Sa underbart!

This Saturday, the 'European lot' joined the ISC on the trip to Niagara Falls, Niagara wine festival and Niagara-on-the-Lake. Departure at 9 am, luckily not at 9 sharp or some of us would have had to stay in Toronto... Our- female- bus driver took us to Niagara Falls in an hour and a half and dropped us off right in front of them! We decided to take 'The Maid of the Mist' as we only had two hours to look around and to get the real experience, we got some *fashionable* rain coats and embarked on 'the vessel'! Quite an experience, I have to say, the water, the mist, the humidity and the power of nature... and us in our plastic blue coats. I felt so extremely little when we headed for the horse shoe falls. You are actually surrounded by mist, damp and water and all you can see is the massive amount of water heading towards you, but then just thundering down where the cliff ends. Per (from Sweden, great guy, especially when he speaks Swedish sa underbart!!!) told me that the Falls rank amoungst the 7 world wonders, and I can sure understand why. It really was impressive to look at! After our Maid of the Mist ride we had lunch in Niagara Falls-city (or whatever you call the city near the falls!), which was extremely touristy and very Las-Vegas-in-Canada-ish. In our yellow bus (the ISC fellows sure seem to like those yellow school buses!) we headed towards the wine festival in Niagara. In Europe, when mentioning a wine festival, you automatically picture a quite elitist sort of event, with nicely dressed,elegant and distinguished people. Well, in Canada this is not exactly the case. Next to the wine stands, there are hotdogs, Thai food, or barbeque dishes, which sums up to lots of smells mixed and the fat American sort of people you see in films. Add to that very noisy cover bands and you've got Niagara wine festival! Nonetheless, we had a good time there, chatting and tasting the Canadian wine (which is not half as good as French or Italian wine). After two hours of alcohol :) we left for the final stop of our trip: Niagara-on-the-Lake. We only spent 40 minutes there, as we were running out of time. A very Disney-like touristy little town with a lot of - heavily overpriced - shops and tons of French tourists! In general a very entertaining day! By now, we have formed some sort of 'European group' (the Korean/Japanese/Chinese/Taiwanese tend to glue together) consisting of: Per (Sweden), Thomas (England), Aurélie, Lydie and Sabrina (3 'Françaises'), Antonin (France), Jens and Malte(Denmark), Linas (Lituania/France) and Bram and me. We tend to have interesting and fun topics to talk about and I hope we will get to know each other better during the following weeks.
Once we arrived in Toronto on Saturday evening I rushed to my room, picked up my stuff and rushed back to Laura-Grace's room in Knox College for a girl's night! We first did some French homework, finding ourselves immensely brave to be able to show the courage to start doing homework at 9pm, and then watched Pride and Prejudice with the other people of the residence. Unfortunately, it was America's (Kiera Knightly) version, with the extra scene in the end. In my opinion Jane Austen would have absolutely loved the film, but must have absolutely hated the last scene. It is just sooo extremely unlikely that Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy would behave like they did in that scene! Quite a shame, I should not have watched those last 5 minutes, when I come to think of it, it just reduced the fun of it! We had a nice evening, including popcorn, pops, sweets and chocolates and lots of chatting! When we finally went to bed, we had all hoped for a sound night's sleep, but Knox's fire alarm prevented that! The thing went mad at 4.15 and they were only able to turn it off at 5.15! Not good for some of us, although I didn't mind the loss of the precious hours of sleep and found the whole enchilada very amusing! Quite an uproar at Knox, which is usually calm and silent! I joined the girls for a late brunch (those UofT meal plans are sure worth the money!) and headed to St. Michael's Library at around 2pm. I finished my assignment and did some Medieval French language (I am absolutely dreading that exam!).
Dinner at Bram's and then a peaceful night in bed, that's all there's left to the weekend!