In Toronto's Airport

So I am currently sitting in Toronto’s international airport waiting for my plane. It arrives in two hours. Getting through security was a lot easier than I expected. In fact, I got in and out in about twenty minutes. Right now, I’m really nervous and still in disbelief about this trip. It seems so unreal. I have been preparing for this trip for so long, it seems strange that it’s actually here.

I guess I should explain a little what I’m doing here. I’m waiting for a plane that will take me to Amsterdam which will then take me to Cape Town, South Africa. I will be studying at the University of the Western Cape and staying for four months, two weeks and two days (yes, I counted).

I really have nothing to say right now. I’m excited and nervous. So I guess I’ll talk about the last couple weeks because those have been exciting. I’ll go from the most recent to the least.

My family and I drove to upstate New York last Thrusday. We stayed overnight in Dayton and I was hoping to get to see Winnie’s school (The University of Dayton). But that never happened. Basically we drove all the way up to Buffalo, which I had no idea was so close to the border between the US and Canada. It took us a while to find a place to stay since it’s a holiday weekend but we finally settled at a Motel 6 that was relatively close to the border and Niagra Falls. After dropping off our lungage, we went and explored the Niagra Falls region, which too our surprise included lots of Indians and lots of other people too; the diversity was amazing especially compared to Kirkwood and even Belmont, both mostly black and white which can get boring.

But anyways, since Winnie had an expired passport, we weren’t sure if he would be allowed across the border or even be able to get back in so we took one of the pedestrian bridge to get across just to see if we could. It worked out fine but not after I had to go back to van and get my passport and then the boys had to get everyone else’s papers because mom forgot them. But in the end, we were able to cross over.

I’m not sure what I was expecting I guess in my mind the Niagra Falls were these grand falls unbelievable to behold. But it was nothing like that at least when looking at them from Canada. They looked so small from across the river, but they were much better up close (more on that later).

And Canada itself was not too exciting. I could barely tell I was in a different country if it wasn’t for the flags and the speed limit in km instead of miles, which really annoyed me. Most of the world uses the metric system but Americans are too good for that. I don’t even know the reason why we don’t. It just puts us at a real disadvantage when you’re overseas because I always have to think: ok, 1 km is 1000 meters which is a little more than a ½ a mile and then try to figure out the distance that way. But that’s enough on that.

Basically, on Friday we explored a little bit of Canada and saw some fireworks, which were pretty cool but fairly short. That’s it for now. I’ll write more later.