arrived

at the airport in vancouver, i cried.

i hated the fact that the family that was staying with us came to say goodbye. i didn't get to spend as much time with my sister and brother as i would have liked. instead, we took countless pictures of the other family with our family in varying combinations and it was not how i had pictured it.

the plane from vancouver to calgary was pretty empty and it was only an hour so it was pretty harmless. there was a young business guy sitting across the aisle from us and he looked like a young jfk so i couldn't help staring.

we arrived early this morning in toronto. the flight was not great. the flight was totally packed from calgary to toronto and sitting in the row in front of us was a lil' 2 year old boy and he cried. it seemed just as i was about to dream...this lil boy would know it and start to cry. i gave up and watched the olympics on the mini screen in front of me. dad snored most of the way and mom poked him now and then. his snoring was pretty harmles because everyone was pretty much sleeping on the flight, seeing how we boarded at midnight in calgary.

when we arrived at the airport we collected our things and i got three of those luggage things for a buck a piece and collected our stuff. as we rolled to the parkade to rent our car, my computer toppled and hit the floor hard. great. (roll of eyes). after loading the car, i went to return the cart and only got a quarter a piece back for the carts and i got pretty worked up about it because i thought i was going to get my dollar back...arg! and to add insult, when i returned one of the carts, it didn't catch right so the machine took the cart and gave nothing. oooh, i was boiling!

we drove straight to brantford and took the first exit into town: wayne gretzky parkway. (roll of eyes) wayne gretzky was born in brantford and his name is plastered all over the place. and another interesting tourist point is that alexander graham bell invented the telephone in brantford so on brantford's water tower it reads: brantford the telephone city. so those are brantford's claim to fame.

we stopped at the mcdonald's for breakfast. mom thought it would be important for us to swtich over our internal clocks right away so that we could do more with our time here. she was right but the first couple of days was really hard. so mom orders coffee and tells the girl behind the counter that she would like a coffee with cream and sugar and one black and the girl gave her a blank stare like, "so what?" she gives mom 2 empty cups and points to the side counter where you had to serve yourself. brilliant. different place, different protocol.

we drove to the tourist information center and it was pretty nice. i picked up a map and we looked around. we noted that there was an elvis fest in town this weekend and mom and i tried really hard not to laugh out loud while we were standing in front of the poster. elvis fest? come on, right? but, yes, i was full blown and little did we know that it would come back to bite us later.

we drove down to the house where i would be boarding and no one was home so we found a nearby park and parked in the lot and slept for about 2 hours. we ate lunch at swiss chalet and the food was nothing to be desired. the chicken was dry and the service needed improvement. we returned to the house and met the family. very nice people and the room and bathroom are fabulous. better than i expected.

mom called her aunt in windsor and told her we were on the way. we drove 3 hours down there and met her for dinner. mom's aunt lived right on the river across from detroit and it was very cool to see detroit's skyline across the water. we had dinner in her apartment and then she had to rush off to a church meeting so we walked along the seawall, took some pictures and drove back to brantford. dad drove the first hour and started to get sleepy so i took over for an hour and a half. we pulled out in woodstock for a pee break and a tim horton's ice cap. off we went to brantford.

we tried every single motel and there was no vacancy anywhere, not even the completely rundown motels. why? you guessed it. elvis fest.

by this time we were all tired and cranky. our only option was to try hamilton which was another half hour away. so off we went to hamilton. it was dark and dire. we called every hotel listed in the bcaa book but there was no vacancy either. the only room we could find was at the sheraton for $300/night. we opted not to spend that much money. we were about to give up and just sleep in the car when after, mom said a mini prayer to the good Lord that what should we happen upon? a motel. run down and not at all our first choice, we could not complain. we just took the last room available. one bed for mom and dad to share and i slept in a car seat that dad took out of the rental minivan.

it was not at all what i expected my first night to be like but hey, it could be worse right. although that's really hard to conceive. when we arrived and left that lil' motel we never took notice of the name or where it was. and so, it'll remain.

it was a terrifically long day. we have to wake up early to go to church tomorrow. tom, my landlord, is the pastor. more later.