Toronto

~ Warning:Super long~ 
When I was planning my trip post exchange, I struggled with places to visit. Originally I had planned on visiting Montreal and Toronto, however it would have cost me an extra $250 in flights alone just to go over to Montreal so alas, I ended up staying in Toronto for a grand total of 9 days. Nine long days.

24th December 2012

I arrived in Toronto on Christmas Eve and breathed through customs in literally 2 minutes. Seriously. I stayed at Canadiana Backpackers Inn and it was relatively cheap. During my stay I realised that it wasn't only a hostel, but also a form of semi-permanent lodging. There were quite a few Australia living in Toronto for no reason in particular. Well, I think the reason was to 'discover something in their life'. Quick review. It was relatively clean although my room was right next to the super, super creaky stairs. Truth be told, the limited number of bathrooms originally bugged me but after 8 nights, I had the timing downpat (especially knowing when the cleaning crew came around). There was free breakfast of pancakes. Prior to that, I was not the biggest fan of pancakes but after the 3rd morning, even free wasn't good enough. To this day, I really just don't like pancakes. Sworn off for a very very long time.

25th December 2012





University of Toronto. 




Christmas day. Alone. Well, I had a hostel Christmas dinner at night but I walked around Toronto at 8am in the morning. It had snowed over night which was incredibly exciting since the only other time I had seen fresh snow was on my Snow Trip with highschool friends back in July 2012. It was cold. And naturally, the streets were completely dead. I walked in a massive loop, through Chinatown-esque area, University of Toronto, to areas that looked somewhat dodgy and eventually walked past a church where people were filling in.

 To be honest, I don't know how I managed to take this sneaky shot.

I was raised as a Catholic, baptised, Sacrament of Reconciliation/Penance, Holy Communion and Sacrament of Confirmation. The last time I was in a church was probably when I was 13 on Christmas Eve. The sermons were as boring as I remember them to be, although I did like the hymns and my favourite part was the moment when you turned to the people beside you to say "peace be with you". Also, the most exciting part was when I went up for the Eucharist and red wine!! I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be so excited for the wine part, but I spent 2 years at a Catholic school (and many years after that at the same church) and we only had Ribena. For obvious reasons.

The Christmas dinner was underwhelming although they had stuffing! I adore stuffing. I first tried it at my lovely Thanksgiving family (should write about that at some stage) and it is lovely. Lovely, lovely.

26th December 2012
Boxing Day. I walked through Toronto again (that was basically my plan for the entire duration of my stay) and came across City Hall (which was a really nice building) and this very cool sculpture.

'Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination'. The photo is super bright, but it is a lion and a lamb on a balanced scale.

Also found the skating rink, which my Canadian web friend replied with, "I don't think I have ever seen it that empty!". I people-watched for a while on another occasion and there was this toddler, bundled up like a little Michelin (wo)man and she was so determined. She wasn't skating per se, more shuffling her feet only to fall down after 1m. She would get up as though nothing happened and continued shuffling. Only to fall. Shuffle. Fall. Shuffle. Fall. It was so endearing and to see her continue to try was just ... it made me warm inside. I stumbled (basically how I found anything) upon Eaton shopping centre and went inside, mainly because my nose was about to fall off. It had the best Christmas decorations I have ever seen and the reindeer light thing was incredible. I didn't buy much, a pair of Aéropostale jeans and also some lingerie from Victoria's Secret. Honestly, the lingerie I got was so pretty, but if I think about the fact that if I was to ever wear it, it would only really be there for all of 10 minutes. So right now, I have $120 worth of Victoria Secret's lingerie just sitting there in my closet forevermore. Ah well. It was appreciated.











