Toronto and New York!

The 'rents and I made it to Toronto with only minor setbacks. My family in Toronto is wonderful - people who remember my nicknames from when I was two and let me raid their fridge and spoil me with Christmas cookies. The day we got there it was 17° degrees. That's not even fair, considering a few days before I was running around the beach like a goof, enjoying the warmth and the sunshine (until Kenny opened a bottle of champagne over my head...). It was a fun, relaxing, carb-loaded 5 days.

The flight to New York didn't go so smoothly. We were set to fly Sunday, two days after an attempted terrorist attack, so the lines in the airport were out the doors. We waited 4.5 hours in line to get through security only to find out our flight had been canceled. So we got the hell out of the airport, refunded our flights, spent another night in on Bloor street with my cousin in downtown Toronto, and rented a car to do the 10 hours drive into Manhattan. It was long, and boring, but infinitely more relaxing then handling the airports again.

New York with parents is fun. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel, walked a lot, shopped a little, ate a lot, and they paid for everything! Wonderful how that works. They've been gone one day and I've already dropped like $200... I've met up with some old friends and spent the day wandering the city; Chinatown, Little Italy, SOHO, and the East Village. Walked the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday after attempting for three years.

Jesse Gay is here for one more day, and we're going to hit up the Natural History Museum. I have a full week left before England. Spending New Years Eve at a club in Brooklyn, should be off the hook!

j

Travel plans, yes.

So I've got it figured out. As of today, June first (shit, gotta pay my rent..) I will be saying goodbye to everything I know and hold dear mid-December and starting my voyage. It starts with Christmas in Toronto with my dad to visit my Canadian relatives, New York City with my Mikey Mou for New Years, various destinations within England for the month of January (and who knows, maybe France?), and then I will fly to Cairo by the 29th and start my program in Alexandria on the 31st.

Yehaw. I say bring it. I'm so excited. I'm working my tail of, to an extent that if I have a day off I feel guilty (which is probably not the best mentality to maintain). Gotta get that scrilla; gotta buy those plane tickets.