Canada Road Trip: Part 1

To save you from a super, unbearably long post about my wonderful trip, I will split the post into two parts. I actually was largely successful at keeping up with my writings during the trip, so this post is journal style. Now on to the good stuff...

June 2, 2011.

Well here I am sitting in my Niagara Falls hostel room just pick enough for four beds and four corresponding people. Yesterday I picked up Laura Cesa from National airport amidst a storm of heavy rain and loud hail. Not too long after Brett and Perri arrived from their 12 hour long day drive from Indiana. Oof. The whole gang was assembled and ready to go. Excited for the trip to follow.

Today began with 8 hours of driving and three different drivers. I started a Michael Chabon book on the way up, so the time passed pretty quickly for me. The check-in point at the border was super exciting, as we were almost overcome with anticipation. The border patrol interrogated the surprisingly shifty-eyed Perri about her possession of her mother’s car and her propensity toward firearms and mace. Nevertheless, we made it through and dropped off our stuff at the hostel ready for adventure. We asked the hostel worker for a dinner recommendation and were lead to a Caribbean restaurant located in a surprisingly deserted part of town for it only being a little after seven. The food was great, but spicy, and unfortunately my appetite was not there. But a headache was. Regardless, we all soldiered on. On the way we encountered a charming scene of a tourist trying to take a picture of a raccoon that was just out in the open. The raccoon won by chasing the poor man away. It was soooo cute! We got to see Niagara Falls lit up all pretty with different colors ranging from slime green to pretty purple. During this time we also waited for fireworks that were supposedly supposed to come at 10pm. Lies! We topped off the evening with a Ferris wheel ride for Perri, Brett, and Laura as I wandered the two blocks of super touristy disgustingness that I would never take my hypothetical children too.

And that was the evening. But before I sign off on this day, there’s one more thing. Gigantor has found her true home. During dinner we had discussed the giant wooden fork and spoon that hang in my room (don’t ask) and Perri swore to start sending me unusually large commonplace items. Well this evening we saw plenty of Gigantor sized objects, including but not limited to, a giant calculator a giant hamburger, and a giant dream catcher. Gigantor may have forgotten her true origin story, but I’m pretty sure the answer lies in Canada.

June 3, 2011

The main event for today was an hour and a half long, walk/trot trail ride that took us along the shores of Lake Erie. I rode Skittles the allergic horse. Poor Skittles is allergic to dust and sounded like he might cough out a lung while he trotted. He also made an excellent potential poster child for Jenny Craig. He had apparently lost a lot of weight before coming to his current home, so the whole back of his neck was one floppy fatty deposit. He was a nice horse despite a few attempts to smear me off onto a tree and a few sneaky forays into tall grass for temporary snacks. After the ride, we ate lunch at our first Tim Horton’s, and then headed straight to the Falls for basically the rest of the day. Our original plan had been to go to a place called the Cave of the Winds where, as far as I could tell (and I could not see the appeal), we would be pelted from up above with the majestic waters of Niagara Falls. Unfortunately, we realized too late that the Cave was (obviously) located on the American side and one of us didn’t have our passports. Instead, we walked along the falls from above, stopping every 10 ft for a new photo opportunity at a slightly different angle. We found a similar Cave of the Winds experience on the Canada side, but were put off by the $16 price tag. After some more walking around, however, we were pouted into submission by one of our travel companions and agreed to go on a different $16 adventure called the “Lady of the Mist” or something hokey like that. This included a boat ride that took us all right up into the business of the Canadian Falls. It was a little difficult to the see the Falls through the clouds of mist that enveloped our poncho covered bodies, but what we could see was pretty frickin amazing. I will not even try to explain the drama that occurred for the most of the rest of the evening. Anywho, we finished off the night with fire works that shot above the falls in bright, loud colorful formations.

June 4, 2011

TO TORONTO! Today started off as a pretty miserable rainy day, but with some awesome thunder. Consequently, we decided to see a movie that had come out the day before at a semi-nearby Niagara Falls movie theatre. X men First Class. I had seen trailers for it that looked super good and period piece like and it was a comic book movie, so Perri, Brett and I wanted to see it. Laura had less interest so she watched Bridesmaids at the same time we watched our movie. I can’t speak for Bridesmaids, but we all thought the X-Men movie was very good. After watching Thor with Perri and Brett (which involved a very out of nowhere romance and a quick personality transplant), X-men seemed completely character driven and all the better for it. I, of course, liked Magneto (the tortured villain), and of course the mutant aspect. But, on it’s own, the movie was also a good period piece, though with an altered timeline of the sixties’ Cuban Missile Crisis (that worked really well). After our two movies let up we stopped at a breakfast chain called Cora’s, then took our 1.5 hour drive to Toronto.

