Snow

The snow in Ontario is beautiful We haven't had very much in Toronto itself and so I will have to spend more time in the countryside next year Jan and Feb, so that I can get my fill of snow!

This is a picure of some of the treats that winter has to offer...

Hockey Game

I watched my first ice hockey game last night. It was good fun! I was taken out by one of our clients and so had tickets for the box. Quite a luxurious way of watching my first hockey game. Its fast and quite exciting and as we were watching a league game it is supposed to be one of the best. There was quite a lot of atmosphere, but I think it would have been more fun to be in the stands, rather than watching from above in the box.

Odds and Ends

3 December and winter is on its way, although, I really expected to get my first snow of the year in cold snowy Canada, not warm rainy england! I have been out in the UK for a business trip and wondered if I'd make it back to snow free Toronto as all the stations closed and taxis stopped running. The good old faithful bus, proved to be the only option out to Heathrow, for a nailbiting race to get there before the check-in closed!

I'm now back in Toronto and we had our first dusting of snow today. The ground turned white, but it didn't stick around very long and most of it has now gone. The temperatures have however plummeted and the maximum today was minus 2 degrees. The forecast just goes downhill from here! I think it may be time to take my warm down coat out of the cupboard.

Preparing for winter has been quite an education. Its the first time in my life I have had to consider buying a second set of tyres for my car... Next weekend, I will buy winter tyres, which help the car grip better in very cold conditions. I have also bought a super dooper ice-scraper, which includes a long handle with a brush, to brush the copious quantities of snow that can fall on the car. A simple little bit of de-icer spray is apparently insufficient. I also find the central heating here, quite interesting. I have an enourmous boiler, which is purely for central heating(the hot water is on a separate system). Hot air is then blown through either the ceilings or the floors and comes out in vents in front of the doors and windows. My apartment warms up in about 25min and then stays warm! In summer, its blows cold air through the vents and you end up with air conditioning. Not too shabby!!


When in Rome, do as the Romans, and so I have bought a pair of ice-skates and tried ice-skating in the village ice-rink. It was good fun, and I am looking forward to taking my skates out to the harbour front, where there is an outdoor ice-rink at the edge of the lake :-)



As Christmas approaches, everyone is starting to decorate their houses with cooured lights and Christmas decorations. It actually looks quite nice when a whole street has fairy lights on all the houses. I need to go for a walk and take some photographs.



A random photo of the "bad" weather going and the nice blue sky coming!



From a special person...!!

Halloween

Pumpkins, pumpkins and more pumpkins... its 31 October and Canada is having halloween. For the last few weeks, people have been decorating their houses with pumpkins, spider webs, beware signs and various other bits and pieces. Its been quite entertaining, seeing what everyone does. Virtually every house has at least a pumkin or 2 on their verandah and the more adventurous range up to whole Vampire dinner parties, with all the trimmings.

I had my first taste of halloween, by going to the pumkin farm and choosing a pumpkin to carve.




We then went back and had to carve the pumkin. This involves removing the VERY slimy innards and scraping out all the pips and other slimy muck from inside. A face is then drawn on the outside and the carving begins. It is much harder than it looks, but I think the end product was pretty acceptable for my first carved pumpkin.






And sitting on the verandah...



I do have to admit, some people go to town with their pumpkins and they look amazing. Mine was a very simple one...

I joined up with a famiy from church to go trick and treating, as they have little children and it was quite fun watching the children go from house to house all dressed up, collecting candy. The whole street gets involved and for 2 hours the street is alive with kids running around getting candy.

The area I was in, even had a play put on outside the one house, with stage lights and music etc. (the owner is in the film industry!) Quite well done and a good laugh.

And Fall begins!

Officially summer is now over and we have moved into Fall - note the correct usage of Canadian terms!

We have had some chilly starts to the day, but it has generally been warm during the day and of course we still have our glorious blue sky :-) After 10 years of predominantly grey, I still love it every single morning when its blue. I think its the thing I love the most - and the space and lack of people. Its marvellous.

I have now moved into my new appartment (flat is apparently a UK word) and am feeling much more settled being in my own place. It is so big, I feel like a queen in my palace. So if anyone wants to come to Toronto for a holiday, I have a spare room. I'll post some photos once I have tidied it up properly. I bought my electrical goods today - so now have no excuse for not ironing my clothes or vaccuming the floor!

Yesterday, I drove North of Toronto to see the fall colours. The colours are amazing. In the UK, the leaves are very pretty, but are predominatly yellow, whereas here, they are all shades of yellow, orange and red. Really stunning. It was such a serendipity (always wanted to use that word!!) when we came across a lake surrounded by forest.



The water in the lake is so clear as well.

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These are a few more pictures of the leaves and changing colours...









And how about this as a location for my house one day? Pretty, isn't it? And who knows, there may even be a few of the Canadian Moose hiding in the forest.




Apparently these lakes freeze over in winter. I can't wait to come back again to see what that is like. I'm keen to try ice skating on a lake - I wonder if we are allowed to? I think winter is going to be such fun :-) I can't wait for it.

This weekend is Thanksgiving weekend, which is a big thing in Canada and the USA (althought the USA only has it in November). I had pumkin pie for the first time - its really nice. Pumpkin and cinamen and other spices in a pastry shell, and most people eat it with whipped cream. Halloween is also big here and it should be fun to see what it is all about. I think my traditional views are a little off the mark!! It seems to be as much fun as Father Christmas and the Easter Bunny ;-)

The next few weeks!

