Hey, it's Qin yong here! We woke up to the start of this week with an unexpected surprise.
A very thick fog blanketed over Toronto today, causing visibility to drop significantly. The fog is much thicker in real life than in the photos. Cars drove a lot slower and had their headlights on as you are not able to see far past this fog. It was a chilly yet somewhat surreal experience as the fog was very sudden.
We had received an email earlier that called for volunteers for a tree planting session near the IBM office. And of course the both of us signed up for it. The tree planting session was on the same day the fog hit. After reaching the office and settling down, we headed out for the tree planting session. Interestingly, the fog lessened and we started planting with some guidance.
We learned a lot from this session - about what trees are native to this area at the IBM office and how to properly plant trees ( the technique involved ). Not to mention, this was also exhuasting but fun to do.
The next day was 30th October, which is Halloween. Hence, IBM had a Halloween celebration in the office and everyone was invited.
There were snacks, a costume contest and a pumpkin carving contest along with many cool decorations. The whole mood was really festive and I think everyone was really enjoying themselves at the event. It's quite interesting to see that Halloween is seen as such a big event in Canada.
Apart from the Halloween event and tree planting session, the rest of our working week was uneventful.
As the weekend rolled by, Hugo and I decided to visit High Park which is Toronto's largest park.
There was a huge area where dogs can roam freely and we saw many different breeds of dogs. The park features an amazing scenery, a nice pond and the iconic maple leaf shaped bushes that turns red when in season ( unfortunately it was not red when we came ). Overall the park was really wonderful and also incredibly big as we did not fully explore the entire park.
The park even had a zoo in it! The High Park Zoo has free admission and features many cool animals that are native to Canada.
Reindeer, Sheep, Bison, Yak, Llama, Emu and Capybara - just to name a few of the exotic animals we saw.
After spending the morning at High Park and the zoo, we decided to have lunch at St Lawrence Market. We wanted to try out the famous seafood stall at the back of the market which featured their signature Boston lobster roll.
Needless to say, it was absolutely delicious!
After spending some time around St Lawrence Market, Hugo and I went to check out another park called Tommy Thompson Park.
We wanted to go to this park to catch a nice angle of Toronto's skyline. However, the park seemed to be rather desolate and off the beaten path as we did not see many people there. The park still had a wonderful scenery as we view the city of Toronto from the outskirts of the city. We also got to see some wildlife there as we came across a group of mallard ducks and the park supposedly is popular for bird watching.
After exploring the park, we headed off to Nathan Philips Square to get a picture of the iconic TORONTO sign.
We also saw a protest regarding the situation happening in Chile during that time. It was interesting to see protests happening in Toronto although it's generally a good idea to stay way out of it and observe from a distance.
That marks the end of the day as we headed back home. See you again at week 11!