Yesterday could have been called a day of surprises. We really had only one plan in the morning, to take the train to Downtown Toronto, but eventually the day turned to be full of something new. The walk from Donna's house to the train station is quite long, and as this city is not that pedestrian-friendly as we have got used to in Finland, it felt even longer. In Toronto it is quite easy to walk around, but here in Pickering there is no tunnels and sidewalks go...

Nothing much actually happened yesterday, we were just taking it easy at Donna's house in Pickering. We went to a grocery store in the morning, where we met this funny lady who worked in a coffee shop. The big difference between Canadians and Finns is that the people are much more open and social here. It took a little getting used to in the beginning, but I just love it now! We talked to the lady for maybe 25 minutes and she even offered us her umbrella as it wa...

Yesterday was more or less a perfect day! We started the day by walking to the International Student Exchange Centre (ISXO) and the International Student Centre (ISC). We had some issues we had to solve at the places, I had a conflict in my course timetable which I wanted to solve as soon as possible and we had way too much luggage to carry around during these three weeks before we get our residence rooms. Within half an hour both problems were solved as we got ...

Our hostel is located at Spadina Avenue and Dundas Street, but the area is more commonly refered to as Chinatown. Although our neighbourhood is situated only at the border of Chinatown, the influence of Chinese culture is huge. Some restaurants, herb and cd stores post their signs only in Chinese and it seems that the whole neighbourhood has gone nuts because of the Olympic Games. If you really concentrate, you can actually imagine being in Beijing here. Two coun...

First feelings from Toronto: Exhaustion! Wow, this has been a loooong day. The trip began in Helsinki at 6 am where we said goodbye to our friends and family. 18 hours later (that's five minutes ago) we arrived at our hostel in Toronto. Oh yeah, and the hostel? Let's just say that sometimes you get what you deserve when you're travelling on a low budget. Now we're going to get some Vietnamese food and soon we'll go to bed with the bedbugs.