Phew... much better. A sandwich can do wonders!
On march 22nd, the international office at York offered a day trip to the maple Syrup Festival at Bronte Creek. It was so much fun (even though it was cold), and very interesting! Now I know why maple syrup is so expensive! The trees you can get the sap out of only grow (basically) in the Great Lakes region, and you can only harvest the sap for 6-8 weeks a year! One tree gives enough sap for 1 litre of syrup per season! So, no wonder it doesn't come cheap. As you can probably tell, we took a tour where they explained to us how maple syrup was made, how it was made 300 years ago, etc. After that, we walked around, looking at an old farmhouse, had some pancakes with (what else?) maple syrup, and managed to find the ONLY tree in Bronte Creek that was dripping sap!! It was just a little too cold yet for the trees to start dripping, but we found the first one (after looking into many empty buckets)! Very cool.

Our tour guide, Kip, is showing us how maple syrup was made... I think 200 years ago.

mmmmmmmmh... sugar!

Beautiful Bronte Creek Park on a beautiful winter's, almost spring, day.
That saturday evening, my two German friends (Betti & Uli) came back from their road trip. And since the weather was good, we decided to go skating on the harbourfront the next day, before they had to get on their flght back to Germany. The weather was beautiful! I ended up not skating too much, since a guy from India joined us and he had barely ever skated before, so for some reason, i ended up trying to teach him how to skate... instead of Marc, who is an actual hockey player... anyways.

The Natrel skating rink at the Toronto harbourfront. In the background, you can see bits of Lake Ontario and the Toronto islands.
Finally, it was "Earth Hour" on saturday, the 29th, so Dani, Marc and I went to Nathan Philips Square to hear some bands play (Nelly Furtado and The Philosopher Kings played a couple of songs, and the mayor held a speech) and watch the city go dark for 1 hour, as a reminder that we should conserve energy to save the world... and stop global warming... all that good stuff. Quite a few buildings went dark, so that was an unusual sight for Toronto at night, since usually it's bright as day. Also, it's weird to me that you actually seem to have to remind Canadians to turn off their lights when they leave their home - I've been doing that since I was a kid! But then I come home from school or wake up in the morning and my roommates have left at least 3 lights on in our appartment, and suddenly I think, that, maybe, Canadians really need to learn how to do that.
And that's it for now: I have my final paper I hope to hand in today, and then it's mostly organizing stuff until I leave for Halifax on the 15th. Hope the weather is good enough for us to go hiking - and I hope there won't be any blizzards, since I will be driving *sigh*
After my east coast trip i'll be heading west, and then I should be back in Toronto around june 29th... hopefully with tons of great pictures and even greater memories!
Until next time!