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 :-)