Tying up Toronto

Wow where did the time go I’m sitting here in Toronto waiting for my flight home back to rainy old Ireland and to be honest, I’m very excited. My time spent in Canada has been amazing I’ve enjoyed every moment of it but I can’t wait to go home to a comfortable bed, a cup of tea and a crisp sandwich.

            The last 5 months have been amazing and everything I expected from Erasmus and maybe more I’ve travelled places I always wanted to go. I’ve made new friendships and strengthened old. I’ve learnt good and bad habits and I believe it has really made me into a better person. As Anthony Bourdain once said “If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.” Now I only had to sleep on floors for a few nights here and there but we travelled and we 
ate as much different food as possible. we saw so much of Canada with an  impromptu road trip to Ottawa and Montreal, I spent a night in a jail cell (it was a hostel that used to be a jail haha)

Ottawa

  

Montreal 

the lovely bunch of Irish people we met in Montreal

            

























Toronto is a strange city it’s a city where everyone seems to be from further afield yet Toronto feels like home. Having lived in large cities in North America before, The Toronto streets felt strangely familiar but completely different people are courteous even if it is minus 20°. And everyone has time for each other.

I think that’s what made my time in Humber college so pleasant, the people are sound and have very much the mentality of Irish people. The lecturers are lovely people and really seem to care about their students. Of course, another fact I enjoyed about Humber was the fact we didn’t have to sit exams due to a communication error and us having flights booked for the week before the last week of college, luckily most of our course was continuous assessment and we were able to submit final proposals a week beforehand. We did, however, sit a few midterm examinations. For “emerging trends in Canadian cuisine” we looked at well, emerging trends in Canadian cuisine, which seemed to me like Ireland circa 2011, we had a choice of protein, starch and a vegetable, which we had to apply a previously learnt skill and present 2 dishes, Saoirse and I cooked pork tenderloin and pork belly with textures of carrot and fondant potato. The beginning of this process can be seen in the below time-lapse. With a final plate following.

The rest us just assignments and a proposal to Humber’s department for sustainability.

Of course, after Toronto, we had to go on a little holiday so Saoirse and I booked a 10-day break to Vancouver to see the other coast (I’m actually on a layover between my flights right now,  

I can’t believe it’s all over and I’ll be back in Ireland in a few hours if I can get on this plane. Canada has been such an amazing experience and I can’t wait to return probably in the summer though.

P.S.

I forgot to mention I’m going  be flying again to visit the 4 people in Venlo in a week to see how the Dutch do Erasmus.

P.P.S

I forgot to upload this. Venlo was amazing, do I have regrets that I didn't choose the Netherlands? no, but did I have a brilliant time, yes. What an amazing place with such a great buzz and such an international mix of people lovely to reconnect to the girls and see what their blog posts are all about.

For one last time

Talk to you later Toronto

Rob J. C