Finally, things start to get busy in Guelph. Summer vacation is over, the students are back in town and every night they are drunk-walking past my window to go out downtown. It also has a lot of positive effects, and they clearly outweigh the annoyance of nightly noises: my real AIESEC-work started!
On wednesday, we had our first booth during the orientation week resource fair and we talked to a lot of first-year students and told them what it was all about and why they should join AIESEC. I hope to see some of the back at our info sessions next week. I also made a classroom presentation (which I won't be able to use in some cases, because the classrooms here don't always have projectors, another little culture shock for me) and emailed a lot of professors and did many other different things to ensure next week everything runs smoothly. It feels very good to be busy again. And to have more people around - the number of people I know in Guelph probably tripled this week.
And even more reasons to be happy: this weekend I did a lot of things that were on my to-do list in Canada: visit Toronto, an Icehockey-match, the Niagara Falls and the US. Martijn, a friend from AIESEC in the Netherlands who is on an internship in Ottawa right now came to visit me and we played tourists. On friday we went to Toronto and explored the city. Absolute HIGHlight (haha) was the CN-Tower, a very very tall tower (553m). The elevator girl said their top platform is the highest viewpoint in the world, but then in the leaflet it says it does not hold the record anymore, so I am not sure what to believe. Truth is: it is freaking high. Weather was not really good, on nice days one can see 100 kms. They also have a glass floor in the middle deck. That was very very scary. I did not feel really comfortable up there, but it was definitely an experience. There are not so many other exciting sights in Toronto, so we visited Lake Ontario, the Rogers Centre and the old and the new City Hall and just walked around. It's a nice, huge city, but I was not as impressed as I was by Montreal. It's a sort Rotterdam. Even comes with the tower. We had to head back early in the afternoon, because another highlight was planned for the evening: The Guelph Storms played against Brampton Batallion, another local icehockey team. They were handing out free tickets during the resource fair, it was a great opportunity. The match itself was not very spectacular, since it was pre-season. The mean Me would have liked to see some more fighting going on, but I liked the atmosphere and the experience. Although my nose got cold.
The next day we had another adventure awaiting us: the Niagara Falls. Going by bus via nice places like Hamilton and St. Cathrines, we arrived there around noon. And I was officially impressed. Even though the Falls are not as tall as the one I saw in Quebec, they are much wider and because there are rocks under one of them, you get way more wet. We did not enter the city of Niagara Falls, which is basically a big Carnival for all the tourists. They have some quite impressive buildings and I have heard of the haunted houses, but that was not really necessary. What really was necessary for me was going to the USA, since it was only a bridge away. Very exciting. Leaving fingerprints and everything. And I learned the correct answer to: "Why are you coming to the US?" is not: "We just want to cross the border." Once we explained the "true" reason for our visit, to watch the Falls from the American side, we just had to pay 6$ and there we were in the country of unlimited possibilities. Our "true" reason was a lie by the way, because the view of the Falls is much better from the Canadian side. After running back from the US to catch our bus, we travelled back to Guelph via Toronto. And it was not over yet: since we hadn't seen "The Dark Night" and many people have told me to see it we went to the movies with Brett and Krista. And for the second time of the day I was officially impressed. I had high expectations and they were not disappointed at all. For some reason I had difficulties taking a Batman movie serious as a truly good movie, but I learnt better.
After all this exhausting activities Martijn and I just had coffee today and hung out at the Café of the bookstore in Guelph (I am very excited about discovering it, since it is really nice) and when he left I caught up on my AIESEC work and discovered the new facebook, which I by the way strongly dislike. It looks as if they got it inspired from Office 2007 (which I like, but not for facebook!!!). Anyways, it is dark outside again, the student crowds walk past my window and I will also go out now to the to see an Indian movie with Whitney and then sleep and next week find a lot of new AIESECers.
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