Life

I’ve been gone for a while. I think I need a real break.
The past week has been a lot: it started out with something neat, though, and I wanted to share a little bit.
Since I’ve had my car on campus at school, I’ve been wanting to make a journey across the lake and see the city on the other side, and this summer I made a friend who self-identifies as as much of a city person as I do and who is equally impulsive. Last Sunday, we popped into a car together and crossed the border and got on a GO train to Toronto.
That was the beginning of the giant wildfire cloud that blanketed the entire US northeast and Canadian woods for a while, and visible in a lot of the pictures.
I did take a lot of pictures. I’ll give away a few (I love taking these)! I’ll definitely upload some to my Wikimedia Commons profile, too:



This isn’t all of the pictures, but I did try some poutine and rode plenty of TTC (although I missed the trams, since none of them were traveling from places to places that both me and the friend I was traveling with wanted to go).
I did hit Chinatown and a Muji in the Chinatown (my favorite store). If there are two places in any North American city that I feel obligated to visit when I show up, it’s the Chinatowns and the historic districts (looking for charming brownstone shots and anywhere with brick roads).

Chinatown felt surprisingly like Taipei, and Corktown and the distillery district scratched the other itch as well as it could’ve. I also missed the Toronto Islands, which I hear are a ferry ride away (fun) and also historic and adorable.
I’ve discovered, with all of this friend-making and city-walking, that what I enjoy the most is making good friends and seeing and trying new things.
As much as I thought, when I left Taipei for that one-week trip those few months ago this year, that what I was missing was something I couldn’t get in America, I’ve more than proven that wrong: my personal bar for satisfaction in life is much lower than I imagined, and I think that’s a good thing.
I’m laying down in bed with my laptop now. Life’s gotten in the way a little bit lately, and the plans I had for this month have fallen out of possibility. I’m back at home early from my summer internship. I’m thinking about the future even more than I usually do, because I can’t help it now that I don’t have much else to occupy my time.

In that bedroom photo, you can see my super-cool new giant teddy bear. That was a gift from a friend. He’s even more stylish with my Bopomofo handbag that I’ve now strapped around his shoulder.
Rather than give a rollercoaster series of events, as I tend to do, I think I’m going to take a break for a long time. A month, two, or maybe more. I’ll come back in the future and report back, but the blogging bug has been sufficiently squashed over the past while.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy my posts and I hope you check back in a little while if you remember. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to talk about.
See you then!