Bonjour from Toronto!

We made it! The drive from Bloomington to Toronto took about 10 hours, with an hour or so extra for food breaks. Mary was an excellent co-pilot; I never got sleepy once! I did eat my first McDonalds hamburger in yeeeears though. And I have to say, it wasn’t too bad. I got one of the fancy Angus burgers, which cost like $6.00 Canadian monies. The bun was some sort of ciabatta roll. In fact the entire menu at the Canadian McDondalds looked different, kind of like they took the McDonalds name and did what they wanted with the products. Anyway…

Crossing the border into Canada was quite simple after we navigated through the detour. (My GPS wasn’t taking us the right way, and I must have made about 6 U-turns, not kidding). There wasn’t a line, and the dude just asked us how long wed be there, why we were there, and if we had anything besides personal belongings. I almost blurted “We have a trombone and a tuba!” but I managed to restrain myself. All in all, it took about 1 minute to cross the border. We noticed, however, that the Canada to US line was about 2 miles long…we are hoping that we don’t have to deal with that on the way back!

We visited the Canadian welcome center, where they gave us a map of Toronto, directions, and $ exchange. For some reason, I didn’t think to bring more than $10, so I didn’t have any money to exchange. I’ll just have to use my visa card to buy food and stuff. Then we left the little border town of Windsor and headed “up the coast” to Toronto. I was surprised, the country side was just as barren as Kansas! It was super flat, and the highway exits didn’t have food or fuel to offer from what we could see. We were getting real hungry for dinner, so that’s one of the reasons we settled for McDonalds-it was the first thing that appeared out of the empty lands. (I bet they planned it that way.)

Once we got to Humber College, on the west end of Toronto, we were very ready to get out of the car! I get pretty sore from long car rides, so I couldn’t wait to walk around. We ran into Ericka and Katherine, the other two ladies from IU, and checked into our rooms. The accommodations ended up being pretty nice- I have my own bedroom, and it is connected to a common room with a little kitchenette and a bath. Ericka’s room is off of the kitchen. I wish I had something like this when I was living on campus!!

I opted not to play yesterday morning before we left because I wanted to try and take about 24 hours off the horn, and I was sure glad that I did!! We all went to the practice modules after finding our rooms, and I took a nice long warm up. It felt great. The fatigue that had been building up in my face over the past week or so was gone. Yay for a day off!!

Sadly, my Ethernet cable that I brought from home doesn’t work, so I have limited internet access, meaning I can use the internet when Ericka lets me borrow her cord. I could buy another cord, but it’s really not worth $10 to have a cord for a few days, since I don’t need it at home. My mission this morning is to get a password for the building’s wireless network so I can use it down in the lobby. I tried last night and the student behind the desk didn’t know what I was talking about- sorry, “aboot.” ☺

Today’s activities include finding breakfast and a grocery store, going for a run, warming up, and rehearsing with my accompanist at 4:30. It’s a pretty easy day.