27th December 2012









 

Today was High Park! For some reason, I thought it was a simple 20 minute walk from my hostel. Boy, was I wrong. The night before, it had snowed heavily, I believe it was 15cm. It was actually a 6km walk one way, which would normally equate to 1.25hrs. But since it had just snowed, there was slush everywhere. Everywhere. I had prepared myself, clothes wise, pretty well for the cold. But the one thing that I had forgotten was my shoes. I brought 3 pairs of shoes when I first flew into LA: sneakers, thongs and sandals. When I flew into Toronto, I had only two: my sneakers and my thongs (since I already threw out my sandals to save weight). Yeah, sneakers aren't exactly the most waterproof shoes on the planet. But for the first few kilometres, my feet were relatively fine (since there were a lot of shops, the foothpath had been cleared and salt was on the ground). But near the end of my walk, there was snow everywhere. I am not sure which one was the lesser of two evils: walking in snow with my sneakers, or walking on the icy/salty/slippery/wet/slushy footpath with my sneakers. For the former, my feet were wet and for the latter, I had to concentrate so hard to make sure I wouldn't slip and crack my skull open. Once I got there, it was pretty. Really pretty but after a while, the snow got kind of old. Snow was pretty and then it was just 'meh' (I had the same attitude in Europe too).

Frozen lake.






My favourite shot. I was tempted to walk further out, but was scared that I would slip and fall into the freezing waters.
29th December 2012
(Skipped a day because on the 28th, I went to Niagara Falls which will be separated into another post).
By this stage, I was struggling for things to do in Toronto. As you can see, I only really did one thing a day because I had so much time in Toronto. Too much time.

I headed out west to Distillery Historic District, St Lawrence Markets and the general area. Some streets were a little hmm. Didn't really feel so comfortable but just walked faster. The distillery district was very underwhelming.


You know it's cold when this happens. I don't even know how....


30th December 2012
I went up North to see Casa Loma! A nice 4.5km stroll one way. No, in all honesty it was nice walking into another part of downtown Toronto although there was this one part that I never quite liked; I swear it was a food kitchen and just awkward all around. Casa Loma, the most disappointing thing on the planet and I ended up walking a little more to a park. It was relaxing just watching little kids toboggan down the fairly steep hill and the dogs just running around, and I ended up walking back to my hostel and called it a day. But blue skies!! The first in a very very long time. It was very exciting at the time.








Gotta love those slushy footpaths!
31st December 2012
NYE! I was meeting an exchange friend for NYE. To be honest, I don't know what I did in the morning. Probably nothing really. We met up fairly late at Eaton Centre and he just irritated me from the get go.

My skin basically went to hell when I got to Toronto. When I was in Boston, my face was already getting worse but when I was in Toronto, it was as though half my face was about to peel off. No seriously. I had all these ... I'm not sure what to call it, I guess sores? Well, I guess that is what it looked liked. Basically it was so cold, humidity was so low, etc that the skin on my face decided to give up. Bits were going red → peeling off (D:) → took forever to regrow more skin. Yep. It was hell. And I was so self-conscious about it. On the second day, I bought myself the Nivea Creme (the stuff that I use on my legs after I shave to make them uber smooth) to slather on my face like there was no tomorrow. Nivea creme, it was the thickest thing possible and if I was to do that here in Sydney, all my pores would be clogged in a micro-second. Anyways, when I saw the friend the first thing he said was, "what happened to your face". I almost hit him. But I did storm off at the very least and he ran after me, trying to keep up. The plan was to watch the fireworks at City Hall. Which we did. The shortest, most anti-climatic fireworks I have ever seen in my life. Even the fireworks at Darling Harbour on a Saturday night were better. Honest to God. The best part of the night though was watching the girls heading into the clubs. They were in -15 degrees C weather, dressed in mini-dresses/skirts, 10cm heels WALKING IN SLUSH/ SNOW. I don't even know. The funniest scene was when I saw these two girls and one was clearly drunk and was saying, "it's so cold". Obviously, as she was wearing a mini dress (without a jacket) and heels. The other girl said her feet hurt, but clearly couldn't take off her heels so after 3 steps, she would crouch down, I guess in an attempt to rest her feet.

I went up to the friend's hostel which was further north (which was so inconvenient actually) and it was just awkward. People getting wasted which wasn't my scene at all and then I walked the 30 minutes walk back to my hostel.

Hostel view of downtown Toronto
1st January 2013
I don't think I really did anything that day. Seriously.