I can't believe that I have been living in Canada for over a month now! I still randomly refer to Toronto as London when asking for directions, which is made all the more confusing by the fact that there is a London about a 2 hour drive outside of Toronto! Aside from that, and learning the new terminology and spelling (do you know how awful it is to knowingly misspell words in your own report!!) it doesn't feel very different living over here. I am becoming very used to my 5 min walk to the office and I think it will be a shock to the system, when I actually have to commute a whole 20min...

I was introduced to the wind that everyone keeps referring to and for the first time, I am grateful for having grown up in PE the "windy city". I think the wind here can rival that of PE! I am told its not much fun when the temperature is 10 degrees below and the wind chill factor drops it a further 15 degrees, but I am also learning that the Canadians are proud of how tough they are to "survive" the winters here and any Canadian will take glee in telling you how cold the winters are! For now, I'm enjoying the balmy 20+ degree days with sunshine and blue sky :-)

I went down to Niagara falls today, with Faye - a lovely lady whom I met on a hike I went on 2 weeks ago. Since meeting her, we have met up with each other to go walking in the cemetery, which boarders onto the apartments I am staying in.



Niagara falls were amazing! We drove down in my nice new car - its about a 2 hour drive and spent the whole day there. I took lots of photos! but don't worry, I'll only post a few onto the blog site.







We stayed on the Canadian side (the falls are on the border of the USA and Canada) as the views from the canadian side are MUCH better. The falls are actually in 2 sections, but the best section is the big horseshoe shape. The water crashed down and billows back up, so as you will see in the photo below, its actually impossible to get a photo of the entire falls without this "cloud" of water in the middle of the photo. When the wind blows you also get absolutely soaked! We were very lucky as it was quite hot when we were there, so we dried off quite quickly.



The leaves are starting to change colour, and in about 2 weeks time, I am planning on driving North to see and photograph some of the Autumn colours. Next weekend I move into my new apartment, which is VERY exciting, I can't wait to be in my own place.

I'm loving my new church and have a new comers welcome lunch this Sunday. It will be nice to meet some of the other new people in the church and be able to talk about ways of getting more involved. They are starting up a "soup kitchen" type program (Canadian spelling!!) in the poorer districts of Toronto and I am very keen to get involved. I think it will be great to be able to start giving back to the community. I think it starts in October, so can let you know...

Well, I think that is about all for now. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks. Moving into my flat, buying a flat screen TV!! and seeing the leaves on the trees start to change colour :-)

The first weeks

I have decided to set up a blog and the current intention is to keep in updated fairly regularly, so that everyone can see my photos etc from my new Life in Toronto!

The first 2 weeks have flown past, but my overriding impression of Toronto, is that I absolutely love it here :-) I may think differently after a winter, but for now, its great.

I'm still staying in a rented apartment, about a 3 min walk from work and loving the lack of a commute. I can leave the apartment, get my coffee and be at my desk in less time than it used to take me to walk to Sutton train station in the morning!!

I have found a place to rent in mid-town Toronto on Eglinton and Baysview for those who know Toronto. I don't yet have any photos of the inside, but this is what the outside is like... (and now I need to work out how to load photos!!)



Yesterday, I bought myself a car, which was great fun. I had already worked out that I wanted a Ford Focus and which dealer had good offers, so I trundled out to Missassuga on the Super-Sized trains they have here in Toronto... I have never seen such an enormous train in my life before! They are double story and go on for about 12 or 14 carriages. Inside they are clean, spacious and VERY nice.



After looking at the sedan versus the hatchback cars, I decided on a sedan as the boot was much bigger and the back seat still folds down, which is very handy. I have bought a black 2009 model, so its the new shape and the car has nice low mileage.









I am also the proud holder of a Canadian drivers license. Ontario only swops drivers licenses with about 4 countries in the world, so despite having a UK "driving on the left" license, they recognise it here and I simply swopped it and now have a Canadian one.

I should get my car on Thursday and I can't wait to have some wheels again. There is very little public transport here, so although you can get around by bus, there is a limited service and unless you stay in the centre of Toronto, you need a car. Hopefully next weekend I can go visit Niagra falls :-)

This weekend is a long weekend, and they have a big exhibition at the exhibition centre. I went along yesterday and had a marvelous time there.

I really enjoyed looking at the sand sculpture. They looked amazing - as though the "statues" were carved from rock.






I also had a good laugh, looking at the fruit and vegetable competion tables. I think this must be a North American thing, but they literally had competions for all sorts of fruit and vegetables. I had to control myself not to laugh and to mearly show interest while taking the photos!!

A winning tray of carrots... AND not only did this tray win first prize, they also won some vegetable of the day prize too!





And a winning aubergine...



On Saturday evening, I watched an aerobatic and iceskating show. It was all done to rock music and quite entertaining. The photos didn't come out very well, but this one shows a guy holding his body out sideways - pretty incredible.




Church has also been great. I've been going to St Pauls, which is an anglican church in downtown Toronto. Its a family church with about 150-200 people. They are so friendly and so chatty, I am already starting to feel at home there. The year is much like the UK, so everything starts up again in September and I'll get involved with a small group and other ministry opportunities at the church.

Work is going very well as well. I am privileged to be working with a great bunch of people and I am actually enjoying work very much at the moment as well.