After a 2 hour flight to Bangkok, a 15 hour wait there, a 7.5hr flight to Doha, a 2hr transfer in Doha, a 14hr flight to New York, almost an hour on the tarmac, half an hour delay for bag pick up we walked through customs in New York fairly tired.
The next step was to get to get to the Hostel.
Outside in the line for taxis, it was like the airport had exploded with busyness and snow. The whole of New York; as most of you would’ve known, had been shut down due to the snow storms and we had arrived in post storm peak hour.
The line for cabs was pretty long, we waited 30mins before being told the airport had run out of taxis, there were still some more to come, but not many.
Pat and I decided to change to the shuttle service (of course as this happens, more taxis turned up). We waited half an hour for our shuttle, our short little Italian man turned up, called out my name and off he went rushing though and disappeared in a crowd of much taller people.
We hurried after him, jumped in the shuttle and drove. 150m down the road, he decided to swipe the front of a stationary car as he was pulling into the curb. We waited another 45mins for another shuttle while our short angry Italian man argued that the other car was moving and drove into him.
By the time we arrived at the hostel, it was 65hours between beds. I was tired, but Pat was wrecked.
Our first day we walked through snow covered central park, went to the North Face store to stock up on some warm clothes, visited Columbus Circle for some wholefoods for lunch (and a quick peek in some more shops) and then continued through Times Square (buying some more clothes along the way), and back up to fifth avenue where I purchased a new laptop.
So after almost 8hours of dragging Pat around he had been quite the trooper, but had begun to be a bit tired and grumpy, so it was time to go home.
Central Park
Our first day we walked through snow covered central park, went to the North Face store to stock up on some warm clothes, visited Columbus Circle for some wholefoods for lunch (and a quick peek in some more shops) and then continued through Times Square (buying some more clothes along the way), and back up to fifth avenue where I purchased a new laptop.
Columbus Circle
Times Square
New years eve we met up with Hannah (a girl from the year below me at school who I used to row and coach with) and her family. We did a great walking tour that was supposed to be 6 hours… It turned into 8! However it was great, we covered a lot of sights and food.
We started in Wall st, proceeded to ground zero, went to little Italy (had amazing pizza followed by a course of delicious rice pudding shared with my fellow chocaholic and sweet tooth Hannah), then onto Chinatown where live frogs, eels and many many live fish are sold.
Wall St
Badges of Ground Zero Volunteers
Hannah Banana+Me+Chocolate Rice Pudding=Heaven
Stinky live fish anyone?
Grand Central Station
New Years in Greenwich Village
Brooklyn Bridge
Ice skating in Central Park
Our last day in New York, Pat had a confession…. And I quote “I love New York” and “maybe we should come back for a weekend” –mwahaha I had succeeded in convincing him that New York was more than just a big city!
Our last day I spent the morning organizing airport transfers and apartment key pick ups while Pat had another extended sleep in to recover from some pretty rough jetlag. Eventually we got out and about and headed to Times Square to meet Hannah Banana, we visited the Toys r Us store where they have a ferris wheel inside the store and we all revisited our childhood dreams in the giant Barbie house, in the Jurassic Park section and then the Wonka candy section.
Between us we had lots of Shockers, Gobstoppers and Runts before going to the M&M store to see the ridiculous amount of different colours and types of M&Ms and a leather Swarovski crystal encrusted M&M jacket worth $3000+.
NY's local icon- The Naked Cowboy
Toys R' Us
M&M&M&M&M&M&Ms
We headed back to the hostel for to pick up the bags and head to the airport.
Toronto is cold, very cold. But it was only -7, apparently we will get down to -20 (yes that is in Celsius).
A lovely man took us in our shuttle to Wilfred Laurier University, my home for the next few months. He was very chatty and unbelievably helpful, drove us to go pick up our keys on the other side of uni and then without being asked to drove us to our door and help us take the luggage inside; apparently after a bad incident he know walks everyone inside to make sure they are safe. He told us that it can get so cold that you are able to hear your breath freeze as it leaves your mouth.
Our apartment is great, in the basement of 201 Regina St North, Waterloo ON (look it up on Google maps for a pic if you feel like it). We have beds, desks, chests of drawers, couches, table, kitchen table, oven and stove. But no pots, pans, cutlery or dishes…
My new room
Orientation games
Orientation day started at 9am, it was a whirlwind of information. We had a tour around the school, met other international and exchange students and a couple of people from our course, there was a group of about 35 people. The tour was great, Laurier is so big, about 5 times bigger than ACU (but its still smaller than most other unis here); it has a gym (free to use) with spin classes etc, an Olympic size pool (free use also), 3 basketball courts in a big stadium, a fast food court open till 2am (good for late night munchies after a big one), heaps of other eating areas and cafes, lots of big buildings, a convenience store, a pub, a nightclub pretty much everything you could possibly need to make this a small city in itself. One hallway has the student union emblem on the group, which no one walks on out of respect for the university. It's called "The Hawk", its even been known to have guards around it during inter-university events to stop people from disrespecting the hawk.
I met a very funny and stereotypically wacky Dutchman called Peter, I think its already love between him and Pat. Later that evening we had dinner as a big group, Peter loves to joke but didn’t quite comprehend the cultural differences between him and a Iranian girl called Sahar. He was telling us how Amsterdam is fantastic and you can do anything and everything including “smoking, drinking and having sex all at the same time”, needless to say Sahar hopped up and walked away from that conversation in suppressed disgust.
Respect "The Hawk"
We finished the night at one of the local pubs watching the junior hockey championship between Canada and the US; needless to say there is a huge rivalry. I’m pretty excited to see a hockey game.
I love it here, I love the snow, everything is so pretty, the people are so polite, kind and helpful, we have so much support offered to us and so much information given to us. A lot of the mentors we were with yesterday offered us spare toasters, kettles, pots, pans and microwaves.
We had our first class this morning, Em (who came from here on exchange to Australia last year) had ethics with us this morning. The lecturer, aka “the prof” was so kind, he spoke to us after class and told us he’d make sure we were properly integrated into his class and he’d help us with any problems we had.
If I could stay a full year on exchange I would (but ACU wont let me), this place is fantastic.
More to come soon! xo
