I have been back in Canada for a little over a year now, and while I am still unconvinced that Ottawa is actually a city (it’s more like a big, friendly town), there are definitely some perks to living here.
For example, the Rideau Canal. The paths alongside are often full of scantily-clad people engaging in healthy, athletic activities but I like to walk there anyway. And in the winter it turns into the world’s longest skating rink! So if I knew how to skate, I could skate to school.
University of Ottawa in the distance.
I can indulge in super awesome gin & tonics with both gin AND tonic. I could usually find gin in Asia but tonic was extraordinarily difficult to find. And I certainly didn’t have fancy gin like this!
Yellow in the bottle but not in the glass. Weird…
One of the best parts of living in Ottawa is the wildlife. A few weeks ago, someone found a fox on the bus, and there are Canada geese grazing on the lawn where I work. Amazing!
I admit that Canada geese are mean, vicious, and often confrontational (they attacked a jogger a few weeks ago), and they leave slimy, green poop everywhere but they’re so pretty! And the honking noise they make as they fly over my house is gorgeous. I just don’t get too close!
The building you can see in the background of the first picture is where I work. The architecture is charmingly Stalingrad at the height of Communism. I work in the basement as a peon, chronicling minutiae for the federal government. I work so far in the basement in fact, that I don’t have cell phone reception. I feel like a troll.
Still, the job is mostly interesting, and I am learning a lot. It’s very different from teaching in Korea – no singing, no dancing, and no spicy baby octopus in the cafeteria. I think that last point may be the hardest for me. Why would you want an egg salad sandwich when you could have sea squirt stew?
Perhaps I’m still not quite used to living in Canada… 😀
ihatecockroaches 