In Toronto, at night/evening we ate at a restaurant called Everest Place, or something like that. It had the feel of a super expensive trendy restaurant, but with affordable prices, huge serving sizes, and a surprisingly Asiatic feel too it. Then we wandered Queen St, a very promising shopping site for tomorrow, and topped off the evening with a bar. In said bar/pub we did like the Romans do. We watched hockey on TV and I drank Canadian Beer. No really the Beer was called Canadian. Then we came back to the hostel, and I wrote this. The end.

June 5, 2011

Today was our first, last and only full day in Toronto…and that may turn out to have been too little. We’ll see. For the first half of the day we split up into two groups. I accompanied Laura to the Toronto Science Museum, while Brett and Perri went to a semi-pretentious Bach garden and explored all of China Town. I had become psyched to go to the Science Museum when I learned there was a reptile exhibit going on with real reptiles and everything. Yeah. After completing a one-hour commute on Toronto’s subway and bus system I was confronted with the terrible truth that the exhibit opened on June 10^th. So close. I knew they were all set up and ready for it b/c they were giving members a sneak peak. Stupid arbitrary start date! Anyway, despite this, and the disappointing lack of chemistry related science for Laura, we had some fun in the large building. We got a glimpse of outer space, saw a few creepy crawlies (including a duo of snakes), read about the human body, and tried to complete a variety of interactive tasks, some of which embarrassingly went straight over our heads. I think some were so simple that we over thought them.

After our fill of the Science Museum, Laura and I headed back, to meet Brett and Perri for lunch. We stopped in a Korean Grill lunch place and I started to recognize a pattern. So far we are having really good luck with finding restaurants of high quality, excellent atmosphere and cheap food. Our dinner from the previous night and the Korean Grill had great food for good prices. This is a nice relief after Niagara Falls. Though it fills me with a deep sense of dread that eventually we will pick a place that looks cheap, and actually is cheap. If you know what I mean. Lunch was followed with shopping on Queen Street. I made it to two comic related stores. The first almost makes me want to move to Toronto. It’s primarily a regular bookstore, but the prices were ridiculously cheap, and it was mostly new books. They were very light on DC graphic novels, but hey, cheap books! The next comic place was not as small and charming and a little threatening, what with the glass and plastic rap over most of the merchandise. I was still able to find something though. Oh and then we did not-comic-book-related shopping too. We then moseyed on over to the old town section of Toronto, which was pretty enough. For dinner was some less than perfect Indian food, and none of us were really hungry at all for some reason. Cough Cough—afternoon ice cream—cough cough.

To be continued...

Graduation--The True Story

-Long Post Alert-

Well, that last post was my exact thought process as I walked across the graduation stage. But I guess you might want some actual content for this post. There is no way I can go through and mention all the fun times of graduation weekend because honestly it’s all kind of a blur of nerves, tension, excitement, and ‘please God can I just get this over with?’. But I can give you highlights and promise you that I will keep detailed notes about my Canadian road trip while it’s happening so I don’t have to play any guessing games.

By the way, I am going on a road trip to Canada with friends Perri, Laura, and Brett…Brett the girl…girly girly Brett…the girl. Then I’ll be dog/house sitting for a Grinnellian family, meaning a husband who went to Grinnell and a wife who worked at Grinnell. A family who I just found out live about a 2 minute drive from my house. Though I may dare to try walking occasionally. The two dogs, I have found out, are Spanish Water Dogs. Very smart, but very quirky as well. There will definitely be blogging about them when the house-sitting starts. And a Canada post is forthcoming—very soon. And I have gone off on a tangent. Oops.

Okey dokey. Graduation weekend. On Friday, at about 12pm, I slipped my last college paper under my professor’s door. As I held the paper in my hand I took a moment to take a deep breath and try to imbue my simple task with great significance. Alas when the paper finally went under the door there were no fire works, there were no choirs of alleluias, and I pretty much felt exactly the same as I had before.

