Some thing I miss...

This morning whilst showering in our tiny shower, I started thinking about the things I'm starting to miss (of course besides the obvious - family, David, friends, my bedroom)...

- a bathtub and bathing. It's so nice to come home from a long day with sore feet and just soak in a tube. I won't get to do that for 6 months!
- good deli meat and cheese. It's hard to find here and I finally found a deli whose quality is reasonable, but it's so expensive!
- being in the front row in class and giggling with Steph and Diana
- oddly enough, having more than 2 hours of class per day... I haven’t figured out why, but more contact and less reliance on self-learning would be so much better!
- an oven! we only have a microwave that serves as a grill/convention oven... but it's not he same and it's disgusting!
- a dollar store. I love going other dollar store and picking up ridiculously cheap stuff - the variety and discount stores here just aren't the same

So that's about it for now... I'll supplement it later with things I love.

And other thing that Canadian may not realize... and that is how much of an influence the US has on our daily lives... just in the small things. And it is now more apparent in talking to people here, from another country that also started as a British colony. For example, we are on the metric system, but ask me how much I weigh or how tall I am in kilos and I have no clue! And in Microsoft Word, the default is in centimetres... which I always change to inches. I like having an 8.5 x 11 size sheet and the copy paper here is slightly different, I think it's A4 but whatever it is, it's longer. And we have the same spelling... using -our (labour), and -re (centre) BUT we use 'z' not 's' for verbs that end in 'ize'. The oven (or our microwave rather) goes to a temperature of 250... and at first I thought, well that's useless! Then I realized (see... the '-ize') that it meant 250C not 350F which I'm so used to when cooking. Also, they drive on the right (so does Hong Kong, South Africa...) but maybe I do not understand the full history on that one.

Anyway, just small little things that make Canada interesting... and as I read in a travel book - we have the aboriginal culture, the French speaking Canadians, we were colonized by Britain, but so heavily influenced by the US and to top it off, have a large number of immigrants. Just think about all the different influences and how it all just adds to our multi-culturism and unique fabric of Canada.

Well enough introspectiveness... I'm going out tonight with a huge group of American kids and I need to get ready... should be fun!