back T.O.

Ottawa->Portland->Toronto (with a brief stop in the wild lands of Hamilton)

What adventures! Alas, I am back home and into the daily grind of school now.

I am excited about my 2nd (and hopefully final) year of grad school but I miss working with these awesome people at EnviroCentre! Luckily, I get to stay on to do social media and website updates which makes me feel less bad for not applying to any T.A. jobs.

This basically sums up my all-too-brief school trip to Portland: 

Yeah, I could definitely live there. If it is really the place where young people go to retire, sign me up!

Let’s see, before that I spent a sweet weekend volunteering at Arboretum, an arts, music, and gastronomy festival in downtown Ottawa.  Everything was so well thought-out- it was a delight to take part in.

There were installations made up junk materials…

Hot bikes…

Howlin’ wolves…

…and lots of hill-side lounging to dreamy music. Side note: I don’t “get” Alex Lukashevsky and his bird-chirping melodies.  Working on it!

I also spend some time exploring the Ottawa River’s many gems, like this old railroad bridge by the O-Train Pathway:

So much cool art.

Just loverly.

Missin’ my Saturday morning coffee (from the Ministry of Coffee) and silly book reading in Minto Park! Oh Ottawa, we will reunite soon enough. PS I like Toronto too, but there is just something very ~cute~ and ~small town~ about Ottawa that appeals to low-key sensibilities.