A few hours later I was outside the door of my dorm building. To my left, walking down the loggia toward me was Aki—one of the first girls I got to know at Grinnell because she lived across the hall from me first year—and to my right, walking toward me was Perri—one of the other girls who lived across from me first year, then roomed with me second year, and is my best friend from Grinnell now. We all met where I stood and went off to my last Grinnell Block Party. On the way we somehow ran into Brett and Laura and so we all arrived together at block party-ready to take part in friends and beer. Ten minutes later rain started to fall from the sky. And then more rain began to fall. And then a whole lot of rain—pouring rain in fact. We ran for shelter under a tree until it began to lightning and I became totally soaked through. Which meant feeling very cold and sporting essentially see-through pants. We ran for cover under a academic building and not soon after I ran back to my room for a very hot shower and more packing, which I had started about a day before.

Around 7:30pm I got a call from Perri, inviting me to dine with her and her newly arrived father and boyfriend at Lonskys, a local pub with excellent burgers. When they picked me up, Perri informed me that she had just found out her grandmother was in the process of dying (from a long stint with cancer), and that Perri’s mom and sister were going to drive to her bedside as soon as possible. Fortunately and unfortunately they eventually made it just in time, which also meant they couldn’t come to graduation. Despite all this real life drama that Perri really didn’t need on her graduation weekend, dinner was lovely. Perri’s dad is quite the character and very easy to talk to.

On Saturday, my own family arrived, sans David who arrived on Sunday. I gave them a tour of all the four blocks of downtown Grinnell, we ate in a very packed Chuong Garden, and we went to Faulkner Gallery which had a brilliant collection. Half of the works were student made and generally very good, while the other half had pictures (painting, photos etc) from various time periods and small historical facts underneath the artworks. Next was the Presidents Social. One of the parts of graduation that Perri and I had looked forward to was seeing the families of students interacting with each other. We were particularly interested in seeing our two families interact, though as I said that didn’t actually happen. Despite the anticipation I found it very awkward figuring out how to introduce my family to others. It doesn’t really help that I’m awkward in many unfamiliar social situations. As a result I usually failed and family members would have to end up introducing themselves. I feel like good conversation still happened though…eventually. Also my mom got to find out that Brett was actually a girl, and not Perri’s brother or boyfriend. To skip ahead a little bit, but in the same vane (of families meeting each other, not in the vane of Brett being a girl), my friend group (basically the Canada road-trip crew) decided to organize our own social get together where all of our families could interact in an informal setting for Sunday. We chose Dari Barn as the location (the spelling of which endlessly confused my father). Now, Laura and I knew that my brother and her sister had been in the same graduating class at Grinnell. However, I also knew that David was a music major and Laura’s sis was a science major, so we decided they probably didn’t know each other. We were wrong, it took a few minutes, but they did end up recognizing each other. So that was cool. But anyway, back to Saturday. Saturday night the Churchfamily ate at La Cabana Mexican in Newton with the Grabowfaimly/2. This involved more socializing and much margaritas.

On Sunday morning, I, mom, and Emily attended the Baccalaureate, whatever that means! Just kidding. No one really knows what it is though until they go to one. Basically there are speeches from both faculty and students. The speeches were good and I got pleasure out of the fact that one of our honorary class members was Bob Grey (or as he is known among Tableville—Bobbert!) because I thought my post-graduated friends would be jealous. Turns out they were just tickled. After the big B, we all started heading over to the Episcopal church to pick up my father who had forsaken speeches for God worshipping. David had called a little before to let us know he was close, and magically on our way to pick up Dad we ran into David coming from his parked rental car. Soon after, Dad walked out of church and we all headed over to A & M, a place known for it’s breakfast. But we of course went for the pie. Because with my family A & M = delicious pie. Everyone liked their pie the best and thought it was the best—except me who got the one dud pie of course.

For Sunday dinner, the Churchfamily ate at the oh so classy Phoenix Café. And at the café, one of my dreams came true. I got to try beef wellington. Ever since I heard of this wonderful dish I wanted to try it, but I was discouraged because it’s usually only found in gourmet restaurants. Though I don’t really know why. It’s essentially a steak wrapped in a pastry. That screams cheap American food. Maybe we’ll see the McWellington some day. But for now I finally got to try it. Post-dinner, for family-absent fun I went on an adventure. No really.

