Day Two - Rainfall!!!

My fold up double bed turns out to be incredibly comfortable. I already realise after just two nights that I could very easily get used to living in the living room of my two best friends' appartment in Toronto, I'm not convinced that I'll want to ever leave when the time comes. After getting to bed around 7.30 on my first evening in this city, I woke around half past midday on the afternoon of my second day here. I have a feeling that this time difference is going to confuse the hell out of my body, I mean, Phil and SI have both lived here for over a month now, and they still work on a pattern of 'go to bed around 5/6/7/8 in the morning, wake up at 1/2/3/4 in the afternoon', although I do know that in the next few days we are all going to make a conscious effort to try and get into a regular sleeping pattern (of sorts), as we want to be able to do things in the days, as well as going out in the evenings. Phil and Si got up around 1, we lounged around in the afternoon, chatted and chilled out. We'd planned to go to Honest Ed's to go and get some cheap vests to sleep in, but literally it rained and rained and rained for about 6 hours continuously. Sitting in Phil's room you could just see how heavy and hard the rainfall was, smashing down onto the roof that his window overlooks, I genuinely wasn't convinced that it was going to stop at all yesterday. Phil made me the best toast I think I have ever eaten at about 3 in the afternoon, breakfast Canadian style!

Tay, the guy from the flat downstairs, came over in the afternoon so we chilled out with him. We put some awful football on on the T.V, it was something from the Canadian Soccer League, Toronto Croatia versus London City. It really was awful, but it definitely provided us with many laughs over how godawful the standard of football is over here anywhere below the MLS. Today it's the birthday of Andy, one of the guys that Phil and Si met in their hostel when they first got over here, so last night we descended downtown to go out with him and a few of his friends and celebrate. We got the bus, the subway and a streetcar into downtown, (I was rather impressed with the use of three methods of transport in around 30 minutes), and went down to meet Andy and a Dutch friend of his in a place called The Horseshoe Tavern. On the way, me and Phil fulfilled one of our life-quests in that we saw a homeless Chinese person, something I was utterly convinced I may never see in my whole life, so even by around 8pm I already felt like a winner. I swear to Zeus the bar that we went to was the darkest place I have ever been into. Just to talk to someone in there required a constant straining of the eyes just to try and vaguely make out their features. Later in the evening one of Andy's friends he met in Montreal came too. Anyway, Phil got a bit drunk, Si did, we all did and then we headed on a walk to a bar rather crudely named 'The Dogs Bollocks', where more drinking, pool playing and the turning up of an Australian that a drunken Phil continuously was rude to, ensued. We drank too many shots and by the time we all said our goodbyes it was clear to everyone this had been a swell night.

Whilst waiting for the bus home at about 4 in the morning we ended up having such a huge, world-changing conversation with lots of people. We ended up talking about the areas of the city, poverty, crime, cleanliness, good-naturedness and everything in between with a black guy, a Mexican girl and a gay guy. I stood there with my two best friends and realised that people over here don't care who you are, what you are, the kind of life that you lead, people over here just tend to get on. There is no way that at 4 in the morning at a bus stop in London you would ever get into a conversation with such a cosmopolitan crew of people, you would stare straight ahead and not make eye contact with anybody that you didn't know. It made me feel a little bit sick to think of how rigid-backboned our society is, how threatening parts of it can be, but worse than that, just how 'every man for himself' our culture in England seems to have become.

I wanted to see a Raccoon, because Phil had told me how huge they were, and in general I just wanted to see one for myself. We got off the bus a block early, walked to a 7/11 store, met an Indian who once lived in Tottenham but totally digged Cricket more than the Hotspurs, and Phil jumped drunkenly over a sofa that was just left on the sidewalk, landing on his arm, and resulting in lots of laughter. We got back to the flat and sat outside for a while, light starting to appear as morning crept ever closer, and discussed the Raccoon situation. Minutes later I was told there was one behind me, I turned and we looked as this huge Raccoon stopped and stared at us about 20 metres away from us. You could see the lines on his face, it was amazing. It stared at us, stared at us, stared at us, and then casually walked across the road, up some steps into someone's garden and then disappeared into a hedge. Day two is dead and I love Canada.