2nd January 2013
It was the day I was leaving Toronto to fly back into the States. Finally. It was also the warmest day out of the 9 days that I was there. I believe that it was -5 degrees when I left! On average, the temperature was around -15 degrees and I almost died. It was so, so cold. My face was cold, my hands were cold, heck, even my knees were cold and I wore so many layers. I had: merino wool thermals, super tight and super long tank top, thermal t-shirt, fleece and sherpa lined jacket (I wore this in Sydney on a 10 degree day and almost overheated) and either my duck down jacket or my 95% woolen winter coat. Not including my scarf, my gloves, my beanie. Down bottom, I had on fleece lined leggings and my jeans over top. Next time, actually I don't know what I could have done differently next time, aside from sticking a thousand and one of those heat packs. The problem wasn't necessarily that it was cold, it was the fact that I still wanted to be touristy and check out attractions which required me to spend extended periods of time out in the open.

Bottom bunk was mine as was the bottom locker on the right hand side ... and the closet on the left. LOL. I made it my little home, especially since I always kept my sleeping bag liner (see blue thing hanging on the side) to cover the length of the bunk bed. 

 My Overall Thoughts

Aside from the weather, Toronto is a city that I could see myself living in. It felt very much like Sydney. The thing I liked the most was the fact that there were parks everywhere, at least one on every two blocks. Sure, they weren't large parks but it was something. Toronto is not a city you would visit as a tourist. Perhaps as a stopover or a starting point for a roadtrip in Canada, but definitely not to visit. Unless you are interested in the arts, because there are two (or maybe three) amazing art galleries, or so I was told by my Canadian friend. I was incredibly bored after the 2nd day. But all in all, it was really good because it gave me a little break from travelling back to back; moving all the time and sleeping in one bed for one night, it becomes draining to be honest and so in a sense, it was lovely to take a breather before I headed on my whirlwind in Europe.

Would I re-visit?
Dear Lord, no. I have had my share of Toronto. Thanks, but no thanks.

Emory University

This is long overdue! But I am stuck in my land law class and hating it.

I studied at Emory University in Georgia. When I tell people where I went, usually one of the first question they ask is, "why did you pick that school?" and I never know how to answer. Truth be told, Emory was my 4th preference and my last "legitimate school". By legitimate, I mean that it was the last school I knew I could attend and still complete my major.

Side note, surprisingly, American business schools don't seem to offer too many accounting elective courses which is what I needed to complete my accounting major. Most of their "electives" were actually my UNSW cores.

(Red = subjects I studied). This was incredibly frustrating since it excluded a lot of really good schools.

My first 3 preferences were: NYU, Boston College and University of Texas. The first two were due to location and the third was due to the prestige of the business school. But all in all, Emory University was a fantastic choice and it all worked out in the end, as I expected it to.

The thing that shocked me the most about the education system was the grading system. Their bell curve is skewed so far to the right that it is actually crazy. Around 40% of the class will get in the A range, and then it went something along the lines of 20% in the B and effectively the rest in C. Ergo, no one really could fail! It actually makes me a little sad. It makes sense why students do a thousand and one extra-curricular activities and summer internships since it is 'relatively' easy to get an A, resulting in the need for differentiating factors. I was in my Econ class (which was the bludgiest class since it was only highschool economics. I had a 95% term average (!!!) but my overall grade was only a C+. lol) and we had an ice-breaking activity. "What did you do over the summer?" Naive as I was, I though people would talk about going to X or something along the lines of fun. Nope. Everyone basically said something along the lines of, "I interned at X" or "I interned at Y in [insert country]". It was crazy. Now granted, whether people were lying was a completely another matter. Two people stuck out to me: a girl and a guy. The girl said, "I worked at X law firm as I am pre-law". This confused me. You are pre-law (ergo studying an arts degree right now) and working at a law firm ... doing what exactly? The whole pre-law, pre-med thing also weirds me out. There was also a guy who told everyone he interned at some amazing company doing something amazing. Now the lecturer, sorry I mean professor (since that is what they are all called, even though back home I would have called him a lecturer or a tutor to be honest) basically called him out, unintentionally.
"What did you do"
* says something impressive*
"What did you really do?"
PAUSE and then answers sheepishly
"Oh I just basically looked at excel documents and copy and pasted tables"

Back on track. I guess the school that I went to also influenced the sort of people in my class. Emory University is a private university (annual tuition of $42 000!!) and the Goizueta Business School was ranked 4th last year nationally. Three general observations:

Students
Students are taught to be needy. By that, it was really odd for me to be given so much 'hand-holding' at university. It was on par with highschool. If we had quizzes, the professor would email us the day before and would remind us the entire week before the quiz. If a student had any problems, they would just talk to the teaching assistant or the professor who would basically direct them to the solution. For example, I had to write a joint paper with two other exchange students and we were stumped with our research (despite already spending hours on it) so we decided to be "American students" and asked the professor. She then proceeded to give us a 3 page bibliography of journal articles we should look at. Say what?! Extra-credit. I don't understand the concept of this. Everyone completes the extra credit assessments (obviously, free marks, who wouldn't) so then it makes no sense to include them since it is almost a component of the entire marking scheme.

