The first rethink...!

Have now been in Toronto staying with some variant on the cousin relation, Andy, and his wife Shan and their 2 kids, Simon (3) and Amy (6 months). Have a very nice basement annex to myself which has been great, but Markham being a fair way out of Toronto, I've decided to head down to a hostel tomorrow in a bid to be more in the centre of things and meet some people, as my company, although lovely up here, is quite limited.

This change of plan is due to the SWAP office that I was headed for an orientation meeting in Montreal being shut until end of Jan, so I've been having to do a bit of a rethink the last few days. The current plan is to hang out in Toronto until at least Thursday, when I'll go to the SWAP meeting here. Then maybe Montreal after that (where potential room might be) or stay here for a couple of months - there's a potential writing job that was suggested by my friend Jenny's brother's girlfriend, which, if it came about would be awesome, as in it would be beneficial to my career, or my excuse for one in London. But I want to head over West at some point as well, so maybe a more temporary role would be best. Who knows. For now, the plan is to have fun downtown Toronto for a few days, hopefully meet some others in a similar situation and go from there. Flexibilty is everything!

Toronto itself is cool - not as cold as I expected. Or, rather, it is cold, and if I were standing at a bus stop in Clapham in those temperatures I would not be a happy bunny, but because it's Canada, I think I'm expecting it to be like that. I was even exploring sans hat or gloves today - I'm turning into a hardened canuck already :-)

Today was a good day, productive. Booked myself into the hostel, bought some snow boots, got my cell phone (another Canadianism!) set up. Wandered around downtown, to the library, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Eaton centre (a big mall) and did things like eat frozen yogurt, stomp through snow and walk up and down the self-proclaimed longest street in the world, Yonge street, which runs through Toronto right up into Ontario and beyond. It also seems to have a large number of adult entertainment shops as well! I've also checked out Holts Renfrew (the Harvey Nics of Toronto) with Jenny yesterday - and was only vaguely tempted by a pair of severely discounted Paige jeans, and come across a massive protest against the Israel with the Israel-Gaza conflict. It's quite strange being so far from home, and yet the Queen still features on all the coins here - I've just emptied my wallet of all English change, which makes paying for things a lot quicker when I'm not discarding 5p pieces..although I wonder if they'd notice...

Next stop, Canadiana backpackers. As someone said to me earlier, the fun and the fear starts here!