll came out like crap and half I really liked. The mastodons are from Mastodon Ridge, which is halfway between the north pole and the equator, and we played mini golf there.




Right now my dad and I are staying in a slightly sketchy Ramada. When we first got here and went to our room, there was someone's stuff still lying around in it. So we tried to go back down to the lobby, but the elevator was broken and this latino lady kept saying all the stairs led to nowhere. So we eventually made it down through the parking garage elevator, and they assigned us to a new room with a little microwave in it.




We went for dinner at restaurant/bar close by and the food was really good. We sat next to a huge window so we had a good view of the lightning storm that started up. There was a lot of lightning, it was really cool. At one point all the streetlights went out and it took a few minutes for them to power back on again. We thought we were going to have to walk back in the torrential rain but luckily it stopped raining right before we left.




So, I move in in four days and classes start a week later. I hope my room is alright. At least it will for sure be better than last year. That's all! Tomorrow we will travel to Canada early in the morning.