Around 10pm Perri and Kino accompanied me to Aki’s apartment for a get together of a little under twenty people. There was some brief sitting, but after one senior voiced discontent about sitting around and basically doing nothing, an adventure was proposed. Slowly, about 7-10 people started to emphatically agree. We would head out and walk. Walk nowhere in particular, but end up somewhere extraordinary, or regular, or sucky (who knows on an adventure!) We started by heading to a most wonderful playground, although I maintain it is super dangerous for little kids. It’s definitely the most strenuous playground I’ve ever been on. From there we wandered in neighborhoods and ended up walking back to campus along the train tracks. And by along I mean, on the train tracks. Though we paid close attention and looked out for trains unlike some people. I, of course, am referring to Darwin’s unfortunate encounter with a train. A story, I found out during graduation weekend, my sister has been telling with much exaggeration to all of her friends. For most of the adventure I walked with friend Alex Rosen. Our game for the night was to add metaphorical significance to everything we were doing and everything that was happening around us. The boy riding on a bike, circling and swerving around and through us was a metaphor. Every streetlight was a metaphor. Every trip and skip was a metaphor. However, I should add that most of the time we actually failed to explain why something was a metaphor, but they all totally were. The whole night, the whole adventure crew, emitted an unmistakable aura: “Oh God. It’s not happening. It can’t be happening. I don’t want it to happen. I’m excited for it to happen. I can’t believe we’re graduating tomorrow. If we keep walking can we go to Canada instead of graduating?”. Okay we said that last one instead of thinking it. This aura was replicated one more time, quite perfectly, that night when we returned to the apartment. One boy who had walked off with another girl during the adventure appeared—ecstatic—bounding into the apartment.

“Guys guys! I found a ‘God Saves the Queen’ ringtone for my cell phone. Wait, wait, listen!”

He started playing the ring tone. It was “Pomp and Circumstance”.

“No! No! Turn it off. Turn it off!” We shouted in unison.

Then the next day was graduation. I won’t write anymore about that particular day because I feel like all of my feelings were pretty well summed up in the last post—although it only encapsulated a small moment of graduation. I know I jumped around in that explanation from day to day, and from meal to meal. But I was trying to capture the confused blur that the weekend was through my rhetorical style. I felt it was important to reflect my jumbled recollection of graduation through my text and sentence struc—okay, I’m lying. Remembering things in order is hard!

The week following graduation was spent living in Perri’s apartment. All the things we did, or didn’t do, during that week would make a working adult cry. I managed to get in some exercise, though, through the help of my new good friend James the basketball. I hope our future endeavors will be fruitful. Also, at various times we also had various Carolines staying with us. (A German international student who stayed for the whole week and a recent graduate, who stayed for one day). The week was exactly what Perri and I needed. Relaxation, although the week was clouded at the edges by Perri’s recent family tragedy, our numb shock about graduating, and fears about the future.

That weekend Perri and I ended our ‘graduation tour’ with a wedding. Not between the two of us, though that is legal in Iowa--for now, but between Zach and Janna, or as we often call them—totally intentionally every time—Jach and Zanna. We drove up to Clear Lakes Iowa on Saturday, which got us there just in time for a very crowded boat ride that never left the dock and a zany bachelorette party. The whole Tableville group was there from last year. It was a most excellent reunion. Although I have seen Jessica, Janna, and Elyse fairly frequently, I hadn’t seen the others for a while. And it was just great to have that feeling of being part of a large formed group again. The “boat ride” was for the family and close friends of the bride and groom. Unfortunately, the water was too choppy so we had to stay stationary while eating our catered beef brisket. Tableville found an appropriate round table on the deck of the boat. Later that night was my first ever bachelorette party which included the excellent game that I have explained before, which is basically Pictionary-Telephone, and ‘penis ring toss’ of course.

The wedding was my first real wedding guest experience (when I was old enough to appreciate it—the bride looked so beautiful). And of course it was my first Greek Orthodox wedding. I know I cannot generalize about all Greek Orthodox weddings from this one, but I’ll give a few of my impressions. I liked that one of the first questions for the bride and groom was “have you promised to get married to anyone else?” I would love to know what happens when that question is answered incorrectly. The whole wedding kind of reminded me of a religious service rock opera. I’d say about 50-75% of the words of the service were sung instead of spoken. There was also audience participation that could happen at any moment. We were quickly signaled when we should sit and stand, although I could not determine any particular pattern. Kind of like simon says, with occasional Greek chanting. But seriously…

There is reason I am including the wedding in the graduation post. The wedding may have been the first time graduation really sunk in. I just suddenly felt really adult. One of my friends from college was getting married. She was in a wedding dress, walking down the church isle, and having her first dance as a married woman. As I sat in the crowded corner at the wedding reception that had been designated for all Grinnellian guests (and appropriately located right next to the bar) and looked at the blushing bride sparkle on the dance floor I knew I could no longer claim the title student, or more importantly, child…

Not that I can’t still try and act like one!