From Quebec Street

I apologize to all of you avid readers who are lacking a certain avenue of procrastination that I previously provided youwhen I was blogging like it was my job. I'm back though, at least for today, and I thought I would fill you in on how the summer in Ontario has been so far.

Amazing.

First though, let's start with the end of my time in Korea. Packing...

...saying farewell to my plant (that finally sprouted a white flower. I thought I'd effectively killed it)...

...a trip to the bowling alley...

...and a few bottles of wine with Beautiful Girl.

One last walk home from school...

After one last Korean meal (I seriously do miss it a lot already),

I arrived home right on time on Canada Day

...and wheeled my umpteen pounds of luggage to a waiting father of mine. He was quite happy to see me, and I him, and it was sure nice to see the old Pearson Airport again. I could not help but comment time and again (the novelty has since worn off, eight days later) about the expansive landscape of this great province. I mean, we were in TORONTO and it was so vast...it was hard toget used to at first. I am still recoiling from the beauty of my home. It's been long enough that I thought I remembered it wrong: I recalled far toomuch green, too much space, too much...free air space. But lo and behold, I remembered correctly. This is really an incredible place to be.

I crashed only for a short time with my grinning father...

...at his condo with this beautiful view...

...before I was up and ready to go...

...on Friday morning. Mom picked me up from Dad's

then we went to Longo's. Alright, I've been talking to the Koreans for a year about the sheer abundance of food and selection of food at the grocery store. It got to a point of saturation, frankly. I fully expected that, as I tend to do, I was exaggerating about the stores. I mean, how much cheese could we really have?!

Turns out I was not exaggerating. The cheese really is that plentiful. It was amazing. When I saw the 8 varieties of apples in Longo's, I just about lost it.

I cried in the supermarket and felt the need to explain my tears to a woman who was passing by. It was all incredibly overwhelming. Reverse culture shock is no longer a farce: it is as real as it gets.

It was all pretty amazing.

After I had a good cry, we went back to my Mom's for a great Canadian breakfast.

I told my mom the story of the Classy Lady and we just about died laughing (my Korean Mum had asked about my mother about a dozen times and the more I told her, the more "classy" she thought she was. It was getting pretty humourous when at long last I couldn't take it anymore. I finally spilled the story about the Classy Lady who nearly "drowned" in three feet of water in the Burlington bay. In response, Mrs. Lim said, "well, your mother is still very classy", as if to imply that she'd lost a bit of the class, but not quite all of it. It was great). Here's the classy lady herself...

I have plenty more pictures...more updates to follow.

Have a great day.