Quote

"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."
- Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

Wednesday, 19 April 2017

180 Turn

A lot has changed since I last blogged! I am no longer a student living in Stratford, but a working woman in downtown Toronto. I was very lucky to have my manager from my internship last summer offer me a full time position to start after I finished school. So as of Monday, I've been working as a User Experience Designer, which is what I want my career to be in. It's been slow going so far, but that's to be expected with the first week. Lots of reading forms and signing up for accounts.
Now obviously with working in downtown Toronto, you also need to live in downtown Toronto. So far I've been sleeping on my sister's floor. Searching for an apartment has been stressful to say the least. I'm hoping to find an apartment with a friend of mine, so that I'm not coming home to an empty apartment every day. But two people means two sets of needs and wants, which is making the entire process more difficult. I went to see an apartment that looked promising this afternoon. Let's be honest, it's just about the only apartment I've found that meets all of our requirements and is not a sketchy looking 4 floor walk up. The apartment was nothing special; the bathrooms and kitchen are run down, but look functional. The bedrooms are big, which is its main selling point. It's definitely an older building, but it has some nice amenities. However, the apartment isn't available until June, which still leaves me looking for a place for May. Needless to say, I have some thinking to do and have to come to a decision in the near future.
My life doesn't have much else going on at the moment because of my temporary residence and the mental exhaustion of starting a new job and looking for a place to live. I'm hoping to do something fun this weekend. I want to start a bullet journal, so I'm going to go search for one at the mall. Also might go to the aquarium!

Sunday, 2 April 2017

The Final Countdown

A lot has happened over the past couple days, all building up to tomorrow, when we have our last class of our undergraduate degree. On Thursday evening we had our last SSC event, a dinner at Pazzo Pizzeria. We had 21 people show up, which was awesome (and I'm fairly certain our largest event ever). Marissa had made photo booth props for people to take pictures with. Luckily there wasn't many other people in the restaurant, so we were free to be silly and take a bunch of pictures against (fun fact alert) the oldest wall in Stratford. It was nice to have a sit down dinner with people as a bit of a send off.
Friday began on a high note when Mara's mom bought coffee and muffins for the entire class as a celebratory parting gift. For lunch, a lot of the graduating class went to the Parlour Inn for a GBDA send off that the GBDA Society had organized. There was some small lunch items, which enticed most of the people who went. But they also got a handful of professors that we'd had over the years to say a few words. It was kind of sweet to hear what they had to say.
Saturday was the GBDA gala. I'd never been to one before, so I was excited. A bunch of us got ready together at a friend's house. It was at Fed Hall in Waterloo, so we had a shuttle bus to take those of us living in Stratford to main campus. The theme was space/gala-xy. It was a little slow getting started because people showed up fashionably late, but eventually there were lots of people dancing. Unfortunately the DJ was repeating a lot of songs so for those of us that had been there the whole time it was getting repetitive. They had a photo booth with the popular giant letter balloons, which was pretty cool. Overall an enjoyable evening. There wasn't a ton of fourth year students there, ironically it was most of the people living in Stratford. It was also nice to see people all dressed up.
Today was Stratford's Annual Swan Parade, where the city officially welcomes spring by releasing the swans back into the river (they have a shelter that they live in during the winter). Another fun fact: the swans belong to the Queen. It's ridiculous how many people show up for this parade which lasts about 10mins. Last year they had 5000 people show up. I don't know if there was 5000 people there today, but it was certainly up there. There's lot of other things going on as well; there's a kids comedy act, colouring booths, and a long line of food trucks with even longer lines of people waiting to buy food. I spent the duration of the parade in a tree which gave me a much better view of everything than those who were on the ground. They had great weather for it. It's currently 14 degrees out and sunny. They couldn't have asked for anything better. I'm writing this on my rooftop patio, it's so nice out!
You can see pictures on Facebook in the near future.