Life in Toronto
Published by Trevor Whitney on Sunday, August 5, 2007 at 5:28 AM.
The EWB House
I’ve had a lot of people ask me about what my living situation etc has been like over the past month in Toronto, so I figured I’d share it on here.
Throughout pre-departure I’ve been living with the rest of the volunteers at the EWB house (the grey one on the left). The house is quite the place! First off, there are 14 of us living there: 9 overseas volunteers, 4 summer interns, and one intern’s fiancé. Needless to say, it’s a full house. It’s located between Little Italy and the Portuguese Village, and a 10 minute walk from Chinatown. It’s also reasonably close to the downtown area. So long as you have good shoes or sandals you can walk just about anywhere.
There’s 3 bedroom upstairs, all of which are packed full of bunk beds. The room I stayed in had 4, with 6 of us sleeping in there. The beds are definitely not designed for people who are 6’4”. The fact that they were bunk beds was ok, but they were pretty short and there was a bar at the head and foot of the bed. Not only was I too tall, but I couldn’t even hand my feet off the end of the bed. I know it sounds silly, but it really started to bug me after a while.
Speaking of bugs, there was also a bit of a bed bug outbreak. The house was fumigated right before we got there, but apparently they didn’t get them all because poor Alanna woke up with a bunch of bites one night. Lucky for me they didn’t spread to my side of the room. They also came back and sprayed again, and they seem to be gone. So if you’re heading to the house in the near future don’t worry, you should be safe!
The Office
Although most of our sessions were at the U of T sometimes we’d meet at the office, mainly when we had guest facilitators and such. Not too much else to say about the office… The other day is was packed full of 30’000 individual sachets of hot chocolate that were being given out as part of a massive outreach event targeted at promoting fair trade products.
Yonge Street
Last weekend we had a day off and I needed a break from studying monitoring and evaluation systems so I decided to wander over to Yonge Street. Yonge Street is kind of like Toronto’s version of Robson Street. It’s also home to the landmark Sam the Record Man store with the huge fluorescent spinning record sign. Unfortunately I’m sad to say that the iPod has killed the record man. Even the icon couldn’t weather the storm of online mp3s.
On the upside I came across “The Chalkmaster.” He was artist doing some amazing art on the sidewalk with chalk. By the messages he had written alongside the artwork I gathered that he has a daughter in Halifax that we wanted to go visit and he had just gotten enough money from passerbys to buy a bus ticket and go visit her. I will leave you on that uplifting note and hope to post again soon.
1 Comments
I’ve had a lot of people ask me about what my living situation etc has been like over the past month in Toronto, so I figured I’d share it on here.
Throughout pre-departure I’ve been living with the rest of the volunteers at the EWB house (the grey one on the left). The house is quite the place! First off, there are 14 of us living there: 9 overseas volunteers, 4 summer interns, and one intern’s fiancé. Needless to say, it’s a full house. It’s located between Little Italy and the Portuguese Village, and a 10 minute walk from Chinatown. It’s also reasonably close to the downtown area. So long as you have good shoes or sandals you can walk just about anywhere.
There’s 3 bedroom upstairs, all of which are packed full of bunk beds. The room I stayed in had 4, with 6 of us sleeping in there. The beds are definitely not designed for people who are 6’4”. The fact that they were bunk beds was ok, but they were pretty short and there was a bar at the head and foot of the bed. Not only was I too tall, but I couldn’t even hand my feet off the end of the bed. I know it sounds silly, but it really started to bug me after a while.
Speaking of bugs, there was also a bit of a bed bug outbreak. The house was fumigated right before we got there, but apparently they didn’t get them all because poor Alanna woke up with a bunch of bites one night. Lucky for me they didn’t spread to my side of the room. They also came back and sprayed again, and they seem to be gone. So if you’re heading to the house in the near future don’t worry, you should be safe!
The Office
Although most of our sessions were at the U of T sometimes we’d meet at the office, mainly when we had guest facilitators and such. Not too much else to say about the office… The other day is was packed full of 30’000 individual sachets of hot chocolate that were being given out as part of a massive outreach event targeted at promoting fair trade products.
Yonge Street
Last weekend we had a day off and I needed a break from studying monitoring and evaluation systems so I decided to wander over to Yonge Street. Yonge Street is kind of like Toronto’s version of Robson Street. It’s also home to the landmark Sam the Record Man store with the huge fluorescent spinning record sign. Unfortunately I’m sad to say that the iPod has killed the record man. Even the icon couldn’t weather the storm of online mp3s.
On the upside I came across “The Chalkmaster.” He was artist doing some amazing art on the sidewalk with chalk. By the messages he had written alongside the artwork I gathered that he has a daughter in Halifax that we wanted to go visit and he had just gotten enough money from passerbys to buy a bus ticket and go visit her. I will leave you on that uplifting note and hope to post again soon.
Too bad you didn't have your camera with you...would have loved to see a picture or two of that chalk art. Your location in TO sounds like it was pretty decent, that always makes things a little more enjoyable. Oh...and I'm sure those bed bugs are nothing compared to some of the insects you'll encounter in Africa. I bet they left a few there just as part of your 'preparation'. Haha!