Let's Go Blogging... Backwards

Well hello. It’s taken me quite awhile to get going on this blog thing. Maybe I just hadn't felt anything I had done was significant enough to start off my blog with, as we all know how important first impressions are. Maybe blogging is like exercising- once you stop, it’s easy to take a long hiatus. I just never started, so the tough part was taking that first step and jumping on the blog wagon. But what has brought me back from the brink of never taking that jump? What prompted me to end that lengthy hiatus? Well, long story short, I was leafing through the daily journal I had kept overseas and I thought, hey, why don’t I blog about my trip this past summer? I could use the journal as my point of reference and expand on and fabricate the rest! It would also provide me with a more detailed account of our adventures while they're semi-fresh, and subjectively remind my travelers (Stephanie and Faith) of all the interesting and crazy experiences we had. I am extremely glad that I maintained my journaling regime, as it allows me to find spots of clarity in what was such a whirlwind and blur of a trip.

Ok, here we go! Enough with this dry reflection stuff.

Toronto

August 9^th. This was the date Steph, Faith and I were to fly to Toronto. This was the date we had been anticipating since we booked our tickets in spring. Ben kindly picked us up that morning and drove us to the airport. With eager faces and a 2-month wardrobe meticulously rolled up in our ginormous backpacks, we set off to leave for Toronto. This happened to be Steph’s first time on a plane. Faith and I were semi-experienced travelers (we had flown a handful of times), but this would be Steph’s first ever experience with her feet literally 22,000 feet off the ground. This novelty-factor was very evident after we found our seats and prepared for take off. I was basically blinded by the light reflecting off Steph’s wide-eyes and broad smile. I think the list of things Steph DIDN’T comment on would be plane lengths shorter than the things she DID comment on: “I see clouds! I see the ground! Oh my gosh we’re moving!” So that was entertaining.

We arrived at Pearson airport knowing we would have to camp out overnight. For those of you who have never spent a night in an airport, I’ll be the first to say it’s probably worse than camping. I’m not much of a camper; the ground is lumpy and hard, and when you wake up everything is covered in dew or bugs. Anyways, here’s a quote from my journal, “I got very little sleep on the floor, using my day pack as my pillow and listening to Carrie Underwood and Taylor Swift on the PA. It was peaceful, just not comfy.” The waiting area seats have these handrails that prevent you from laying stretched-out across them (the nerve of them, I know), and although the floor is carpeted, it’s about 1mm thick- very different from my pillow-top mattress. The airport seemed engineered to deter loitering or something... But please, be aware that I didn’t expect this trip to be comfortable. The life of a backpacker is known to be adventurous and very random. This also wasn’t my first night with barely any sleep so that wasn't a huge anomaly from my lifestyle. We ended up roaming around alot, with the airport as our playground…minus playground equipment except for a giant, abstract aquarium with plastic cubes (see below). But boredom-laced insomnia aside, we were looking forward to tomorrow and the warm, out-stretched arms of Barbados...