There also seemed to be so much trust when it came to exams. Being the cynical person that I am, I am very 'hmm' about the whole thing. Usually in the class, 2-3 people would leave for the bathroom. But come exam/ quiz time, there would be around 10-15 people getting up for the bathroom. The thing was, that it was so lax. You didn't need to ask for permission, you didn't need to wait for the other person to come back, you just got up and left. Hmm.

Personality wise, it seemed that there were so many students who were those students in my law classes. The ones who seem to know everything about everything and link the topic back to what they completed in one of their internships.

Side note,  I have been struggling with one of my papers for my law elective and I decided to ask for help from my lecturer. Shouldn't have bothered, as all I got was, "there is no perfect paper, just brainstorm and an idea will come to you". D'oh. Fairly sure that wouldn't have happened in the US.

Teaching
My best professor was Ted Rodgers an accounting professor for my auditing class. He was so passionate and loved teaching. He was just brilliant. The next interesting professor was my econ guy who was from Swaziland but had a scholarship to complete his PhD at Emory University. He was bizarre; not entirely sure if it was just him or a difference in culture. Also learnt a lot about his home country and the language (I didn't know that they used clicking sounds).

Assessments
Apart from the weird bell curve, it was very strange to having a thousand and one small assessments, each worth 5% and a final exam that was, at most, a maximum of 40%. I didn't get any overall As for my subjects. Not too surprised considering for 2/4 subjects (ergo the ones that I didn't need for my major but were just filler-subjects since I needed to study full time) I went to 2-5 classes the entire semester. The entire semester. One of the most amusing moment was when I received my Consumer Behaviour (marketing class) midterm back and I received a 75% which was the lowest in the class. Even though everyone seemed to be able to get such high marks, I didn't think that the actual assessments were easy, I guess somewhere along the line, marks get fluffed up and additional marks are just floating around. My grades overall: B+, B+, C+ and C+. The two highest were for my accounting courses and the two lowest for my filler. The thing that made me sad was that for my two accounting classes, I managed to 'beat' so many other students, local students who were actually paying a ridiculous sum every year. And then there was me, who studied literally the last before or the morning of the test and still got a decent mark.

Also, the business school was heavily reliant on group work. I purposely selected the subjects that had minimal group work or none.The frustrating thing was that since people had already been at the 'b-school'  for 2 years, they already formed groups even before we were told to form groups. Thereby stuck with people who were a) exchange students or b) problematic as team members. Not necessarily bad, but just interesting.

Sororities and Fraternities
I was interested in rushing for a sorority until I realised the a) time and b) effort.Getting houses to bid on me, sounds worse than a job interview to be honest. Sunbear's roommate was in a fraternity and I think for the semester, he had to pay $600 (!!!!) to contribute towards the beer fund. The beer fund. What I found interesting was that the sororities' houses were significantly smaller and also part of the school whilst the fraternities were the typical houses you see on tv and they were not part of the school as the alumni (?) had purchased the property from Emory University. Apparently this was why there were less restrictions on the frat houses as they were technically not part of the school. I went to one frat party. It was interesting. Grinding is a concept that makes zero sense to me. And seeing a hundred people grinding against each other is, well, an interesting sight. Also, seeing dozens of drunk people having sex on the oval after the party was also ... interesting. Hmm.

Unofficial school masot; Dooley.

One of the coolest parts of the school was the fact that it owned Lullwater Park which included a suspension bridge.

Boston

21st December
The first city that I visited after leaving Atlanta was Boston. It was the saddest thing flying from ATL, looking out of the window to see Downtown and Midtown for the last time. If I was to ever visit the US again, Atlanta would not be near the top of my list unless it was purely to visit with a fellow exchange person. Per usual, it was blue skies and great weather leaving the South and flying up North, it just became drearier and more grey. The contrast was startingly. I landed in Boston and there was torrential rain and super crazy winds so that there was horizontal rain which was not cool considering I had all my luggage with me and not enough hands (or energy) to hold my umbrella. Although to be fair, it would not have protected me from the elements.

