Life in Toronto

We arrived back in Toronto and Tim booked us into a placed called University Club of Toronto. It is a funny story as to how he was able to get this reservation. One that I will let him tell.

Ok, so I surfed the net & sat on the phone making calls for 2 solid days trying to find cheaper accommodation than the Westin in Montreal, when I came across The University Club of Toronto, thinking it was another Uni res type of place. It was cheap for the type of room I was looking at on the net. I had nearly finished making the booking over the phone when the reservation lady said "can you please tell me the name of your affiliate club?" I told her I didn't understand & she told me that in order to stay here you had to be a member of an affiliate cub & that the list was on the website. I did a quick scroll down of the list to Australian Affiliates & I saw RACA. Thinking that the RACV was a sub-branch I told her that I could get a letter of introduction from them & send it to her via email to confirm the booking. I rang the RACV & they promptly sent off a letter to the exclusive club & I felt organised. The day we arrived the lovely lady behind the desk informed me that for future reference the RACA & the RACV are two different cubs, but she would forego this little misshap & we were welcome to stay. So for 2 nights, Mel & I were university graduates by default. Woops....my mistake....hehe.

So things have really started to fall into place here in Toronto. As it seems finding long term accessible accommodation is like finding a needle in a haystack. But we were put on to this couple who are wanting to rent our their accessible house for 10 months. This couple is going to France for 10 months and they have a two story house with a lift. One of the owners is a paraplegic, therefore the house is fully accessible and comes with a car that is the fully accessible and is exactly the same as Tim's car. The location is great, it is 20 minutes out of the city, close to a shopping centre, church, hospital and vet, the essentials. We went to meet the couple and see the house and could very much see ourselves in this house for the 10 months. It also has a guest room so we can have people stay if they want to visit! What sold it for us us though was as we were walking to our bus stop we passed these two little girls and a little boy with a lemonade and book stand. It was so cute to see that this neighborhood was still safe enough for these kids to be able to do this. It was so adorable and I think we might have some visitors this halloween.

The only draw card to this place is that it is not available to rent until September, so we have booked accommodation at an arts university. It is not great but it is cheap and typical of student residences. It brings back all the memories, good and bad of when I first moved to Geelong and lived in a student res for two years. The crazy cooking smells of every ethnic group, the rooms with little windows making you feel like a prisoner somewhat, worn down carpet and the thin suspicious looking bed linen. I have to keep reminding myself that it is only for a while and it is cheap, where as Tim thinks it is exciting to live like this for a while. He says it's like school camp again, except you don't know anyone. Our biggest challenge will be working out what to cook as we only have an electric frypan and a small toaster oven. No stove and no big oven unless we want to cook in the unclean student kitchen. This is a challenge we both find quite funny and stimulating so if you have any ideas of meals that you can only cook in a frypan and toaster oven make sure you post them. Stay tuned for our post with photos of our house.