I ended up huddled at a Starbucks, drinking some sort of fall/winter drink that honestly tasted as though it was 99% sugar (seriously, I do not understand people's obsession with Starbucks' hot drinks) and crying on my phone. Good times.








Luckily the skies cleared up and I finally was able to explore a little bit of Boston. First was Boston Commons. It was alright, a park so couldn't expect too much. Boston Commons is basically right across the street from the wealthy suburb of Beacon Hill with the incredibly cute terrace-like homes.





I eventually wandered around and did get a little lost in the financial district of Boston. Probably not the smartest thing since it was dark but it felt really safe (unlike Downtown Atlanta which was incredibly sketchy). Accidentally stumbled upon the Christmas tree and the lightshow. The tree was so large, it was just crazy.

22nd December 2012





The second day, I decided to walk the Freedom Trail. The Freedom Trail is a trail marked by red bricks that starts at Boston Common and ends up in Charlestown, with numerous historic sites along the way. I expected it to take up more time than it did, although I am a fast walker.

Boston was the first time that I truly experienced the cold weather. It was quite chilly when I visited NYC over fall break (although that was only 12 degrees C) and of course, in the South it was always averaging at around 18 degrees. However when I visited Boston, if memory serves me correctly, I am inclined to say that it was around 5-8 degrees which was so incredibly cold (ha! The irony). After finishing my walk at Charleston (side note: now when I watch Rizzoli and Isles, which is set in Boston, I know where it is!) I decided to visit Harvard as well. I wasn't particularly interested but I only went because I had time. I walked back to Boston Commons and caught the T (red: the train) to Cambridge. It was pretty, granted although it didn't look too different (in a sense) from Emory University's Oxford College and it was overall quite underwhelming. With time to kill, I decided to wander around, typical. Originally I had planned on walking to the next train station however what eventually happened was that I ended up walking back to my hostel.

A casual 8km stroll. In addition to the 8km I walked that morning.

On the way back to my hostel, I actually stumbled upon MIT and ended up using their bathroom. No seriously, that was the only reason that I entered the university building.

23rd December 2012
The third day (and my last day) I decided to just wander around downtown again and I visited somewhere. Honestly, I can't remember where the building was but I somehow stumbled upon a website on Google that said that I could go onto the 15th floor (which isn't that high in the grand scheme of things) for free and look at the city and out to the ocean. It was somewhat random; just a commercial building and I had to get buzzed in to reception who then allowed me up to the balcony. Weird. Truth be told, I am not entirely sure what I did that day but judging from the photos that I took, I ended up back at Boston Commons and watched people skate around although I ended up returning back to my hostel since I was freezing and it was starting to snow.






My Overall Thoughts
Boston University was actually my second preference and I am glad that I didn't get nominated purely because of the weather. I am not entirely sure I would have been able to cope with the cold and the dreariness. It is hard for me to judge the city, it just felt like a ... well city. Quite pretty although nothing that really stuck out for me. Although to be fair, my heart wasn't really into travelling as I was missing Sunbear and Atlanta terribly. It was also just the realisation that my exchange experience was over, the thing that I had been living for for years. And it was all over. Similar to NYC, the thing that 'struck' me was the - and I truly despise the word, but- diversity. I guess it is also because there are three really good universities in the area but demographic wise, it was considerably different to Atlanta.

And the word diversity and my distain for it. I follow a lot of 'study abroad' blogs from people to Australia who are from America (I feel that 95% of such blogs are by Americans) and usually one of the top observations is that Australia lacks diversity (I got told this also by the Chicago greeter). What they really mean is that they see, put crudely, is that they see Whites and Asians, where Asians are all one and the same (or namely Asian = Chinese). There is a lack of diversity because there is a considerable less proportion of the community who are from a Hispanic, Latino and African American ethnicity. Well that is the impression that I garner. But it honestly drives me up the wall. I digress from Boston.

Would I re-visit?
Not particularly. In the 2.5 days that I was there, I felt as though I had done everything touristy possible and didn't have much of an interest in visiting the suburbs or anything of that manner.